The stone under Kael’s boots was already cracking when the second blade came for his throat.He ducked low. The blade missed his ear by an inch. He slammed his shoulder into the attacker’s ribs and heard something crack. No time to celebrate. A third trial climber was circling to his left, staff crackling with lightning. Kael’s arms were shaking. Two floors of fighting had drained him dry.Four against one. Nobody climbed the Ashcrown Trial Tower expecting fair odds on the ninth floor. He just hadn’t expected his own cousin to be one of the four.He’d known, climbing up through the lower floors together, that something felt wrong about how eager Doran had been to stick close. Heirs didn’t usually bother watching out for Nullborns on a climb this dangerous, not out of kindness, and Doran had never once pretended kindness was his strong suit. Kael had told himself it didn’t matter. He needed the company, whatever the reason behind it. He understood now, far too late, exactly what kind o

The tunnel past the pillars had no torches. No runes. Nothing to explain why Kael could see at all, until he realized, with a cold little jolt, that the faint grey light in his vision was coming from behind his own eyes.He didn’t think about that too hard. There’d be time for horror later. Right now there was only the dark ahead, and the curse mark under his ribs counting down toward a number he refused to think about again until he had to.The passage sloped down for what felt like the whole length of the Tower above it. Stone gave way slowly to something rougher, older. The carved symbols on the walls grew cruder and more frequent the deeper he went. Twice he passed alcoves holding things he didn’t stop to name, shapes too still to be sleeping, too whole to be simple bones.The third alcove moved.Kael froze as a construct unfolded itself from the dark. Man shaped, but wrong in the proportions. Its surface was a lattice of the same crude symbols carved into the walls. Its eyes lit

Varic’s study smelled like old paper and expensive wine. Kael stood in the doorway a moment, just looking, letting himself remember every dinner where this man had smiled at him across a table and asked polite, empty questions.Varic sat with his back to the door, a quill moving fast across some ledger, and didn’t look up.“Doran, if that’s you, I told you not to come here after.”“It’s not Doran.”The quill stopped. Varic’s shoulders went rigid, one long slow second before he turned in his chair.He was good, Kael had to admit. His uncle’s face barely moved. Only his eyes gave him away, a flash of pure, animal shock, gone almost as fast as it came.“Kael.” Varic set the quill down with careful precision, like a man buying himself time to think. “You’re supposed to be dead.”“So I keep hearing.” Kael stepped inside, letting the door click shut behind him. “Funny how many people already knew to expect it.”“I don’t know what you.”“Doran told me everything.” Kael’s voice was flat and e

Finding Kessa Voss took two days and a handful of questions asked in exactly the wrong places, which was the point. Word traveled fast in the Quarter when someone was looking for a ranked heir, and Kael had learned quickly that the fastest way to find the hunters was to let them think they were hunting him first.She caught up to him in an alley behind the tannery on the third night, spear already lowered, face set in the same cold focus she’d worn on the ninth floor.“They said you were dead.” Kessa’s eyes narrowed, taking in the torn clothes, the healing bruises, the wrongness in how he stood now, too still, too certain. “I don’t know what you are, but you’re not walking away from this alley.”“Funny.” Kael didn’t move from where he leaned against the wall. “That’s almost exactly what Doran said.”Something flickered across her face, not fear, not yet, but the first crack of doubt. “You spoke to Doran?”“I spoke to Doran. Then I spoke to Varic.” Kael pushed off the wall, unhurried.

The hall of House Ashvane had never been silent before. Not once, in three hundred years of Grand Audits, had anyone dared let it fall quiet like this.Kael let them stare.He’d walked in through the front doors, in plain sight, past guards who took one look at his face and simply froze, some order from above telling them not to engage, or maybe just pure animal instinct warning them this wasn’t a fight worth having. Word of what happened to the last three guards had clearly traveled fast.“You’re dead.” Lord Ren, the Steward’s own son, found his voice first, though it cracked on the second word. “The Trial reports confirmed it. The examiners confirmed it. You are dead, Nullborn.”“I was,” Kael said, almost gentle, which made it worse. “Something down there disagreed.”He raised his hand. Not to strike, just to show them. Threads of unlight curled between his fingers, black the way the space between stars was black, and where they touched the marble floor, the ancient Ashvane sigil ca