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Time had passed. Bright stars littered the night sky.

God’s creations glared at him with cruel disgust. Blood cried up from the trembling ground.

Agony seared his limbs as the bones in his hand snapped back together with a sickening crunch.

His body contorted and spasmed as life sprang to his limbs.

Blood reversed its flow and returned to his neck in an even stream, choking him, drowning him, until he breathed with clarity and ease.

Every breath, though, was frigid and foreign.

Heavy and oppressive, the night pressed in on him as though the stars and the earth had recoiled from his return.

Spent, his body collapsed atop the dirt.

Tears filled his eyes. At least he could still serve God by protecting the crown.

The thought was hollow and did nothing to soothe his fractured soul.

He did not feel complete; he did not feel whole.

He had fallen from God. Maybe he did not have a soul anymore, just the spirit given not by the creator but by a sorceress.

Perhaps that was why each breath was foreign and bitter.

“What have I done?” he whispered, fearing a colder, darker, and far more painful life of no escape.

He had stood for honor, for loyalty to God and the king.

Yet he lay there with the steel of his brother’s sword still warm with his blood.

He had trusted Arnoul and believed in the righteousness of their cause.

Every day, he had trained to be a warrior to protect holiness.

Every night, he prayed for strength to remain blameless and to keep a repentant heart.

Now, all he saw was the empty shell of that honor, that lifelong purpose, crumbling away under the weight of betrayal and immortality. Where was the justice?

Arnoul walked away free to live, free to die, free to take his land and wife.

Rage burned in his chest. Arnoul had forced his hand in accepting the sorceress’ deal.

If that traitor had not cut him down, he would not have had to give up death to save his wife and daughter from that miserable knightly imposter.

He was condemned to wretchedness because of Arnoul’s treachery, Arnoul’s wrong.

It was Arnoul’s doing. Arnoul deserved punishment.

Arnoul had stolen his honor, his peace, his hope of a life with God.

Arnoul deserved pain. Arnoul deserved to die.

“I shall him slay.” The words escaped through clenched teeth, his voice hoarse.

His body trembled from the rising fury that spread through him like fire, hotter than the stars.

The pain that had once gripped him was gone, replaced by a fierce clarity.

The thought of God’s will lingered in the corners of his consciousness, but his mind was consumed by one thought—Arnoul.

Pushing himself up from the dirt, his limbs ached, but strength had not left them. The world around him seemed to narrow, the stars above shrinking into insignificance. His fingers curled into fists, the knuckles white against the night.

Rollant would serve justice. He would make Arnoul live the same agony he felt when he was struck down by a man he had once called brother.

He crossed the bloodstained expanse of the Crusaders’ encampment with swift strides.

His unwavering resolve propelled him forward and muted the laments of the injured and dying.

He glided like a phantom as if enveloped in darkness by the sorceress herself, causing his surroundings to fade into a black blur.

The man who betrayed him lay asleep, exposed and unsuspecting, beneath the tattered remains of a Crusader banner. His sword was still close at hand, with Rollant’s ale and salted meat bag thrown by his side. The thief!

Arnoul stirred gently, mumbling in his sleep, “Forgive me.”

The moonlight illuminated his contorted lips and furrowed brow in nightmarish slumber, as Rollant drew Arnoul’s sword into his hand.

Slay him. Cut him down as he has done to me.

The thought blazed in his mind, filling him with the cold burn of hate.

Arnoul deserved to die. He had taken everything—honor, trust, and life itself.

Rollant had followed the code of knights, fought for God and country and king, and now it all lay in ruins at Arnoul’s feet.

He was cursed to life forever and never be one with God.

“End it,” he muttered as his knuckles grew white around the hilt of Arnoul’s sword.

It would be a cowardly murder. An unarmed, sleeping man would be no threat.

Yet the stale, foreign air passing over his lips, not full in life but neither in death, ground to silence every code and honorable virtue to which he had pledged his life.

His hand wavered. The blade trembled. A strange chill crept into his chest and stayed.

The sound of an indecipherable whisper echoed in his skull.

Doubt gnawed him. He blinked. His vision blurred.

He could feel her presence—the sorceress.

If he were condemned to live forever, then Arnoul would be condemned to die for his betrayal.

If the sorceress granted Arnoul immortality, too, then Rollant would be a thorn in Arnoul’s side for all eternity.

He raised the blade high. The steel glinted in the moonlight. His vision tunneled, focused on Arnoul, who was unaware that the Angel of Death waited for him. Oh, how it must have been when Arnoul took the blade to Rollant’s throat mere hours before. The treacherous thought sealed Arnoul’s fate.

In a swift arc, Rollant wrenched the blade back and brought it down, cutting Arnoul deep in the throat, severing the voice before a single scream could escape and wake the soldiers who slept nearby.

Arnoul’s gurgling filled the space between the dying and the immortal.

Arnoul’s eyes beheld Rollant and grew wide beneath the moon.

The color drained from his face as if he’d seen a ghost.

“This is no dream, old friend,” Rollant whispered.

