The fire had died down to embers, casting a faint, dying orange glow against the stone walls of the ruined tower. Garen was snoring softly in the corner, bundled under a heavy blanket.

  Selene sat near the ruined tower entrance, staring up at the Emberveil Nebula, a silent heartbeat in the sky. She wiped a stray smear of crimson from her lip, the metallic taste of Astraea’s blood still lingering on her tongue.

  A shadow detached itself from the darkness.

  Sebastian approached. He looked up at the sky, his profile sharp and pale beside Selene.

  “You judge her,” Sebastian said softly.

  Selene kept looking at the sky. “She enjoys giving pain to others. I saw it at the Baron’s gate. A monster is too light a word for her.”

  “You see cruelty,” Sebastian said. “But consider how she was made.”

  “Astraea is a product of her circumstances, much as you are shaped by your own. In the Kingdom, cruelty is like silver coins, a tool wielded by those in power. Astraea was forged in a furnace that burns away anything soft or tender.”

  Selene leaned forward, her green eyes finally settling on him. “What do you mean, how she was made?” she said, staring into the embers of the camp fire. “I dreamed last night. A little girl running to her father in the woods. A vampire dressed in white killed him and took her. Something about ascension.”

  Was Astraea always a vampire?

  Sebastian stilled. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but she caught it.

  “Don’t dwell on dreams, Selene. They do not tell the truth. I’ve seen kingdoms fall because of them,” he said.

  He turned fully toward her then, whatever trace of amusement he had vanishing. His expression hardened into something cold and precise.

  “One more thing, Selene. What you have been doing with Astraea these past few days… the act of feeding. You must never speak of it to others of our kind. In Carmyne, to drink the blood of a mortal is sustenance. To drink the blood of another vampire is heresy, punishable by true death.”

  Selene finally looked at him, her tired eyes glowing faintly in the nebulous light.

  “The same blood that runs in my veins runs in hers,” she said, her voice hollow but steady. “She killed Thena. She treats life like it’s a game. So I use her. I drink her blood to keep the hunger under control, because if I don’t feed on the monster, Sebastian, I might turn into one. That’s our pact. She pays for what she’s done by keeping my humanity intact.”

  Sebastian watched her for a long moment, silence stretching between them.

  Selene pulled her coat tighter, leaning her head back against the cold stone. She closed her eyes as fatigue finally claimed her.

  Sebastian lingered a moment longer. A flicker of genuine fascination crossed his face as he watched her chest rise and fall in the rhythm of sleep.

  “Remarkable,” he murmured to himself, turning back to the darkness. “A predator that dreams at night. What a dangerous thing you truly are.”

  The next day was a grueling march through the dawning mountain peaks of the Veilspine Valley.

  By late afternoon, the terrain had shifted. The sharp ascent of the mountains leveled out into a high-altitude plateau of gray scrub and wind-scoured stone. The mist here was thinner but colder, biting through leather and wool alike.

  Ahead, two massive spires of jagged black rock rose from the earth like the tips of buried spears. They stood fifty feet high, unnatural and imposing, framing the only path forward.

  Selene stopped. Selis, leading the horse, stopped beside her.

  "The Black Rocks," Selene murmured.

  Garen trudged up behind them, Nihil creaking in its leather sheath. He looked at the stones, then back the way they had come. “So this is it? The edge of the world?”

  “The edge of our world,” Selene replied.

  She stared at the gap between the black stones. For a second, the cold wind vanished, replaced by warmth.

  “Adventure awaits, little Owl,” Eldric used to say, his hand resting gently on her shoulder. “But remember, the best adventures are the ones you survive to write down.”

  “Selene?”

  Selene blinked, pushing the memory down. “No one in the valley has gone beyond this point and returned to tell the tale. I suppose we will be the first.”

  They stepped between the stones.

  There was no magical shimmer, just the crunch of boots on gravel.

