Chapter 1: Prelude: As All Things Meet Their End

Silence lay upon the battlefield—a sound more harrowing than the cacophony of war. It lingered in the shadows of tattered banners, burdensome and vast as the laden clouds above. The falling snow seemed to dread that silence, tarrying on the small and subtle wind or clinging to high branches. Still, it was the nature of snow to fall, and so it descended, settling finally upon the bloodstained earth.

It glazed the open eyes of the dead. It clung to bristled hair as hoarfrost. It concealed the gleam of iron and steel as if to hide those naked blades for shame. The darkwood kept the silence as if straining to hold its breath—perhaps awaiting the survivors’ return. Once, they would have come to bury fallen kin. Once, they would have mourned the dead in funereal song.

Once. No longer. Such efforts were as futile as willing this bitter winter to end.

The world grew weary in its age. Through its many wounds and wrinkles, a sickness seeped into the earth and the air. It turned the valleys barren. It brought storms and snow to even the warmest clime. It rendered death a cruel parody of life.

In time, it would bleed upon this carrion field, into riven skin and broken bone. It would bar the dead their quietus and bid them to stand, weapons bared anew. Blade would cross bloodied blade, dealing, once again, in the business of death.

However, there was one among the fallen. One neither dying nor dead—at least, not in the way of all mortal things. For her, death was temporary. The Void, a known frontier. Winter’s chill had taken her bones, but her heart still beat like dogged drums of war. It stitched her ruinous wounds as a seamstress at cloth—her heart the black hand, her blood the ebon thread.

In time, the lungs were no longer punctured. The intestines spooled into their proper place. Bones snapped into position, and the fingers were the first to twitch alive.

* * *

My work is not yet done.

It was her oath and her impetus. Six words, simple and nondescript… that nonetheless roared like fire in her blood.

“Not yet… done,” Valhera gasped with the first breath of her life begun again. Frost had veiled her open eyes, so she blinked in vain to wipe it away. She tried to wet her ice-numb lips, but her tongue could only flounder. She breathed the frozen wind, thick with smells of blood and iron. It would have made her nauseous, once, but this was not her first battle. These were not her first wounds.

This was not her first death, and she had risen from far worse.

Her fingernails, cracked and blood-crusted, dug into the earth. She pushed against the ground, elbows screaming their protest for they had not yet fully mended. Still, she had a certain tenacity, and within moments, she managed to lift her head from the frigid dirt. Her knees bent forward, digging into the snow, relieving her arms of some of their weight. One trembling hand gripped her long, bluish sword, then sought the support of the nearest gnarled tree. In time, she crawled to her tall and tired stature. Her shaking knees nearly buckled, but something kept her upright. Maybe it was the strength of her ironclad will… or the frustration that this struggle had become all too familiar.

“The Undying rises again,” mocked the voice in her head. It was nasal but articulate, high but masculine.

Her anger rose within, and for a moment, its heat displaced the killing cold. “And still, you cling. A bloated leech.”

“I will not be so easily removed.”

Valhera ignored his taunt, instead, striving to catch her breath. As she stood, a sensation trickled down her cheek—a tear, perhaps, though biting and bitter much unlike water. A black droplet passed her jaw and fell, soaking into the now-stained snow. So too, it pooled on her tongue and leaked from her teeth as it had so often before. The substance had mended her wounds, but now carried a cold through her body and blood—a cold beyond that of this forest, wrapped in deadly winter. It would not be warmed by fire, shelter, sunlight. It was a cold that grew each time she died… that by now, she knew well.

It was the cold of the Void—the sickness of this world. Patient, manifold. Infinite.

She lifted her right hand and looked it over. Her knuckles were crooked, palm slit by a gruesome scar, but it was an old battle that had left her crippled. Most of her fingers still bent if she willed it, so she was not bothered by these things. However, something dark crept to the crease of her palm, unwelcome, unkind. Dark tendrils wrapped her wrist, carving her skin as a tattoo of thorns.

She fumbled with her sleeve, then used her teeth to pull it back. The mark continued down her forearm, black like gangrenous veins. She wondered how much of her body was covered, now. If it was visible on her neck, yet, or her face. Then she dropped her arm and realized she didn’t much care.

“A little less dead, a little more monstrous,” the voice continued.

