Chapter 1
Rune
The moment they stole everything from him, Rune vowed to end the world.
His bride lay perfectly still upon the stone altar he had carved for her. Alora looked asleep. Beauty forever preserved beneath a red dome of his magic. Golden curls spilled across the pillow. Her blue gown lay smooth, unblemished, as if death had passed her by and merely forgotten to return.
But his cold dark chambers may as well be a tomb.
He let the spell dissolve for a single breath and reached out, fingertips brushing her cheek. Cold. Always cold.
“I will not fail you this time, songbird,” Rune murmured.
He had lost the first war against the God of Death. But now Jokull was gone, cast into myth and ash, and nothing remained to bar his path.
Tonight, he would finish it.
And when he did, the world would fall.
Or he would—for he would rather be dust than lose another war.
Rune pressed a kiss to Alora’s cold lips. “No matter our fate, we will find one another again,” he promised.
Then he turned from the altar and strode onto the balcony of his Shadow Keep, casting the drapes aside.
The battlefield roared beneath him.
Black clouds churned overhead, the sun smothered beneath the weight of his shadows. The air reeked of blood and ash, thick enough to taste. His demons, borne of dark twisted things, surged forward like a tide of destruction.
Above them, his Drakon tore through the skies. Smaller than true dragons but swifter, leaner, their shadow-scaled bodies coiled through the air like winged serpents.
Where Rune’s intent turned, they struck, jaws snapping with ember-lit hunger as they fought the Skellings. The fae fought desperately, hawk-like forms scattering beneath the onslaught, their formations breaking as Drakon shrieks split the air.
Below, his Harbingers cleaved through the human armies of thousands who had risen from all corners of the world to stop him.
Calla moved like a spark in black silk and steel, her chakram slicing through men as easily as breath.
Her pale lilac hair was streaked with blood of the fallen, laughter curling from her lips as though the battle were a dance.
Hadeon was a mountain of muscle and iron, horns glinting, massive war hammer felling lines of soldiers with each brutal swing.
Deimos drifted among the carnage like smoke, each strike of his claws severing lives.
Every death fed Rune’s spell.
Beneath the battlefield, glyphs he carefully carved deep into the basalt drank greedily of blood, pulsing faintly red beneath the chaos. The spell woke, aligning as the array faintly glowed.
“Almost ready,” he mused.
They had branded him a blight.
A monster.
A bringer of darkness and wickedness.
For a millennium, Rune had lived up to every name.
And now, they would call him Death.
He summoned a Drakon with a thought. The beast answered, shrieking as it dove. Rune vanished into shadow and reappeared upon its back, the world dropping away beneath them as they soared.
Rune watched the slaughter from above, relishing with every soul extinguished as he searched the masses. Impatience gripped his chest like a vice. His focus kept dragging back to the tower behind him.
At the sudden sharp sweep of frost cutting through the ranks, Rune, at last, found Jorik.
The young King of the Everfrost cut down demons effortlessly with a scythe of ice, accompanied by his twin brother and sister as a trio of wintery wrath.
The demigod children of Jokull.
Inheritors of the power Rune had come to claim.
After ten years of endless maneuvering, it would be his tonight—
A burst of light tore across the horizon.
Rune’s attention snapped upward as a comet of blue fire slammed into the battlefield, annihilating an entire unit of his forces in a wave of holy destruction.
Kāhssiel.
The commander of the Seraphs descended in a blaze of cerulean light. Six pearlescent wings unfurled behind him like blessed mantles. Whole. Radiant.
The sight infuriated him.
Cerulean light bled from Kāhssiel’s eyes, his sword flaming in the same color with divine Seraph fire. At his side, a sorceress raised her hands, green flame twisting around her fingers, binding with his light. Their combined magic crashed through the skies, ripping Drakon from the air.
A legion of seraphs followed in their wake, golden armor gleaming beneath arcs of fire. Over the hills marched ranks of mages, elves, and fae flying flags from Arthal.
Rune snarled.
The Kingdom of Azure had sought reinforcements from across the seas. Sharp unease rose, reminding him too much of how sudden he’d lost the last war.
No matter.
He had his target.
Rune dove.
The Drakon struck the earth in a violent explosion of shadow and flame, the ground shattering beneath its weight. Rune stepped free, shadows coiling around him as he advanced toward Jorik.
The young Azure king faced him, silver armor streaked with blood, hatred in his ice-blue eyes.
Rune smiled as Noctharion bloomed in his hand. The cursed blade whispered in Hellspeech as crimson symbols ignited along its length.
“Hello, nephew.”
Jorik’s grip tightened on the scythe. “It ends tonight, Rune.”
Rune laughed softly. “I have heard those words before. Yet your clever mother needed Sunstone to stop me, an ore that is no more.” He tilted his head, feigning thought.
“Which reminds me. Did I leave enough of your father’s favored mage for a pyre?
The one who helped forge Sunstone. I forget what you called him.
..” Rune smiled sharply, letting the name drip slow and mocking. “Aero, was it?”
Jorik roared and attacked.
Exactly as he wanted.
Their weapons met with a force that cracked the ground. Ice and flame collided, magic twisting violently between them. The twins joined the fray, blades flashing, movements sharp and coordinated.
Then the twins joined the fray.
Sana struck from the left with a spear of enchanted bone and ice, her war cry sharp as wind on steel. Jalen came from the right, ice blades spinning. Together, the three demigods moved like a singular force of nature.
Skilled. Dangerous.
Still children.
Shadows erupted from Rune’s back, catching weapons mid-swing, blocking Sana’s bone-blade and catching Jalen’s weapon mid-swing. Rune caught the scythe, wrenching it from Jorik’s grasp.
“Is this the limit of your skill?” Rune asked, striking a kick to Jorik’s chest, shadows laughing the other two away. “Pathetic.”
