I was on my knees in the yard of the Dreadhold, breath scraping through my throat. The smell of my scorched flesh clung to the wind. The air shimmered with heat, thick with ash and sea salt. My skin still burned where the brand had touched me, the wound throbbing with its own pulse.
The Sovereign of Flames was gone, but the echo of him remained—the hiss of metal cooling, that of my own blood.
Then the command cut through the haze.
“Get the next one!”
The words struck harder than the brand itself.
Lazarus.
“Hold him,” someone barked.
I tried to move—my arms, my legs—but they were useless, quivering from pain and shock. My voice came out dry, cracked, barely human.
“Leave him,” I rasped. “Please?—”
No one listened.
They pressed him down in the dirt. The sound came next—the iron pulled from the brazier, seething against the air, a serpent of molten light.
Lazarus didn’t speak. He only braced himself, muscles tightening, jaw locked, as the sun caught the sheen of sweat on his back.
Then came his scream.
It tore through the yard and through me, raw and wild, the kind of sound that left the soul behind.
I forced my head to turn, the movement sending fire down my neck. Through the glare, I saw him thrashing against the guards’ grip. The brand burned into his shoulder, flesh searing, smoke curling upward like a prayer no god would answer.
The scent hit next—burned flesh, sand, and salt carried on the wind. My stomach lurched. I gagged, chest heaving for air that wouldn’t come.
When they released him, he fell beside me, his body trembling, the skin of his shoulder blistered and blackened where the brand had struck. Smoke still curled from the burn, and in that rising haze I saw it—the mark.
The coiled, writhing shape ofLotan,the seven-headed serpent. The symbol of chaos. Of destruction. The god of the abyss.
A brand for the unworthy.
A brand of death.
And if it was burned into him, it was burned into me.
Forever.
The Sovereign of Flames turned without a word. His ember-colored robes caught the sunlight like dying fire as he ascended the steps. The mask vanished into the glare, leaving behind only silence—and the hiss of cooling metal.
A stillness fell over the yard. The kind of stillness that felt like the world holding its breath.
Even the wind stopped.
I lay in the dirt, the smell of charred skin filling my lungs—his and mine. It clung to everything. It wouldn’t let go.
Then came another sound, steady and unhurried—footsteps that carried the promise of judgment, each one sinking into the earth as though the world itself bowed to their command.
I forced my head up. Pain screamed through my neck, my vision swimming in the light.
A figure stood atop the raised platform above the yard, framed by the burning sky. His cloak was as black as wet ash, heavy with the wind that swept in from the sea. Each movement carried the certainty of inevitability.
Morgrath Severen.
