A heavy thunk sounded as the tumblers lurched into place. Hinges squealed as the door swung open. His footfalls echoed on the dust-covered stairs as he started his way up to the top of the tower.
He should have brought a light globe. The lancet windows had been boarded closed ages ago, so only splinters of daylight pierced the gloom, forcing him to go slowly up the narrow, twisting stairs. Finally, he came to the top, where another door waited. He fumbled for the lock, turned his key again, and then emerged into a dim, musty room.
It was here, hidden behind shattered furniture and giant cobwebs, that the Caberwill shrine had been abandoned after the Red Dawn.
When Rune had come here before—only once, with his parents when he’d become crown prince and inherited Opi’s key—it was over quickly, and he hadn’t been given a proper chance to look. But he’d never forgotten that little spark of mystery and wonder, and sometimes he dreamed of climbing the tower stairs again. (At other times, somewhat shamefully, he’d dreamed that he’d traveled to Winterfast Island to awaken her, that he’d become her second in battle, worthwhile, selfless, more like his brother.)
It was a thrilling yet terrifying fantasy, one he’d often turned over in his mind in the moments before he fell asleep, polishing every detail into perfection.
Of course, he hadn’t had time for that lately. He’d grown out of it, and if anyone asked, he was completely over his fascination with the Nightrender.
Now, his heart pounded, and with no one here to draw away his attention, he gazed at the simple stone altar, filthy with dust and grunge, and even droppings. There was a relief of her on the front, just a faint suggestion of a body and upraised wings, but it was obscured by dirt and the bone-white scrape of rock, as though someone had tried to scratch away her image.
Ire stirred in his chest, seeing the Nightrender’s shrine in such a state.
He knew the history—of course he did—but she’d protected the people of Salvation for thousands of years. This was disrespect of the highest order.
It didn’t feel right to summon her like this, when she’d been neglected for so long. Quickly, he tried to brush off the grime, but it had sunk into the pores of the stone and would not be removed without more effort than he could give right now.
A thin, warning voice sounded in the back of his head, but he crushed it. This moment required action.
“Perhaps it won’t even work,” he whispered.
But perhaps it would.
And if he was being honest, he wanted this. He knew he shouldn’t, but he did. Every piece of him wanted to see her, just once, and to deny that feeling would be to deny destiny.
This was destiny.
Rune’s whole body was lightning as he knelt before the shrine and pressed his palms to either side of the relief. Even scratched out and hard to see, she was magnificent.
“Give me strength,” he prayed to Elmali. The patron Numen of Caberwill had never helped him before, but praying—in this moment of all moments—couldn’t hurt. “Bless me with courage and wisdom.”
Then he spoke the simple and forbidden words: “Nightrender, I summon you.”
Dark light erupted from the shrine, flooding across his hands and arms and face and chest. It grew, stealing his breath until the blast overwhelmed him, and he fell backward, unconscious.
5.
NIGHTRENDER
For the first time in four hundred years, Nightrender opened her eyes.
Cool darkness shrouded her room, but daylight speared the crumbling shutters. She could feel the sun slipping lower in the sky, feel the drifts of snow that rippled up against the base of the tower. There was the sound of the surf far below. Otherwise, her world was dim and quiet and strange.
And wrong.
When she sat up and peered through the gloom, it was only to discover the battle against entropy had been ceded long ago. Dust and snow covered the floor, while cobwebs crackled with a fresh coat of ice. Where she’d lain on the bed was a negative space: dirt and mildew and rot stained the sheets around her with darkness.
It didn’t even stink anymore; the odor of abandonment had expired a hundred years past.
A moment of discomfort pulsed through her. One beat. Two.
Usually when she awakened, there were caretakers with offerings of fresh food and clothes in the latest fashions. Not that she cared for the latest fashions, but she had always done her best to put the humans at ease—a challenge with her wire-thin frame, sword-sharp gaze, and midnight-dark wings that stretched twice as wide as she was tall. More than once, she’d been told that humans found her unsettling to look at, even when they wanted to look. Even her soul shard had been taken aback a few times.
Nightrender pressed her hand against her heart, yearning for a connection lost hundreds and thousands of years ago, so many times, and suddenly she was steeply aware of how alone she was.
No humans, no food, no clothes. All the gowns and trousers and fine silk shirts left in the wardrobe had crumbled away. As she drifted through the empty rooms and corridors of Winterfast Tower, as softly as a breeze, she stretched her senses wide. There were no sounds, save the rising wail of wind outside and the occasional scuff of her footfalls where the stones had shifted over the centuries.
Her passage disturbed only the dust and snow collecting in the halls and the heavy air that hadn’t been breathed in hundreds of years. It tasted like death where it touched the back of her tongue.
Nightrender moved down the grand spiral stairs, past the library of decomposing stories and the armory of rusted memories. There was something disconcerting about walking through a home that had somehow become a mausoleum.
They’re probably all dead.
The thought crept in, prickling against her mind before she could stop it.
All the humans? All the kingdoms? All the world?
What if there’s nothing left for you to protect? What if you’re completely alone in the universe?
For a heartbeat, the sense that they had all left her was utterly complete and—she gripped the splintering stair rail—terrifying.
But then the sensation vanished, and her customary calm confidence came rushing back.
Someone had summoned her, or she would not have awakened. If they were all dead, all the millions of humans who lived on Salvation, then she would have slept through to the end of time.
Millennia of memories stretched behind her; Nightrender could easily imagine sleeping for the rest of eternity, her tower crumbling in, her body covered in debris and earth and water and the weight of both forever and never.
She resisted the temptation to indulge in melancholy any further. No one was going to appear to dress her, to inform her of the happenings in the human kingdoms, to prepare her for battle against the rancor. No one would tell her that her Dawnbreakers had been chosen, that her armies were raised and waiting at the Soul Gate. No, it was only her now, but their absence didn’t absolve her of her duties.