Elias Sahl · Prologue
Garrik Thorne was running.
Not to win a battle. Not to reach an enemy, nor to beat everyone else to the warm bed of a woman far too young for a man his age and far too clever for his lies.
He was running to save his own life.
He was forty-seven years old, still had a sword in his hand, three cracked ribs, an open gash above his right eye, and a mouth full of the metallic taste of blood. His left side burned with every breath. His right leg answered a fraction too late. The arm holding the blade was numb to the elbow.
But he ran.
Through smoke and screams.
Through the gutted, burning houses of Valdombra, where that morning chickens had pecked peacefully in the mud and the women at the bakery had argued over the price of flour.
Now the bakery was burning.
A woman lay sprawled across the threshold, bent in a way no body should ever bend. A man with no lower jaw dragged himself along the street on both hands. A horse ran in circles through the square, its belly torn open, stumbling over its own entrails.
Garrik did not stop.
Behind him, something scraped across the cobbles.
A dry dragging sound.
Then another.
He did not look back.
The dyers’ alley lay ahead. Narrow. Dark. Choked with smoke. If he made it through, he would reach the canal road, beyond which stood the old bridge, and from there, the willow grove. And in the willow grove, two horses were waiting for him, tethered well out of sight.
His private way out.
No one knew about the horses.
Not his men.
Not the ten first-class mages who had accompanied them on that godforsaken mission.
Least of all the velvet-gloved official who had handed him the contract three weeks earlier.
Garrik Thorne had not survived thirty years of wars, hunts, and ugly business by telling the whole truth to the people who paid to own him.
He slipped on something soft.
His foot shot sideways. His shoulder slammed into the wall of a house, and he felt a rib shift where no rib had any business shifting. His vision flashed white.
The sword scraped against stone.
The sound brought him back.
Garrik forced himself onward, gasping.
His hands were shaking.
That infuriated him more than the pain.
Garrik Thorne had held a sword steady with three broken fingers, fought in the rain with an arrow in his thigh, and laughed in the faces of men far larger and better armed than he was.
And yet now he was as frightened as a child in the dark.
Not the healthy fear every warrior feels before a fight.
This was panic.
Breathe, he ordered himself.
Bridge. Canal. Willows. Horses.
Don’t think about the dead.
Bridge. Canal. Willows. Horses.
A body fell from a window in front of him.
It struck the cobbles with a soft thud. An old woman, perhaps one of the villagers who had remained inside when they cleared the town for the ambush. She still wore a gray shawl. Her head lolled to one side, her neck broken.
Garrik jumped over her.
The old woman opened her eyes.
She grabbed his boot.
Garrik pitched forward and smashed his chin against the stone. Blood flooded his mouth.
The old woman dragged herself toward him.
She did not scream or breathe.
Her eyes were milky, but her hands reached for him with obscene determination.
Garrik kicked out. His heel struck her nose. Cartilage and bone gave way.
But she did not let go.
“No.”
The word came out low.
It was not an order.
It was a plea.
The old woman opened her mouth. Black blood ran from her gums.
Garrik brought the sword down.
Once.
Twice.
On the third stroke, he severed her wrist.
The hand remained clamped around his boot.
He tore it away with a growl and started running again.
Don’t look back.
Smoke burned his eyes and filled his throat. Behind him the dragging continued, but by then he no longer needed to turn around to know what was chasing him.
A childhood memory came crashing back: his grandfather telling stories about the Dark Lord.
The Dark Lord did not merely kill.
Men could do that.
He took the dead and sent them back.
Fathers against sons. Brothers against sisters. Soldiers against the companions with whom they had shared bread the day before.
That day his father had slapped him hard enough to knock him to the ground.
“The dead don’t walk,” he had shouted. “Those are just the stories of a mad old man.”
For forty years Garrik had believed him.
Now, his grandfather’s stories had started running after him.
The alley opened onto a small inner courtyard. Garrik reached the well in the center and leaned against it, doubled over.
One, two, three breaths.
No more.
How did we end up here?
The job was supposed to be simple.
A hostile subject.
That was what they had called the target.
Dangerous. Unstable. Responsible for attacks on nobles and officials. Advanced magical training. Motives not fully established.
Contain alive, if possible.
Suppress, if necessary.
Garrik had read those words in a private room at an inn far too expensive for him, sitting across from a pale official who smelled of lavender soap.
“You will have magical support. Ten first-class mages.”
Garrik had raised an eyebrow.
“Ten? For one person?”
The official had not smiled.
That should have been enough.
Ten first-class mages were an army within the army. They could breach a fort or break a company of heavy infantry. For a single rebel, they were far too many.
The pay, too, was excessive.
Garrik had sensed they were hiding something.
Even so, he had accepted the job.
Easy money had always been one of his weaknesses.
At Valdombra they had prepared bait and cleared most of the town. Then they waited.
The figure arrived alone, wrapped in a dark cloak, face hidden beneath the hood.
Lothar, beside Garrik, narrowed his eyes.
“Looks like a woman,” he muttered.
Then ten mages closed the circle.
Ten.
Runes ignited beneath the hooded figure’s feet. Golden chains rose from the paving stones and wound around its body.