Jorik merely laughed. “The pathetic one is you. Chasing what you can never have.”
The words struck deeper than any stream of sunlight ever could.
Rune’s chest heaved, rage burning like slow magma in his veins.
“Your bride is dead, Rune. You killed her,” Jorik said, voice sharp with cruel certainty. “And nothing you do will ever bring her back.”
The wounds pounded against Rune’s temples.
“The divine ashes from my parent’s pyre have been hidden in a place you will never find them. The seeds of immortality were destroyed. Do you understand?” Jorik sighed, straightening from his stance. “Your bride is never rising from the dead.”
Exhaling a breath, Rune let the scythe drop at his feet. His hollow breath echoed in his ears like a distant heartbeat.
“Never…” he repeated faintly. “Jokull said the same when I begged for her life.”
Then he smiled.
“But you forget,” he said softly, lifting his gaze, “that your father left three other seeds.”
Jorik’s eyes widened, realization dawned too late.
“And I need the blood of only one.”
Rune flung out a hand, and his shadows impaled Jalen through the stomach. The demigod dropped with a choked cry, his ice melting instantly. Sana screamed. Rune caught by the throat when she attacked and he hurled her backward with such force she vanished into a wall of enemy soldiers.
“No!” Jorik scrambled for his weapon.
Rune didn’t give him the chance.
Shadows pinned Jorik at the center of the array circle, shadows binding him to the earth. He writhed, snow matted hair sticking to his damp brow.
Rune crouched beside him. “Thank you for bringing your father’s power to me,” he said softly. “I will take it now.”
He gripped his nephew’s head as he delicately cut a symbol into Jorik’s forehead with his claw.
Jorik cried out as blood poured down his temples and spilled over the glyphs.
And the array ignited with crimson light.
Any who attempted to aid their king were cut down by the Harbingers or eaten by Drakon.
The air went ice cold as Rune’s will was poured into Jorik, seeking, siphoning, pulling the death-magic from his blood like smoke from fire. Jorik convulsed, eyes rolling back. His veins blackened, mouth splitting in an agonizing scream.
Rune shuddered as the power surged into him, ancient, cold, and divine.
“Yes…” He hummed, closing his eyes as his veins chilled with the power of death.
The storm above them stilled. Even the wind paused as Rune drank deep from Jokull’s legacy, the stolen magic weaving into his marrow.
Every soul around him lit up in his sight and he tasted their fear, sensed every death as the battle wore on.
“Marvelous.”
There was a distant shout, a flare of blue and green flame, and the surge of fallen souls slowed, but Rune ignored it.
Everything he needed was in his grasp.
Calla appeared beside him. “The Seraphs are advancing, sire. Their weapons are burning through our ranks. We need to fall back. Now!”
At the warning, Rune spared a glance over his shoulder.
Kāhssiel and that damn sorceress of his had managed to disintegrate half of his army. The tide was turning. But Rune glanced at the Shadow Keep and continued the siphon.
He was doing this all for her.
“We hold,” Rune growled.
“Sire—”
“I will not stop now. Not when I am this close—”
Jorik lifted his head. His eyes were white and glowing with a familiar rage. A rupture of blue light burst out, disintegrating Rune’s shadows pinning him. Jorik took hold of Rune’s arms in an ice-cold grip and removed them with an unholy strength as he sat up.
And a voice echoed from his lips that was not his own. “You were never meant to rule the dead, brother.”
Rune’s breath stalled in his lungs. “No. The gods cannot interfere in the matters of mortals, Jokull. This realm is mine!”
“My power is not.”
Sana and Jalen reappeared behind him, each holding glowing chains. Before Rune could react, they struck. Manacles clamped over his wrist. He bit back a cry at the burn of metal against his skin.
Neshek Hael.
Blessed iron.
The chains were etched with golden glyphs, shining with the light of the Heavens.
Jorik snarled, looking at him with his father’s eyes. “At last you crumble beneath your pride.”
Rune roared in fury and disbelief. His power was thinning like sand slipping through clenched fists. His markings dimmed, shadows diminishing.
“No, NO—!”
Not again. He could not lose to him again.
The black clouds above thinned and the darkness around the battlefield roiled, clawing at the air as if desperate to stay. But the sunlight broke through.
Rune helplessly watched his demons disintegrate to ash wherever it touched, and the fleeing fell beneath a wave of seraph fire. His Harbingers flew to his aid but disintegrated to smoke in the light before they could reach him.
A sharp, searing agony tore through his chest.
Not like this.
A violent rumble shook the earth.
Jorik rose to his feet, glancing past him. “And so at last, it falls.”
Rune whipped around. A fissure split down the center of the Shadow Keep, cracking so loud his ears rang.
The black structure groaned and folded, crumbling down on itself. A scream ripped from Rune’s throat as he broke away from Jorik. The chains followed as he ran, ignoring the fire in his wrists, the light burning his skin.
“Alora!”
The clouds roiled above him, and he knew what was coming.
Lightning flashed across the Heavens. A voice followed it like thunder, searing him to his bones.
RETURN TO WHERE YOU BELONG.
And where was that? To the stars or to dust?
There was but one end for him.
Rune’s skin seared, his body shuddering with pain and rage.
After a million years of silence.
After leaving him buried in the hollow darkness.
The Heavens at last looked upon him to pass judgment.
Not when Rune pleaded. Not when he wept.
But now, when he had brought the world to its knees. When there was no other resort but to destroy him. Well, he would rather burn than beg.
Rune raised his head to the Heavens and roared, “THEN DO IT! SMITE ME!”
The sky tore open with a world-shattering crack, and his sight went white as a bolt of divine lightning struck.
And he fell again.
Through earth. Through flame. Through shadow.
To annihilation.