The Rune of Eldrath.

CHAPTER 5: THE HUNTER AND THE VESSEL

Garrick had protected a king before.

King Aldren had been forty years old and suspicious of everyone who came within arm's reach of him, and Garrick had kept him alive through two assassination attempts and a deliberate poisoning over six years. That work had been clean. Identify the threat.

Remove it, keep the principal breathing. Aldren had been complicated but he had been human in the ordinary sense of the word, and his enemies had been human in the ordinary sense too.

Kael Voss was a different problem from any Garrick had worked before.

They stopped in the northern forest when the horses needed water. Garrick found a stream and tied both animals at the bank and let them drink.

Kael sat on a flat rock nearby with his right hand resting open on his knee and the rune glowing quietly in the dark between the trees. He had not tried to hide it since they cleared the city gates.

"Close your hand," Garrick said.

Kael closed his fist. "Does it show through?"

"Less." Garrick sat on a fallen trunk across from him. He kept his sword loose in the scabbard out of habit. "I am going to explain your situation to you and I need you to hear all of it before you say anything."

"You said one argument last time," Kael said.

"I still mean it. One. At the end." Garrick leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "The rune in your hand belongs to Eldrath. Eldrath was a god, old enough that the texts that described him were mostly destroyed after the last Rift War by people who wanted him forgotten. What survived is in pieces scattered across a dozen different archives, but I spent five years putting those pieces together." He watched Kael's face. "He was sealed away a thousand years ago.

The method used was his own power, poured into a single human bloodline. The human body acted as a container. The vessel potential passed down through that bloodline, generation to generation, dormant and invisible, until something activated it."

"The scroll," Kael said.

"Yes. Someone placed that scroll in your vault deliberately. The activation rune at the bottom was not accidental and the scroll was not misplaced. It was put in front of you specifically."

"Who did it."

"I do not know yet. I have suspicions but nothing solid." Garrick continued. "There are three relics that can control the god's power while it sits inside a vessel. A crystal spearhead, an iron crown, and a shard of starlight.

They were separated after the last Rift War and hidden across the realm because together they give whoever holds them total authority over the vessel. If you claim all three the god stays sealed inside you and cannot take over. If you do not claim them then over time the god will push you out completely and take control of your body."

Kael was quiet for a moment. "The thing that laughed when I used the power in the street. That was the god."

"Yes. It is called the Shadow Within in the older texts. It is patient and it does not need to rush because it has as much time as your body stays alive. It will offer you things. It will show you what you could have if you let it take over. The promises will feel real." Garrick met his eyes. "They are not real. Every vessel who accepted them ended up empty."

"And Malachar," Kael said.

"He wants the god's full power stripped from you and transferred to himself. He does not care what it does to you and he has every bounty hunter and soldier in the realm looking for you right now." Garrick paused. "Vespera the Veilwalker is the bigger immediate threat.

She was the king's chief advisor before she opened the first Void Rift on purpose five years ago. She has been feeding on stolen magic ever since and she wants the god's power for herself, not for Malachar. They are working together for now but that will not last."

Kael looked at his closed fist. Then he looked at Garrick.

"You want me to travel across a broken realm to find three magical objects while an exiled god tries to hollow me out from the inside and two different enemies try to capture or kill me." His voice was flat. "You want me specifically to do this."

"I do not want you to do anything," Garrick said. "I am telling you what happens if you do not."

"The Void keeps expanding."

"The Void consumes everything. Every city, every person, every piece of ground that has any living thing on it." Garrick did not soften it. "The Rift we saw tonight was small compared to what comes if the god is not sealed properly."

"I destroyed one creature," Kael said. "I do not even know how I did it. I did not choose to do it." He stood up and moved a few steps away and then turned back.

"I have never fought anyone. I have never been in a situation that required fighting. I lived underground in a building full of books and I was good at that and now everything about that life is gone in one night."

"I know," Garrick said.

"You keep saying you know like that helps."

"It does not help," Garrick said. "Nothing I say about it helps. You are still the only person who can carry the rune and the rune is already in your hand." He stood up.

"I will teach you to fight. I will teach you to read terrain and track soldiers and stay alive in conditions that should kill you. I have done this work for fifteen years, i am good at it."

Kael looked at him for a long time. "Why do you need this? You could walk away."

"I could," Garrick said. "I am not going to."

Kael opened his mouth to say something else and then stopped. His eyes went out of focus. He pressed his free hand to the side of his head and made a short sharp sound between his teeth.

"Kael," Garrick said sharply.

Kael did not answer. The rune in his fist blazed hard, the gold light beating fast and bright through his fingers. His whole body locked up rigid. Garrick crossed the distance between them in two steps and caught him before he hit the ground, lowering him onto his back on the forest floor.

"Stay with me," Garrick said. He pressed a hand firmly to Kael's shoulder. "Look at me."

Kael's eyes were open but pointed at nothing. His breathing came in short shallow pulls. The rune pulsed so brightly that the trees above them were lit gold for a full five seconds.

Then it faded.

Kael blinked. His chest heaved once. He looked up at Garrick above him.

His hazel irises flared pure gold.