Shadow and Light (Ash and Aether #4)

Chapter 1

ONE

SOREIA

The claws find me between one heartbeat and the next.

I jerk awake with the phantom sensation still raking through my ribs, dragging downward, splitting flesh from bone.

My magic gutters in my veins—that sick, failing flicker I’ve learned means death is close.

The world goes silent around me in the dream, the way it always does right before the end.

No wind. No screams. Nothing except the wet sound of my own body giving up.

Then I’m gasping in a ruined watchtower, spine pressed against cold stone, fingers already wrapped around the knife I sleep with. Dawn light cuts through gaps in the collapsed roof. Dust motes float in shafts of weak gold.

I’m alive.

For now.

My hands won’t stop shaking. I force them flat against my thighs and count my breaths until the tremors ease.

The dream clings to me like a second skin—the specific angle of those claws, the precise moment my magic unraveled.

Not a prophecy. Never a prophecy. My visions don’t show futures.

They show the instant before death catches me.

Every time, the dream ends in the same place. That breathless pause where survival tips toward extinction.

Every time, I wake up alone.

I push myself to my feet and take stock.

The watchtower was probably beautiful once—carved stone lattice, a signal platform at the top for warning fires.

Now half the structure lists dangerously to the east, and the stairs have collapsed into rubble.

I climbed through a gap in the wall last night, too exhausted to find better shelter.

Below me, the border settlement spreads like a corpse left too long in the sun.

I don’t need to go down there to know what I’ll find.

The smell reaches me even at this height—old blood, burned wood, the particular sweetness of bodies the ash storms haven’t buried yet.

The watchtower’s elevated position gives me a clear view of the destruction: market stalls overturned, defensive walls breached at multiple points, shapes lying in doorways that might be people and might be piles of rags.

The silence is the worst part. No birds. No insects. Not even wind through the empty buildings. Settlements don’t go quiet like this unless everything living has fled or died.

This is the third settlement I’ve passed through in as many days. All of them look the same. All of them smell the same.

I’ve been heading east for two weeks—not for any reason I could have named precisely, only that the last survivor I spoke to said the settlements there were falling slower.

Some advantage in distance or terrain that kept the worst of it at bay a little longer.

Whatever that advantage was, it was running out.

The world is falling apart faster than I can outrun it.

I climb down carefully, testing each handhold before I commit my weight. The stone crumbles in places, weakened by whatever tore through here. Claw marks gouge the walls—deep, deliberate, as if testing the structure’s integrity before deciding it wasn’t worth finishing off.

Scouts.

I’ve seen the damage they leave often enough to recognize the pattern. Fast, lean monsters designed for pursuit rather than confrontation. They travel in small packs, hit without warning, drag prey away from groups. They don’t stay to feed. They catalog. Report.

To what, I don’t want to know.

The streets are worse than they looked from above.

Bodies lie where they fell—in doorways, half-emerged from windows, sprawled across market squares with goods scattered around them like offerings to gods that never answered.

The blood has dried to rust-brown stains.

Ash coats everything in gray-white film, muffling the colors until the whole settlement looks bleached. Preserved.

A memorial no one will ever visit.

I move through the wreckage as quietly as I can, keeping to shadows where they exist. The Anchor hums low in my veins, awake but not reaching—not yet.

Every use costs me. Years, months, days.

My bloodline wasn’t built for longevity.

We make endings stick, and death takes its payment in the same coin.

The trader’s body is in the market square.

I almost walk past it. He’s half-buried under a collapsed stall, another shape in the debris. But his hand is extended toward the street, fingers curled like he died reaching for escape, and the glint of metal catches my eye.

A bracelet. Bronze, worn thin from years of wear. The kind merchants use to mark themselves as neutral parties, protected by trade agreements that clearly mean nothing to monsters.

I crouch beside him and check for a pulse I know I won’t find. His skin is cold, papery under my fingers. Dead at least a day, maybe two. The ash storms have kept the worst of the decay at bay, but his eyes are filmed over, staring at the sky without seeing it.

There’s blood at his throat. Not a claw wound—too clean. Teeth. He was bitten, the flesh torn away in a single vicious motion. Quick death, probably. Quicker than most.

His other hand is pressed against his chest, and when I peel back his fingers, I find parchment. Crumpled, bloodstained, but legible.

A list of names. Safe houses. Trade routes.

The kind of information someone carries when they’re running from one place that’s fallen toward another that might still stand.