“Yes, I care so much what you think of me.”

“You’d argue that I’m wrong?”

She decided not to answer. Instead, she turned her senses outward and breathed in deep, the miasma of war. Frost, iron, blood.

The wind would carry those smells. The earth would drink the blood spilled upon it. The trees would whisper of the battle they had witnessed, but too faintly to be heard. Even so, Valhera looked over the fields of dead and felt those things as much as she felt the cold.

Everything left its remnant, she knew. Lives lived, deeds done, everything. Stains, like ashes left in wake of a fire, or the faint tinge of smoke on the breeze. In time, perhaps the vestiges would fade, the dead would be buried, and the world would carry on. But no—not even those mercies were afforded anymore. These days… the weight of the past pressed on every shoulder as heavy as a millstone.

The dead could no longer travel to the place beyond the Veil. It was the reason that these corpses would only rise again. It was the reason the world teetered on its end. It was the reason for the war, the violence; for everything foul and crooked.

She took one slow, shuddering step in no particular direction. It was almost too much for her burdened legs to handle, but she didn’t have all the time in the world.

“Not eager to fight again?” her trespasser asked. “I thought you reveled in it.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I recall a certain pleasure in your eyes when you hacked out my heart.”

She dragged her blade behind her where it scratched a dead man’s armor. “Once, without regret.”

Laughter rattled her skull. Spiteful, humorless—the sort that came from madmen. “Without regret? I know you better than that, Valhera.”

“You were a murderer. No, you were worse.”

“Fine. Cast your stones, but mind your own bloody hands.”

She needed no reminder of the things she had done. However, she refused to grant him the satisfaction of her anger. Instead, she focused on the road ahead. One step… at a time.

She tried to avoid trampling the dead, but there were too many for the luxury. As she walked, her motions loosened the bloody scraps of her once-intact armor. A stumble dislodged her ruined breastplate, and the shreds of it tumbled soundlessly into the snow. Beneath it, her gambeson, too, had been torn. She seethed, exposed anew to winter wind.

There were no arms that could cut through steel. Even her own weapon, forged of fabled mithril, was unable. This death, she remembered, had not come about by swords or arrows. Only warlocks could rend such damage, bending shadow to cut deeper than any blade. She thought about Aryssa, and how their short lessons had barely been enough to keep the warlocks from carving out her heart. The memory brought back mixed emotions, so she spat to the side.

“It cannot be mere happenstance. She left, then they found you.”

“She did not betray me,” Valhera growled.

“Not again, you mean to say.”

Valhera realized she was grinding her teeth. A deep breath in, and she tried to relax. She focused on the little things like her father had taught her. Her senses, above her thoughts. The world became smaller. Her rage, a more docile beast. She paused, letting the smells, the sounds, the sights wash her over.

She looked and saw that it was mostly Elthysians, dead at her feet. Most wore simple armor and wielded simple weapons, but there were paladins among the fallen. Her sword, dragging through dirt, had been a paladin’s weapon once. A sword fit for a hero of legend, or so she’d been told. She wondered if these paladins had thought of themselves the same. If they’d known that this pointless war could only quicken the end of all.

She didn’t feel much, looking at Elthysian banners and stepping in Elthysian blood. They had cast her out long ago. More recently, they had crossed the river Lesmyne to fight this futile war. Once, her father had told her that nothing but death lurked in Khaldara. She figured that he had been right, if only concerning his own species.

Her path stretched on. Soon, there were more and more direlings, the horned folk, among the numbered dead. When she looked at them, she felt empty. She remembered her first season in Khaldara—even caught between warlords and undead, she’d felt at home. Maybe because of their particular songs, or because they, like her, bore horns and tails like the demons of old. Regardless, she’d repaid that kindness by bringing the whole Elthysian army knocking.

“I told you this was the inevitable end,” the trespasser said.

“You’re as blathering in death as you were in life.”

A moment’s pause. “Denial won’t change the bitter, bitter truth.”

She tried to ignore it, but her broken hand still curled into a fist. It hurt, bones grinding as they always did, and she forced her fingers to unfurl.

He was right. She was not innocent in this, the end of all things. This chain of events, started long before her birth… had reached fruition by her hand.

