CHAPTER ONE #2
That’s all I had left of who I was. No faces, no feelings, no memories. Just a single piece of fabric and the echo of a name to hold me together.
Callum’s eyes caught mine, narrowing as he noticed where I was staring— far west, beyond the trees, beyond the veil of night.
“You’re not searching for those damn Nyctom stars again, are you? You know no matter how far you reach, you’ll only see Luamis’ sky.”
The Bale was rumored to have begun the moment King Kairos of Nyctom fell twenty years ago.
The night their stars went dark.
My voice was an intimate murmur as I asked, “Don’t you ever wonder if they still litter the dark kingdom’s universe, or if the Bale plucked them out one by one?”
Callum let out a strenuous exhale. “I do.”
I sighed, knowing he wasn’t going to answer further. We’ve had this same conversation many times before.
“I wish I could have seen if the rumors were true at least.”
He looked to me. “Which ones, exactly?”
“The ones that swore their endless nights withered any dreams, letting their nightmares breathe strong and deep.”
He hummed, low in his throat. “Is that what you picture when you think of it?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I can’t summon anything other than collapse. Though I’d like to believe it was once a place of wonder, not dread. Somewhere beautiful.”
For a long moment he didn’t say anything more, just stared into the dark as though he could see that far west, past the mountains, past the decay.
“I wonder,” he said at last, voice low. “But I don’t let myself dwell on it. Some truths are already heavy enough without chasing the stars that burned out with them.”
His words settled over me, dissolving into the strained quiet that followed. Because I knew what he meant.
That even if the stars of Nyctom still burned, they would belong to ghosts. And ghosts don’t light the way forward.
The Bale didn’t stop at Nyctom’s border. It still scoured across the continent, sucking life from the soil and draining magic from the land. Stripping the Fae, who drew their strength from its roots, dry.
Hopefully even lusting after false kings. Gods willing.
That was the promise written from the old magic, the balance.
The Bale wouldn’t cease, couldn’t be cured.
Not until all three rightful heirs had reclaimed their thrones.
“How are we supposed to find them, Callum?” I asked quietly. “How do we even know they’re real?”
His shoulders stilled, jaw setting in the way that said he was deciding which truths to share and which to bury.
Exhaling deeply, he said, “They’re real. Kairos would have known better than to leave Nyctom unsecured to his line.”
The wind shifted again, carrying the low growl of thunder from the north, still distant.
I searched his face. “But if there is an heir…they’ve stayed hidden for over twenty years.”
His eyes stayed west for a beat, then fell before finding mine. “Then whoever they are, they’ve stayed hidden for a reason.”
I tried to imagine someone surviving all that time as nothing more than a rumor, wondering if they were lonely, or if the solitude brought them something ruling never could.
They had to be real. Because if Nyctom had no heir to awaken, then none of us were surviving what was coming.
They were hiding, I promised myself. Not a rumor, or a ghost. But alive.
Not for long.
I stiffened, shivering off the inevitable whisper as it coiled, silent now, against my ribs.
I forced my attention back to Callum before he could notice the shift in my expression. But the words lingered.
Not for long.
For now, the forest we hunted in held. But the Bale was coming, and the kingdoms were far from saved.
“Rook’s thoughts say they’re circling back to us now.” Callum’s sword hissed as it slid home into its sheath. A golden wink flickered my way. “How are those legs holding up?”
His telepathy magic allowed him to tether to one mind at a time—bonding, listening, letting the other speak back.
For all these years, he’d chosen mine. Always mine.
While I was granted the gift of answering, the others weren’t so fortunate. To them, he was just another relentless voice in their heads. Like their conscience. Except the intrusive thoughts were swapped for micromanaging.
My palm pressed into the ache of each thigh, kneading at the sting.
“Gods,” I groaned. “Who knew squatting for an hour would be this excruciating?”
That’s when my curse yawned awake again, sensing, winding tight, inhaling what I could not yet.
Callum’s smirk widened, the kind that meant he’d already written out my suffering in neat little columns.
“I knew.” He rubbed his chin like he was weighing which torture to propose. “That’s why I pushed you the last few weeks. Starting the day after tomorrow,” he paused, savoring it, “three hundred squats. Easy start.”
I barked a laugh. I could carve a path through men all day, but one of Callum’s training sessions left me considering death as a kindness.
“Yeah, that’s not happening—”
My words leaked into the air, cut short by the stagnant abyss before us. Misty shadows tangled thick, too heavy, too still.
The Viper hissed against my ribs, pressing sharp until my skin prickled.
It had gone quiet. Not the peaceful, calming silence where your mind is its own, but the deadly hush of a predator.
A stillness that sees you.
Callum’s hand went straight to his sword, the blade singing against the air.
“It’s not Rook or Ford. They’re still about a hundred yards out.” He angled the point into the ink, into that shape that wasn’t shape at all.
We hadn’t missed one. Couldn’t have. They’d been outnumbered. If anything had slipped past the fight, someone would’ve seen. Someone would’ve stopped them.
Yet something moved there, hidden in the shadows, woven into them heavier than the rest.
“V—” He took a step forward. “Do you have eyes on anything?”
“It’s watching,” I breathed. “I can feel it.”
Because I could. It felt like ice and doom scouring across the rocky ground, seeping into the soil. It didn’t unnerve like the stillness of dark things. This was patient.
Callum spoke it with verdict; words I had never heard him speak before. “Let it out, Verena. Now.”
My head whipped toward him.
Eight years with this curse. Eight years of holding the leash tight, and never once had Callum demanded it of me. What did he sense? What could he possibly see that I could not?
I could feel the other watching from the space between my eyes, eager. My stomach clenched at a rising thought.
