THE ASHEN HEIR AND THE HOLLOW CROWN

THE FIRST HARVEST

Time slowed.

Kael would remember that later, and he would never be able to explain it. The nightmarish’s claw descended through the smoky air like a falling blade, and he could see every ridge on it, every drop of black fluid sliding along the curved bone. He could see Vell, ten paces away, her mouth open in a shout that had not yet reached his ears.

He could see that the creature was going to kill him.

He could also see, with a clarity that made no sense, that it was favouring its left side.

There was a wound there, half hidden beneath the glistening hide, where some soldier’s spear had gone in before the soldier died. The creature was guarding it. Every lunge it made was slightly shorter on that side, slightly slower.

Eighteen hours of siege theory, Kael thought, with something close to hysteria. Twelve years of Brennan’s lectures. Find the weakness. Let the enemy tell you where it is.

He did not try to block. He did not try to run.

He stepped inside the claw.

The edge of it ripped across his shoulder, a line of ice that became fire. He felt his coat part, felt skin split. But he was under the arm now, close enough to smell the thing’s breath, a stench of rot and frozen iron, and the wounded flank was right there, a dark, weeping gap in the armour of its body.

He drove the spear in with both hands and all his weight.

The nightmarish screamed.

It was the worst sound Kael had ever heard, a human voice stretched over a thousand broken strings. The creature thrashed, and the haft wrenched in his grip, and he was flung bodily across the rampart. His back hit the parapet. Air left his lungs. Stars burst behind his eyes.

The nightmarish staggered, clawing at the shaft buried in its side, crimson eyes guttering. It took one step toward him. Then another.

Then Sergeant Vell’s spear came down through the back of its skull.

The creature folded. It hit the stones with a wet, heavy thud and did not move again.

For a long moment, nobody breathed.

“The wounded flank,” Vell said.

She was standing over Kael, chest heaving, blood on her cheek that was not her own. Around them, the remaining soldiers of the Eighth Cohort were finishing off the other two creatures, whose screams had thinned into wet, gurgling silence.

“You saw the wounded flank,” she said again. “How?”

“It favoured it,” Kael whispered. His throat felt like sand. “Every attack was shorter on that side. It was… obvious.”

“To whom?”

He had no answer. She studied him for another moment, then reached down, took his good arm and hauled him upright with startling strength.

“You are bleeding,” she said. “Get to the infirmary. And, Varyn…”

“Yes?”

“Nobody here hears you took that thing’s attention for six breaths. Not unless you want every officer on this wall asking why a sealed-core prince can do what a trained spearman could not.”

He understood. It was a warning, and it was also, strangely, a kindness.

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

“Do not thank me.” She was already turning away. “Just stay alive long enough to make it worth the trouble.”

The infirmary was a nightmare of its own. Rows of cots, men groaning, a single exhausted healer with sleeves rolled to the elbow, working through the line with needle and thread and a bottle of something that smelled like turpentine. Kael waited his turn on a bench near the door, one hand pressed to his shoulder, blood slowly soaking through his fingers.

It was only when he was alone, tucked into a shadowed corner while the healer worked on someone else, that the ring grew warm again.

[ FIRST KILL ACKNOWLEDGED ]

[ Target: Nightmarish (Tier 1). Credited: 80% to host, 20% to external contributor. ]

[ Harvest available. Proceed? Y / N ]

Kael stared at the words. His heart began to thud.

Harvest.

He was a strategist by training. He had been taught never to take a gift without asking the price. But he was also a prince who had been exiled, bleeding, in a dying fortress at the end of the world, and he could not afford to be careful.

He thought yes.

The world dissolved.

He was standing in a street he had never seen.

It was a city of white stone beneath a sky the colour of old pearls, and it was beautiful. Tall towers wound with ivy. Lamps burning gold in the windows. Children running along the cobbles, laughing, their bare feet slapping the stone. A woman in a green dress called out a name that sounded like Tomas, and a boy turned and waved.

Kael was seeing it from somewhere low. From someone’s eyes.

Then the sky began to bleed.

It started at the horizon, a thin line of crimson spreading like ink through water. The laughter stopped. The woman in green looked up, and her face changed. Kael felt the body he was inhabiting seize with terror, felt a scream rise in a throat that was not his. The street tilted. The towers bent. The ground opened.

And then there was only pain, and a long, endless falling, and a hunger that had no name.

Kael came back to himself on the bench with a gasp, nearly toppling to the floor.

His shoulder was no longer bleeding.

He looked down. The torn flesh had closed to a thin pink line, as though a week had passed in an instant. His hands were shaking. His pulse hammered in his ears. And above his head, the blue words were waiting.

[ HARVEST COMPLETE ]

[ Acquired: Strength +2. Agility +3. Endurance +2. ]

[ Acquired skill: Predator’s Sight (Rank F). You perceive the weakest point of a wounded target. ]

[ Acquired memory fragment: The White City. ]

[ Seal integrity: 99.7% → 99.1%. ]

Kael read it three times. The last line stopped him cold.

Seal integrity. The very thing Brennan had warned him about. The thing that had been placed there, not born into him.

The system was not only giving him power. It was eating the seal. Every kill, every harvest, chipped away at the lock someone had put on him.

Which meant that somewhere, someone had built a very deliberate cage, and the creatures of the Wall were the key.

And the thing I killed, he thought, hands trembling. It was not a monster once. It was a boy named Tomas.

He pressed his forehead against the cold stone of the wall. He felt sick. He felt, God help him, stronger than he had ever felt in his life. Both things were true at once, and he did not know how to hold them.

A shadow fell across him.

“You are not hurt,” said a quiet voice.

Kael looked up.

A man stood a few steps away, thin and stooped in a healer’s grey robe, with a face so ordinary that it seemed designed to be forgotten. He was holding a bowl of water and a rag. His eyes were fixed on Kael’s shoulder, on the unbroken skin beneath the torn cloth.

“The wound was deep,” the man said softly. “I saw it from across the room. And now it is closed. Interesting.”

“It was shallower than it looked,” Kael said.

“Yes. I am sure that is what it was.”

The man smiled, a small, tired, knowing smile. Then he set the bowl on the bench beside Kael and walked away without another word.

Kael did not breathe until the man had disappeared behind a curtain.

Someone saw.

He looked at the grey ring on his finger. It had gone dull again, an ordinary piece of cheap metal. But in the depths of his mind, he could still feel the memory of the white city, and the crimson wound spreading through its sky, and a boy’s voice crying out a name.

The empire had been lying about the Ashfront for a very long time.

Now Kael was beginning to understand why.