PROLOGUE
Far and wide, as far as her eyes could reach, everything was red.
Red and mangled and dead.
Limbs protruding from torn bodies at wrong angles, swords still clutched in hands frozen by rigor mortis, charred corpses fuming in the chilly morning air.
And so much blood.
Not the kind she craved to feel gliding down her throat, sipped directly from the plump vein of an orgasmic human.
No.
This was a foul kind of blood.
Pungent and rotting.
The blood of the dead.
Death permeated all around her as Ereshkygall sank to her wobbly knees in the blood-soaked mud, clutching her lover’s near-lifeless fingers in her hand.
Alektriona gave a gurgled, wet cough, as crimson rivulets dribbled down her chin, pooling at the base of her once immaculate, alabaster neck. Her battered fingers twitched in a feeble attempt to squeeze Ereshkygall’s hand.
“Alek, love, no. Conserve your strength,” she said, although she knew bone-deep there was no such thing left in her lover’s body. Her skin had already taken on the sickly pallor of demise, and all they had left were mere moments of consciousness.
“Please, please, Alek, I urge you to reconsider. Let me turn you.”
Ereshkygall became frantic as more blood poured out of Alektriona’s mouth, soaking her torn leathers. If the darn female would only accept becoming a vampire, maybe she could steal her from death’s cold, unwavering embrace.
It was a futile attempt; she already knew it.
They had already seen the outcome of this battle.
They knew the cost.
The toll.
The sacrifices.
“It’ssss over…Eresh.” Alektriona’s once melodious voice was nothing but a broken whisper. “The prophecy…” More blood spilled down her chin with every strangled word, “…ensure it passes.”
There was still so much Ereshkygall wanted to say.
So much love she wanted to profess to the heavens and the rapidly cooling body of her lover.
So many promises of a happily ever after that would never transpire now.
She choked on the almost-there taste of those ephemeral moments, on the intangible, heartbreakingly beautiful could-have-beens.
She closed her eyes in defeat and acceptance, trying to halt the imminent spill of bloody tears that threatened to blur her vision.
As such, she missed the infinitesimal second when Alektriona’s once hauntingly azure eyes lost their last glimmer of light.
All she heard was a feeble gasp and a faint whooshing sound that she would later tell herself was Alektriona’s pure soul taking flight.
Then nothing.
There was such a deafening silence in death. There was no peep to be heard on the battlefield, no intake of breath or rustle of war-torn leathers.
She was the last one standing.
When she finally opened her eyes, she was greeted by Alektriona’s pale, still form, a weak smile forever etched on her features.
“May we meet again in the afterlife, my love,” Ereshkygall whispered, and the breeze scattered her words, taking them to the heavens above where all her friends had departed to.
Akaori was gone.
Aeon too.
Kreyos, Reythia, Llyr.
Everyone.
All her friends, her brothers and sisters, her lover. All perished in a senseless war caused by sick jealousy and perverse obsession.
She was all that remained. And it was her duty to preserve the memories of what had transpired—to keep vigil over time itself until the day the Foretold One would emerge and the balance between good and evil would be restored.
Ereshkygall rose on her shaking feet, wiped away her bloody tears and set her sights on the hazy horizon.
There would be nothing but time to mourn and drown in echoes of the past.
Lifetimes of that were awaiting her.
Now she had to find a remote and secure location to hide away, to let nature take its course.
She vaguely remembered rumors about a cavernous system of tunnels deep in the belly of the Saunoque Mountains. A place where she could spend eternity unbothered until the prophecy they conjured in a fevered dream would come to fruition and the cycle would begin anew.
But before she could lay her weary bones in an eternal resting place, she had one last thing to do.
She pocketed the orphaned daggers, painted crimson and humming a sorrowful tune of loss. She could feel their despair as if it were her own.
Because it was.
They’d lost their wielders just like she had lost everything.
Now, it was her last mission to find Akaori’s human sister, Adhala, and deliver the blades for safekeeping, until one day, many moons away, they would return to their destined owners.
With a last glance behind her at the desolate landscape where destruction and decay reigned with a bloodied fist, she limped her way out of the battlefield and began her journey.
She hadn’t decided yet whether it was an honor or a curse to be the one entrusted by some preeminent deities to keep the Manichaean cycle flowing. Truth be told, the absurdity and pointlessness of it all had started to erode her belief in any higher power.
All she knew was that there was a prophecy she needed to uphold. There would be a distant time when the natural balance could be restored once and for all. That failure to do so would bring forth Imiryion’s utter obliteration.
She owed it to all those who had perished not to have let them die in vain.
And she owed it to the future ones as well.
To warn them of past mistakes and guide them to their eventual victory.
A blessing and a burden.
That’s what her foreverness had become.