But there was little time for regret, rumination. Looking back, she saw movement. Maybe it was a trick of the darkwood’s light… or the stirring of a soldier from a death too short. She heard a sound, low and long—maybe the creak of a darkwood tree, or the groans of the rising horde. Her heart twinged, not with fear, but with sorrow. Because there was nothing she could do for so many dead.

She trudged deeper into the darkwood, abandoning the ravaged grove. Even as her stamina withered and her muscles cried their weakness, she continued. Warlocks had killed her, she remembered, but they had stopped just short of something more permanent than a few scars. They would return. The others would know that their vanguard had failed.

And when they did come, they’d find her spent, feeble, and alone. She would not suffer that.

She had one last task in the realm of the living. Something that no warlock, no Elthysian, and no war would bar her from achieving. So even as her body began to fail, she kept her shambling pace. Even as the sun descended and undead roamed the forlorn forest, she walked with the tenacity of something that cannot die.

“My work… is not yet done,” she muttered, words lost in the groaning of the trees.

“I wonder how much longer your candle can burn on anger alone. How much longer… until that heart of yours takes its due.”

Valhera reared her head, snarling as if to vent the voice. Labored, it came out as more of a wheeze.

* * *

There was a deadwind blowing. Ithana smelled the telltale signs of frost and blood and iron. On the surface, it was gentle—while Ithana meditated in her garden, it pushed her dark hair and rustled the tall, thorned flowers around her. It washed over her horns and lidded eyes with a sober serenity, mask to the tempest it concealed.

But she was a Dreamer. She observed with senses beyond the physical plane. Her heart had its own way of seeing, and so she witnessed the raging storm, the dead undeparted. She gritted her teeth against the rending cacophony of steel on bloody steel. Above all, she witnessed the grief of life lost… and the regret of soldiers’ failure.

It meant that somewhere, there had been another battle. It meant that more of her kin had fallen in the war that grasped this darkwood. It meant that more of them pressed against the shattered Veil, unable to depart this world and doomed to rise again.

Such were the times, she sighed, opening her eyes and watching the wind play across her garden. Her flowers danced, fully bloomed despite the cold in the air, tall despite the lacking light. Their thorns were long and myriad, sharp as any needle. White petals cradled their delicate stamen, tinged with brown like upturned earth. To an observer, they would appear wilted. Fighting for life. But Ithana had grown driftweed for years. It was a flower that scorned the sun and prospered where all else would wither. It was spread by neither seed nor spore; rather, it made life of death. Gardens, of shallow graves. Gift of the Dead God, it was the reason she had settled on the grounds of olden wars.

Ithana stood, starting to walk among the petals and thorns. Her hands trailed over brown-and-white bulbs, and the flowers seemed to curl their thorns away. They would not, in their wisdom, harm their caretaker.

She wondered what dreams drifted on the deadwind. Tonight, perhaps… she would tread closer to the Veil. She would offer comfort to those denied their end. Hers was not the power to mend what was broken, but as each dawn rose increasingly dire, she allowed herself some solace in doing what little she could.

She made her rounds, humming as she trod, almost seeming to speak with her garden. Their blooms brought her peace, as driftweed often did. But that peace could only be short-lived, times being what they were.

There was a figure, shadowed, approaching her little cottage, movement and silhouette blending with the dark between the trees.

In time, the shadow drew closer, visible even in the sun’s waning light. It was a young direling woman. Jet-black hair hung around a pair of gently curving horns, dragging in the deadwind as her tail and unsheathed sword dragged through the snow. Her gait was slow and shuddering, much like one of the undead. Ithana opened her second sight, ever-wary of the dangers in these woods, but she did not see an undead’s restless soul. She did not feel its abiding aches and sorrows—at least, not the sort to deny a soul its rest. Rather, she saw something startling, spoken of in the oldest Dreamers’ tales.

She saw the Dead God’s power. Long ago on the eve of his death, Gilgaroth had blessed seven generals with his black blood, but the Undying had found despair in immortality. Each had, were legends to be believed, ripped loose their own hearts. They had been cautionary tales to some, or heroes of a bygone age. However, there had been whispers on both sides of the Veil. Whispers of one’s return… rumors Ithana had skeptically entertained, if only for what they implied.

