The bronze bells of Eryndor sang their ancient song across cobblestone streets, each peal echoing off merchant stalls draped in crimson silk and gold thread.Banners snapped in the morning breeze… the royal sigil of the twin suns blazing from every rooftop, every window, every corner where celebration could take root.Children darted between the legs of adults, their laughter bright as the copper coins they clutched for honeyed tarts and spun sugar.Vendors called out their wares in voices hoarse from joy, holding aloft pastries that gleamed like jewels in the Festival of Radiance sun.The whole kingdom had dressed in light today. Even the gutters sparkled.All except the mud where Kael Draven knelt.His fingers, cracked and stained brown, worked the bristles of a worn brush against leather boots caked with horse dung and street filth. The boots belonged to merchants too proud to dirty their own hands, nobles too refined to acknowledge the boy who cleaned them.Water from his bucket h

The shackles cut deep, each jolt of the chain sparking fire in Kael’s wrists as the guards dragged him up the temple steps. The stones beneath his feet had been worn smooth by centuries of pilgrims— people who had come here seeking blessing, forgiveness, or the spectacle of punishment.The Temple Square yawned open before him, a hollow carved into the bones of the mountain. And it was full— so full Kael couldn’t make sense of it at first. Thousands of faces, pressed tight against one another, filling tiers carved from rock, spilling into balconies and rooftops. They leaned against iron rails meant to keep them off the sacred floor. He had never seen so many eyes, and every single one of them seemed to want him dead.High above the crowd, the stone gods stared without blinking. The Radiant Father with his hand forever raised in blessing. The Merciful Mother with arms spread wide. The Stern Judge, sword and scales frozen mid-balance. They had been carved long before Kael’s curse, before

The corrupted beast hit the ground like a falling boulder, the shock rattling loose dust from the temple walls. Once it had been a man… bones and breath, dreams maybe… but now the flesh had been twisted into something monstrous. Eight feet of muscle knotted wrong, jaw stretched wide enough to bite through stone. Yellowed fangs jutted crooked from blackened gums, and its eyes burned red. Not mindless. Worse. It remembered.It paced the ring, slow and deliberate, the way a wolf toys with a rabbit that’s already bleeding out. Each step clicked claw against stone. Foam slid from its mouth and hissed where it spattered the sacred floor.Kael staggered back, the chains at his wrists dragging like anchors. His ribs screamed with every breath, the bruises from the morning’s beating swelling hotter than fire. The Eclipse Mark seared under his shirt, but whatever power it promised stayed sealed, locked as uselessly as his shackles.“Come on!” a man from the stands shouted. “End it already!”“D

The beast’s fangs hovered inches from Kael’s throat, ivory daggers catching the torchlight as if eager for his blood. The creature did not lunge… it savored, lowering its jaws with cruel patience, breath hot and fetid with the stink of graves.Pinned beneath its weight, Kael could not move. His chest barely rose. Every attempt at breath stuttered shallowly, and his limbs might as well have been carved from stone. Only his eyes worked, forced to stare upward at the slow approach of death.Is this it? The thought crawled up through the haze of panic. Is this how a dog dies? Spat on, forgotten. Ripped apart for their joy.The crowd answered him with thunder.“Kill it!”“End the blight on House Draven!”“Let the cursed blood soak the stones!”A thousand throats screaming, a thousand hands pounding. The square itself seemed to shake with it. Kael had lived nineteen years beneath those voices… mockery, jeers, eager laughter at his suffering. He knew each cadence like a cruel lullaby.Perhap

The laughter crashed over Kael like a storm tide, thousands of voices breaking against him in cruel unison. What poured from the stands was no longer human mirth, but something monstrous… an echoing chorus that fed on pain and called it joy.“Did you see it fly?” wheezed an old merchant, bent double, tears streaming down his lined face. “Like a sack of grain tossed by a storm!”“The mutt thought it could matter!” shouted a woman from the upper tiers. “Look at it now!”Kael crawled across the stones, every inch marked with blood and dust. The faint shimmer of black fire licked at his wounds as he pulled himself closer to Fang’s still form. Broken ribs flared with every breath, yet he pressed forward.“Fang,” he whispered, fingers trembling as they stretched toward the hound’s motionless flank. “Stay with me… please.”From above came the voice that stilled the crowd in an instant—sharp, proud, merciless.“Pathetic.”Aelric Draven rose from the ivory throne, his golden hair a crown in th