Most of the names mean nothing to me. Dead people. Dead places. But one snags my attention, makes my bloodline twitch like recognition—

Kaster Nexis.

No safe house listed beside it. No trade route. The name, underlined twice, with a single notation: Predator. Solitary. Do not approach unless necessary.

I read the words three times.

Kaster Nexis.

I’ve heard the name before. Whispers in dying settlements, warnings passed between refugees. A dragon who hunts alone in the wastelands, who kills monsters the way other predators kill prey—without hesitation, without mercy, without apparent purpose except that they exist and he wants them to stop.

He doesn’t protect territory. Doesn’t guard populations. Doesn’t enforce anything.

He kills.

The trader’s dead eyes stare up at me, and I wonder if he was trying to reach this dragon when the scouts caught him. If he thought solitary violence might save him when nothing else would.

My magic stirs again. That same recognition, almost like my bloodline knows a truth I haven’t learned yet.

I fold the parchment and tuck it into my belt.

I find him dying in the cellar of an abandoned inn.

Not the dragon—the trader’s companion. I almost miss him entirely, but the sound of labored breathing draws me down the stairs into darkness. He’s wedged himself into a corner, legs splayed at wrong angles, a wound in his stomach that’s stopped bleeding only because there’s nothing left to bleed.

His eyes track my movement when I kneel beside him. Lucid, despite the pain. Dying people get that clarity at the end—the body’s last gift before it gives up.

“You’re not one of them.” His voice is a wet rasp.

“No.”

“Thank the—” He breaks off, coughing. Blood flecks his lips. “Thank nothing. The gods did this.”

I don’t argue. My bloodline knows the truth of it better than most—the monsters aren’t random. They’re designed. Built for specific purposes by a power that doesn’t want to be seen.

“The trader outside.” I pull out the parchment. “He had this. You were traveling with him.”

Recognition flickers across his face. Grief, maybe, if he has the energy for it. “Mikkel. Fuck. They got Mikkel.”

“He was dead when I found him.”

“Good.” The word comes out savage, relieved. “Better that than—” Another wet cough. “Than what they do when they take you alive.”

I’ve heard stories. I don’t need details.

“This name.” I point to the underlined entry. “Kaster Nexis. You were looking for him?”

The dying man’s eyes sharpen. For a moment, he looks almost lucid. Almost hopeful.

“Dragon,” he manages. “Predator domain. He hunts in the Ash Wastes, three days east. Kills everything the gods throw at him.” A horrible bubbling laugh that ends in choking. “If anyone can—if anyone could—”

His hand closes around my wrist. The grip is weak, but desperate.

“Find him. Do whatever you have to. He’s the only—” Blood floods from his mouth. His body convulses once, twice, then goes still.

I sit with him for a long moment. His hand falls away from my wrist, fingers uncurling.

Another body. Another warning no one else will hear.

I close his eyes and leave him in the dark.

The scouts find me at sunset.

I’m crossing the eastern edge of the settlement, heading for the road that leads toward the Ash Wastes, when the air changes. That particular stillness that means I’m being watched. Evaluated for whether I’m worth chasing.

I don’t run. Running triggers the chase instinct in these things, and they’re built to be faster.

Instead, I keep walking. Steady pace. Even breathing. Power coils beneath my skin, ready but not reaching.

The first scout breaks cover from behind a collapsed watchtower. It doesn’t attack immediately. It circles, watching me with eyes that hold too much intelligence.

A second appears to my left. A third behind me.

They’re herding. Testing my responses. Mapping my capabilities before they commit to the kill.

I stop walking.

The lead Ssout tilts its head. A series of clicks emerges from its throat—communication, maybe. Reporting.

It lunges.

My magic surges before conscious thought, slamming into the creature mid-air. The Anchor power catches it like a fist, and I feel the death that wants to happen, the ending the universe has been denied.

The scout dies.

White-hot pain lances through my skull. Blood floods from my nose, copper-bright against my lips. My knees buckle, and I hit the ground hard enough to scrape skin from my palms.

The other two scouts freeze.

They’re not supposed to do that. They’re not supposed to hesitate. But the finality of what I did—it’s disrupted their programming.

One of them makes that clicking sound again. Urgent. Alarmed.

Then they run.

Not toward me. Away. Back into the ruins, disappearing between collapsed buildings with a speed that leaves me blinking at empty streets.

I stay on my knees, breathing through the agony in my skull. The power feels thin, scraped raw, like I’ve used a blade too many times against too hard a surface.

Years. I burned years to kill one scout.

But it stayed down.