Ashe’s mind reeled, trying to make sense of where he was. He should have smelled it first, the sharp tang of a portal, the wrongness that always rode the air. There was nothing. The absence felt loud. It was strange, like water that wasn’t wet. Fear prickled at the base of his spine, tangled with something else he could not name.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  He could hear the other heralds around him, voices piling up in frantic questions. No one had answers. No one even sounded sure of what was happening.

  Then a scream tore through the noise.

  His.

  The sound ripped out of him like something yanked free. Ashe staggered and clutched his throat, fingernails digging into his own skin as pain flared, thick and heavy and hot. Fire wrapped his neck in a perfect ring, as if someone had poured burning oil around his throat and lit it. The heat was everywhere. The heat was inside him.

  He hit the sand and rolled, clawing and thrashing like the ground could smother the flames. It only made it worse. The grains scoured his skin, harsh as sandpaper, and packed into every crease as he bucked and choked on pain.

  Annabelle’s healing still glowed on his shoulder. Her palm pressed down, steady and sure, holding him in place when he could not hold himself. Then a wet gurgle broke the air. The warmth vanished so fast it felt stolen.

  Her weight dropped onto him.

  Slack. Wrong.

  A dead drape across his chest. A twitch, a final breath and then silence.

  The voices around him died all at once. Conversations snapped shut, not from confusion anymore, but from the fact that something had already taken a bite out of reality and left a body behind.

  Annabelle. One of the top heralds. Gone in an instant.

  Ashe heard the soft rustle of sand as the others shifted into position, spreading out without being told. Feet set. Shoulders squared. They faced the dark beyond the dunes as if staring hard enough might name whatever was coming.

  Annabelle’s limp weight lay across him, slack and heavy. The pain at Ashe’s neck went cold the moment she touched him. Not numb. Cold like a brand pressed from the inside.

  Then it pulled.

  The fading warmth that had been on his shoulder did not vanish into the air. It sank into him. It poured through his skin in a steady, hungry draw, as if his body had opened a mouth and latched on. The ring at his throat stopped burning and started humming, tight and alive. Heat threaded down his chest, sharp and clean, and with it came a rush of strength that was not his.

  His lungs filled easier. His hands stopped shaking.

  Power pooled behind his ribs, foreign and unmistakable.

  Annabelle’s last light, feeding him.

  Then came a pulse.

  Constant. Rhythmic. Not quite his own, but lodged inside him anyway. It beat in the ring of cold at his throat, not in his chest, as if something had found a new home beneath his skin and started knocking from the inside.

  Ashe tried to move. Tried to shove Annabelle’s weight off him. His arms trembled and slipped in the sand. The moment he forced an inch of space between them, the band around his neck flared again, heavier this time, meaner. Pain clenched hard enough to steal his breath. His limbs spasmed and went useless, jerking like they belonged to someone else.

  His mind scrambled for anything. Anyone.

  The gods. The portal. A rule. A mercy.

  “Keor!” Diaggo screamed, the name ripping out of him like a prayer and a warning at the same time.

  Somewhere out in the sand, someone answered with a shout that cut off halfway. Then came the sound of flesh tearing, wet and awful, followed by a heavy thud as a body hit the ground.

  The pulse in Ashe’s throat jumped.

  A rush of strength followed it, quick and sharp, sliding into his veins like stolen heat. His fingers curled harder in the sand. His mind cleared by a fraction. It felt wrong. It felt like being rewarded.

  He tried to gag. Nothing came up. Annabelle’s dead weight pinned him and the pain pinned him harder. Another rustle of movement out there. Boots shifting. Someone breathed a word that turned into a scream. Another tearing sound. Another thud.

  The pulse answered again.

  Then again.

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  It did not stop with Keor.

  Bodies kept dropping into the sand, one after another, spaced just far enough apart that Ashe could hear each one clearly. The brief struggle. The panicked inhale. The cut-off sound. The impact. Eight more times. Eight more lives snuffed out in the dark while he lay trapped beneath a corpse.

  Each death fed the thing inside him.

  Each time the cold ring tightened, then released. Each time a new beat joined the rhythm, a new strength pooled in his limbs, a new clarity sharpened his senses. It should have felt like a gift. It should have felt like a second chance.

  Diaggo’s voice came last. It broke on the edge of panic as it searched for him in the dark.

  “Ashe, we need…”

  Then it cut off.

  No scream this time. No thud he could place. Just silence swallowing the rest of the sentence, leaving only the soft hiss of sand shifting under a restless breeze.

  And inside Ashe’s throat, the pulse answered anyway.

  It felt like feeding. Sick, desperate feeding, like a vampire at a friend’s throat. Like he would not survive without it. Ashe wanted to throw up. Wanted to crawl away, to run until the sand turned to stone under his feet.

  But he could only lie there, unmoving and listening, while the pulse kept time with the dying.

  At first, Ashe could not tell if anything had changed. His body still shook with the aftershock of pain, and the sickness in his stomach was proof enough that a massacre had just happened. The pulse kept time inside him, steady and wrong.

  Then the pulse shifted.