Hesitant, she walked toward the woman. The driftweed parted around her to spare her robes the tear of needly thorns. Seeing her, the stranger stopped her advance, nearly collapsing, but managing to lean on her sword. Her weight pressed it into the frost-hard earth, and she bowed her head, veiled as it was by dark strings of hair.

Ithana drew closer, to whispering distance. The woman met her eyes. Her skin was awfully pale, her lips a faded blue. Scars crossed her face, one almost lost in the crease of her nostril, the other cutting across her eye and black brow. Though she leaned, bent at the waist, her height seemed to tower, far taller than the average woman or man. But none of these things drew the gasp from Ithana’s lips. None of these features were especially extraordinary—in fact, the woman looked like a typical direling warrior. She would have, anyway, if not for the black substance that wept from her eyes and dripped from trembling teeth.

The woman watched Ithana with blue eyes half-lidded. Her breath was deathly labored, shaking like her unsteady knees.

“A… Dreamer,” she said. Perhaps she found some comfort in the word. Relief dawned upon her, short and fleeting, then her eyes rolled back into her head. Her legs, broad and long, gave out. She collapsed at Ithana’s feet and moved no more.

Ithana crouched by the woman’s side. Turning her over, she checked for a pulse. It was faint, half-hearted, but the woman yet lived. She pulled back the woman’s sleeve and looked over the forearm. There, a maze of black lines tangled across the flesh.

She knew this woman. Or, rather… she knew of her. Remote as she was in the darkwood, the harrowing tales of war had nonetheless reached her ear.

“Ithana?” said a voice while her thoughts tumbled and turned. There were footsteps behind her, then a presence by her side. It was Istis, of course—her partner, her covenant-bound. She looked at him, locking trepid eyes, and watched a similar recognition dawn on his face.

Words escaped her, then. In that moment, perhaps it would have been too much to speak of the stranger fallen in her garden. Instead, she asked about a subject rather closer to her heart.

“Is Eslen down for the night?” she asked, and Istis hesitated.

“He took some coaxing. But yes.”

Ithana grunted but found nothing more to be said. Slowly, she touched one of the woman’s black tears. Blunt, burning pain flared her nerves, and wincing, she withdrew. When she wiped away the residue, her skin was raw and red.

“She…” Istis started, though he, like her, was dumbfounded. “Who is she?”

Ithana bowed her head, sensing his fear through their covenant-bond. “She’s exactly who you think she is.”

“The Undying,” he said. Ithana closed her eyes and watched the woman once more with her second sight.

She was a Dreamer. She had spent many years watching the Veil. It was her duty as the Dead God’s disciple. She understood the things that lay beyond like few possibly could. And yet the power that lay before her… defied what she knew. It was as vast as the sky at night. Every bit as fathomless.

“Beyond any doubt,” she whispered. Istis’s hand, warm, smoothed over her back. “And yet, she teeters on the brink of another death.”

“Then what do we do?”

Ithana looked deeply into her partner’s eyes. He wore a grim expression.

“We help her,” she said, simply.

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“She’s killed warlords, Ithana. Destroyed city walls. Slain entire armies…”

“Elthysian armies.”

He shook his head. “That’s not the point. That kind of power has no place in our home. Sleeping a stone’s throw from our son.”

Ithana looked down. Her fingers kneaded together as she thought.

“You’ve heard the rumors. The songs. She could be the last chance for our people,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “Eslen… if things continue as they are, his world will be nothing but darkness and undead.”

“You don’t know that,” Istis said, but his voice was uneasy.

“Black Blood, Istis, you know that I do. I can see the growing weight of this war… in a way that few can.”

“She’s the Undying. She’ll recover without us.”

“She’s weak. And… weary. Besides, it cannot be an easy thing to come back from the dead.”

Istis said nothing in response. He bowed his head as if to find his answer in the fallen snow.

Ithana reached her heart, bound in their covenant, to his, intent to share what words could not. He welcomed her, as he often did. She felt his fear, burrowed deep within his stomach and veins. Denial, too, that they did not stand on the brink of the end. There was anger, that after such a long time waiting, their son had been born under the darkest of portents.

He met her pale eyes. She held his cheek in her weary hand.

“I know,” she said. “But there is little to be done. Except, maybe… to offer the Undying what help we can.”