Arnoul’s hands scrabbled at his neck, and blood spurted from his lips. Rollant spat on Arnoul’s surcoat and watched as the light faded in Arnoul’s eyes.

Rollant’s heartbeat thundered in his ears, drowning out all other sounds. The rush of satisfaction he had expected, the moment of triumph—none of it came. He had expected to feel free—freed from the betrayal, from the pain, but there was no glory there, only emptiness.

A hollow victory.

Arnoul, once his brother-in-arms, was now nothing more than a body like all the rest.

“Reap what you sow,” he said to Arnoul’s spirit. “He deserved to die,” he whispered in an attempt to ease the vengeful monster back into the black pit of his belly. The urge to vomit remained in the monster’s descending path. His breaths were ragged—colder than the breaths before.

His fingers still gripped the sword hilt, but its weight felt wrong, as though it no longer belonged in his grasp. He threw it down by the traitor’s feet. He shivered, now able to feel the icy winds of the night. His breath turned to fog before his face.

The whisper returned—so faint he almost missed it.

But it wasn’t coming from the wind or the battlefield—it came from deep inside himself.

The familiar voice, thin and cold, curled the edges of his mind.

His heart faltered as her power sent him to his knees.

His hands caught his body from the drop.

Arnoul’s dark blood coated his fingers. He had killed a man in a coward’s act of revenge.

It was not justice. It was not honor. It was not pure.

It was savage.

He lifted his quivering fingers to his face. Arnoul’s blood ran down his finger like a tendril of darkness racing toward his heart and chasing away the rage that had consumed it.

The sorceress’s voice drifted through him, her tone no longer alluring but dripping with disappointment. “You have chosen a path darker than even death.”

She appeared before him again, her form solidifying out of the shadows.

Her celestial hair floated in the night, but her gaze did not evoke the warmth of starlight.

Her lips curled into a smile, though it was far from kind.

“You have taken more than his life, Chevalier. You have forsaken the honor that once defined you.” Her eyes glowed faintly in the dark.

“And so, your punishment will be as eternal as your immortality.”

Rollant’s breath stilled. “Punishment?” He gasped. Fear wrapped his legs. “But you gave me life.”

She moved closer, her ethereal form swirling with a cold wind.

“I gave you life, but your actions have bound you to something far worse than death. You were not just. You were not noble.” Her gaze flicked to Arnoul’s lifeless body.

“And now, you are no different from the traitor who lies before you.”

Rollant’s heart sank as her words settled over him like a death shroud. “I have done right,” he tried to argue, even against his own thoughts.

“You did what was easy. Gave way to fleshly vengeful desire.” Her voice was cold, cutting through him like the sword he had thrown at Arnoul’s feet. “You have not killed for justice,” she said. “You killed for vengeance. And now, you shall suffer for it.”

Rollant staggered back, crawling away from her. His eyes widened as her swirling form passed over Arnoul and came to him.

“What suffering shall I endure?” he asked, afraid of the answer.

The sorceress’s expression grew more somber, her eyes narrowing as if she pitied him. “Your beloved wife and daughter, the two women you hold most dear.”

“Please,” he whispered and shook his head. His limbs went weak. His heart struck still at the mention of Amée and Cateline. His voice cracked, and tears welled in his eyes. “Anyone but them.”

The sorceress swayed her head against the breeze, telling him it was what he feared.

“They shall be taken from you the moment you cross the threshold of your home. Their lives, like your own, shall be forfeit because of your actions. But because I see your love for them, I shall give you an option. Therefore, you may never return home, and they shall enjoy long lives,”—her finger rose—“or you cross the threshold to see them one last time.”

Rollant fell to his side. He had accepted the sorceress’s deal to see, love, and care for his wife and child. Now, she was taking them away just like Arnoul had done. He snarled at her cruelty, a knife in his belly. “You cannot do such a thing!” he cried.

She stood as a silent sentinel; her gaze was past him as if it had already been decided.

His heart broke like his body and his mind.

“Please,” he struggled to his knees and bowed his head before her. “Spare their lives. I will do anything. I beg you.” His voice crumpled with a sob. The strong, resolute knight was reduced to nothing. “Please, I shall?—”

The sorceress silenced him through an icy tendril to the heart.

“It is done,” she said, her words as dark as the blood staining Rollant’s fingers.

“And more shall be taken from you for begging when I have already extended grace. Know this, Chevalier Rollant de Montvieux: should you ever embrace anyone in love, they too will breathe their last. Your heart will be forever empty, your touch forever cursed.”

“No . . .” The word tore from Rollant’s throat, hoarse and raw.

He scrambled to his feet, the weight of her curse crashing over him like a tidal wave.

But she vanished like smoke, and he was left gasping into the night amid the murmurs of the king’s camp.

He turned toward his home across the sea, as though he could somehow outrun her words.

Amée. Cateline. Their faces flashed before him.

Tears ran down his cheeks. What had he done?

But the curse had been sealed. Her words were absolute.

He had abused her gift of life. Rollant would live, but he would never truly be alive again.

For as long as his body endured, he would walk the earth with the knowledge that his love, his embrace, would forever bring death to those he cared for.