Chapter 1: Dead Rise, Shadows Fall

Ashanti awoke to the sound of thunder, but the sky outside her window was clear, though dark and dreary. The trembling had started on the floor beneath her cot, subtle at first, like the pacing of someone in the halls below. Then came the rattle of glass in its frame, a low groan echoing through the stone walls, not from the wind, but from something darker. Alive. She sat up slowly, her small hands clutching the wool blanket, ears straining for something familiar. Her room was dark, lit only by the moon's pale silver light spilling through the slits in the tall, arched windows. Shadows stretched long and strange across the stone floor, swaying as if disturbed by a silent wind.

THEN CAME THE SCREAM. FAR AWAY, MUFFLED—BUT UNMISTAKABLY HUMAN. ASHANTI FROZE. SHE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE ALONE. MAELA WAS ALWAYS NEARBY. HER NANNY. HER MAID. HER OTHER MOTHER. BUT THE CHAIR BESIDE HER BED WAS EMPTY. THE LULLABY SHE USUALLY HUMMED—ALWAYS OFF-KEY BUT WARM—WAS NOWHERE TO BE HEARD. ANOTHER TREMOR SHOOK THE CASTLE. THIS TIME STRONGER. SOMETHING HEAVY FELL IN THE CORRIDOR BEYOND HER DOOR WITH A LOUD CLATTER. SHE FLINCHED, GRIPPING HER BLANKET TIGHTER, HEART FLUTTERING. THE DOOR OPENED.

MAELA’S SILHOUETTE FILLED THE THRESHOLD, BACKLIT BY TORCHLIGHT AND CHAOS. HER FACE WAS HIDDEN IN SHADOW, BUT HER VOICE WAS GENTLE. “LITTLE MOON, WE MUST GO.”

ASHANTI BLINKED AT HER. “WHERE’S MAMA?” HER VOICE WAS SMALL. SLEEP-SOFT. FEAR WAS ONLY JUST BEGINNING TO CRACK THROUGH THE HAZE.

“NO TIME. QUICKLY NOW.” MAELA STEPPED INSIDE, HER MOVEMENTS FAST BUT TOO SMOOTH. AS IF SHE WEREN’T AFRAID AT ALL.

ASHANTI HESITATED. THEN SLID FROM THE BED AND PADDED BAREFOOT ACROSS THE COLD FLOOR. MAELA REACHED FOR HER HAND, GRASPING IT TOO TIGHTLY. THE MOMENT THEIR SKIN TOUCHED, ASHANTI FELT A JOLT—A CHILL THAT SPREAD THROUGH HER ARM AND NESTLED DEEP BEHIND HER RIBCAGE. SHE LOOKED UP, AND MAELA’S EYES CAUGHT THE MOONLIGHT FOR A SPLIT SECOND. THEY LOOKED… WRONG. TOO STILL. TOO PALE.

BUT THEN THE WOMAN SMILED. “THAT’S MY BRAVE GIRL. JUST HOLD ON TO ME.”

THE SCREAM CAME AGAIN, THIS TIME CLOSER. LOUDER. ASHANTI CLUNG TO THE MAID’S HAND AS THEY SLIPPED INTO THE CORRIDOR, INTO THE SCENT OF SMOKE AND BLOOD. THE HALLS HAD ALWAYS BEEN BEAUTIFUL. ASHANTI HAD ONCE SPENT HOURS TRACING HER FINGERS ALONG THE IVY-CARVED MOLDING AND THE TALL MURALS OF SILVER-FURRED QUEENS PAST, EACH WITH A SERENE GAZE AND A CROWN OF ANTLERS RESTING UPON THEIR HEADS. NOW THOSE SAME MURALS WATCHED IN SILENCE AS MAELA LED HER DOWN THE CORRIDOR AT A BRISK PACE, THEIR PAINTED EYES SEEMING DARKER, STERNER, AND DISAPPOINTED. THE PERFUME OF FRESH LAVENDER BLOSSOMS THAT USUALLY LINGERED IN THE AIR WAS GONE, REPLACED BY THE ACRID STENCH OF SMOKE AND SOMETHING ELSE—COPPERY AND WET. ASHANTI'S NOSE WRINKLED WHILE HER EYES BURNED. A BODY LAY AGAINST THE WALL NEAR THE STAIRWELL—ONE OF THE PALACE GUARDS. HIS GLAIVE WAS SNAPPED IN TWO, AND HIS CHESTPLATE HAD BEEN CAVED IN, RIBS PUNCHED THROUGH FROM THE INSIDE LIKE GLASS. ASHANTI STOPPED WALKING AND STARED. HE WAS ONE OF THE NICE ONES, ALWAYS GIVING HER CANDIED NUTS WHEN THE QUEEN WASN’T LOOKING.