What if I wasn’t enough without it? What if who I was beneath the venom wasn’t a match for whatever hunted us in that dark?
Callum’s jaw was iron, flame dancing in his palm.
He didn’t waver. He wouldn’t. He was always honest, brutally so, and still somehow the kind of leader who made you believe you could be more than your scars. He would never ask if there wasn’t reason—
“Verena.” His voice broke on my name. The dread beneath it bared itself at last. “Summon it.”
The command was quiet, and it shook me more than any roar ever could.
I didn’t falter as my vision narrowed, coal slits replacing what once were rounded pupils. The blue-green of my irises drowned into a deep, venom-dark teal.
I focused on the place where the wrongness bled through the trees, where the air itself dripped with falsehood. A tickle sliced down my palm as my serpent stirred, scaled coils unspooling from my wrist, streaking silent across the soil below.
Once, it had only been a bracelet Callum pressed into my hand years ago when the curse had only just awakened, black stone carved into a snake swallowing its own tail.
It had locked into place the second it touched my skin. And it had not released me since.
To unearth what’s awakened and call it divine, he had said to me.
A plea to see the Viper as extraordinary. Even if it carried burden.
The weight had quickly become familiar, almost comforting. As if I could truly feel the flicker of its heart pressed into my pulse.
One night, a new compulsion had risen. Not one to hunt, only to bite.
Myself.
So, I had.
Blood had slid down my chin, beading against the bracelet as the curse whispered in a language I barely understood. My voice, yet not mine.
Eeva. Live.
The stone bracelet uncoiled, midnight scales thickening as it slithered up my arm, heavier, alive.
In that moment it had become an extension of the curse, not a lock on the Viper, but a hand on my throat. Keeping me from becoming it.
It found its home, twisting around my throat, fading between flesh and shadow, indistinguishable from the ink I kept glamoured around my shoulder and collarbone.
I had laughed at that moment.
The only part I couldn’t remember was if it was me laughing, or the Viper.
“I’m not picking up any heat signatures.” I scanned the tree line. The form remained, sitting wrong in my chest.
Cold dug in deeper; my heart clenched around it, the beat no longer steady but serpentine, in the voice that never quite belonged to me.
Follow, go, go, go.
Callum ignited a sphere of flame, hurling it overhead to light where my snake crept along the realm.
Rook and Ford emerged breathless from the trees just then, catching the glow. Without shifting my focus from the shadows, I motioned them closer with a flick of my arm.
Ford dragged a hand through sweat-matted hair, squinting. “What the hel are we staring at? Air? Existential dread?”
Callum didn’t flinch, his stare still pinned to the dark. “To your right.”
Rook’s deep brown eyes darted as he limped toward us, his uneven stride a relic of birth rather than battle. He moved with practiced ease, turning the flaw into something almost deliberate.
His nature magic rose, roots breaking through the ground at our feet. He bent low, hair like soil spilling forward as he inhaled. The breath ended in a cough, choking on the thick air as the forest floor shivered.
The flame in Callum’s palm swelled into a cobalt orb, its glow pressing against the haze. Beneath it, my snake recoiled, tongue darting as it slithered back up my wrist and into stone.
Rook’s voice wavered, though his magic did not. “This feels...” He shook his head, rejecting the words before they could settle. “Wrong. Like heat that freezes, but a cold that burns.”
I craned my head, eyes slicing the tree line where slivers of color fluttered, barely there, like power hiding behind the space between realms.
I blinked, the movement coming sluggish and heavy, and the thick taste of it subsided.
The presence. The dread. It all vanished.
My eyes swept the trees again, the rocks, the yawning dark between them. “It’s gone.”
Ford stiffened, rubbing the back of his neck like he could knead the unease from his skin. “Define gone...” His hazel eyes glinted, narrowed. “Gone as in... vanished into the ether? Or gone as in it went to fetch a midnight snack and plans to come back for dessert?”
The joke was weak. Forced.
“It’s just... gone,” I said again.
The air had changed. No more prickling cold crawling down my spine, no more rot on my tongue. Only the fresh aroma of pine.
“There’s no heat besides ours and the core.” My hand shot toward the trail we’d come from. “We should leave. Vengeance be damned, I’m not sticking around to see what that was.”
The forest exhaled with us as I forced my eyes back to their natural sight.
As we moved a white owl cut across the canopy, hooting once before perching on a crooked branch above, the moon catching its steeled eyes as it watched us.
It hit me then and I paused. “Hold up.” The others stilled as I nearly scolded us all for forgetting. “The weapons.”
Callum’s brow furrowed as I yanked the packs from their shoulders one by one. Leather buckles snapped open beneath my fingers.
Empty. I dug deeper. All empty. Except—
My glare slid to Ford as a collection of highly questionable items clattered around the bottom of his.
“We left the weapons we collected from the Brights back with the bodies.” I cinched each pack tight again, shoving them back into waiting hands.
Ford’s especially, I guided it into his palm with only two fingers, as if it might stain me.
His lips curved with the beginnings of a laugh he didn’t dare loose.
“I’ll run back and meet you guys at the cabin.”
My feet angled toward the heart of the forest. Toward the place we’d abandoned steel and sanity both.
But Callum’s hand lashed out, halting me mid-step as he said, “No. I’ll go.”
Tearing free with a smile that was more blade than balm, I tossed him a half-hearted thumbs up as if the gesture could soften the defiance.
“I’ll be fine. Don’t go completely overbearing brother on me now.”
The curse purred low in my blood as I stepped past where my friends’ warmth ended and the forests cold began.
And as the air shifted and Callum fell quiet, I let the dark swallow my silhouette.