  They passed the boundary, moving into the uncharted hills on the western slope. As the sun dipped well below the peaks, casting long, violet shadows across the valley, the landscape changed.

  It became a metal graveyard.

  Garen stopped, his hand flying to his mouth to stifle a sound of disgust. “By the Architect…”

  The valley floor was littered with the dead.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  As they moved through it, dozens of bodies lay scattered in the failing light. There were soldiers clad in blackened plate armor, their tall helms battered and dented. They lay tangled with the twisted, pale forms of the Corrupt, figures wearing the same blackened steel, now rusted and fused to their decaying flesh.

  Whumpf.

  A heavy, rhythmic gust of wind hammered down from above, kicking up spirals of dust and grit across the ground.

  Whumpf.

  The sound was deep and hollow, like a massive sail catching a gale, though the air around them was largely still. Garen glanced up at the darkening peaks, brow furrowed. Somewhere in the distance, a low, guttural rumble vibrated through the spiraling rocks—too sustained to be thunder, too throaty to be a rockslide.

  They pressed deeper, the unease settling into the marrow of their bones.

  And everywhere, jutting from breastplates, embedded in skulls, driven deep into the bedrock, were daggers.

  Hundreds of them.

  They stood upright like a garden of steel thorns. Some were buried in the earth, others in flesh.

  Then a voice rose. “I wouldn’t take another step if I were you.”

  They stopped.

  Some distance ahead, sitting casually on a large boulder amid the carnage, was a knight clad in blackened plate.

  But he was not alone.

  Perched on the jagged peak directly above him was a nightmare made of scales and shadow. A massive dragon, its hide the color of dried blood, clung to the rock with its talons. Its wings were folded tight against its body, and its long, sinuous neck craned downward, golden slit-eyes watching all them from above. Smoke drifted lazily from its nostrils.

  Garen’s jaw went slack. He just stared, his chest forgetting to hitch with breath. In Lowtown, they feared hunger, cold, but this was something that belonged to a different world entirely, a creature that defied every law of nature he knew. Even Selene felt a cold spike of adrenaline punch through her veins, rooting her boots to the earth.

  The blackened plate knight held a thick-spined dagger in his hand, tossing it casually in the air and catching it by the blade.

  “Three humans,” He said, his voice bored. “Coming from the forbidden valley. You are either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. By royal command, this sector is under my charge.”

  He stood up, the metal of his greaves clinking against the rock. "And you are standing on my work."

  The knight drew his arm back.

  The coffins hit the ground hard. In the same heartbeat, Selis stepped instantly in front of Selene, placing herself between her god and the threat.

  "Wait!" Garen yelled.

  He didn’t wait. He threw the dagger, and it whistled past them, striking the ground behind them and sending it sailing back the way they had come—straight into the field of bodies and steel they had just crossed.

  Clink.

  The dagger struck another blade embedded in the earth.

  The reaction was instantaneous. The blood magic in the thrown dagger resonated with the hundreds of daggers planted in the field.

  BOOM.

  The entire plateau behind them erupted.

  It wasn't a single explosion; it was a chained detonation. The garden of steel thorns vaporized in a series of violent red flashes, pulverizing the bodies of the Corrupt and the fallen soldiers into ash. The earth shook violently.

  The shockwave hit the group from behind like a tidal wave.

  Selene, Selis, and Garen were lifted off their feet and thrown violently forward. They hit the dirt hard, skidding through the gravel near the knight boulder. Dust and stone rained down on them in a choking cloud.

  Above them, the dragon let out a low, rattling chuff of amusement.

  “That is how we deal with corruption,” the knight said, drawing two more blades as the dust settled. “Now it seems you humans have strayed beyond the peaks. Good for you, that trespass is forgiven by… death.”

  The dust from the explosion was still swirling when the horse screamed.

  Terrified by the shockwave the animal reared violently, its hooves pawing the air.

  Usefully, the distraction gave the vampires time to move.

