PROLOGUE
Once upon a dream, there lived an evil dragon within the cursed mountain. His shadows devoured all light, casting the land in eternal darkness. One day, a brave princess rose up to slay him, but he devoured her too…
CHAPTER 1
Rune
The moment they stole everything from him, Rune vowed to end the world.
His bride lay perfectly still upon the stone altar he had carved for her. Alora looked asleep. Beauty forever preserved beneath a red dome of his magic. Golden curls spilled across the pillow. Her blue gown lay smooth, unblemished, as if death had passed her by and merely forgotten to return.
But his cold dark chambers may as well be a tomb.
He let the spell dissolve for a single breath and reached out, fingertips brushing her cheek. Cold. Always cold.
“I will not fail you this time, songbird,” Rune murmured.
He had lost the first war against the God of Death. But now Jökull was gone, cast into myth and ash, and nothing remained to bar his path.
Tonight, he would finish it.
And when he did, the world would fall.
Or he would—for he would rather be dust than lose another war.
Rune pressed a kiss to Alora’s cold lips. “No matter our fate, we will find one another again,” he promised.
Then he turned from the altar and strode onto the balcony of his Shadow Keep, casting the drapes aside.
The battlefield roared beneath him.
Black clouds churned overhead, the sun smothered beneath the weight of his shadows. The air reeked of blood and ash, thick enough to taste. His demons, borne of dark twisted things, surged forward like a tide of destruction.
Above them, his Drakon tore through the skies. Smaller than true dragons but swifter, leaner, their shadow-scaled bodies coiled through the air like winged serpents.
Where Rune’s intent turned, they struck, jaws snapping with ember-lit hunger as they fought the Skellings. The fae fought desperately, hawk-like forms scattering beneath the onslaught, their formations breaking as Drakon shrieks split the air.
Below, his Harbingers cleaved through the human armies of thousands who had risen from all corners of the world to stop him.
Calla moved like a spark in black silk and steel, her chakram slicing through men as easily as breath. Her pale lilac hair was streaked with blood of the fallen, laughter curling from her lips as though the battle were a dance. Hadeon was a mountain of muscle and iron, horns glinting, massive war hammer felling lines of soldiers with each brutal swing. Deimos drifted among the carnage like smoke, each strike of his claws severing lives.
Every death fed Rune’s spell.
Beneath the battlefield, glyphs he carefully carved deep into the basalt drank greedily of blood, pulsing faintly red beneath the chaos. The spell woke, aligning as the array faintly glowed.
“Almost ready,” he mused.
They had branded him a blight.
A monster.
A bringer of darkness and wickedness.
For a millennium, Rune had lived up to every name.
And now, they would call him Death.
He summoned a Drakon with a thought. The beast answered, shrieking as it dove. Rune vanished into shadow and reappeared upon its back, the world dropping away beneath them as they soared.
