He blinked at her, confusion flickering across his face. "Yes?"
"You are not Death,” she wryly dictated. "You are an unnamed mortal, very capable of dying."
He sighed, already sensing her direction of thought. "It is not my time to die, Veilwalker."
"It is not,” she agreed, voice cold. "Because I won’t let it be. I will accompany you." She kicked Spire forward, riding ahead of him. "You need a successor before you can end your poisonous reign here."
Death exhaled, long and dilatory, before nudging his own nameless steed forward. "My savior,” he mockingly praised under his breath.
Ilys ignored the unease curling in her stomach, ignored the way the air seemed to mock the closer they drew to the rising smoke.
A slaughter awaited them.
They moved through the fog on foot, their horses tied beneath a grove of leafless trees. Ilys kept low, boots soundless on the gritty earth, her cloak drawn close. Beside her, Death walked with care, no longer weightless. The trees broke and the field stretched before them like a wound.
Bodies lay twisted in the churned mud, caught in the stillness that came after battle. Smoke clung to the ground in heavy coils, rising from a broken pyre that had long since gone cold. Ash drifted like snow through the air. The stink of blood and rot lay rampant across the soil.
And in the distance, movement.
Six figures moved among the dead, clad in the stained remnants of Tyl’s verdant colors. No banners. No order. Onekicked over a corpse and cut free a belt. Another dragged a sword behind him, letting it scrape just to hear the sound. One bent to lift a body by the hair, turned the face up to the light, then shoved a blade through the throat.
They were not looters. Not quite. Not soldiers, either. They were men who had remained because no one had told them to go.
Ilys crouched behind a low rise and pulled Death down with her.“Now,” she whispered. “Shift. Do it now.”
Death’s gaze swept the field. She saw him pause, saw the moment he felt the souls still residing, faint as smoke caught in the wind.
“I feel them,” he said.
“Then take them,” she urged. “Before we’re seen.”
He closed his eyes. Drew in a breath. The air bent around them. His outline blurring as it once did at the height of his divinity.
Then it passed. His shoulders slumping and the magic slipping from him like a breath.
“I cannot,” he confessed.
Ilys gripped his sleeve. “Try again.”
“I did.”
She looked toward the field. Too late.
One of the men had turned.“There’s movement on the rise,” he called, voice dull.
The others looked up.
Another said, “Armed?” Boots shifted in the mud.
“Run,” Ilys whispered.
But Death didn’t move. He stood, hands empty and latent.
“Once more,” he growled, but the effort met only silence.
The short one called up to them,“Who do you belong to?” His voice reached the pair unhurried, curious, and confident.
Death raised his chin. “We belong to none. We are here to do the Veil’s work.”
