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“Looks like we have visitors.”

As much as I would have liked to take my time waking my tome, time was of the essence. I pulled my bleeding hand back and reached for the dagger at my hip, cutting a deep slash across the meaty palm of this body and planting it firmly on the Wiran ruby. It drank eagerly, not letting a single drop trickle onto the leather, and as it did, the book began to tremble. By the time it had its fill, the page edges were tinted red as if every one was dipped in blood. That was my cue to pick the Tome of Wira up and tuck under my arm as it thrummed happily.

“Come here,” I cooed, as if talking to a favorite pet. “We have people to kill and dead to raise.”

Walking along the Clifftombs battlements brought a refreshing clarity to my exceedingly scattering mind. This last transfer was the worst by far. Coordination of this body was beginning to dwindle, and it was getting harder to focus my mind on even the simplest task. I needed to place my soul back in my original body soon, or I feared there would be little to put back.

Whoever was trying to break down the drawbridge wards was going to see a very unhinged and merciless side of my magic. I just had to get over the nausea already bubbling in my stomach at the thought of looking down off the wall.

Another heavythudslammed against the ward, and I took a steadying breath before leaning over the parapet just enough to see below. If I hadn’t already been gritting my teeth out of fear, I’d be grinding them now at the outrage that was turningmy blood to acid. All along the other side of the deep moat spellcasters were scattered, dressed in ragged furs and carrying crude weapons strapped to their backs as their hands wove elaborate patterns in the air. Pale red auras enveloped their arms from elbows to fingertips, and it seemed like they were collecting magic, sending it to one person directly across from the closed drawbridge. He was dressed very differently from the rest, probably marking him as someone of higher rank among the tribe. The head of a great beast decorated his own, covered in snow-white fur with hollowed eyes and a mouth filled with sharp ivory teeth. The rest of the pelt draped over the man’s broad back, leaving his torso exposed in nothing more than a long-sleeved leather tunic left open at the front. Sigils painted in white covered every inch of bare skin across his broad chest. His whole body practically vibrated while he held his arms outstretched, that red haze covering all of him, and he swayed to an unheard rhythm.

Even as I watched, one of the other tribesmen at the edge of the group dropped to their knees, hands clutching at their chest with scrabbling fingers before falling face-first into the snow. That ominous glow left their body, and they fell still. This magic was far beyond their very human, very mortal capabilities.

“Shit,” I cursed.

The next blow they dealt could take the whole wall down, if it was strong enough to suck the lives out of those spellcasters. Another two fell to the ground in the next breath. The man in the middle glowed even brighter.

I had to take out the whole fucking mob to stop that spell.

My neck popped when I rolled my head on it, loosening some muscles that had tightened in my shoulders while watching the tribe lay siege to the drawbridge ward. The Clifftombs had never fallen from invaders, even in the Frigid War, and I would be damned if it fell while I stood on its walls. I pulled the Tome ofWira from under my arm and hefted it in one hand; the weight satisfying in my grip as it fell open in a flurry of pages. The tome knew what spell I needed. Or rather, what spell it allowed its power to be used for. Cheeky thing.

Blood from my cut hand smeared across the pages before being sucked in, and the archaic symbols of the Old Language sparked alive with their own purple glow. A low hum filled the air as the tome’s spell charged, pulling its power from the blood sacrifice and settling an oppressive weight around my shoulders. It was almost… like a dampness accumulating in the bitter cold, or a sodden blanket being draped over me and left to stiffen in the freezing wind.

My eyes snapped open—I hadn’t noticed they were closed—when a voiceless command resonated in my head from the tome. I did what it told me to, sweeping my hand swiftly off the pages like brushing away dust. A deafening boom nearly ruptured my eardrums as a massive blast of magic arced from it, slicing through the group below like a farmer’s scythe through dead stalks. As one, the group fell to the ground, limbs splayed as they fell where they stood. All except one in the very back, high up on a hill just outside the old hamlet, sitting on a kisteral now exposed once their cover was blown down. Their hand was raised in front of them, fingers splayed wide, as blue sparks of magic sizzled in the air around them. The spell I’d cast had rippled across the ground and slammed against a shield, a rather powerful one at that.