  With a splintering crack, the lids of the pine coffins burst open where they had fallen.

  Sebastian and Astraea moved in a blur. Sebastian stepped smoothly in front of the humans, hands raised in a placating gesture, his coat immaculate despite the chaos.

  Astraea vaulted from her coffin, moving like liquid shadow toward the panicking horse. She reached into a long leather holster strapped to the saddle’s flank. With a sharp metallic hiss, she ripped the Crescent Twins free, the two halves of her scythe clicking together as she spun them into a defensive stance.

  The knight paused. He lowered his crimson daggers, tilting his head as the horse finally stopped rearing, shivering as it caught the scent of the dragon above.

  "Well," the knight said, a deep, mocking laugh rumbling in his chest. "I wondered what smelled like rot and perfume."

  “Alexander,” Sebastian said smoothly. “Charming greeting. You always were subtle with introductions.”

  "And you," Alexander retorted, looking at Sebastian with undisguised contempt, "are still hiding behind words. And... ah, the Runt is here too."

  He looked at Astraea, then shifted his gaze up to his dragon, and finally back down to her boots.

  "Walking, Squire?" He sneered. "I see the Council still hasn't deemed you worthy of a mount. Tell me, do your feet hurt, or does your pride hurt more?"

  Astraea hissed, her red eyes narrowing to slits. The gemstones in her scythe flared with angry light, reflecting off the terrified horse's wide eyes. "One more laugh, Alexander, and I will carve that armor off your corpse and feed your lizard its own heart."

  "Try it," Alexander said, sounding bored. "I'll detonate a dagger in your ribs before you finish the swing. And Darksmoke here hasn't eaten in days."

  The dragon shifted its weight on the peak, causing a small avalanche of pebbles to rattle down the cliff face. It let out a hiss that sounded like steam escaping a vent, its golden eyes locked on the horse, hungry and intelligent. The horse whinnied in terror, backing away until it bumped into Garen.

  Alexander straightened, sheathing one blade while keeping the other ready. Red fractures pulsed along the blade’s surface, a visual cue that it was primed to explode. “If the Council sent you two—the diplomat who cannot fight and the squire who cannot ride—then they truly do not care what happens in this valley.”

  Alexander gestured with his dagger toward the smoking crater behind the group, the place where the bodies had just been vaporized.

  “That was a battle,” Alexander said, his voice turning grim. “How is that possible, this far from the front? A battle here, in this secret valley, the cradle of dragons, so close to the heart of the kingdom… things are changing, and they refuse to see it, blinded by the Church.”

  He nudged a piece of gravel with his heavy boot. “Carmyne soldiers, fighting corruption this close to the castle. It spreads through the blood, turning them into… malformed creatures, fighting each other.”

  He looked up, his tone deadly serious. “I have guarded this valley for hundreds of years. I have never seen the corruption spread this far from the front. Darksmoke smelled the rot on them from a great distance away. If I hadn’t detonated the field, that infection would have reached the valley beyond.”

  His gaze hardened. “You know what that would mean for the human settlement in the valley.”

  He looked at the humans, his gaze lingering on Selene. He stared at her white hair, glowing in the twilight, and the way she stood unshaken by the devastation he had just unleashed.

  "Curious," Alexander muttered. "Perhaps you aren't just luggage after all."

  "We are not luggage," Selene said, standing up and brushing the dust from her coat. Her voice was steady, challenging.

  Alexander smiled. "I like that. Shame about the company you keep."

  He crossed his arms, the metal plates sliding against each other with a heavy rasp. High above, Darksmoke spread its wings, blocking out the first stars of the night, casting a long shadow over the group.

  “So, the Council sends a diplomat and a squire, and you’re transporting three humans from the Forbidden Valley,” Alexander summarized dryly.

  He tapped the hilt of his dagger against his reinforced chest harness.

  “Now,” he said. “Tell me why I shouldn’t feed them to Darksmoke and save us all the trouble.”