But I have seen them. Felt them.
All those who survive the Warlock Trials do.
Needles of pain prick my skin as the ice creeps up my legs. Because Cultus Mortis is real. They’ve always been real, and they’re worse than any myth. Deadlier than any nightmare. They feast on corpses. They devour death. They are rabid, primal creatures who thrive on murder. No emotions. No souls. No personalities or names. They have forsaken it all in the name of a god who would just as quickly forsake them.
I snarl against their diseased magic. Tethered,helpless, while they drain the life from my veins as if slicing knives through my arteries. Their ice continues to crawl over my bones. Inside my chest. It solidifies in my muscles until I can’t even blink. Not for the first time, I am completely at their mercy.
“Scream,” the Death Lord hisses. It runs a blade across the boy’s throat. Blood gushes. The boy chokes on it, scarlet bubbling from his mouth and splashing against the cold marble floor. But somehow, someway, the blood in his body is replenished. The wound heals. So the hooded figure slices him again. Again.
The boy does not stop screaming.
“Littlest warlock.” A familiar rattling hiss sinks vicious hooks into my skull before the cult glides eerily into view. The leader—the Death Lord—stands at the front of its pack, their formation calculated in the shape of a seven-pointed star. It tilts its hood, and smoke blows out from gaping darkness. A phantom skull billows across the short clearing, where the marketplace used to be, and over the corpses between us. The hair on my neck lifts even as I clench my teeth, refusing to acknowledge the sickening swoop of my stomach. “How great you have become since our fateful month together. We taught you well.”
It sucks my blood from its blade and moans.
“You didn’t teach me shit.” My entire body strains to break free of its hold, to move, toact. I want to pulverize it. I want access to my magic so I can rend it into a million fucking pieces.
The cultists beside the Death Lord raise their robed arms, and more ruination spills forth. Icy tendrils slither like snakes over the wreckage. They bite at the ankles of those who remain standing before coiling up their frozen legs. A young boy succumbs with a sharp gasp, eyes rolling back in his head before he crumples. Blood oozes onto the earth, and the cultists inhale greedily, slurping up the scent of fresh rot to feed their revolting magic. They won’t stop at just smelling, however. Before long, they will feast.
“Such a mess you’ve made,” the Death Lord purrs, its hood tilting as it takes in the surrounding destruction. “A shame you have used up that precious warlock magic of yours. I would have enjoyed a fight.”
“Release me,” I growl, “and I’ll give you one.”
I’ll fucking enjoy it too.
“No, no, littlest warlock.” The Death Lord plucks a dead branch from the ground and hurls it through the crowd. It impales an elderly woman directly between the ribs. A man shrieks at her side, the sound pure grief. Terror. But he can’t move either. There is no way out.
We are as good as dead.
I don’t close my eyes and cower. I won’t give them the satisfaction.
“The elders said you would bring about a new era. A human as powerful as a god—and now your kingdom hunts you. Your own elders sent us after you.” The Death Lord’s infernal voice is like ash and bone. Like rot and decay. “You’ve failed them, Arion Stone, and at last, we can claim you.” A pause. Another rattling breath. “You will feed us well.”
My fists ache to grip its throat as magic sears through my veins. The dying embers of a once-raging wildfire. I shouldn’t have expended so much on this place, wasted my reservoirs, and damned myself to hide our fickle emotions and open a fucking library.
“Friends of yours, warlock?” Zephyra murmurs, an attempted joke that escapes her in a weak gasp.
“Not in a million fucking years.”
“I suppose that’s a point in your favor.” She shrugs as if heedless of our situation, which is… strange. The cult has extended their death magic across the whole of the isle. With this much devastation, their magic should be unlimited. Zephyra shouldn’t be able to move.
“Do you think we should peel open your mermaid first?” Smoke billows out from beneath the Death Lord’s hood once more. “Perhaps you might like to taste the inside of a demon before you meet your own demise. You could always join us, littlest warlock. You haveso muchpotential.”
In my periphery, Zephyra frowns. “Hold on,” she says, louder now, “are you planning oneating us?”
It is not the Death Lord who answers, but the cultist closest to it. It boils over with hideous laughter. “Yes, littlest mermaid. It is finally your turn. I will lick you. Taste you.Feast.” It inhales with a frigid shudder. “I have not forgotten your scent, and it isdelicious.”
“We must feast,” the others echo in response.
Zephyra frowns harder, her eyes wide with horror. A second passes, and the cult continues drifting toward us as icy fog rises from the earth. The islanders fall like dominos. I try not to look at their faces. I try not to hear their screams. I cannot help them now, or ever again.
“Is this as hopeless to you as it seems to me?” For just an instant, I think Zephyra’s arm brushes my sleeve, but—no.Impossible.“You—you can’t move except to speak?”
“Yes,” I say shortly, answering both her questions at once.
She whispers her response as if they won’t be able to hear it. “And you’re out of magic?”
“Yes.”The admittance burns through my esophagus, nearly melting the ice in its wake.
