The tendons in my knees felt liquid, weak, but I moved toward the windowsill, anyway. The sun was hours from lifting over the horizon,but it was not darkness that met my eyes. Torchlight, dancing fiendishly across our property, stabbed at the night air. The Visstill was alive with glints of metal and crazed, hate-filled eyes. Dozens of eyes, hollow and feral. And they were moving in a frenzied mob toward our home.
They were gathering in front of ourhome.
“I saw—I saw—” Elliot shuddered, his small shoulders curling inward. “I think Mother and Father are dead. When you didn’t wake up, I thought you might be dead, too.”
“Elliot—”
“I think they’re dead,” he howled again. “And I don’t want you to die, too!”
Elliot’s beautiful, innocent face made my stomach roil. Thick lashes clumped together with tears. Eyes a soft, warm brown, now somber with grief. Dark hair curling over his ears and neck, now knotted with tangles. I reached out to hold him, to put my arms around him and will the world away, when a crash resonated from below.
A masked legionnaire stumbled up the stairs into our room, clamoring on his hands and knees as something grabbed at his foot from behind. He glanced wildly at Elliot and me as he struggled, kicking again and again—but whatever it was at the foot of our stairs began to pull, dragging him down.
“A little help would be nice!” the legionnaire yelled, throwing another violent kick at a Corrupt that resembled a local farmer. The young man’s golden armor was streaked with blood, and his cape, now trailing along our floor, left behind darker marks of red. “A knife, a hammer”—he paused to take another kick, groaning with effort—“a chair, a vase—something!”
Elliot and I ran frantically around the room, seizing the first objects we saw. Elliot threw a quilt, which tangled around the Corrupt’s body, and I flung a landscape that Eden had painted, which ricocheted through the air before it slammed against the monster’s sneering face. The Corrupt fell back, howling, and landed in a heap of unnatural angles at the bottom of the stairs.
The legionnaire jumped to his feet, immediately wincing. “Ah, that stings,” he hissed, clutching a wound in his side. “Though I do have my legs back, thanks to your valiant”—he glanced at the lifeless heap at the bottom of the stairs—“blanket and art throwing. Interesting technique.”
“Th-thank you, sir,” Elliot mumbled.
“On a more serious note, do you have any family or friends in the next village?” He pulled off his mask, wiping the sweat from his brow with a swipe of his forearm, his brown skin glistening in the dim light. He was young—and handsome. Wounded and smeared with blood and dirt, but hardly a few years older than me. He didn’t put the mask back on. Instead, he clipped it to a holster at his side. “Half of Norhavellis has succumbed to Corruption. It’s too dangerous for you to remain here any longer.”
“Silas, where are you?” called a frantic voice. “Silas—oh.” A masked young woman, clad in Light Legion armor, appeared at the bottom of the stairs, nearly tripping over the Corrupt’s body. “I thought this one had you for certain. How fortunate you aren’t dead.” She glanced between Elliot and me, pulling off her mask and placing it at her side to take a better look. Her kohl-ringed eyes, framed by waves of dark red hair, were curious and slightly judgmental. “Ah, the two Havenfall siblings. Are these your rescuers?”
“It’s great to see you, too, Mila,” Silas responded. “And yes, they are.”
I drew myself up to my full height, sending the woman the most imposing gaze I could muster—not unlike the one the Shadow Bringer had given me. “We saved your comrade’s life, so you will take us with you to Istralla.”
“Now, what would the Light Bringer think about that?” Mila asked, clearly perplexed. “You’ll need weapons first. Knives? An axe, perhaps.” She hopped over the Corrupt and bounded up the stairs. Once in our room, she looked around, frowning at what she saw. “But you’re not fighters at all, are you? Especiallyyou, little boy,” she said, gesturing absently at Elliot, who made a face back at her. “What should we do with them, Silas? Can’t have them running around with wooden spoons.”
The Corrupt at the bottom of the stairs shuddered and groaned.
Silas and Mila shared a pointed look.
“Mila,” Silas urged, a hard edge to his voice, and they descended the stairs once again.
Mila pulled a line of cording from around her hip, artfully tying knots around the Corrupt’s wrists and ankles. “There, there. Help me move him so he can be purified later.”
Silas grunted in agreement.
I shuddered and turned to Elliot, who looked just as aghast as I felt. We didn’t say what we were both thinking: that Mother and Father would be sharing the fate of this Corrupt. Their souls would be spared by the Light Bringer, but the demons inside them would be destroyed. Along with their mortal bodies.
If they weren’t already dead.
A loud crash resonated from below. If more Corrupt were breaking into our home, we had nothing to defend ourselves with and nowhere to go.
“Elliot, come on!” I urged, shoving our window open and clambering to the roof.
Outside, the clanging of metal on metal muffled what little sound we made, so we carefully moved to a quieter, darker side of our house. Silas and Mila chased after us, capes catching in the jagged texture of the wooden shingles. They crouched forward, balancing against the uneven surface, just as three Corrupt grabbed the edge of the roof, reaching for our feet.
Elliot screamed, yanking me back by the hand.
The Corrupt pulled themselves up until their elbows were pinned to the roof, feet kicking against the side of the house for leverage. They grinned at us—the three of them—and let out a chorus of gleeful snarls.
“Esmer, Elliot! How wonderful that you’re still alive,” one rasped. It was Norhavellis’s baker. Edgar. His dripping mustache leaked a dark substance, and his eyes no longer reflected the kind, warm manwho’d always made magic with sparse ingredients, bringing light into Norhavellis where there was scarce any to begin with.
I recoiled, horrified, as I recognized the faces of the others: Muriel, Edgar’s wife, and Anna, their child. Their brawn and the unnatural resonance to their voices must have come from the demons within them. The demons that nowwerethem.
