Chapter IV
IV.
brYNN
One Month Later
Brynn shifted against the rough wooden bench of the prison wagon, her wrists chafing where the iron manacles had worn the skin raw. Two days of travel had numbed her to most discomforts, but the sobbing from the girl beside her was beginning to grate on nerves already stretched thin.
"Please," the girl whispered for the hundredth time, tears streaming down cheeks that had probably never known real hunger before today. "Please, there has to be another way. My father has gold, he could pay—"
"Your father sold you to pay his debts," Brynn said quietly. "Crying won't change that."
Though at least your father was alive to make that choice. Brynn's parents were dead. Had been for ten years now. She shoved the thought down.
Morgan, the girl who'd given her name between sobs, flinched as if she had been struck.
Across the wagon, three other tributes sat in their own private misery.
A middle-aged woman who hadn't spoken since they'd loaded her into the wagon stared at nothing with empty eyes.
A young man barely past boyhood, his lips moving in constant prayer to gods who'd already abandoned him.
An older man in merchant's practical clothing sat rigid, jaw clenched, trying to maintain some shred of dignity in the face of inevitable death.
All of them marked for death. All of them too broken by fear to see the opportunities that still remained.
Brynn had spent her month of imprisonment more productively.
The strange tools Lord Edmund's men had confiscated were long gone, locked away in some vault where scholars could decipher their construction.
But the two pieces she'd palmed during her capture, a delicate probe and a tension wrench that warmed when she held it just right, remained hidden in the specially sewn pocket of her vest.
One month of imprisonment had given her time to prepare in other ways.
She'd convinced her guards that a condemned woman deserved final comforts, playing the role of a frightened girl seeking solace in stories.
They'd brought her books. Old tales about the Death Lords and their realms, the kind of folklore meant to frighten children into obedience.
The guards had thought her a fool, seeking escape in fairy tales while awaiting her doom.
But she'd read every word, learning what she could.
The five Death Lords and their domains. The Courts of Violence, Consumption, Lingering, Mourning, and Forsaken.
Not enough to save her, but enough to know what she might face.
The landscape beyond the wagon's barred window had been changing for hours.
Gone were the rolling farmlands and tidy villages of the inner kingdoms. Here, the trees grew gnarled and leafless even though it was spring, their branches reaching toward the sky like skeletal fingers.
The grass had turned from green to a dull brown, brittle and dead.
Even the air tasted different, thinner, with a metallic undertone that made her mouth water unpleasantly.
"We're getting close," she murmured, more to herself than the others.
Morgan's sobbing intensified. The praying boy's voice cracked on whatever plea he was making.
Through the bars, Brynn caught her first glimpse of their destination rising from the horizon.
The ritual grounds sat atop a massive hill that looked unreal, its slopes bare except for standing stones arranged in concentric circles around the summit.
Even from miles away, the place radiated menace.
The kind that settles in your bones and makes you understand why people cross to the other side of the road to avoid walking too close to certain ruins.
But danger could be studied. Could be understood. Could be used.
"Look," she told the others, her voice cutting through Morgan's sobs. "Up ahead."
They looked. The praying stopped mid-word. The empty-eyed woman's head turned for the first time in two days. The older merchant's gaze surveyed the hill with the same practicality Brynn recognized in herself. Even Morgan's crying hiccupped to a halt.
The ritual grounds weren't just old; they were older than the kingdoms themselves, older than the roads leading to them, maybe older than the human settlements that had sprung up around them.
The stones crowning the hill weren't carved from any quarry Brynn knew.
They were black as night, so dark they seemed to have no surface at all.
Runes covered every visible surface, symbols that seemed to pulse with their own slow heartbeat.
"Gods preserve us," the young man whispered.
"The gods aren't invited to this party.” Brynn kept her gaze on the ritual grounds ahead, refusing to let her voice waver. "That's rather the point."
Their wagon crested a slight rise, revealing the full extent of the ritual grounds.
The hill was surrounded by what once had been a town, but the remaining buildings felt off in the same unsettling way as the place itself.
Houses with too many angles, doorways that didn't quite connect to roads, windows that seemed to look inward instead of outward.
People still lived here. Smoke rose from chimneys, laundry hung from lines.
But Brynn suspected the residents weren't entirely human anymore.
Places like this changed those who lingered too long in their influence.
"How do you know so much about this place?" the empty-eyed woman asked suddenly. Her voice was raspy from disuse, barely above a whisper.
"I don't," Brynn admitted. "I just pay attention. One month isolated in a cell gives you plenty of time to think, and thinking beats crying any day of the week."
She didn't mention the dreams that began after her encounter with the strange tools.
Dreams of stone circles and death magic, of voices speaking in languages she'd never learned but somehow understood.
Dreams where she stood in places like this and felt welcomed rather than threatened.
Reading about the Death Lords and the barriers between realms only made the dreams more vivid and specific, until she could no longer tell what was from the books and what came from something deeper.
