I can’t stop looking at his fingers. What can he forge with them now?
“It’s time.” He guides me to the door. I look back at the book, just as I did with Lucian. Longing, regret over my decisions, a terrible feeling I’m about to lose again, bombard my mind, turning me into a shell that is easily occupied by others.
Just like last time, I numbly follow Erevan. Because I love him, just as I loved Lucian. I obey there orders.
“It’s all going to work out as planned.” Erevan squeezes my hand, but keeps his sights ahead.
Was coming to Panthas really ever our plan? Was it truly meant to save the gods?
Erevan presented it.
It’s always beenhisplan.
Silas was wrong. It’s notmewho is the imbalance.
Torin
I always thought my last breath would be painful, filled with lost dreams and the time needed to accomplish them. I thought I would have sealed my lips shut as I tried to hold that last exhale in my lungs. I would have begged the divine heavens to give me just one more day, one more hour.
I was wrong. Utterly, bitterly wrong.
A smile curls my lips as I push out every last drop of my dying breath into the stale air that crackles with my magic.
Having all my power ripped and forced out of my body will be… unimaginable. There is beauty in debauchery; it’s free, wild, and untamed. It’s not delicately pretty and poised.
The sword hangs in my hand, covered in my blood, the ultimate show of my devotion to my world. The drip-drop of my blood echoes in these cavernous, hollowed-out walls that once belonged to a king. Now, the remnants of the castle lay buried in a cursed land. Once known as Caldara, famed for its outrageous luxuries, thanks to the mines hidden beneath its soil.
They dug too deep. Weakened the land. It swallowed them in return.
Most died the day it sank. Those who escaped whispered that the gods had cursed the land. A tale that serves me well—no one dares come here.
The ground is riddled with sinkholes that open into tapped-out mines. A few escape tunnels, buried deep in the mountain and unseen, are all that remain. A hidden location I discovered in a book I burned. These walls are nothing more than a skeleton. A perfect place to hide a terrible weapon.
I was born a fae, but I will die like a human—magicless, just flesh and bone.
Now I understand why so many humans want to remain in their natural state. It makes life more precious, less endless, more important.
In our lands, which rage and fester with war, the feeling of importance is hard to find when lives are snuffed out faster than eyes can blink.
My people never accepted me. I was an outcast, never understood. No one even tried. So I sank back, hid in the shadows, and tried my best to remain unseen.
That was better than being rejected.
What will they think of me now? Savior to all.
The stolen book, which we call the Vitalis, weighs heavily in my dying hands. A book the gods left for us. Some praise it, but I know the truth: it was a test we failed. It’s a book meant to bring about our downfall. A book that houses all the runes and gives them life.
I was hardly the first thief who stole this book from the veiled lands now known as Lunestra. Therefore, my guilt is no more than a single leaf dancing in the wind.
The others are to blame; their guilt hangs as heavy as an age-old timber fallen to the scorched earth.
I, Torin Lochenhiem, am determined to end the War of Broken Oaths, an era in which rune magic runs rampant and laws are erased to create new runes. Balance has been severed by the excessive use of runes.Symbols that once brought peace canno longer be trusted, for whoever possesses this book controls everything.
More.More. They all want more, no matter the cost.
Our lands are dying; the sky is dark from the endless pyres, and the rivers have more cracks than the faces of elderly humans. Yet the leaders of our lands, the kings and queens, look the other way. Instead of putting laws and regulations around runes, they just create more, thinking that will fix the problem.
You can’t fix a problemwiththe problem.
