Prologue

  The Day Death Died

  Oarsrest Village

  Ilythia

  Eleven hours Post Surgence

  Rengi was alive.

  Which, by all accounts, should have been impossible.

  He lay upon his back, staring up at an open, cloudless sky. It must have been mid afternoon, yet he could have sworn the world had been bathed in twilight when he’d been ambushed in the woods. He reached for his throat, certain he would find a ruined mess of sinew and flesh. Instead, his fingers were met with smooth, unmarred skin. It didn’t make any sense. One of the wolves had torn out his throat, he was sure of it. Moments ago, he’d been choking on his own blood.

  His full recollection was hazy at best, but he remembered those final moments with frightening clarity. He’d been fighting to tear his arm loose from the jaws of one beast, only to be taken down from behind by another. Something warm and slick had closed around his neck. His skin yielded to the creature’s fangs and at first, all he felt was a dull, tingling pressure. He couldn’t feel his legs, nor his arms, nor the entirety of his body from the neck down. Then, agony had burned through what little he could feel like an untamed fire. Blood bubbled up between his lips and though he could no longer feel them, his lungs sputtered and seized.

  The darkness that had taken him had been a release, an end to his pain.

  And now here he lay.

  Had it all been some terrible nightmare?

  He wasn’t in bed, that much was clear. Cold, wet mud squished along his exposed back and a temperate breeze caressed certain intimate flesh that had no business being left to the scrutiny of the sun. He squinted through his blurred vision. Were those rooftops running along the edges of his sight? Or were they simply trees distorted by the lack of clarity? He rubbed at his eyes, only to realize what he saw were, in fact, a familiar arrangement of thatched roofs.

  Hesitantly, he sat up and found himself lying beside the massive, crystalline spirit stone at the center of his town square. Its proud pillars pulsed with unfamiliar energy, momentarily distracting him from the fact he was completely and utterly bare. He felt eyes along his back and his skin prickled. He wasn’t fortunate enough to be the square’s sole occupant, was he? His cheeks grew hot as he twisted around to see. People were staring, having paused their comings and goings through the spring market in order to gawk.

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  Mordreth bleed and bury him– death might be preferable to this, after all. Had said goddess truly seen fit to reject him? Or was this all some elaborate prank? Both sounded unlikely, so maybe he’d been kicked by a horse? It would explain the confusion, his blurred vision, but not his current state of undress. Could he be hallucinating–

  “Rengi?” The feminine gasp brought him up short.

  He whirled, torn between relief and outright mortification at the sight of his betrothed, “Sabine?”

  The young woman’s brown eyes were wide, flitting from him, to the spirit stone, and back again in disbelief.

  “H–how did you do that?”

  He frowned, twisting his lower half away to preserve what little modesty he had left, “Do what?”

  “Appear in that flash of blue light.”

  He glanced around as if he might find the answer hidden among the crowd.

  “I have no idea. I’m . . . not even sure how I got here.”

  He’d been dying one moment and materializing here the next. None of it made any sense. What was worse? He was fairly certain neither experience was a dream. It was real. But how?

  Womp.

  The spirit stone at his back began to hum.

  Womp.

  Energy pulsed through the square, drawing gasps and shouts of alarm.

  Womp.

  A blue light seeded in the heart of the crystal cluster, growing brighter and brighter with each subsequent pulse. Rengi scrambled back, wanting nothing to do with the stone or its strange new magic. For all he knew, it would send him somewhere else, somewhere worse. Gods, what if it took Sabine this time?

  Fear for her safety had him on his feet and closing the distance between them, modesty be damned. He took her hand and led her further into the crowd, away from danger. Let someone else be taken this time.

  Light flashed and a body appeared to the left of the spiritstone. Like Rengi, the elderly man was wholly naked. The terminal emaciation of his body left his grey skin stretched over far too much bone, spine and hips jutting like crags from a hillside. In truth, he was more corpse than man and Rengi couldn’t help but wonder if he was already dead. He didn’t so much as twitch. But then, one of his legs moved and he sucked in a wheezing breath.

  “Is that elder Branar?” Someone asked.

  “That’s impossible,” Sabine said, “My father’s at home. He’s been bedridden for weeks.”

  Sick with the flux, if Rengi recalled correctly. Last he had heard, the man had taken a turn for the worst and was practically on death’s door.

  Realization began to sink in and a new sort of unease wound its way through Rengi’s gut.

  Had the elder died too?