Prologue
The Night a God Died
"Every story of a devil begins with a death. Mine began with hers while she was watching over me."
It was raining the night my old life ended.
Not dramatic rain.
Just the quiet, cold kind that soaks through jackets and makes everything grey.
I was cutting across the school courtyard when I heard it something falling from the east roof. A shape tumbling through the air with the horrible, graceless weight of something that had forgotten how to fly.
A single white wing trailed behind her.
Torn ragged. Shedding feathers that burned gold, then grey, then nothing.
I caught her.
I don't know why. Every instinct said run.
My arms were already open.
She was light. Terrifyingly cold. Silver hair plastered to a sharp, beautiful face. One remaining wing folding against my chest like a sail coming down.
Her eyes opened.
Lightning through storm glass.
"You," she breathed.
Her voice cracked.
"You can see me."
Like that was the cruelest thing I could have done.
She died three seconds later.
And something inside my chest cracked open.
Not pain. Something else.
A door. Swinging wide. Releasing a light so red and so furious it had no right to exist inside an ordinary boy.
That was when she stepped out of the dark.
Calm as starlight.
Devastating as a verdict.
Black hair. Rain-soaked. Eyes like two red eclipses.
She looked at me cataloguing, measuring and then the corner of her mouth curved.
Not warmth. Not cruelty.
Something far more dangerous than either.
"Interesting," said Seraphina Valcrest, heir to the House of the Eternal Flame.
She held out a chess piece. Old blood-red.
A King.
"Die here in the rain," she said. "Or live as something worth fearing."
A pause.
"I'll only ask once."
The Sacred Gear in my chest screamed.
It had been waiting seventeen years for exactly this moment.
I took the piece.
God help me.
I took the piece.
End of Prologue