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Prologue

Damien

Many centuries ago

“What have you done?” Fear turned my words low and gravelly, the night nearly swallowing them.

One moment, I was trapped in that Spirits-forsaken chamber that reeked of stifled power. The next, I was greedily gulping down the scent of rain-soaked rock, blooming cyphers, and freedom.

The chosen warrior stood before me, eyes swarming with a rage so fresh and burning—swarming with a betrayal-spawning defiance. One unlocked by ancient truths and whirls of secrets, irises blending from calm brown to burning pinks.

He did it, then. He found and took the agent.

This should have been a moment of victory, but his next words dripped with vitriol. “I’ve learned the truth.”

Four words that splintered my entire mission, unleashing a tidal wave of failure. The key had been dragged on a rope before me. But every time I took a step toward it, it was yanked back again. Elusive and wanting, but I had it.

I. Had. it.

Had him.

I had allowed my own feathers to shed because I was so certain. He was supposed to be the resolution, the absolution of sins stacked against us. Instead, he chose to become our greedy undoing.

As I clenched my hand at my side, my power flourishing within me, I realized that left me with an atrocious choice. It went against everything my eternal presence signified, but things had been altered by the hands of fate, that brutal mist of being.

At the thought, my unbeating heart pulsed with remorse.

Imagined, I reminded myself. Your heart does not beat.

Was there a way I would not have to do this?

But he said he knew the truth and declared it with such disdain. His fate was already sealed, then.

“You are certain the rumors you have heard hold true?” Worry gnawed behind my ribs, tightening my lungs. Though I did not need breath, it was restrictive. If the chosen did not know everything, though, maybe we could reignite the path. Maybe I could convince him otherwise…

But when he lifted his chin, that magenta promise glinted. He knew it all.

“I wish the wars of eternal beings were mere rumors,” he said.

And prophecy shattered around us with the weight of a thousand bursting stars. His skin glowed, subtle and faint, reminding me of a light I had not seen in centuries as it poured forth. Grief clawed through me, shrinking my vision, but this power was not nearly as potent, untainted, or burning as that lost source.

This was the sacrificed essence of the seven, locked away for millennia.

Wind whipped around our shoulders, the breeze burnished with failure and imbued with the energy of my mountains, singing a disjointed melody along my bones. I gritted my teeth against it. The shift of ether smothered the desperation mounting within me.

Discordant magic ripped through me.

Shredding.

Tearing.

Taking all I was.

I fought it, bearing down on the long dormant power that tried to wrench from me. This was not as planned…this was not…

Panting, I crashed to the ground across from him, two promised beings on their knees at the bequest of magic. I willed the force breaking from me back where it belonged.

But it was a stranger beneath my own skin.