Maela’s grip tightened. “Don’t look.”

But she couldn’t help it. Another lay at the bottom of the stairs, then another, half-shrouded in the red-and-gold drapes of the Grand Hall, the velvet was soaked through, dragging behind them like a wounded limb as they passed. The sounds grew worse the farther they went—clashing steel, snarls that no beast of the Greyclaw should’ve made, and underneath it all, a low, rhythmic moan that vibrated through the stones. A chant? A curse? It made Ashanti’s teeth ache.

“Where’s Papa?” she whispered.

Maela didn’t answer. Her face remained turned forward, jaw locked. The firelight cast sharp shadows over her features—too sharp for her normally kind face. Her expression didn’t match her voice, which remained soft, sweet, almost too sweet. Ashanti’s small legs stumbled as they turned a corner into one of the rear wings. The silence here was thicker, heavier. A vase was shattered across the floor, crushed under a bloody bootprint that led into a shattered servants’ door.

“Where are we going?” Ashanti asked, her voice a trembling whisper.

“To safety,” Maela said.

But something in her tone was… off. There was no warmth in it, no real comfort, like reciting words someone had fed her. Ashanti felt her chest tighten, confusion giving way to a new feeling. Instinct. Something inside her, buried deep, screamed that this wasn’t right. That the hand she held no longer belonged to someone safe.

They turned another corner. A knight in blackened silver armor stood there, impaled on a massive spear that jutted from the wall like a grotesque decoration. The spear had not pierced him from the front, but from the back. Like he had been fleeing. Ashanti whimpered.

Maela knelt beside her and brushed hair from her face. “Almost there, little moon. Just be good a little longer.”, though her smile didn’t reach her eyes.

They passed beneath a broken archway where the stained-glass crest of the Greyclaw line had shattered, its colored fragments crunching beneath Maela’s hurried steps. The flicker of firelight ahead cast long shadows through the hallway, and a sudden gust of wind carried in the scent of ash and rot.

Then came the sound—wet, dragging steps and low, guttural groans.

Maela froze.

Ashanti, still holding her hand, peeked around the corner, curiosity winning out over fear. Down the corridor ahead, the great eastern doors of the castle had been torn from their hinges. Beyond them… movement. Hundreds of shambling figures spilled into the courtyard, hunched and twisted. Their flesh was warped—too many joints in the wrong places, some crawling, others loping like broken wolves. One dragged a severed leg like a leash. Another twitched with insect-like limbs and no face at all, just smooth skin pulled tight across its head. And they were pouring in. They didn’t speak, nor did they shout. They just moaned endlessly in unison—a choir of death echoing across the stones.

Ashanti’s breath hitched.

“What are they?” she whispered, clutching Maela’s skirt now.

Maela didn’t answer. She looked through the horde as if searching for something. Or someone. Her grip on Ashanti tightened.

“They shouldn’t be this many…” she murmured to herself.

Then one of the Stricken turned its head—sharply, inhumanly—and looked straight at them. It didn’t have eyes. It shouldn’t have seen them. But it let out a howl, a wet, warbling shriek—and the entire pack twitched. Heads turned. Limbs moved. Maela didn’t wait. She yanked Ashanti back and dashed down a side hall, skirts hiked up, sandals slapping the cold stone. “Hold on!” she hissed, voice flat now. All gentleness gone. They passed servant doors and hidden latches, winding down into narrower halls slick with condensation. Somewhere above them, the horde roared again, and a tremor ran through the floor.

“This way,” Maela muttered, voice returning to its sweet lilt. “We’ll go through the chapel. Just like we planned.” Planned?

Ashanti couldn’t place the word, not the way Maela said it. Not with that tone. They reached the heavy wooden door to the castle’s small chapel, used more for noble appearances than real worship, and Maela threw it open. The familiar scent of old incense and polished wood washed over them. Moonlight filtered in through the stained-glass dome above, still miraculously intact. Ashanti panted, her small chest rising and falling. She looked back once, just as Maela barred the door behind them. That thing had looked straight at her. It didn't have eyes. But it did see them. How? How did she know they saw them?

Maela turned back toward her. “You were very brave,” she said, crouching down to meet her gaze.