For one moment it looked as though it was over.
Garrik was already thinking about the pay, the wine, and Lothar demanding his share before he had even cleaned his blade.
Then the figure raised its head.
Nothing else.
Only that.
And a voice crossed the square.
Deep. Immense. It did not seem to come from a human throat.
Garrik did not understand the words.
Above them, the sky opened.
Not with light.
With the deepest black.
Dozens of circles appeared suspended over the square, motionless and deep as wells dug into the night.
Dark bolts fell from them.
It was not an explosion.
It was not a battle.
It was an execution.
The mages were the first to fall. Their shields flared, trembled, gave way. Then came the soldiers, and finally Garrik’s men.
Everything happened so quickly that for several heartbeats he did not even understand that he had survived.
The voice came again.
A second incomprehensible proclamation.
Then one of the dead mages rose and hurled a bolt of light at his own allies.
That was when Garrik stopped looking for explanations.
He ordered the retreat and started running with every breath he had left in his body.
A blow against the courtyard door dragged him back to the present.
Garrik turned.
Another blow.
Then the wood gave way.
And what had once been Lothar appeared before him.
His neck bent the wrong way. His mouth full of black blood. One hand dragged a spiked mace that had never belonged to him.
There was no longer enough life in Lothar’s eyes to recognize him.
But he was coming for him.
Garrik felt his heart drop.
No, Lothar.
Not you.
Lothar had been with him for twelve years. He had saved Garrik’s life at Merga. Stolen his wine at Cantarossa. Once kept him from marrying a widow with three children and two knives hidden under her pillow.
Lothar lurched forward.
Garrik met him with a strangled shout and struck him in the temple.
The blade sank in.
It was not enough.
Lothar kept coming.
Garrik shattered one knee, drove him against the well, and rammed the sword into his neck.
He hacked until the head dropped into the empty bucket with a dull thump.
The body took three more steps.
Then collapsed.
Garrik stood staring at it.
He had seen men die in every possible way. He had slept beside corpses without dreaming of them. He had believed he had killed the child who once listened to his grandfather’s stories.
He had been wrong.
That child was still there.
And now he was screaming.
Garrik ran out of the courtyard.
The bridge was close.
Fifty paces, perhaps less.
He could make it.
Behind him Valdombra burned. The dead moved through the streets, some of them still able to use the weapons and magic they had possessed in life. Garrik heard blows, explosions, screams, and incantations, but he stopped looking.
His escape route was ahead of him.
The bridge.
The willows.
The horses.
When he heard a sound to his left, he stood still one heartbeat too long.
Something slammed into him.
It was Sella dei Ponti.
Or what remained of her.
She had lost both arms during the massacre, but that did not stop her from throwing her whole body at Garrik, trying to bite his throat.
He fell onto his back.
Sella’s mouth snapped shut a finger’s breadth from his face.
Dirty teeth.
Empty eyes.
“Sella!”
He did not know why he had called her name.
Perhaps because some idiotic part of him still hoped a name might hold something back.
It did not.
Garrik managed to wedge a knee between them, shoved her aside, grabbed her by the hair, and drove his sword up beneath her chin.
The blade came out through the top of her skull.
Sella went limp.
Garrik shoved her away and staggered to his feet.
The bridge was there.
Ten paces. Perhaps fewer.
For one moment he truly believed he was going to survive.
Then the paving stone beneath his right foot cracked.
The sound was small, almost gentle.
Garrik looked down.
“No.”
The earth impaled him.
A black root erupted from below, thick as a man’s wrist. It entered beneath his ribs, tore through his left side, and burst from his chest in a hot spray.
Garrik remained standing.
His body had not received the news yet.
He stared at the root jutting from his chest.
He tried to breathe.
The world broke apart.
He fell to his knees.
“Earth magic,” he murmured.
Until then he had seen black circles, dark formulas, and dead men obeying.
He had believed, insofar as it was possible to believe anything inside that nightmare, that he was facing a practitioner of dark magic.
Instead, the earth had struck him.
Roots.
Life turned into a spear.
Could that thing command the earth as well?
The root withdrew.
Garrik fell onto his side. He managed to drag himself to the wall of a half-destroyed house and let himself slide down against it.
Only ten paces separated him from escape.
Death, he thought, was a whore with a grim sense of theater.
He spat blood.
His left lung had collapsed. He knew it from the wet sound in his chest. He had heard it too many times in other men’s breathing not to recognize it in his own. He did not have five minutes.
Perhaps not even three.
Valdombra burned before him.
Slowly, the terror began to recede.
Not because he had become braver.
Courage was a matter for men still able to choose.
Garrik had no choices left.
So fear lost its teeth, and in its place came a cold clarity.
This was no arcane rebel, no hostile subject.
What the stories spoke of had become real.
The Dark Lord took the dead and hurled them against the living.
The Dark Lord could not be captured by ten mages, forty mercenaries, and an old idiot with a head full of promises.
Garrik looked at the bridge, so close it seemed like mockery.
Then he spat blood and smiled.
They sent us to capture the Dark Lord.
What fools we were.
End of the sample
This preview ends here. The rest of the chapter will be available in the complete novel.
© 2026 Elias Sahl · All rights reserved