He hesitated. “It’ll be difficult. Feeding another mouth.”

“Please, Istis. Have I ever led you astray?”

Silence, for a while.

“Not once,” he said.

“Then trust in my sight one more time,” Ithana sighed. She laced her fingers with his, and he squeezed her sweating palm.

“I will. I trust you, Ithana. As I always have.”

“Grab her shoulders. I’ll get her legs.”

They brought her through the rows and rows of driftweed. Where before, the flowers had turned their thorns away, now they seemed to reach. Petals shivered in the presence of the stranger. Leaves turned, like curious hands.

Still, they danced in the deadwind. As the couple brought their visitor inside, perhaps a few stamen peeked from bulbs like hidden, prying eyes.

They settled the woman in an extra bed typically reserved for Ithana’s patients. They lit a fire in the blackened hearth and covered her with blankets of linen. Istis excused himself into the other room while Ithana regarded the woman’s sleeping eyes. They shook, flickering, as if fighting an unseen foe.

She sat, for a time, by the Undying’s side. She kneaded her hesitant hands. She thought of her child and the things within her partner’s heart—most of all, his fear. Fear that she felt deep within, also, if only for a moment, as cold and as heavy as the arctic ocean depths. She knew, even more than her love, the particular shade of Khaldara’s doom. The world lay dying, as all things have their end. But, even then… her darkening heart could not help but hope.

To a Dreamer, hope was a toxin. It would cast her eyes to the future, blinding her to the present and the past. It would turn her passive, deluded, powerless. Hope, held in such times, could only be lost, and it ill fit a Dreamer to suffer such sickness. But it was not hope for her own sake. Rather, she hoped as a mother for her son. Toxin though it may be, she would not crush that feeble light and become all the more an invalid.

She stood. She placed a censer of black iron by the bedside and pressed driftweed into its crucible. She kindled it as incense and breathed in deep its aromatic smoke. Keen to ease her patient in her rest, she adjusted the herb to burn more slowly.

She turned to leave, tail dragging behind. Hand on the door, she looked to the Undying once more. Fear needled her again, but she did not allow it to stay.

As a Dreamer, she would not fear the unknown. Death, after all, was the greatest unknown, and it was her duty to dance in the dark.

Fear would cause a misstep. And the music of life left no room for error.

So she was not afraid. Instead, she passed the threshold and found Istis waiting with arms outstretched. She leaned into his embrace, gently soothing his worry and taking comfort in the familiar warmth of his arms.

* * *

My work is not yet done.

Valhera woke to the smell of burning driftweed. She breathed in deep, mind lost in a fog similar to the settling smoke. The aroma was gentle on the senses—not sweet like the herbs Azareth had smoked, nor acrid like a wood fire. It was pleasant and homely, like the earthy scent of morning dew on a grassy hill. Some said that driftweed smelled different to every soul—whatever odor reminded them of simpler times, of peace and repose. She did not know the truth of it, but for a moment, it soothed her aching heart.

She was warm, too. Heavy blankets pressed on her body while a fireplace burned across from her bed. She had been cold, she remembered. Bone-cold, to death.

“A gentle dawn, after an unquiet night,” said the voice in her head.

It jarred her out of the trance brought on by warmth and driftweed. She tried to sit up, but the effort shot searing pain through her abdomen. A grimace on her face, she went limp again.

“Weakness has taken its hold,” the trespasser continued. “Rest.”

She curled her lip and curled her broken hand. “I don’t have time to rest.”

“Your body has reached its limit. There is nothing to be gained in pushing it further.”

Valhera breathed in deep until it strained her mending lungs. She shifted and began to wonder.

“What happened? Where am I?”

The voice sighed before it spoke. “Worry not. You stumbled onto a Dreamer’s doorstep.”

Valhera breathed in the driftweed and figured it should have been obvious, even if she didn’t remember.

“She knows who you are,” the voice continued.

“Of course she does.”

“What are you, at this point? Famous? Or infamous?”

“I don’t care. The warlocks can’t be far behind.”

“And when they come, I doubt this broken body will bridle your fury.”

Valhera grimaced. “The Children of the Void aren’t the sort to fail a task twice.”

