Prologue Fury
I’ve been dead to the world since the bitter winter after Urdin and Thamaos killed one another.
I’m uncertain how long it’s been since King Gherahn’s authorities carried me north to torture me to death, chained me to the black, icy cliffs along the Abyss of Pensea—how many days, months, years, decades, centuries have stretched from then to now.
But I have an inkling.
Once upon a time, I beheld my future through the eyes of a weary traveler. Though much of my body has decayed since then, I still have my angry heart. More terrifying, I still have my godsdamn mind. Then again, creatures like me are hard to kill.
And we never—ever—forget.
When I wouldn’t die, the king’s Brotherhood locked me far beneath the earth, entombed in a prison of dirt, stone, and suffocating iron, and prayed to Loria that the kingdom’s people would let me slip from recollection. What a gift if my immortal bones would turn to dust as forever came and went.
But here in this unforgiving crypt, with darkness and memories as my only friends, I still exist, my eternal torment paused like a held breath as the Ancient Ones’ whispers reach my ears, the god spirits who’ve been waiting for my justice. My salvation.
My vengeance.
He’s coming, they promise me, communicating the only way they can from the Shadow World’s Empyreal Fields. The man from the East. He’s coming.
I have been called Beauty. I have been called Love. But I am Fury, and some fool is going to bring me back to life.