ONE
RHEA
The Veil River runs black beneath my mare’s hooves as we cross the half-collapsed stone bridge. Each step echoes wrong—too hollow, too sharp—the sound fleeing this cursed place before we do.
My bay mare, Sweetie, tosses her head and balks three steps from the bridge’s end. Her ears pin flat against her skull, nostrils flaring wide. Muscles bunch beneath me, ready to bolt back toward civilization and sanity.
"Easy, girl." I slide from the saddle, boots hitting wet stone with a squelch. The air here tastes of metal and ash, thick enough to coat my tongue. Mist coils around my ankles.
Sweetie snorts, backing toward the other side of the bridge. Smart horse. Smarter than her rider.
But I didn’t ride three days through the Thornlands to turn back now. Not when the Blackspire Abbey’s lost archives wait somewhere in those shattered spires ahead. Not when theCodex Mortuum—the most complete grimoire of necromantic theory ever written—might finally be within my grasp.
The text that could revolutionize everything we know about death magic.
Sister Morrow called it a fool’s errand when I told her where I was going. Said some knowledge comes at too high a price. But the coven’s libraries hold nothing but sanitized theory and watered-down hedge magic. If I want to understand the deeper mysteries—the real power that flows beneath the surface of all magic—I need sources they’d never allow.
I press my palm to Sweetie’s neck, whispering the old protective chants. The words feel rusty in my mouth—half-remembered fragments of faith I never fully embraced.
"By stone and steel, by blood and bone, let no shadow claim what walks alone."
The incantation settles unease in the air. Sweetie’s breathing evens, though her ears stay alert. She’ll wait. And if I stay too long, she knows how to get home.
I shoulder my leather satchel, heavy with chalk, salt, and the few grimoires I managed to smuggle out under Sister Morrow’s nose. My fingers find the familiar weight of my silver athame at my hip. The blade is cold through my woolen skirts.
Ahead, Blackspire Abbey rears against the bruised sky—a broken bone of stone and shadow. Its towers lean at impossible angles, some snapped clean off, others twisted into spirals. Even from here, massive holes punch through walls that once held beautiful rose windows.
What the hell happened here?
Stories say the abbey fell to shadow-spawn during the Veil War two centuries ago. Stories say the monks fought entities that devoured light itself. But stories also claim the abbey’s libraries contain texts that predate the Veil’s shattering—grimoires written when orcs and witches worked together instead of viewing each other as enemies.
Ancient magic. Forbidden magic. The kind that could unlock secrets the coven would kill to suppress.
Knowledge is power. Fear is control.
I repeat the words as I pick my way across the rubble-strewn courtyard. Gargoyle heads lie scattered among moss-covered stones, their snarling faces cracked but still menacing. Weeds push through cracks in what was once beautiful stonework, nature reclaiming what shadow broke.
The scent hits me stronger here—damp ash mixed with rust and old iron. My stomach clenches.
Blood.
I stop before the abbey’s main doors. Massive oak planks, reinforced with iron bands that have gone red-brown with age and weather. But it’s not weather that stained them. Dark streaks run down the wood, and the iron bears gouges that look suspiciously?—
Claw marks. Big ones.
The door frame draws my eye next. Runes cover every inch of wood and stone—not the neat, measured symbols I learned in the coven, but frantic slashes carved deep enough to bite. Some I recognize as warding sigils, others as binding marks. But there are patterns here I’ve never seen, geometric shapes that seem to shift when I’m not looking directly at them.
I pull out my journal, flipping to a clean page. My charcoal scratches across the paper as I copy the unfamiliar ward structures. These markings feel important, dangerous. Whoever carved them was desperate to keep something contained.
Or to keep something out.
Wind stirs through the courtyard, carrying voices that aren’t quite voices. Whispers that almost sound?—
Rhea...
I freeze, charcoal hovering over the page. The sound came from behind me, but when I turn, only mist and shadow fill the courtyard. Sweetie stands where I left her, ears pricked but calm.
Just echoes. Old stones, strange acoustics.