“Perhaps. But they’re overconfident. They have never been eluded for long, or had an opponent nearly as… vicious. It is rare that they fail at all. That may work to your advantage.”

“I remember thinking the same about you.”

“How trite. My arrogance was my downfall?”

“You tampered with things you shouldn’t have.”

“I would have saved the world.”

Valhera would’ve laughed if she’d had the breath. Instead, she coughed and wheezed. Still, she knew the trespasser felt her derision. At the very least, it shut him up.

“Where’s my sword?” she asked, reluctant to breach the silence.

“Do not expect me to keep an eye on every little thing.”

“It’s important. You know it’s important.”

“Yes, I care so deeply about your favorite butcher’s blade.”

She gritted her teeth. “I need mithril.”

“Then slay another paladin. They are a dime a dozen, these days.”

“It’s not the same. You know it’s not the same.”

“Oh, I am sorry. I forget that the end of all things will wait upon your vanity.”

Valhera’s thoughts went silent after that, even as anger twisted her heart. She knew better than to try and pry answers from his bitter hands. Still, she knew how he watched. He watched as she tried to move her withered body again, as she lifted her mangled hand and traced its black markings.

It was ridiculous to lay here, she thought. Waiting for her body to recover… for warlocks to find her again. Waiting for more Elthysians to pour into Khaldara… for more undead to litter the dying earth.

The direling warlords’ confederacy was already falling apart. Every passing day, a little more of Khaldara fell into the Void. It was only a matter of time before perdition befell every corner of the world. And here she lay, black heart beating despite starting it all.

Her muscles didn’t want to move, but she moved them anyway. Bare feet slapped the wooden floor, and her knees trembled under her weight. Her crooked fingers dug into the bedding, helping her up while her elbows strained and shook. Within moments, she was standing, head pounding from the effort.

However, a body, so weak, could not support her conviction. Her legs buckled like brittle branches. Her hands shot out to break her fall, lances of pain shocking her wrists and elbows. She hovered a moment before those, too, gave out.

“Your tenacity is admirable.”

“Burn in Hell.”

“Strain will only prolong your recovery.”

“Don’t tell me you care whether I live or die.”

Silence, for a moment, while she pushed against the ground. There was a noise through the wall—the sound of talking, then a chair being moved.

“I care for this world, Valhera,” the trespasser said.

“Then you should’ve listened to me.”

“Of course. Even with all that has happened, I am the one who was wrong.”

She couldn’t help but laugh as her elbows gave out again. Her breath was short and ragged, so it sounded more like a sob. “You didn’t want to help anyone. You wanted me dead. You wanted revenge.”

“Righteous vengeance may right such damnable wrongs. Or is your desire different?”

“We are not the same.”

“Yes. Only one of us construes her weakness as virtue.”

Valhera snarled, gathering her breath for another push. She managed to raise her chest just as the room’s door clicked open. Her muscles burned, desperate, weak, and her forehead smarted as it met the unyielding floor.

Two hands slid under her arms, lifting her upper body with obvious strain. Valhera hissed and kicked at first, but her better instincts took hold and told her to calm. Instead, she worked her trembling legs and tried to gain her feet. Between her effort and the other person’s steadier hand, she soon found herself laying on the bed again.

Her helper stepped away, and Valhera got her first glance. A direling woman, short and slight, with the smaller kind of horns commonly found on females. She wore simple robes that hid most of her figure, and had long dark hair tied in intricate patterns—far too long to be practical in battle or manual labor. She looked soft, Valhera thought, skin unmarred by calluses and scars. Her pale eyes watched Valhera, but they looked clouded and tired as if staring at something unseen.

In the doorway behind her, there was a direling man. He was of a leaner build than the woman, but not like the seasoned warriors Valhera had encountered among the warlords’ ranks. Although he kept a restless hand on the hilt of an axe, it was plain that he wasn’t accustomed to using it as anything more than a tool. For him, it cut wood first, flesh second. A common man, she figured, made paranoid by the times. He stared her down as if waiting for sudden movements.

She held his gaze unwavering. She wouldn’t be threatened—not even by a look.

The woman glanced at the man and made an annoyed gesture before opening her mouth. “I apologize for my partner. These are… strange times.”

Valhera snorted, but waited for the man to break eye contact first. She glanced once more at the woman, then at nothing in particular.