The wagon wheels changed rhythm as they began climbing the hill. The road here was paved with stones that looked too much like bone for comfort, fitted together without gaps or mortar. The standing stones grew larger as they climbed, until each one towered above the roadway.
"I can't do this," Morgan whispered. "I can't. I'll die of fear before we even reach the top."
"Then you'll die," Brynn said. "But dying of fear here is still better than dying of fear after you've been chosen by something that feeds on terror. So pull yourself together and save the panic for when it might actually help you."
Harsh, maybe. But she'd learned in the last ten years that kindness was a luxury none of them could afford.
The guards escorting their wagon weren't the ones who would decide their fate.
That honor belonged to creatures who measured mortal lives in moments and found most of them wanting.
The Death Lords wouldn't be impressed by tears or moved by pleas.
They might, however, be intrigued by defiance.
The wagon finally reached the summit and came to a stop before gates that looked like they belonged in nightmares—two massive archways flanked by pillars of bone-white stone, each carved with faces.
Hundreds of them, twisted in expressions of terror and despair, their mouths open in silent screams. The gates themselves were forged from metal so dark it seemed to swallow light, and they weren't just closed.
They were sealed with what looked like dried blood, dark stains coating the metal in patterns that suggested desperate hands clawing at the surface from the inside.
Guards waited beyond the threshold. They wore human faces, but their eyes held no white, only solid black.
When they breathed, their chests rose and fell in perfect unison, like puppets pulled by the same strings.
"End of the line," called the wagon driver, a grizzled man who'd spent the entire journey refusing to meet any of their eyes. "Everyone out."
The manacles were removed from their wrists, only to be immediately replaced by ceremonial chains.
Lighter in weight but far more ornate, each link carved with symbols matching the standing stones.
Brynn realized the chains would mark them as tributes, property of the ritual, claimed by old laws that outweighed any kingdom's authority.
As they were led through the gates and into the ritual grounds, Brynn caught sight of the amphitheater where their fates would be decided.
Stone benches arranged around a central platform, every surface carved with more of those writhing runes.
The air here was so charged with otherworldly energy that it made her teeth ache, and the hidden tools pressed against her ribs felt warm, as if responding to this place.
Above them, the sky was starting to darken even though it was still early. This wasn't the natural evening gloom, but rather a darkness that indicated the boundary between worlds was growing thin, allowing things from the other side to push through.
Brynn was guided down the worn steps with the other tributes, their ceremonial chains jingling with each step. The sound echoed oddly in the vast space, creating strange harmonies. She counted the levels as they went down—thirteen terraces, each marked with different symbols.
"Sweet gods," the empty-eyed woman breathed, her voice barely above a whisper. "What is this place?"
No one answered her. Even the guards seemed reluctant to speak within these walls.
The central platform was raised just high enough that everyone in the amphitheater would have a clear view of whatever happened there.
It was perfectly circular, perhaps thirty feet across, made from stone the color of old bone, weathered grey and smooth.
Five smaller circles were carved into its surface, each inlaid with a different metal: silver, gold, copper, iron, and something that looked like shadow.
Those circles were where they would stand, where they would be examined like livestock at market.
Around the platform's edge ran a channel carved deep into the stone.
It was stained dark, and she didn't want to think about what had filled it during past ceremonies.
The whole structure looked as if it had been designed for sacrifice, though she supposed that was exactly what this was—just a sacrifice with prettier words and formal protocols.
Officials in ceremonial robes were settling onto the higher benches, their faces hidden beneath hoods that cast shadows darker than nature should allow.
These weren't the same people who sentenced them or brought them here.
These were the witnesses, the record-keepers, the ones who would document which Death Lord claimed which tribute for whatever grim purpose lay ahead.
"The old ways," one of them intoned, his voice carrying impossibly well in the vast space. "The ancient pacts. The bargains that keep the realms in balance."
Morgan started sobbing again, a broken sound that seemed to be absorbed by the stones themselves.
The young man was praying under his breath in a language Brynn didn't recognize.
Possibly one that predated the common tongue, pulled from some half-remembered religious tradition his family had preserved.
But Brynn found herself studying the platform with interest. The metal inlays in the smaller circles hummed with residual energy, making the hidden tools pressed against her ribs grow warmer in response.
This place seemed to know her, just like the tools had. Just like her dreams had suggested it would.
The air above the platform was starting to shimmer, reality warping like heat waves.
"Look," she murmured to the others, nodding toward the sky above the amphitheater.
The darkness she'd noticed from the wagon was deepening, but it wasn't spreading evenly.
It was gathering in specific patterns, forming what looked like doorways in the air.
Five doorways, each one edged with a different color of light: green, silver, red, gold, and something so deep and dark it was less a color than an absence of light.
The Death Lords were preparing to manifest.
Around them, the officials fell silent. The only sounds were Morgan's muffled sobs and the steady clinking of their chains as the tributes shifted nervously on their feet.
Brynn straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. She'd survived one month in Edmund's dungeon, two days in a prison wagon, and thirty years of a world that had tried repeatedly to kill her. Whatever came through those doorways would see her standing tall.