Ashanti saw something flicker in the woman’s eyes then. A shimmer of something not… human, a flicker of something wrong in her smile. Like her face didn’t quite know how to make the expression anymore.

“Very brave,” she repeated, too softly.

Maela lit a torch from the chapel’s altar brazier, its flame catching with a quiet whuff. The light spilled down a stairwell of hewn stone behind the altar, previously concealed by a carved wooden panel now flung open like a secret tongue. The hidden descent awaited, lined with ancient steps slick with the damp of centuries. Faint moss clung to the cracks, and the air that rose from below was cold, not the crispness of night, but something older. Still.

Ashanti held tighter to Maela’s hand.

“This is where the kings sleep,” Maela whispered as they began their descent. “And queens. And heroes. But they won’t mind us. No one rests forever.” The little girl didn’t reply. Her feet moved automatically, each step a muffled echo behind Maela’s. The further down they went, the more the sounds of the chapel and castle faded. There were no more tremors. No more screams. Just the crackling fire and their breathing.

The crypt opened before them. Stone arches loomed in the dark like crooked ribs. The tombs were carved from black granite, many sealed with sacred runes that shimmered faintly in the torchlight. Some bore statues—lion-headed women, great wolves, a king with no face—all standing sentinel over their resting kin. Ashanti slowed. She stared at one of the sarcophagi, where a name had been etched in an ancient tongue she didn’t understand. A bloom of white moss grew at its base. For some reason, it made her think of her mother’s hair.

“Why are we going this way?” she asked softly.

Maela glanced down at her, that smile once again plastered onto her face. “Because the monsters upstairs don’t know the old paths. But I do. And you—” she tapped Ashanti’s chest lightly “—must be protected. You’re special.”

“Why?”

A pause.

Then Maela knelt. Her eyes glinted in the torchlight, but it wasn’t the warmth of fire that lived in them now. Something darker pulsed behind her irises. Like oil swirling on water.

“Because you were born under the bleeding star,” she said, stroking Ashanti’s cheek. “Because even the dead fear what sleeps inside you.”

Ashanti blinked. “I don’t understand…”

“No,” Maela whispered. “You wouldn’t. Not yet.”

She rose and led them forward once more.

Beneath the last arch, nestled into the wall, was a stone door carved with a crescent tree—the symbol of the Greyclaw bloodline. A small indentation sat at its center. Maela pressed her palm to it, whispered something in a language not meant for the living, and the door slid open with a deep, echoing grind. The tunnel beyond was narrow, framed with old roots and brambles long petrified. Ashanti stepped through, and the weight of the earth seemed to press in on all sides.

Behind her, Maela paused. She looked back toward the crypt, and her smile slipped for just a moment.

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“Almost there,” she said.

But her voice had changed. Just slightly. As if someone else were saying the words through her throat. Ashanti’s hand was damp in Maela’s now. Not from fear, she told herself, but from the heat of the torchlight and the stuffy tunnel air. But her chest tightened with each step, her little legs stiff with uncertainty. Something had changed. Maela’s hand used to be warm, calloused from brushing her hair and carrying trays. Her voice, once soft and humming with lullabies, now felt too… smooth. Not gentle. Measured. Like she was reading from a script. Ashanti glanced up.

Maela’s lips moved, but no words came out. Not at first. Just murmurs. Like she was talking to someone. Or something.

“…not like they told me… shouldn’t be aware yet…”

Ashanti blinked. “Maela?”

The woman didn’t answer.

“…fissures already opening. They’ll blame the horde. But this is deeper. Older…”

She was muttering now. As if the words weren’t for Ashanti at all, but for something else listening. Something beyond the walls. Ashanti slowed. Her small fingers tried to slip free from Maela’s grasp, but the woman’s hand tightened just slightly. Just enough to hurt.

Maela smiled down at her. “Almost there, sweetling. Just the roots to pass. Just the bones to cross. Then we’ll be safe. Safe in the dark.”

Ashanti said nothing. She kept walking, but her breaths came faster now. The walls of the tunnel pressed inward. Twisting roots—long petrified into ironlike branches—arched overhead like claws. Some had split the stone, crumbling the corners of the ceiling and revealing slivers of blacker rock behind. Something about it felt wrong. Like, this place wasn’t part of the castle, not entirely.

“Are we going to Mama?” Ashanti asked, trying to sound braver than she felt.

Maela chuckled, and something in the sound scraped across her nerves.

“We’re going to someone who’ll keep you safe. Someone who’s been waiting a long time.”

Ashanti’s steps slowed again.

“But I don’t know them.”

