CRACK.
A branch falls from above, smashing between us like the universe cockblocking us on purpose.
We both jump back, startled, weapons half-raised before we realize what it is.
I exhale, shaking. “The forest doesn’t want us making out either, huh?”
Kursk growls at the sky. “Even the trees conspire.”
We laugh. It’s the only thing that makes sense right now.
But when we look at each other again… the moment isn’t gone. Just waiting.
Somewhere deeper.
CHAPTER 8
KURSK
The fire is everywhere.
It licks the sky, chews the bones of the mountain, bathes the stronghold of Gor’Zaht in amber helllight. Screams echo—familiar voices, kin—cut short by wet thuds and cracking sinew. I sprint through the rubble, ash in my lungs, blood on my hands.
Grothak.
My brother’s eyes find me across the battlefield. Wide. Empty. His jaw hangs slack, face frozen in a rictus of betrayal. The Vorfaluka stands over him, its many limbs trembling with laughter, two mouths gibbering curses that don’t belong in this world or any other. Its claws drip red.
I try to move, scream. But my legs are stone.
My hands are bound.
And Grothak’s voice is a whisper in the smoke.
“Kursk… why weren’t you there?”
I jolt upright, breath ragged. Sweat drenches my skin, cold and acidic. My hand flies to the Spiritslayer spear—always near, always ready—and I find it resting against the window frame, faintly aglow. Soft as starlight. Wrong as rot.
The Vorfaluka is near. But so is something worse.
Magic bleeds.
The spear hums with a resonance I do not recognize. Its core—its tether to the Veil—is fraying. The shimmer of its sacred steel feels thinner, like a thread stretched taut before the snap.
I rise, bones aching, the air too still in this wooden hovel Olivia calls a “cabin.” No guard tower. No wards carved into the beams. No shrines. No sentries. Just paper books and the lingering scent of cinnamon and sleep.
I kneel before the spear, touch its shaft with reverence.
“Do not abandon me,” I whisper. “Not yet.”
It flickers. Dim. Like the dying eyes of kin.
The floorboards creak behind me.
She doesn’t say a word at first. Just stands there in the kitchen doorway, hair mussed, wearing a shirt with some faded ancient glyph: “Rock Band World Tour 2008.” Her expression is soft. Concerned.
“You okay?”
I don’t answer right away. The words are heavy. Too human.
