The Ashenwood had teeth.
And it was hungry.
Sunniless learned that truth within the first mile of true night.
The forest did not merely grow dark.
It inhaled the light.
What little moonlight filtered through the canopy came down in sickly slivers that twisted when you weren't watching.
The ground beneath his bare feet was hot—too hot—like walking on the hide of something vast and sleeping.
Nyxara moved ahead, a ribbon of living night.
No words left her lips. Instead, her voice slipped directly into his skull—intimate as a tongue across the ear.
Smell that?
He did.
Copper and musk.
Fear-sweat.
Old magic.
Something big was bleeding nearby,
and something even bigger was enjoying it.
They crested a ridge of roots that curved like rib bones and looked down into a hollow lit by corpse-fire.
The clearing was enormous.
A horned behemoth lay in the center—twenty feet at the shoulder, armored in bone like a siege tower. Its belly had been ripped open. Ropes of steaming intestine sprawled across moss like fallen banners.
Three figures crouched over the kill.
Not human.
Tall, whipcord-thin, parchment-colored skin.
Arms too long, fingers tipped with black talons.
Lipless faces, eyes ember-orange, glowing. Firelight slid across them wrong, like oil on water.
"Skinweavers," Nyxara murmured, voice laced with ancient hatred.
"Old allies of the ones who bound me. They drink pain the way you once drank gin."
Sunniless curled his lip.
"Looks like they'd taste like regret and bad decisions."
Correct.
And they were about to learn a new flavor.
One lifted its head.
Neck elongating, vertebrae popping K-K-KRRRACK! like knuckles.
It stared straight at the ridge.
Sunniless didn't wait.
He stepped into the open.
The movement felt different now.
Fluid.
Spine rolling like Nyxara's before a strike.
The venom in his blood sang, high and sweet.
The nearest hissed.
Silk tearing.
Nine feet tall, maybe ten.
Arms split at the elbow into four.
Black threads of shadow stitched the air—half wings, half whip.
Sunniless smiled. Too many teeth.
"Evening, lads. Mind if I cut in?"
The first Skinweaver lunged.
FAST.
Faster than any human had a right to be.
Talons slashed in a black-and-orange blur.
He moved faster.
He didn't dodge.
He simply wasn't where the claws expected him to be.
Empty air.
THWACK!
Shoulder into chest.
Bone cracked.
The Skinweaver flew backward, WHUMP!, folding around a tree with a wet crunch.
The other two circled. Heads tilting at impossible angles.
Sunniless rolled his neck. The sound wasn't human.
"Come on then," he crooned. "I'm starving."
They attacked together.
One high, one low.
Shadows whipped from them like flails.
He dropped flat.
The lashes shredded a tree behind him SHRRRIP! SPLINTER!
He surged up inside the low attacker's guard, claws sliding out with SNIKT.
He drove them under ribs, twisted, tore something vital.
The Skinweaver screamed.
Glass dragged across stone.
Black ichor sprayed, hissing where it touched him.
It didn't burn. It tasted like power.
He rode the dying creature down. Mouth opening impossibly wide.
Not teeth alone.
Something uncurled from his throat—long, black, forked—and punched through its sternum.
It drank.
Memories flooded him: centuries of flayed sacrifices, screams braided into spell-threads, cold satisfaction serving something older than pain.
He swallowed it all.
The husk at his feet fell silent.
The last Skinweaver fled.
Nyxara rose like a river of night.
Jaws closed on the fleeing torso.
CRACK!
The body split wetly in half.
Silence returned.
Broken only by dripping ichor and Sunniless's breathing.
He looked down.
Rags burned away.
Scales bloomed—matte black, edged with venom-green.
Not armor. A promise.
Claws fully formed. Fangs pressed against his lower lip when he smiled.
The hunger remained.
Sharper. Focused.
Nyxara lowered her massive head.
One golden eye filled his vision.
Better?
"Much."
His voice rasped, new and dangerous.
"I feel like I could eat a cathedral and still have room for the priests."
Then eat.
She nudged the behemoth's carcass.
It rolled, exposing the cavernous wound.
Heart first. Always the heart.
He didn't hesitate.
The organ the size of a wagon wheel, still twitching.
He tore into it with claws and teeth.
Hot blood flooded his mouth, rich and electric.
Power slammed him like a forge hammer.
Muscles swelled.
Bones lengthened with wet pops.
Scales spread down ribs and back, forming a flexing cuirass.
He stepped back, wiped blood on a claw.
Nearly seven feet tall.
Lean, but carved from harder substance than flesh.
Nyxara radiated approval.
Now you begin to look the part.
He flexed. Shadows coiled between his fingers, obedient.
"And what part is that?"
The part that ends kingdoms.
She flowed toward a cave beneath twisted roots.
Come. Dawn is a lie here, but there is time. Something you need to see.
He followed.
The cave spiraled down.
Walls slick with bioluminescent lichen pulsing bruise-colored light.
The air grew warm, humid, tasting of copper and old incense.
Hours later, he entered a cavern vast beyond imagining.
In the center: a tree.
Not alive—petrified obsidian, branches twisted into screaming faces.
Roots plunged into a black lake that reflected nothing.
Chains hung from every branch—thousands.
Hooks at their ends, and on each hook, a heart.
Some still beat. Most did not.
Venom surged.
Vision flickered.
"What… the fuck is this place?" he whispered.
My prison, Nyxara said softly.
Nine centuries.
The Compact of the Pale Circle.
These hearts were the price.
Each century, a new one: kings, heroes, saints, monsters.
Each heart bought another century of sleep for the thing beneath the roots.
He stepped forward.
Boots silent on stone.
One heart, small and grey, still struggled.
Child's, perhaps.
Crushed it.
Beating stopped.
Nyxara did not stop him.
"And now?"
Now the Compact is broken.
The hearts rot.
The sleeper stirs.
I am free because a greedy little thief refused to die quietly.
She coiled around the dead tree, tail brushing chains so they sang like bone wind chimes.
But freedom is not enough. I want reparations.
"How many of the Pale Circle are still alive?"
Seven. Old. Fat on stolen centuries.
They hide behind crowns and cathedrals now.
He smiled, slow and terrible.
"Then let's start with the closest."
He turned.
Nyxara stopped him.
One more gift first.
Her coil lifted, revealing a mask—bone-white, human but wrong.
Cheekbones sharp, eyes wide, mouth stretched in too-many-tooth grin.
Serpents twined across it.
Wear it. It hides what you are becoming. For now.
He took it. Warm, pulsing like skin.
"And when I don't want to hide?"
Then let them see.
He slid it into the scales at his waist—accepted like a sheath for a blade.
Together, they left.
The tree groaned, splitting down the middle.
Something vast shifted below, chains rattling like laughter.
Outside, false dawn crept across the Ashenwood.
Nyxara raised her head, tasting the air.
Southwest. Three days if we hurry.
A duke, pale silver on his smallest finger.
The last to hang a heart here.
It still beat, in a jar by his nightstand.
He talks to it when he thinks no one listens.
Sunniless cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders.
The weight of his new body was perfect.
"Then let's go say good morning."
One step.
The forest parted.
Trees bent aside.
Shadows coiled at his feet like hounds.
Nyxara flowed beside him, dark river, golden eyes.
Purpose clicked into place inside his chest.
Sharp. Clean. Hungry.
The slums taught him the world was a butcher's block.
Now he was learning to be the knife.
And the first cut would be beautiful.