  The cold ring at his throat softened, not gone, but no longer biting. The pressure that had locked his limbs eased like a hand finally unclenching. The rhythm did not stop. It traveled, sinking deeper, as if the ring was only a gate and whatever it had taken was settling somewhere behind his ribs.

  His mind cleared in the same breath. Not adrenaline-clear. Not survival-clear. Clean, sharp, like waking on your own after a full night’s sleep.

  Too clean. Too sudden.

  Ashe swallowed and tasted ash. He pushed at Annabelle’s body again, bracing for the flare, for the punishment that had hit him the moment he tried to separate before.

  This time the ring did not lash out.

  It hummed, faint and patient, as if it had already finished what it wanted. Annabelle slid off him and onto the sand with a soft drag. Her arm flopped at an angle that made something in his chest twist. He sat there, half upright, hands sunk into the grit, unsure whether standing was allowed or if the sand itself would bite him for trying.

  It would be a lie to say he had been friends with the other heralds. Still, he had respected them. He had believed in what they represented. If the best of them could not hold the line, then what chance did humanity have?

  That hope was gone now. Years of it, wiped out in minutes.

  The wind returned in a faint breath. Sand hissed across the ground. Somewhere out beyond the dunes, nothing moved.

  Then something pressed against his mind.

  A pulse, but not from within. Not the stolen rhythm in his throat, not the heavy beat behind his sternum. This was a presence, sharp and absolute, easy to locate because it wanted to be found. It hit like sound without vibration, like a scream that never touched the air, shoving his thoughts aside as if making space for itself.

  “Hello, Ashe.”

  The voice was smooth, almost honeyed against his ears. It did not come from any direction, yet it felt close, intimate, as if it spoke from inside the space between his thoughts.

  “You have my coin.”

  The air stilled. The breeze died. Even the faint rustle of sand vanished, as if the world itself held its breath.

  Leanor.

  The name from the coin. Ashe blinked. His mouth opened, but the words would not come.

  Leanor did not wait. His voice carried urgency despite its smooth calm, as if emotion had been filed out of it.

  “You will help me. Or you will join your friends in death.”

  The threat landed like a blade. Clean. Unfeeling. Heat surged up Ashe’s spine. Anger. Rage. A raw need to throw himself at the man and make him pay for every body in the sand. His muscles even tensed.

  But he did not move.

  He could feel the strength in his limbs, the stolen power coiled under his skin, but he also knew what stood in front of him. He stood no chance.

  “As soon as you touched the portal coin,” Leanor said, “you became mine.”

  No anger. No force. Just certainty. Like a law. Ashe felt the pulse behind his ribs answer, a hard thump that did not match his heartbeat. Fear tried to crawl over the anger, cold and steady.

  He swallowed. His throat was dry. “Why?” he managed. The word scraped out rough.

  A chuckle answered him. Not amused. Not human. A sound that copied humor without meaning it.

  Then footsteps. The crunch of sand, growing closer.

  The pulse in Ashe’s head rose into a shriek of warning. His instincts screamed at him to move, to roll away, to do anything.

  He could not.

  Leanor stopped so close Ashe felt warm breath brush his cheek, too intimate, too casual for what he was. Ashe’s limbs went dead. Not weak. Not tired. Simply unresponsive, like a switch had been flipped inside him. The power at his side swelled anyway, a tidal force pressing against his skin, huge and uncontrollable, as if his body was a cup trying to hold an ocean.

  “My boy,” Leanor murmured. “You are a pawn in a larger game. You can join me and save what humans are left when this is over.”

  A pause, deliberate.

  “Or you can refuse. You can watch your world be consumed.”

  Leanor’s hand settled on Ashe’s shoulder. A soft pat. Almost gentle.

  “It is not a hard decision.” Ashe felt each word settle on his ribs like stone. Time stretched. He realized he had stopped breathing, lungs locked tight, as if even air required permission.

  Leanor placed a weapon into Ashe’s hands. The motion was careful, almost kind. He guided Ashe’s fingers around the grip and closed them there, making sure Ashe could not drop it.

  “Remember,” Leanor said. “Don’t fail me.”

  For the first time, something slipped beneath the smoothness of his voice. A thin edge. A hint of urgency.

  “I will know where you are. Don’t try to run.”

  A fingertip tapped Ashe’s collarbone, just below the cold ring at his throat.

  “You have a week to prepare. Warm up with some portals. Get used to your new strength.”

  The words had barely landed before a hard gust hit Ashe like a shove. Sand stung his face. His balance went, and he tipped sideways in the grit. At the same time, the pressure in his mind vanished. The pulsing presence was gone so suddenly it left a hollow behind.

  Ashe lay there, unmoving. Breathing felt like a distant memory. Then the sand blurred and dissolved beneath him, heat and grit blinking out as the world snapped back into stone.

  Cold floor.

  Kitchen.

  Ashe dragged in a huge, ragged breath. His lungs heaved as his body finally returned to his command.

  He was alone. The kitchen was silent. The voices, the chatter, the other heralds were gone. Annabelle. Keor. Diaggo. All of them.

  Just a memory.

  The weapon in his hands was the only proof it had been real. The familiar weight of his walking stick, the pull of his weapon at his side, were the only comfort left to him. The closest thing he had to a friend.