“You will,” Maela whispered. “They are the ones that beckon to its call. It sings of you and your importance.”

Ashanti shivered. A faint hum echoed through the roots. It wasn’t a sound. Not exactly. More like… a feeling. A vibration in her chest, deep and unsteady. Her vision swam for a moment, and the crystal embedded in her sternum—a gift from birth, they said—gave a subtle pulse beneath her skin. Maela turned suddenly, crouching so they were eye to eye.

“You’re very brave,” she said, too sweetly. “That’s why they’ll let you live. You’re not like the others. You’re a key. And keys don’t get thrown away.”

Ashanti felt her throat tighten. Her mind whirled. She tried to remember her mother’s face. Like the end of a dream. All she could picture was white hair and a voice that once said her name like it mattered. Something wasn’t right.

“Where are we going?” she asked one last time.

“To the edge,” Maela replied. “Where even the stars forget your name.”

Then she stood, her torchlight flickering across an old stone arch. Symbols carved in bone and root shimmered faintly—wards meant to keep something in. Or maybe… keep something out, then she led Ashanti through. The tunnel sloped downward now, cold seeping to the skin. The walls wept with condensation, or perhaps it was something older seeping from the stone, moss-streaked and bone-pale under the flickering torch. Ashanti’s feet slipped once, and Maela didn’t catch her. Just kept walking. Just kept humming that same low tune under her breath.

She’s not Maela.

Ashanti froze, halfway between steps. Her heart was pounding so loudly she thought the tunnel might collapse from the sound.

“No,” she whispered. “—I want to go back.”

Maela didn’t stop.

Ashanti tried again, louder this time. “We have to go back! Mama will be looking for me!”

Maela stopped then.

But she didn’t turn around.

“You don’t have a mother anymore,” she said softly. Almost too softly to hear. “Only a purpose.”

Ashanti’s knees buckled.

“No…”

Then she turned. And for a moment, Maela looked almost like herself—face kind, features unchanged. But her eyes were too wide. Too focused. And then… moaning. It came from the path behind them, low and gurgling. Dozens of voices layered in a wet, sucking chorus. It slithered up the tunnel like fog. Ashanti’s breath caught as she turned to look—and saw them. Shapes in the dark, shuffling and clambering towards them. Crooked heads and torn finery. Some with rusted mail and shattered blades dragging on stone. Once, they had been people—soldiers. Priests. Servants. Now they were only flesh bound by hunger. Eyes cloudy and blind, but seeking.

Ashanti screamed.

She turned to run forward, but Maela caught her.

“Too late,” she said. Not cruelly. Not kindly either. “The dead know when something precious passes through their hall. You shine, little flame. That’s why they follow.”

Ashanti thrashed. “Let me go!”

“No. No more running,” Maela said, almost to herself. “You were meant to walk the path. Even if I wasn’t supposed to lead you. Even if the roots bloomed too early…”

The moans grew louder now, closing in. Ashanti sobbed, tears streaking her face now. She bit Maela’s hand. Hard. Maela hissed and dropped her. Ashanti fell, rolled, scrambled to her feet, turned, and faced the first of the dead that stepped into the light.

Its jaw hung loose. The skin around its mouth was blackened. A knight’s cloak clung to its shoulders in tatters, the symbol of her mother’s house clawed through. Ashanti took a step back and then felt warm arms scoop her up again.

“No time,” Maela said, voice sharper now. Less like a servant. More like a warden.

She ran with Ashanti down the final stretch of tunnel, toward a black archway ahead—hewn stone surrounded by runes that bled faint red against the dark. Behind them, the dead gave chase. The stone corridor opened into a wide, circular chamber, its walls veined with creeping moss and reliefs too worn to decipher. A faint silver glow pulsed from sconces of ghostflame set high in the walls—eternal, unnatural light that bathed the room in a cold, sterile sheen. Maela stepped through the archway with Ashanti in her arms, and immediately the sounds behind them—shuffling feet, distant moans—fell away into silence. The dead would not follow. Ashanti shivered. The air in the chamber was still and close, like a tomb sealed for centuries. An altar stood at the room’s heart—tall, angular, its surface cracked and weathered, etched with symbols that looked like nothing from the halls above. They pulsed faintly, just enough to draw the eye and make her skin crawl. Maela set her down before it. Ashanti’s feet were bare against the cold stone. Her small hand slipped into Maela’s instinctively, but the woman’s grip was stiff now, mechanical.

“W-what is this place?” Ashanti asked, her voice too small in the vaulted space.

