Blood So Deadly Divine (The Deadly Divine #1)

Prologue

A thunderclap woke me from the long slumber. Piercing through eons of silent meditation, a reverberating clash that rippled through my being.

The earth shook, but not in a manner accustomed to the slow, grinding shifts of continents, nor akin to the habitual kisses of storm upon soil.

No, this was an anomaly, a rude awakening, fracturing the stillness that had cradled me in a serene embrace for time immemorial.

It was as though a star, unbound and searing, had plummeted into my embrace.

Carrying the taste of fresh rain upon the parched ground—an untouched river coursing through age-old valleys.

An insatiable curiosity unfurled within me, and I stretched beyond myself—reaching, tasting. For I harbored an unyielding greed, a hunger untouched by time, a craving to engulf this fresh, pulsating essence, to experience the novelties of existence through this new, vibrant lens.

Yet, when I finally uncovered this anomaly, a horrifying discovery made me withdraw.

It was a moon child—radiating a fading glow of Starfire—that had found herself ensnared, her essence fettered in a tangle of darkness; a predatory force that had leached upon me, gnawing and corrupting, forcing me into languid numbness.

The darkness draped around her delicate form, striving to restrain the wild surge of life within, to silence the vibrant song in her veins. It was an entity both known and feared, a marauder feeding upon the pristine light, a ravager of harmony.

With an agonizing slowness that resonated in the depths of my being, I beheld the extinguishment of her spirit, the fading of that divine Starfire from her sight.

An internal scream of despair echoed within me, a mournful reverberation at the witnessing of such loss. Every molecule of my vast form quaked with grief as I saw her final breath released.