Kieran Ardent tightened the leather straps on his worn gauntlets and stepped out of the ramshackle tavern, the tang of sweat, stale ale, and smoke clinging to him. Around him, the evening crowd moved sluggishly, wary of the coming nightfall.
"Lock your doors!" an old woman hollered from her perch near the well. Her voice grated like rusted iron. "The Shades come with the moon, and they spare no one!"
Kieran ignored her. He'd heard it all before. He pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, its edges frayed from too many winters and too few replacements. His sword, a battered steel longsword with nicks and scars along its edge, hung heavily at his side. Not that he minded.
"Kieran!" a gruff voice called out from behind.
Kieran stopped, grinding his boot against the gravel path before turning. A broad-shouldered man with pockmarked cheeks and a lantern in hand lumbered toward him. Jorven, the village blacksmith.
"You're leaving already?" Jorven asked, his brow creased with concern.
"Does it look like there's anything left for me here?" Kieran replied, his tone flat. He turned back toward the ravine, where a narrow path wound into the shadows of the thick forest. "I'll be out before nightfall."
Jorven shook his head, lantern light flickering across his weathered face. "The woods aren't safe. The Shades grow bolder every week. Two hunters never came back yesterday."
Kieran paused, his fingers brushing against the hilt of his sword. "Then they should've been smarter."
Jorven's expression hardened. "And what makes you any different?"
Kieran turned back, leveling Jorven with a cold, steely gaze. "Because I don't care if I don't come back."
The silence that followed sat heavy between them. Kieran gave a curt nod and resumed his path, the dying sun spilling molten streaks of crimson across the trees.
The forest was alive in all the wrong ways.
Kieran moved with purpose, his footsteps deliberate and soundless on the carpet of damp leaves. Shadows stretched like talons from the trunks of ancient trees, their gnarled branches clawing at the darkening sky. The deeper he ventured, the more the silence began to hum—a low, droning pressure that set his teeth on edge.
It was the Veil. He could feel it, like a cold hand brushing against the back of his neck.
He didn't stop walking.
The village could keep its warnings and its myths. Kieran had no patience for superstition. But experience? That, he listened to. And experience had taught him two things about the Shades.
One: They were real.
Two: If you stared into the dark long enough, it stared back.
He gripped the hilt of his sword as he moved, knuckles white against the leather wrapping. Each step pulled him further from the village, further from everything he wanted to forget.
Then he heard it.
A whisper.
Kieran froze. The sound came again—soft, curling through the branches like smoke.
Help me...
His eyes narrowed. It wasn't unheard of for Shades to imitate voices—a cruel trick to lure prey deeper into their territory. But this voice didn't carry the malice he'd come to expect. It was strained, weak, desperate.
Kieran hesitated. The smart thing to do would be to turn back.
But he didn't.
Of course you didn't, his inner voice sneered. You never do the smart thing.
With a muttered curse, he pressed on, weaving between the twisted trees as the whispers grew louder. His pulse quickened, each beat hammering against his ribs. The voice seemed to come from all directions, disorienting, a song without a source.
And then he saw it.
A clearing lay ahead, bathed in the faint silver glow of the rising moon. At its center slumped a figure—not human, not Shade, but something other. It was tall, unnaturally so, draped in tattered robes that rippled despite the absence of wind. Its face was obscured by a mask of pale bone, cracked down the center.
An Ascendant.
Kieran tightened his grip on his sword. He'd heard stories of Ascendants—ethereal beings said to dwell in the Veil. Some called them gods; others called them demons. Either way, they were to be avoided.
Help me... the voice whispered again, but this time it echoed inside his skull.
Kieran took a step back, his instincts screaming at him to run. But the Ascendant stirred, its masked head lolling toward him. From the fissures in its mask, two faint glows—one silver, one crimson—pulsed in and out like dying embers.
"Human," the Ascendant rasped, its voice like a blade dragged across stone. "I am dying."
Kieran's mouth was dry. "That's not my problem."
The Ascendant shifted, its tattered robes sweeping the ground. "I can give you power. The kind you cannot imagine."
"Power?" Kieran snorted. "What good's power to a dead man?"
"The power to live," the Ascendant said, its voice dropping to a whisper. "The power to destroy those who haunt you."
Something inside Kieran twisted at those words. His grip on his sword slackened. The images came unbidden—faces, bloodied and broken. Screams that still echoed in his dreams.
"What do you want?" he demanded, his voice rough.
The Ascendant's head tilted. "A bond. My strength, your vessel. You will carry my power into the world."
"A price?" Kieran asked sharply.
"There is always a price," it whispered, "but you have already paid it."
The clearing seemed to darken. Shadows pooled around the Ascendant like ink, reaching out toward Kieran. He stumbled back, but the voice slammed into his mind—a tide of whispers, rising and crashing all at once.
Take my hand...