PROLOGUE

Breathe, Ruya told herself. She clutched a thick tome to her chest and shut her eyes. Eerie silence washed over her. The room was rank with the familiar scent of decay. She’d sat at the deathbeds of hundreds, if not thousands, of people at this point in her life. A necessary duty of the high priestess of death.

But she’d never seen anything like this before. Bodies were sprawled all over the catacombs, easily a hundred people all piled haphazardly atop each other. She tried not to look at their faces as she walked over and around them. They weren’t the first casualties of this war.

They wouldn’t be the last.

She hesitated before she entered the last room in the catacombs. In the center was a large sandstone ossuary. The flickering light of a single torch sent shadows dancing across the pale walls. Ruya approached and pushed the stone lid halfway off. She placed the tome inside reverently. The lid slid shut with a final, echoing thud. Pale-green necrotic fog began to slip out of the crack between the lid and the ossuary itself.

“Was this really necessary?” Ruya asked herself.

“Yes.”

The voice came from the shadows, and Ruya jumped. A tall creature emerged, human in all appearances but decidedly not. Ruya sighed in relief, then shivered. Her now-empty hands rubbed her arms from the cold.

“Kyran, I knew them. All of them.” Ruya gestured toward the archway where a few of the corpses were visible. She didn’t look. She didn’t want to see their empty faces looking back at her. Ruya didn’t trust her legs to support her if she did.

“Their sacrifice will be remembered.” Kyran wiped blood off his pale hands onto his salwar. He approached Ruya and wrapped his arm around her with uncharacteristic warmth. Ruya took to it, leaning on him.

“Where is Tsillah?” Ruya asked, craning her neck behind him to see if she could make out the devata anywhere.

“She’s exploring her new home,” Kyran said. “We should leave.” He glanced to the walls. The white stone was beginning to sprout black necrotic rot that grew rapidly outward like vines.

Ruya nodded. She had no desire to be here any longer. The curse would spread quickly and leave this place unsafe for anyone other than Tsillah. Kyran took Ruya’s hand, leading her away from the ossuary. She carefully tiptoed around the bodies, following in Kyran’s footsteps toward the light of the High Temple.

Back to the world of the living.

Back to the war.