It felt as if our gazes were tangled, like I was looking across the battlefield and staring into the eyes of the opposing general at war. Like the Frigid War all over again, but this time I was much stronger and my opponent was wholly unknown to me. Finally, after what felt like hours staring each other down, the cloaked figure pulled their kisteral around and retreatedthrough the broken streets of the Clifftombs’ borough toward the surrounding hills.

I wasn’t fooled. This was just the first battle. But next time, I would bring an army that couldn’t die.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Haron

Someone interesting came to the Covenant Library today. A man by the name of Olin Remana, perhaps no older than

30 years. His age would have indicated he could be a citizen of either Golath or Julra, but he refused to divulge

his origins. He was, however, very interested in the last census, particularly the maps drawn by the scouts detailing

the developing city to the south. I had confided in Sinna later about the stranger, and she mentioned her deceased

son’s name was also Olin. Olin Val Toric.

-"The Tragic History of Julra," by High Scholar Yuret Wend, Year 59 of Ber's First Reign

Gripping the Tome of Wira gave me the strength to step up onto the platform my stone coffin sat on. It was almost effortless to shove the lid off in this borrowed body—the brute was all muscle and no brain when I met him. The body inside looked like a sleeping princess waiting for true love’s kiss, lying in the cold space with a serene expression. The only detail that broke that illusion were arms folded over the chest tightly gripping the Julran fangs I favored fighting with. Even now, I could still remember how difficult it was fighting against the weight of death just long enough to lower myself into my resting place with those weapons. How the thin body of the maid I took over shook on unsteady legs as I gawked at the success of the transferal spell. Then, how it took another hour struggling to close the lid with my flawed control over my new body.

For all the times I’ve dragged my battered, weary soul from body to body the last hundred years, the sense of relief that rose up from my chest at seeingmybody brought tears to my eyes. It wasn’t a purposeful reaction, but like my very soul wept in relief. I looked exactly the same as when I’d abandoned my shell for one of the dead maids I’d hauled with me to this hidden crypt. Again, I had the Tome of Wira to thank for granting me enough power to preserve my body with another of its spells.

That first time I ripped my essence from my body and placed it in the maid's corpse would haunt me for the rest of my days. Every body has its last moments burned into its brain, and everytime I inhabited a new one I relived those memories. Something I was not aware of the first time I transferred, and was wholly off-balanced by the sensation of being stabbed again and again until finally having my chest crushed in with the heavy stomp of a boot. While the original damage had been healed when I inhabited it, the pain inflicted on the maid's body was jarring and wholly unexpected.

“Welcome home,” I murmured, leaning over the edge to gently brush the backs of my borrowed fingers against my own cold, pale cheek. Azapof residual magic zipped up my arm from the contact. “Let us begin, then.”

The transferal itself was not an elaborate ritual. Most of the challenge was maintaining enough focus to not let my soul slip from my grasp as it was placed inside a new body. Problems usually arose when the corpse was fresh enough to still cling to its own soul—like the body I currently held—and I had to forcibly shove it out to make room for my own.

Now, a tugging feeling from deep in my chest encouraged me forward. Like a rope tied between my soul and my body was being pulled taut, reeling me in slowly but relentlessly.

With a small knife tucked into the belt of my borrowed body, I sliced both palms deep enough for the sluggish, dark blood to pool in the palms and drip down my arms. I lifted the Tome of Wira up and opened the heavy book, flipping through to find the ritual I’d memorized so long ago, still burned into my mind with the fire of survival and desperation. The spell was nothing more than words spoken in the Old Language of the gods and a blood sacrifice. The power I needed laid in the Tome itself. The tome I’d written by hand, page by tattered page, and bound myself with twine made with my own hair. The tome I covered with leather from the nearly-extinct trebegnon I’d hunted and killed on my own. The tome that held the largest Wiran ruby known to Erewen, made with my blood and strength of will performing thecreation ritual for two moonphases and nearly starving myself to death in the process.