“We’ve had many strangers in our home,” the woman continued, “but you are… different.” The driftweed smoke gave her voice an easy tone, but Valhera fought against the aroma.

“You’re a Dreamer,” she said.

“I am,” the woman replied, dipping her head. Her demeanor was slow, almost sluggish—traits that seemed common to those who made their living close to the dead. Valhera watched her, thinking of the others she’d met, pale of eyes and soft of stature.

“Where’s my sword?” she asked, flicking her tail.

The woman furrowed her brow. She nodded at the man, and he vanished into the other room, emerging seconds later with the weapon in hand.

Valhera breathed a sigh of relief. She stretched a shaking hand to take it, but the man seemed hesitant. Cautious, he offered it forward, and she ran a gentle hand over its scabbarded blade. Remembered in the mithril… there was a certain comforting presence. An aura. An aroma. A memory as sharp and heart-rending as the metal itself.

“That weapon holds a certain power,” the Dreamer said as her partner backed away. “The sort that… goes unseen by most.”

Valhera bowed her head above the sword. The voice in her head offered his thoughts.

“Blood is not the only thing that stains a killing blade.”

“Nor the hand that wields it,” she finished, returning her attention to the physical realm and the direling couple standing mere feet away.

The Dreamer turned her smooth hands upward, a gentle smile on her face. She approached, a single step.

“I am Ithana,” she said. “And this is my partner, Istis.”

Valhera watched them warily. Seeming, for a moment, as if she meant to draw her blade.

“You are the Undying,” Ithana said, simply. Recognizing Valhera’s guarded look, she stood rather more still.

“No one dies anymore.”

“Undeath is not the same as life.”

Valhera rubbed her forearm where her black mark throbbed under her skin. She sank deeper into the bed then turned her eyes to the ceiling.

“You broke the walls of Risnium,” Ithana continued. “You cleansed the fog of Avernus. You stole the Divine from Elthysia, and… awakened the Mother of Direlings.”

Valhera closed her eyes, then. Every time someone recounted her deeds, she wanted to squirm. Every time, laughter rang from the voice in her head.

“Some say you’re the last hope of Khaldara,” the Dreamer went on. “Some say… you’re our doom.”

Valhera tightened her jaw. “And what do you believe?”

Silence, for a moment. Ithana turned, and there was hesitation in her voice. “I don’t know what to believe. But I’ve watched the Veil for years. This calamity… maybe it was inevitable.”

“Maybe it was.”

“Are you trying to stop it?”

“In my own way.”

Ithana paused, then paced across the room. “What does that mean?”

Valhera watched the Dreamer from the corners of her eyes. She almost responded candidly, but thought better of it. Instead of answering the woman’s question, she asked one of her own.

“Why did you help me?”

Ithana responded quickly. “I would not abandon an injured sister. Such is my creed.”

“We’re all siblings under Gilgaroth, then?”

“He has not forsaken us.”

“Tell that to the rotting hordes.”

Ithana’s face tightened, brows scrunching together. “He is not the one who broke the Veil.”

Valhera hesitated. “He won’t be the one to fix it.”

The Dreamer’s eyes went hard for a moment, mouth becoming a thin line. “Maybe not. But I would be a poor disciple if I only kept his tenets in times of peace.”

Valhera blinked a few times, then sighed and laid back. Her eyes traced patterns in the ceiling for a while until the Dreamer took a deep breath and spoke a little softer.

“You’re right,” Ithana said, looking very tired. “It is hard, keeping faith while the world crumbles around us. But I have worked miracles by the Dead God’s hand. He has guided myself, and others, to peace.”

Valhera picked at the fraying threads on her blanket, crooked fingers clicking as they worked. She let the silence drag on.

Ithana spoke, louder this time. “I saw his power in you. His blood. Some say… you’re his chosen. That you can cleanse the dead.”

Valhera held her stare for a long moment. “I’m a girl from a farm.”

“That’s not where your story ends.”

Valhera let the words dangle unanswered while she looked this woman over once again. She peered deeper into those foggy Dreamer’s eyes, and saw something that hadn’t been so readily apparent. It was a look with which she was all too familiar. One she’d seen on every battlefield… that she’d worn too often on her own face.

