It pointed, with a trembling claw, at the chasm beyond him. At that endless dark pit that awaited.
“Go...in there?” Kinlear asked.
The monster nodded, its breathing ragged. It had little time left.
“You are Veilborne,” it whispered, and he could have sworn he heard a smile behind its words. “You...are not afraid.”
His own thoughts.
His own words.
Something cold and strange slid into Kinlear’s bones as the monster gave a final, rattling breath. It tumbled backwards and died, face-up in the snow.
In a breath, the shadows disappeared. And as the snow slowly tumbled down...time itself seemed to slow.
Kinlear felt like he was dreaming – a dream within a dream – as he saw the face that had been hidden beneath the darkness, all along.
“No,” he whispered.
Because his monster, the terrible beast that had hunted him, slayed him, reveled in his endless deaths...
It washim.
With fangs and dark lines across its face, as if the shadows had soiled even the blood in his veins. He stared down at it, trembling as the wind kissed his skin.
Darksoul.
Prince.
They were one and the same.
He barely had time to make sense of it before the ground beneath him gave way.
And he fell, screaming, into the dark and depthless pit.
11
He screamed until his voice left him.
Until his arms pinwheeled and his hands scraped at the air. There was nothing to stop him, nothing to help slow his descent. He screamed until his lungs were ragged, because heknewthis place. He’d been here before, the very first time he died.
But instead of the towering, golden gates...
He saw a storm in the distance.
The battlefield, in the sky above the Expanse.
It was filled with a cloud of dark shadows and flashing, colorful lights. Sacred magic clashed against darksoul dread. He saw raphons and war eagles and most of all, he saw a dark-haired Sacred king.
His father, fighting against the Acolyte as he sent his double-pillared magic in spirals of wind and ice. But the king looked older, and far more ancient, as if magic had taken its toll on his body. As if decades had passed since Kinlear last saw him.
“Father!” he cried, reaching out as he fell through the sky. “Help me!”
But his father fought on.
The thunder boomed, and the image shifted until suddenly the soldiers were gone. Until the sky above the Expanse was empty once more.
As he fell, his mind was filled with truths.
