Prologue Balthazar #5
Zara gasped, stumbling back as if I’d struck her. Her eyes flooded with pain.
“I don’t need you,” I said coldly. “Freya is dead, and it’s because of you. You had to see me and say goodbye; because of that choice, our children were left unguarded. They died alone.”
The silence that followed was suffocating—thick and heavy with everything we couldn’t take back.
I staggered back, gasping for breath as grief crushed my chest. My beard was damp, tangled with blood and sweat. Zara stood in the moonlight, pale and quivering, her skin glowing like starlight against the darkness. Her eyes locked with mine, shimmering with agony and disbelief.
Then the man cleared his throat.
“My name is Mathias Alastair,” he said softly, voice calm but commanding. “And you both must come with me.”
He took a step forward, his eyes not filled with fear but with something else: understanding, mourning, and strength.
“I see the agony carved into your face,” Mathias said, his gaze locked onto mine. “I feel your misery, even from here. You may blame me if it numbs the pain—but I swear to you, on my life, I had no hand in your children’s deaths. I did not summon the Timehunters.”
He stepped forward, looming. “You must leave this place and come with me. It is no longer safe. I know who you are, Balthazar. And I can help you. I can help you understand your darkness—its purpose, its power. You can start again. You can build a new life, a new family. But not if you stay here and tear each other apart.”
He extended his arms, not in threat, but in offering. “Come with me. Let me help you. Let me help Zara. You need me more now than ever before.”
“No!” I roared, the word cracking the air like a bolt of lightning. “I don’t trust you—I never will! I refuse to go!”
I turned away, and there they were.
Tove. Revna. Meya. Astrid.
Their small bodies had been gently arranged, heads touching in a circle of stillness and sorrow. Pieces of wood had been stacked around them—someone, likely Zara, had prepared their funeral pyre, ready to send them to Folkvangr.
A warrior’s rite.
A mother’s heartbreak.
“There’s nothing you can say that will make me want to understand who I am,” I growled. “It’s too late. They’re gone. My precious, sweet girls—gone. What point is there in living and knowing when the only things I lived for have been ripped away from me?”
The agony rose in me like a tempest, a wildfire in my chest that consumed everything it touched—reason, hope, restraint. I felt it scorch through my veins, devour my thoughts, and leave nothing but smoke and screams in its wake.
“I have no purpose now,” I said, voice hollow. “Except one. Vengeance.”
I clenched my fists, trembling.
“I will burn those fucking Timehunters down to their bones. I will erase their name from time itself. That is all that matters. Not answers. Not origins. Not starting over. Only vengeance.”
All around me, I heard echoes—faint, distant, impossible.
Laughter.
Their laughter.
My daughters’ giggles drifted on the wind like ghosts. For a moment, I saw them—smiling, vibrant, dancing in the flicker of the flames.
Then the laughter twisted.
Distorted.
And their faces melted into snarling, blood-spattered masks—Timehunters, cruel and grinning, their blades dripping with the blood of my children.
“I swear on my life,” I growled, fists clenched so tightly my knuckles cracked, “I will tear down the Timehunters with every last ounce of strength I possess.”
I strode to the pyre and fell to my knees, the snow soaking through my trousers as my hands hit the ground. My chest heaved. My vision swam.
I leaned in and kissed sweet Tove’s brow, brushing a strand of hair from her face with trembling fingers.
“Farewell, Tove,” I whispered. “May Folkvangr welcome you into her arms.”
One by one, I repeated the ritual.
Revna.
Meya.
Astrid.
Each kiss broke a piece of me. Each prayer was a cry from the hollow well of my soul. I offered a silent one for Freya, though part of me still clung to the impossible hope that she might be alive.
Tears blurred my sight as I reached for a still-glowing branch—the last ember of my former life. The heat scorched my palm, blistering my flesh, but I didn’t flinch. It was nothing compared to the inferno inside my chest.
With shaking hands, I lowered the branch to the kindling beneath them.
Flames sparked. Then roared.
I watched the fire climb and devour—flesh, cloth, memory. Everything we had built. Everything we had loved.
A voice inside me screamed for revenge, howled for blood.
But another voice—a faint, fractured whisper—begged for forgiveness. It asked if this was truly the path forward. If I could ever find peace in this endless rage.
And for a heartbeat, I didn’t know which part of me to obey.
With one last shuddering breath, I turned from the blaze.
And walked into the abyss beyond.
Torn between retribution and redemption.
But vengeance had its claws in me now, dragging me forward, devouring every shred of hesitation until only the hunger for blood remained.