Desperation. The Dreamer hid it well, but it was a common feeling these days. Valhera figured it was the reason her deeds had been recounted so many times by so many strangers and sung by so many bards. The world teetered on the end of all things. It had been built on an unsure foundation, and survivors had no choice but to latch onto whatever hope they could find.

If they knew the truth, they would know that hope was ill-placed. But without hope, they could only conclude that the world was mad.

“Mad indeed,” said the voice in her head, but she barely heard it. Valhera looked at her two fidgeting hands—one intact, the other crooked and maimed.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t chosen by Gilgaroth. I’ve helped the dead, but… there are too many. As for fixing this world… I’ve tried. I have. But at every turn, I’ve made it worse. I’m the one who started this war.”

Ithana was slow to respond. “Whatever the case, I can see you. With a Dreamer’s eyes. No matter what course calamity takes… you have the power to change it. For better or worse.”

“More often for worse.”

“Then learn from the past and work for the better.”

“It’s not that fucking simple. And I didn’t ask for your advice.”

Ithana held her hard stare. “I want our people to have a fighting chance. The Undying is our best chance. No matter what she is, no matter what she’s done.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I’ve done. No one would say that.”

“Gilgaroth was not perfect, but his power guides us all the same.”

Valhera held back a grimace. “He wasn’t the person you think he was.”

Ithana’s face wrinkled in a frown. Valhera looked down and away.

“You’re asking me what I am,” she said after too long in silence. “That’s not an easy question to answer.”

“I could offer a Dreamer’s insight.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Valhera growled between her teeth. “What I’m trying to say… is that I’m no hero of old. I don’t die, so people think I’m… more than I am. Larger than life. People think… I’m a woman from a song.”

Ithana hesitated, bowing her head. “If not a hero… then what?”

Valhera looked inward and saw scenes rehearsed. Memories, first, from her childhood. Even then, there had been something different. Then, the memories more recent, more vivid in her mind. Blood. Death. Demon-fire. Long ago, she’d thought herself a victim, then a monster, then a murderer.

At first, she’d wanted to escape a bloody past, but that path had paved a bloodier future. She’d wanted answers about her birth, then wished they’d remained unknown. She’d been driven by anger, then guilt, then anger again.

She thought about the people who had led her on her path. Those who had convinced her, even for a moment, that there were things worth fighting for. The one to whom she’d been covenant-bound… who, even now, claimed a corner of her weary heart. She thought of those who had bent good intentions into futility and ruin. She thought about how so many of them had met their end on sharp, cold steel… hers, or otherwise.

The longer she thought, the larger grew her ravening void. She stared, listless, while her body went limp. Eventually, the Dreamer moved, shifting to leave. Valhera watched, content to be alone. But something burned within her, fighting for its life. A vestige of something… she had long ago lost. Difficult to articulate and harder, still, to capture, but almost as immortal as her ever-beating heart.

“Wait,” she said, in a voice similarly small.

Ithana stood near the threshold. The male direling had left, but the Dreamer watched with cautious attention.

Valhera thought of the ways she had changed. These days, she dared not chase hope. These days, anger had taken so much of her heart. But she remembered her first season in Khaldara. The bloody year since. The past, wrought… but never forgotten.

“You’re a Dreamer,” Valhera said. “You help people… with what they’ve done.”

Ithana turned to face her more fully. Closing the door behind her, she moved to settle in a chair.

“I’ll tell you what I am,” Valhera said. “But we have to start at the beginning. Before I was the Undying. The girl from a farm.”

Ithana’s head craned in a slow but steady nod.

So Valhera thought back. Back to before her hand had been broken, before the warlocks had been after her blood. Before she’d found her mother. She saw a scene, peaceful and green, without the threat of war looming overhead. She looked, first at the Dreamer, then at her mithril sword. She thought of the man who had given it to her. Whose deeds had first haunted its metal. The man who had raised her… and had loved her as his own.

She took a deep breath and licked her drying lips. Her tongue worked for a moment, forming the words before she said them. She rehearsed the sentence in her head, over and over, knowing that it was a lie. But sometimes, she knew, a lie must be told to make way for the truth.

And the truth was horrible indeed. Better to start from an innocent place.

“My father,” she began, simple and steady. “Was a farmer.”