Chapter 3
Itouch down to the hard ground, petrified by ice and wind, my thick winter boots offering no protection against the miles of ice beneath my feet. Phasing from my spirit form to my human form is always painful. The opposite of being ripped apart limb from limb, it’s as if I’m being sewn together, piece by piece, with a needle of ice and a thread of misery.
Half-alive, half-dead.
The flat, icy ground crawls with snakes of snowy winds, and peaked glaciers jut skyward on the horizon, blocking what little light radiates from the waxy moon. Most souls who end up here call it Hell, but I call this realm by its true name.
Baratrum.
The shadows lurk and slither in the ice crags behind me, awaiting their next meal. They prefer souls who put up a fight, but they’ll consume anything. One tendril of darkness curls around my boot, tugging, as if to say, “Come back, give in.”
I stand my ground against its pull and seal my mind off from everything. It’s the only way to survive here.
“You called, My Liege?”
I take a knee as Nil, the god of death, materializes in front of me, his will like invisible tethers knotted throughout my soul, forcing me here. Normally, when he wants me to hunt, I’m pulled to it by those tethers. No formal meetings are needed.
If my mind and soul had some warmth left, I might be curious why he’s gracing me with his presence.
But it doesn’t. And I’m not.
Today, Nil impersonates a blood barbarian from the Yalk realm. One of his more pleasant forms, if only because this form is solid—visible.
I bow my head, locking my gaze on my black, frayed boots that once bore magnificent rubies studded up the shin.
“Dagen, I have an . . . opportunity for you,” his voices echo, a compilation of souls he’s consumed.
Souls I’ve hunted for him.
“Another blackened soul?” I ask.
They’re my forte, it seems. His other lackeys are more suited for hunting the sweet and innocent. It’s a tradeoff. To hunt the crawling, dark scum, you have to be crawling, dark scum.
Nil’s barbarian horns protrude from his head, their wide girth splitting the skin above pointed ears. “There is a pure soul I require,” he says, his eyes alight with cunning.
“A pure soul, My Liege?”
Blackened souls, wretched souls, rotten souls—I’ve dealt with those. Never a pure soul.
Pure evil, probably.
The ice beneath us quakes as he stalks around me in a slow circle. Shadows jump and writhe like Heshena hyenas at his presence, nipping at his heels.
“Yes, a pure soul. If you deliver her to me, I will grant you freedom.”
I blink as if waking from a trance. I know not to think of such foolish, human-like desires. Ten years here, and I’ve abandoned most human-like things, but . . .
“Freedom?” I breathe.
Nil’s smile is all wrong on the face of the blood barbarian. It’s too meticulous, too calculating for such a brute creature.
“Some freedom,” he amends. “You will no longer be confined to this realm. I’ll allow you to live where you wish, but you’ll still be my deathwalker, bending to my will, a slave to the urges.”
My fingers curl to fists at my sides when I’m reminded of the worst of the urges—the primal need to consume souls to sustain myself.
“That does not sound like freedom.”
He walks behind me, his voice dropping into the smooth persuasive tones I’ve come to recognize as the calm before the conniving. “Just imagine,” he says. “You could know the warmth of a bed again, the kiss of a lover . . .” His boots pause on the groaning ice. “Do we have a bargain?”
A bargain. I’ve seen many souls bargain with him. It always ends the same.
Badly.
He circles me.
From the corner of my eyes, I watch him snatch a shredded, red soul with dark edges sent here by another deathwalker. He breathes it in with a long inhale, and the soul screams, the sound like shattering glass when it dies its final death.
The trails of red pigment die on his lips.
“I do not bargain with gods.”
“Pure souls are quite powerful,” he smiles, invigorated by the soul’s fresh power now thrumming through his veins.
“So?” I ask. “You own my soul. Just order me to do this and be done.”
I am not falling for the traps he calls bargains. If this soul is powerful enough to elicit coercion from Nil, it must be a specific breed of awful. Awful souls are his favorite. Like trophies.
His red, bone-like talons seem to lengthen as he inches one toward my chest. “Rules must be followed in the case of pure souls. Rules even I cannot break.” He smiles, red teeth glinting like razors in the moonlight. “It also requires a certain . . . charisma.”
He’s being too patient, his voice too calm for my liking.
“No.” My knee on the ice throbs from the unworldly cold.
He draws the barbarian’s bludgeon-like sword from his back strap to inspect it, which is comical. He has no need for swords.
“Then I shall sweeten my offer,” he says. “Bring me the pure soul, and I will give you a hundred years of complete freedom from my will. You can reclaim your throne, help your people, and free those little slaves, like you were so set on doing before you died. But that is my final offer. I cannot remove the shadows from your soul. You will still be what you are.”
“How will I reclaim my throne? I am not powerful enough against the First-Made Vessel—”
He snaps his fangs at me and inhales. “You may borrow the pure soul before you bring her to me. Her power will supplement your own. Use her to kill your enemy if you wish.”
My throat tightens. I know better than to bargain, but . . . freedom. “Where is this pure soul?”
He sheathes the sword with a malicious grin and bends down to my level, bringing with him the stink of the barbarian’s blood-stained teeth and horns. “She resides in the Zarr castle. Heiress to your throne.”
If I had a normal beating heart it would be hammering against my ribs.
