Read Chapter 7: First Attack

The inn at Fallow’s Rest smelled of woodsmoke, spilled ale, and something underneath—a sweetness that didn’t belong, like fruit left too long in the sun. Elara noticed it the moment they pushed through the door, and she saw Dain’s nostrils flare too. He didn’t look at her. He looked at the room.

A dozen travelers dotted the common hall. A merchant nursed a cup by the fire. Two farmers argued over a game of dice. The innkeeper, a broad woman with flour-dusted sleeves, wiped her hands on her apron and gestured to a corner table. “Supper’s nearly done. You’ll take what’s left.”

Dain tossed a coin onto the counter. “We’ll take a room, too. Separate.”

“Only one left. Top of the stairs. It’s got two beds.” She caught the look on his face. “Take it or leave it, hunter.”

Elara set her bag down. “We’ll take it.”

Dain’s jaw tightened but he didn’t argue. He was good at not arguing in public. She’d learned that about him in the two days since they’d left the chapel. He saved his arguments for when they were alone, and she’d seen the way he watched her hands, checking whether the scratches on her forearm had closed.

They hadn’t.

The sweet smell grew stronger as they crossed the room. Dain’s hand drifted toward his belt, where a short blade hung sheathed. He moved with an ease that suggested practice, not threat, but his eyes were scanning the corners, the ceiling beams, the shuttered windows.

“You feel that?” he murmured.

Elara touched her chest. The ache was there, familiar now—a bruise behind her ribs that had settled in since the plague ward. “The smell?”

“That’s him. He’s been here. Recently.”

She wanted to ask how he knew. But before she could, a sound cut through the room—a low moan from the back corner, where a narrow door led to the kitchen. A man stumbled through it, clutching his side. Blood soaked his tunic, dark and spreading. He was young, maybe her age, with a hollow face and eyes that didn’t seem to see the room.

“Help,” he rasped. “Please. I need a healer.”

Elara moved before she thought. Her training was older than her fear, older than the bone-deep weariness that had become her shadow. She crossed the hall in three steps and caught the man as his knees buckled.

“Easy,” she said, lowering him to the floor. “Let me see.”

The wound was deep. A gash across his ribs, ragged, like something had clawed him. Not clean steel. Not an accident. Elara pressed her palm against it and felt the warmth of his blood, the pulse of his pain—and it was like opening a door into a furnace.

The pain hit her in a wave. She gasped, her vision white at the edges. His pain was a physical thing, a hot blade driven through her own side, and for a moment she forgot how to breathe. She felt the wound open in answer, her flesh tearing in sympathy, blood seeping through her sleeve.

“Elara.” Dain’s voice was sharp behind her. “Don’t.”

She ignored him. Her magic was a thread of light in her chest, thin and frayed, and she pulled it forward, fed it into the man’s wound. She felt the flesh knit under her palm, felt the edges of the gash pull together, close, seal. The pain receded from him, flowing into her instead, settling into her bones like fever.

She let go and fell back on her heels. Her side throbbed. Her arm was wet. The young man’s eyes cleared, focusing on her face.

“You… you saved me.”

“Don’t move,” she managed. “You need rest.”

But Dain was already there, hauling her to her feet with a grip like iron. “You’re bleeding.”

She looked down. Her own blood was soaking through the sleeve of her traveling coat, a dark stain spreading at her side. The wound she’d taken—the one that mirrored his—was not closing. It was still open, red and raw, and the sight of it made her stomach turn.

“It’ll heal,” she said.

“No, it won’t.” Dain’s voice was low and tight. He pulled her toward the stairs, away from the eyes of the common room. The innkeeper had gone pale. The farmers had stopped their game. Even the man she’d healed was staring at the blood on the floorboards with something like horror.

The sweet smell in the room grew thicker.

Dain stopped mid-step. His head snapped toward the window—the shutters were trembling, rattling in their frames, though no wind stirred the air. The candles guttered. The fire in the hearth dimmed to an ember glow.

“Get down,” Dain said.

He shoved Elara behind him as the window burst inward. A shape came through it—not a man, but something shaped like one. Tall. Thin. Its skin was pulled tight over a frame that seemed to have no flesh, only bone and shadow, and its face was smooth, featureless, like a mask worn inside out.

Elara didn’t scream. She couldn’t. The thing’s presence pressed against her like a weight, cold and heavy, and she felt her own emotions drain, flicker, gutter—fear, then nothing. Then fear again, weaker.

Dain moved. His blade was in his hand, and he crossed the space in a blur of motion that seemed impossible for a man his size. The shadow-creature turned to meet him, its arm lashing out, and the blade caught it—but the thing didn’t bleed. It didn’t flinch. Dark smoke curled from the wound, and the creature’s featureless face tilted toward the hunter.

“He’s here,” Dain muttered. “Not the beast. One of its echoes.”

The creature lunged again. Dain ducked, rolled, came up with the blade between them. His other hand reached for a pouch at his belt, and he threw something—a pinch of black powder that ignited midair with a flash of white light.

The creature recoiled, hissing. A sound like nails on slate, like the scrape of dry wings.

Elara pressed her hand to her bleeding side and forced herself to stay standing. She could feel the creature’s pull, the way it fed on the emptiness around it. She’d felt that pull before, in the chapel with Aldric, in the plague ward with the numb ones. It was the same thing, the same hunger, wearing a different shape.

But she could also feel something else. Something in her chest, cold and small and stubborn. The locket her mother had given her, the one Dain had recognized. It was warm against her skin.

“The locket,” she called out. “It’s hurting it.”

Dain glanced back at her, his face briefly open in surprise. Then he moved, sidestepping the creature’s next lunge, and grabbed her arm, pulling her toward him. He pressed her hand against the locket.

“Then you stay close,” he said.

The creature lunged again. Dain drove his blade into its chest, and this time the thing screamed—a thin, reedy sound that drilled into Elara’s skull. She felt the locket burn against her palm, hot as a coal, and the creature crumpled, folding in on itself like paper thrown into fire. It dissolved into threads of smoke that spread across the floor and vanished.

The room went silent. The fire flared back to life. The sweet smell was gone.

Elara sagged, the wall catching her before she hit the floor. Dain turned to her, his chest heaving, and his eyes went to her side. The blood was still there. Still wet.

“You used your magic,” he said. “That’s why it knew where we were.”

She shook her head. “I healed him. I couldn’t just watch him bleed.”

“He was bait.” Dain sheathed his blade. “That thing didn’t come for him. It came for you. It smelled the magic burning through you, and it followed it here.”

He took a step toward her, and his voice was quieter now, almost gentle. “Whatever you do from now on, Elara. You cannot heal. Not until we end this.”

The young man she’d saved was still on the floor. He was sitting up now, watching them, and his face was twisted with confusion.

“The thing that attacked me,” he said. “It came from the aqueduct. It wanted me to follow it. It kept whispering about a place where people don’t hurt anymore.”

Dain went very still. “Where is this aqueduct?”

“A day east. Near the town of Halworth.” The man swallowed. “But you won’t find people there. You’ll find empties. There’s a sickness gone through the whole town. No one feels anything. No one cries. No one bleeds.”

Elara looked at her own unclosed wound, the blood that wouldn’t stop, and felt cold settle into her chest.

“Then we’re going the wrong way,” she said. “We need to go to Halworth.”