Chapter 25 – Dain
DAIN
She promised. She fucking promised.
The thought burned through me as we crashed through the forest, following the sounds of battle. Azaria had given me her word: no midnight patrols, no slipping off for a hunt. I’d checked myself. Saw her go into her tent. So what the fuck happened?
But when we burst into that clearing and I saw her—pinned beneath corpses, surrounded by hounds, still fighting—that anger meant nothing. It died the moment Quinton’s words cut through the chaos.
“It’s in her now.”
I kneeled beside the cot, stone-faced and silent. My hands moved with the calm of routine, but inside I was unraveling.
Quinton was all sharp edges and urgency, barking orders. “Everyone out now. Elias, Dain—you stay. Hold her down if she convulses. The rest—away from the blood and the hound’s corpse. No one touches it.”
He peeled Azaria’s leathers away, hands steady but his jaw clenched. The wound on her side gaped, deep and ugly. Blood sluggish, dark and wrong, black veins crawling from the edges, tendrils twitching beneath her skin like something alive.
Abyssal rot.
Nightmares slammed into me.
Four years ago. I was twenty-six, kneeling in mud, choking on the stench of old magic and fear. The night we lost him. The worst night of my life.
The four of us—me, Azaria, Kael, and Reyna—were called out on an urgent mission to a settlement beyond the safe roads. She was young for a Captain. Twenty-one, barely a year into the role. Rumors of disappearances. Mages gone missing.
He wasn’t with us—Eris was on a mission of his own. Simple errand to Thalor: he wanted to visit his family. Nothing dangerous. Until it was.
We found them first, the Dravareth unit. Five of them, still bloodied from the massacre. We killed them all. Then we found the mages. Fifteen bodies. Faces twisted, veins black and cracked, tendrils coiling up to their eyes, bodies leaking shadow instead of blood. Water mages. All of them.
We didn’t know most of them. Some we recognized: uniforms, faces beneath the rot. We’d learn later that they came from different squads. Rylen’s, Torik’s. Some unassigned. It didn’t matter. They were all dead.
And then we found him.
Eris Teylan, chained in the ruins, slumped beside a ruined altar, clutching his own sword. Blood pooled at his side.
He’d been our friend. Azaria’s especially.
Someone she’d opened herself to in ways I’d never seen before or since; the softness in her voice when she said his name, the way her guard dropped when he was near, the quiet understanding that passed between them that needed no words.
Eris was someone she cared for deeply, more than she’d let most people see.
The rot had already taken root, curling up his arms and reaching his face.
He looked at Azaria, tried to say her name.
There was nothing I could do. The infection was everywhere: inside him, outside, filling the air with death.
I shut down my panic and sat with him, pressed a palm to his brow, slipped into his mind as gently as I could.
His mind was so far gone, it opened without a fight.
Dravareth unit. Ambushed on the road to Thalor.
Shot him with an abyss-infected bolt, then chained him in the ruins; left him there while they finished the others.
By the time we found him, three or four hours had passed.
The infection had spread up his arms, reaching his face, curling toward his heart.
All I could do was give him those last moments in peace.
Numb the agony; let his mind drift far from pain.
Azaria kneeled beside him, hands covered in blood that wouldn’t wash away. She begged. I begged. But the rot ate through every defense, every prayer.
In the end, I’d been the one to close his eyes. Azaria couldn’t—her hands were shaking too hard, covered in his blood. So I did it. Pressed my palm to his brow one last time and let him go.
Azaria’s scream, raw and animal, echoed through the ruins. Reyna was shaking, crying, pressing a fist to her mouth to hold in her grief. Kael stood silent and pale, his own tears falling. The memory of that night—and Azaria’s scream as he passed—followed me like a shadow.
And now, as I stared at Azaria’s wound—at those same black tendrils crawling under her skin—my hands shook.
Not Azaria. Not again.
On the outside, I was still stone—voice calm, movements measured. But inside, I was coming apart. Fear raged beneath every breath. I remembered the way the rot moved. How fast it claimed. How utterly helpless I felt, kneeling there as the world bled out at my feet.
Azaria convulsed. Her body jerked violently, back arching off the cot. I lunged forward, pinning her shoulders.
“Dain! Keep her head up—if she convulses, pin her arms!” Quinton’s voice snapped through the tent.
I nodded—grateful for the orders, for something to do besides drown in memory. But as I looked at Azaria, her pale skin, blue lips, and dark blood that seeped from her wound, I prayed to every god I didn’t believe in.
Eris had been shot with a bolt. Artificial Abyss, concentrated but contained. It still killed him in hours. This was organic. From the hounds themselves. Living corruption. It would spread much, much faster.
Please, not her.