Zarr. My home.
If I accept this bargain, I could find out if she’s still alive. My death was so violent, so sudden, I never found out what happened to—
“Do you accept?”
I have to know, and the chance of freedom . . .
“Free me of my bonds for the duration of this bargain, and I will accept.”
“Very well.” A triumphant, bloody grin spreads across his gray skin. “I require a soul to eat before you leave.” He waves his claws. “Fetch the one I marked.”
I bow my head. An order.
“I suggest you eat a soul as well. You’ll need your strength.” He turns and walks a few thunderous steps before pausing. “Must I remind you what happens to those who fail to uphold my bargains?”
I bow again. “No, My Liege.”
His bottom half dissolves into shadow before he says with a knowing grin, “I almost forgot, you cannot shred her soul as you do others. She must give it to you.”
There it is. The catch.
“Will she be marked?” I’ve never seen a pure soul before.
A bloody, cunning smile. “I cannot mark pure souls.” He begins to disappear.
“Wait,” I call, my cold brain finally catching up. “How much time do I have to deliver on this bargain?”
“Till the night of the King’s Final Duel.”
The words float in from a past life, long forgotten.
The King’s Duel.
After Nil and his inky shadows dissipate, I tear my pant leg from the ice and part of my flesh stays with it. I survey Baratrum in its empty, frigid expanse, hoping not to see it again for a hundred years.
The compulsion to obey and the urge to kill is strong; an insatiable hunger ripping me apart from the inside out. Only the following of orders and the tearing of souls will satisfy it. I turn into my spirit form and fly to fulfill my orders.
Nil’s marked soul calls me to an entirely different realm. The lands of Heshena materialize beneath me in a matter of seconds, bringing forth green sands and giant trees with leaves bigger than my face. This land is not like the dry deserts of the Yalk realm, or the paved roads in the Tatum realm. This realm, with its three suns and glittering air, is the prettiest realm I hunt in.
I drop low, my invisible essence weaving throughout the mossy, wooden pillars, unable to think or feel anything but the urge.
After miles of Shena trees, I arrive at the crater of Hesh—a bowl-shaped city nestled in a rocky depression. Dark-skinned fae, with hair of all colors, bustle up and down concave streets. As a ghost, I can hear their desires. As a deathwalker, I can see their memories, a cacophony of whispering desires and vivid memories. They project through my mind without my consent as I pass soul after living soul.
I soar past the gold, sparkling palace, barely noticing the magnificent Sand Gladiators inside its walls below—rows and rows of statuesque men and women notorious for their physical acclimation. They pass beneath me as I jet overhead and leave the city behind. The soul Nil marked pulls me past oceanic cliffs and pastel sands sprinkled with glassy stones and pale driftwood.
Until I come to a hut, modest, but worn, carved out of a long dead tree. The thin door hangs crooked, windows are fogged by years of sandstorms, and the roof has lost a shingle leaf or two. I materialize, dropping my boots to a shale pathway. The stones freeze and shatter beneath me on impact, and the windows ahead cloud up with ice. The marked soul’s memories hit me before I see him, like the stink of rotting flesh wafting into my mind. His murders play out before my eyes, whether I want to watch or not. They come in flashes.
Scents.
Emotions.
Brown pointed ears, studded with gold earrings, are covered in blood. Red luscious hair knotting in my—his—hands. Ice coats my tongue.
Love burns through the memory, but also hatred, and rage. It’s so hard to distinguish their rage from my own.
She tried to leave him.
The door splinters in my wake, and the marked elf jolts away from a desk, dropping a pen and parchment. He’s a normal Heshena elf, and I think that’s what gets me the most. Monsters can hide in such humble, deceivable forms.
He creeps backward. “Who are you?”
The urge to rip into his soul suffocates me, not a craving—there’s no pleasure in consuming souls—just following orders, surviving. The monster inside claws and thrashes to tear out his soul, but I draw my sword of shadow.
“Fight or submit.” I always grant them that much—an old sentiment that’s losing meaning to me.
He tries to bolt around me. I snatch his leather vest in my fist, smash his skull against the mud wall, and sink my arm through his chest like a ghost. He thrashes and screams as I clutch his soul, pulling, tearing, cracking.
No human feelings, I tell myself. His final breath is a shudder.
A yellow soul with a festered-black center bleeds into the spirit dimension before it’s sucked away to Baratrum. If his soul is strong enough to survive the shadows—which it isn’t—he’ll become a deathwalker. Otherwise, he’ll be no more.
I expect to feel Nil’s will calling me back to Baratrum, but to my relief, there is nothing.
Our bargain has begun. I know it because the tethers recede from inside, allowing me to move as I wish.
I take flight and dissolve into the night skies of the Zarr Realm, trading the multiple suns of Heshena for dark, gloomy fog. Soaring above endless stone quarries, rock mills, and infantry training grounds inside the Zarr Kingdom, excitement trickles into my chest. I’m home. To the east lies the Barrens, to the South is the Zo Kingdom, and beyond that, the Zem Kingdom, just like I remember. Except now, as a spirit, I see the ancient wards separating the kingdoms, like sky-high domes of swirling air.
The winter fog is thick and gray, but even it can’t hide the black, twisting spires drilling upward into the night ahead.
The Zarr castle.
My castle.