Chapter 18

  POV: Radulf, Grand Prior of the Morduin Order’s Paladin Corp, Khed Division

  Radulf sat on the broken carcass of a stone arch, the heat of dying embers curling against his boots. The ruins stretched around him—blackened bones of what had once been something proud. A temple? A stronghold? It didn’t matter. Everything burned the same. Everything was eventually destroyed. He rolled the scrying mirror between his fingers, the enchanted piece of polished bronze catching the firelight in dull flashes.

  The silhouette in the mirror droned on. Some Deputy Prior from the Order. A sharp-voiced little man who spoke like he thought words could make up for a lack of spine. Radulf had stopped listening after the only words that mattered.

  Eskinder is dead.

  He had known it was coming. Everyone in the Order had. Eskinder, the Grand Prior of the Holrac Division and wielder of the Divine Mark called God-Eater, had been dying for years—thin as paper, his voice growing softer with each passing season. But Eskinder had been the kind of man who took his time with everything. A slow death seemed fitting. Peaceful, they’d said. In his sleep. Of course it was peaceful. Eskinder had already fought every battle worth fighting.

  And now he was gone.

  A strange hollowness opened in Radulf’s chest, unexpected and unwelcome. He had thought himself past grief. He had buried too many comrades, seen too much blood. But Eskinder—Eskinder had been different. The old bastard had taught him everything worth knowing. How to be a leader of men. How to break a man with a glance. How to bend the Roots of Yggdrasil to his will without letting it bend him back. How to walk away from the wreckage and never look over his shoulder.

  For a moment, just a moment, the anger didn’t touch him. Just the weight of that absence. A silence where something should have been.

  And then the Deputy Prior’s voice shifted—quieter, tighter. Radulf focused on the words again.

  “…upon his death, the God-Eater was released from his soul and returned to Artifact form, as expected. But before we could secure it—”

  Radulf’s fingers froze on the edge of the mirror.

  “—one of our own knights took it. A betrayal. A Holrac knight by the name of Boro. Two knights were dispatched in pursuit, but…” The man hesitated, like he knew how the next words would sound. “They failed. We received aetheric signatures indicating they have both perished. . . We have agents en route to locate and retrieve their bodies.”

  The world went very still.

  For a long while, Radulf said nothing. The fire crackled around him. Wind stirred the ash. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft. Too soft.

  “You sent two knights. Only two knight to retrieve the God-Eater?”

  “…Yes, Grand Prior. The artifact was taken under unusual circum—"

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  “You sent two knights.” The words cut through the air like a razor. “For a Divine Mark. One of our Orders four holiest and most powerful Celestial Treasures?”

  “They were among our best—”

  “No Deputy Prior. No Division Commander. Two knights.”

  The Deputy Prior fell silent. The sort of silence that came when a man realized he had already lost and it was better to hold his tongue lest he lose his head.

  Radulf set the mirror down on his knee, staring at the hazy reflection of his own face. His knuckles burned where they gripped the edge. “Do you understand what you’ve allowed?” His voice stayed low, even. He didn’t raise it. He didn’t need to. “You let a traitor walk out with one of the most dangerous weapons in the known world. And your solution was to send two men. And now, we all sit in the ashes of their failure.”

  “Grand Prior—”

  Radulf stood, the scrying mirror still in his hand. “Failure is the price we pay for ambition. I understand that. I expect it.” He crushed the mirror between his fingers. The bronze plate groaned, then cracked, the magic inside sputtering out in a shower of golden sparks and colorful plumes of concentrated aether. “Incompetence, though? I do not abide incompetence.”

  The false wind picked up, sending a cloud of cinders spiraling around him.

  He had no use for words. No use for excuses.

  The scrying mirror flickered, the Deputy Prior’s silhouette wavering in the dim light like a candle about to go out. His voice, already thin with uncertainty, crackled through the dying enchantment.

  “The knights’ last confirmed location was near Valhadryan. That’s where their signatures faded.”

  Radulf’s ears perked up at that. Valhadryan. The place where all lost things seemed to end up. He rolled his shoulders, the weight of the God-Slayer within him a familiar pressure, ever-thrumming, ever-ready. He harmonized the emanation of his own soul with the resonance of destruction.

  He tilted his head. “Do I need to leave the Tower and handle it myself?”

  The Deputy Prior hesitated, choosing his words like a man picking through a field of broken glass. “N-no, Grand Prior. The team we’ve dispatched will locate the God-Eater. We will keep you updated, of course.”

  Radulf exhaled through his nose. The logical part of him agreed. His work at the Tower was important—maybe more important than the God-Eater. A strange thought, but not one he could dismiss outright. The Tower held secrets. And secrets, in the right hands, were worth more than any Divine Mark.

  “Fine,” he said, closing his fingers over the cracked mirror. “Use one of the others from my team if you need to reach me. There’s an issue with mine.”

  “Yes, Grand Prior.”

  The mirror gave one final flicker, then dimmed, its magic spent. Radulf let it drop from his fingers, the shattered bronze plate landing with a dull clink on the scorched stone.

  He stood, brushing ash and debris from his coat. The air reeked of charred flesh, burnt ozone, the lingering stench of magic spent in violence. Behind him, the body of the dragon lay in ruin, its scales still smoldering, smoke curling from deep gouges in its flesh.

  Once, it had been a thing of majesty.

  Now, it was just another corpse. Radulf had long accepted that his path to glory was littered with corpses. Such was the fate of the one who wielded the God-Slayer Mark.

  His subordinates had already descended on the carcass like carrion birds, prying loose scales, extracting venom glands, hacking off whatever parts would fetch a price on the open market, or otherwise be useful for the Artificers of the Morduin Order. One of them, a wiry man with a scar splitting his brow, glanced up as Radulf strode past.

  “Move out,” Radulf ordered.

  The subordinate barked the command, and the rest of the team snapped into action, leaving the dragon’s remains behind. They all wore the black robes of the Paladin Corp, and the black masks of the Khed Division. The wiry man donned his own mask, coughing an apology for having taken it off. Only the Grand Priors were truly permitted to not wear the mask while on official business of the Order. Their position and title was the greatest mask of all. When you became a Grand Prior, you buried your old identity. By that time, there was no one in the world who truly remembered what you looked like under the mask, anyways.

  Radulf barely noticed. His mind was already elsewhere—turning over the pieces, fitting them into place. He would reclaim the God-Eater. That much was certain.

  But first things first.

  He had a tower to climb.

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