I look at her sharply. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, we find this bell everyone keeps talking about." Fire sparks in her green eyes. "And we end this on our terms."
Bold. Reckless. Probably suicidal.
Perfect.
For the first time since waking, I smile. Really smile, not just a baring of teeth.
"Now you’re thinking like a cursed warlord, little witch."
Her answering grin is as sharp as her silver blade.
"I learned from the best."
FIVE
RHEA
The library stretches before us in the wavering light of my conjured flame—a graveyard of knowledge where charred tomes lie scattered across the floor. Soot coats everything, turning what was once a sanctuary of learning into something that belongs more in a furnace than a house of worship.
"This place saw fire," I murmur, stepping carefully around fallen shelves. "Recently, by the look of it."
Krath grunts his agreement, using his considerable strength to shift a toppled bookcase aside. "The Marshal has no love for written wisdom."
Or maybe he had something to hide.
We move deeper into the ruins, searching for anything that might tell us about the bell. The one that hangs in the shattered tower. The one Brother Aldric’s journal mentioned in those final, frantic entries.
Krath clears debris while I examine any tome that survived the flames. Most are beyond saving—pages fused into illegible masses, leather covers warped beyond recognition. But here and there, protected by stone or luck, I find fragments still readable.
"Here." I kneel beside an intact volume, its brass binding green with age but unmelted. "Chronicles of Blackspire’s Founding."
The text is illuminated script in High Gothic, painstakingly detailed. I trace the words with my finger, translating as I read.
"’In the Year of Shadows, when the dead walked among the living, the Abbot commissioned a great bell to be forged. Not of bronze or iron, but of blessed silver and the bones of saints.’" I pause, making sure Krath is listening. "’The bell was crafted to call wandering souls to their final rest. But the founding text warns—the bell’s voice cannot be silenced once awakened, save by one willing to offer their very essence to still its cry.’"
Krath goes very still. "Their essence?"
"It doesn’t specify." I flip through more pages, finding additional passages. "’Let none approach the bell in anger or haste, for it knows the heart’s true intent. Those who would silence its call must come as supplicant, not conqueror.’"
Willing sacrifice.
The words hang unspoken between us, but I see understanding dawn in Krath’s red eyes. This isn’t about breaking a curse—it’s about replacing it. Someone has to take his place.
"There’s more." I move to the far wall where a massive fresco stretches from floor to ceiling, half-hidden beneath layers of soot. "Help me clear this."
Together we brush away centuries of grime. The mural emerges slowly—colors still vibrant beneath the filth, gold leaf catching my flame’s light.
It depicts a great hall filled with orcs in gleaming armor. At the center stands a figure I recognize despite the artistic styling—Krath in his prime, powerful and proud, surrounded by loyal soldiers. But behind him, partially hidden in shadow, another figure raises a blade.
The Pale Marshal.
Even rendered in paint and gold, his treachery is clear. The blade drives deep into Krath’s back while shadow and fire coil around both figures. Ancient script runs beneath the scene in the same High Gothic as the chronicle.
"’When trust became betrayal and brotherhood became envy, the Ashbane fell to shadow’s whisper. Thus was loyalty rewarded with chains, love met with loss, and honor bound in ash and bone.’"
The silence stretches between us, heavy with old pain. I can feel tension radiating from Krath—not anger this time, but something deeper. Grief, maybe. Or shame.