“A place forgotten,” Maela murmured. “A sanctuary for shadows. Even the dead know to fear it.”

Ashanti stared up at her. “We should go back. Mama will be—”

“No one is coming,” Maela interrupted, not unkindly, but with finality.

Ashanti shrank back. “You’re… different.”

Maela tilted her head, and in the ghostlight, her features looked strangely hollow. Not twisted by malice—emptied of something essential. Her eyes didn’t blink often enough.

“I’ve always been like this,” she said softly. “You just didn’t see.”

“I want to go home,” Ashanti whispered.

“You can’t.”

There it was—truth, raw and merciless.

Maela turned toward the altar, placing a hand on its surface. The runes beneath her palm flickered dimly to life, and a low hum began to resonate through the floor.

“Things are moving too soon,” she muttered to herself, voice cracking for the first time. “The Drekon promised us more time. But the seal… It’s already fraying. They’ll have to take the girl earlier than planned.”

Ashanti’s heart pounded. “Who?”

“They said her blood mattered,” Maela continued, speaking more to the chamber than to the child beside her, “royal lineage. Binding blood. She would walk the knife’s edge and never fall. A tree that blooms without sun”

Ashanti backed away, inching toward the archway. “I don’t understand. Why are you saying these things?”

Maela looked at her, then truly looked. And for the briefest flicker, something human returned to her face. Regret. Or sorrow. Or perhaps recognition of the line she had crossed.

“You’ll forget this, little one,” she said gently. “But something inside you won’t.”

The humming deepened. Somewhere, gears hidden in the walls turned. The air pressed down like an unseen weight.

Ashanti’s lip quivered. “I don’t want to be here.”

A sound echoed from the wall beyond the altar—a slow grinding of stone as part of it began to slide open, revealing a spiral stair descending into deeper darkness.

“You must be,” Maela said.

And with no more time for words, she took Ashanti’s hand once more and led her into the black. The stairway twisted downward for what felt like hours, the light of the altar chamber quickly swallowed by the dark. The walls closed in as the cold deepened—no longer the chill of stone, but something damp, fetid. The scent grew thicker with every step. Ashanti clung to Maela’s hand, though her grip weakened. Her little legs trembled with exhaustion and fear. When they reached the bottom, the air changed. It wasn’t just cold. It was wrong. The hallway that stretched out before them was hewn roughly into the bedrock, no longer the elegant craftsmanship of a castle crypt, but a prison cut from spite. The stones were wet with condensation and old blood. A distant clatter echoed—metal on stone, and the hushed voices of others. Flickering torchlight illuminated barred cells. Ashanti counted at least six on either side as they passed. In each, children. Some are no older than her, others are nearing adulthood. All looked broken in different ways. One girl stared blankly at the wall, humming a wordless tune. A boy sat in the corner, whispering to his hands. Another, older, clutched the bars and hissed when they passed, eyes feral. They were all candidates. First Rank. Ashanti didn’t know the term, but she felt its weight. Like waiting lambs. No comfort. No kindness. Only time, and what waited beyond it.

“Why… why are there so many?” Ashanti whispered. Maela didn’t answer.

The guards down here didn’t wear colors—just leather and masks. Not masks of beauty or ceremony. Blank, wooden things. Expressionless. One of them stepped aside and unlocked a heavy door ahead. Screaming erupted from behind it. Not the kind of scream a scraped knee earns. Not even the scream of a child who lost her mother in a crowd. It was the scream of someone being unmade. Ashanti flinched violently, grabbing Maela’s skirt. A teenager, barely older than her brother had been, was being dragged away from the corridor ahead, blood staining his shoulder where something had been embedded, or ripped out. He fought until he didn’t. His screams faded as the door slammed shut again.

Ashanti stared, frozen.

“I don’t want to be here,” she sobbed, voice cracking. “Please. Let me go home. I want Mama.”

Maela’s voice came quietly, hollow. “There is no home now. Only what you become.”

Tears streamed down Ashanti’s cheeks. The final door opened—a thick, iron thing that let out a stale breath of air darker than pitch. A chamber beyond with no light. Not even torches. A black that swallowed everything. Waiting.

Two masked figures took her wrists.

“No—No!” she cried, fighting for the first time. “Please, Maela! Please!”

The woman didn’t meet her eyes. Ashanti screamed and kicked and thrashed, but it was no use. The black took her. The door slammed shut, and the world forgot her name.

In time, she would forget it too.

In time, the screaming would stop.

In time, even feelings will be forgotten.