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‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Thea couldn’t help the scoff that escaped her. Everyone else had spoken of their adventures beyond the fortress, of deadly curses, harrowing terrain and ancient evil creatures… While in Seb’s pitiful story, he hadn’t even left the nest.

But Seb had heard her. ‘There are dozens of skeletons up there,’ he continued, his voice low and full of menace. ‘According to legend, it’s where the Thezmarrian warriors tied up the whores they no longer wanted. They left them to drown when the caves flooded during the storms. A sacrifice to whatever gods haunt the seas. Even Elderbrock mentioned them, remember?’

Anger warmed Thea from the inside, and her fingers itched to wrap around the bastard’s throat.

‘Ignore him,’ Kipp murmured.

‘It’s hard to ignore him when I want to kill him.’

Kipp made a sound that might have been a choked laugh. ‘You know what the cook at the Laughing Fox used to tell me when I got picked on as a boy?’

‘What?’

‘She used to say, Kristopher…’

Thea snorted at the use of his given name.

‘Kristopher, she’d say,’ he continued, changing the pitch of his voice slightly. ‘It doesn’t matter who stands against you… What matters most is who stands with you.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’ve been living by that token ever since. There will always be people who bet against you, Thea. But the ones you stand with shoulder to shoulder when you face an enemy are the ones who count the most.’

Thea let her friend’s words wash over her. As they sank in, she locked them away in the corner of her mind where she kept precious things, and turned her gaze ahead.

The Warswords set a gruelling pace, and the company rode into the day and the following night, with only a handful of brief stops to rest and water the horses. As they drew closer to their destination, the conversation grew thin and eventually only the Warswords spoke.

A palpable tension had settled over the Thezmarrian force, especially amongst the shieldbearers. The reality had sunk in that this was no mock battle they approached, but a real one that might see some of them irrevocably changed, or lost to Enovius.

Thea’s own body was taut in the saddle as they rode, her hand absentmindedly reaching for her fate stone. The jade was warm from being pressed against her skin. Faced with such darkness, she didn’t know if its presence comforted or terrified her. While it promised she wouldn’t meet her end amidst theruins of Delmira, it offered no other assurances. No matter how many hours and minutes she borrowed and stole from other facets of life, it wouldn’t be enough. Not unless… Unless she became a Warsword’s apprentice.

Audra’s words were a whisper in her mind.‘Most things to be feared exist in life, not in death.’

Thea traced the number carved into the stone with the pad of her thumb. All her life she had been called reckless, all her life she’d been accused of having a death wish, all the while wanting nothing more than to simplylive.

A unified gasp snatched Thea from her thoughts.

Ahead, the golden light of dawn revealed a field carpeted in heather, and in the distance stood the Ruins of Delmira. She could make out collapsed watch towers and crumbling walls, and grounds that appeared scorched.

The sun rose higher as the Thezmarrian company rode towards the fallen kingdom’s heart.

The earthy scent of heather tickled Thea’s nose, an aroma that nudged something at the back of her mind, something she could not place. Her hands grew clammy around the reins and her shoulders were tight with tension, the hair on her arms standing up.

Suddenly, she saw why.

An unnatural darkness gathered on the horizon, sapping the sky of the dawn light. Thea’s heart hammered as she counted five distinct shapes…

‘Fuck,’ Hawthorne muttered, echoing her thoughts exactly.

He signalled for the company to halt and unsheathed both his longswords.

Torj took up his famous war hammer. ‘So there’s more of them. We can handle them, can’t we?’

‘It’s not just that there are more…’ Hawthorne turned his horse to face his fellow warrior. ‘Those are no ordinary shadowwraiths…Those arerheguld reapers, the kings of the wraiths – a much deeper evil. They’re larger and stronger, more evolved. And they are far more intent on spreading their darkness than their spawn. While like regular shadow wraiths, they’re attracted to power, they also seek hosts for the curse they wish to disperse. Reapers want to make more monsters, not just maim and kill. We have to change our strategy at once. Our broader forcescannotengage.’

Hawthorne didn’t take his eyes off the creatures in the near distance. ‘There is something strange at work here and beyond the Veil… But the time for speculation isn’t now. What matters is that they can only be killed a certain way.’

‘Which is?’ Vernich glowered.