Fort Giden

Fehrir Natalian noticed the blood before Julian said anything.

Of course she did.

She was standing near the service corridor when he entered the manor, carrying folded linens against one arm. Her dark-brown hair had been braided neatly down her back, and the plain black-and-white uniform of the DeRose household made her easy to overlook if one had spent a lifetime learning not to notice servants.

Julian had not.

Mostly because Fehrir had seen him injured too many times for invisibility to survive between them.

Her brown eyes dropped to his abdomen.

"Young Master."

"Please don't."

"You're bleeding."

"Technically, that's a recurring condition."

She did not smile.

Bad sign.

Fehrir placed the linens on a nearby table and approached.

"Sit."

"Father gave me nine minutes."

"Eight now."

Her tone remained gentle.

That somehow made the command stronger.

Julian sat on the edge of a bench.

Fehrir knelt before him and pulled aside the coat.

The bandage beneath had darkened again.

Her expression tightened.

"What happened?"

"Trigon."

"At Lazarell?"

"Apparently education has evolved."

She exhaled through her nose.

Then began reinforcing the dressing with the efficiency of someone who had performed similar work before.

Julian watched her hands.

Careful.

Quick.

No theatrical concern.

No judgment.

Fehrir simply repaired whatever portion of him had arrived home broken.

From the main hall came Jeane's voice.

"Fehrir."

"Yes, Lady DeRose?"

"Once we leave, Juny stays inside the grounds."

Juny appeared immediately from around a corner, sketchbook under one arm.

"That's unfair."

"It wasn't a vote," Jeane replied.

Lagons Rebirth, the senior household attendant, stood nearby receiving the rest of her instructions.

"No visitors without recognized seals. No training outside the inner yard. If the Council sends anyone, they wait."

Lagons bowed.

"Understood, my lady."

Juny looked at Julian's bandages.

Then at the courtyard beyond the open doors.

"Why is he going?"

An excellent question.

Julian glanced toward his mother.

Jeane's mouth tightened.

"Because your father decided he was needed."

Juny frowned.

"For what?"

Julian spread both hands.

"Outstanding torch-holding."

Fehrir pulled the bandage tighter.

Pain flashed through him.

"Ow."

"Apologies."

She did not look apologetic.

Juny looked even less convinced.

"Julian shouldn't go."

There was no judgment in it.

No talk of weakness.

Just worry.

That, somehow, struck deeper.

Julian reached over and tapped the top of Juny's sketchbook.

"Stay here."

"That's not an answer."

"Draw something insulting about Geen."

Juny considered this.

"Already did."

Good boy.

Fehrir finished the dressing and stood.

"Take more bandages."

"Mother already said that."

"Then for once, listen to both of us."

She placed a small wrapped bundle in his hand.

Bandages.

Salve.

A vial of something that smelled unpleasantly medicinal.

Julian tucked it into his coat.

"Thanks."

Fehrir gave a small bow.

Her expression remained worried after she lowered her eyes.

Julian pretended not to notice.

It was easier for both of them.

◇ ◆ ◇

His equipment fit into one bag.

Potions.

Bandages.

A steel dagger.

Combat gloves.

Dark coat.

Heavy boots.

Everything on that list could have belonged to an ordinary traveler with unusually poor expectations regarding safety.

Geen's equipment required weapon cases.

Antonius carried a sword famous enough to possess stories of its own.

Jeane's Liwet daggers had been engraved with flowing symbols that seemed to move when water touched the metal.

Julian had a knife.

A very respectable knife.

He tightened the straps of his gloves and examined himself in the bedroom mirror.

Messy black hair.

Dark eyes.

Fresh exhaustion.

He looked exactly like a man about to be transported somewhere because his father had discovered a strategic use for basic manual labor.

Perfect.

When he returned to the courtyard, Jeane was already inside the carriage.

Antonius sat near the front with a leather case of documents.

Geen had closed his eyes in a posture Julian suspected was meant to communicate meditation and superiority simultaneously.

Julian climbed aboard.

The doors shut.

The estate gates opened.

For the first hour, nobody spoke.

For the second, Julian became painfully aware that every rut in the road had developed a personal grudge against his abdomen.

By the third, Ostium had long since vanished behind them.

Fields gave way to rougher country.

The road narrowed.

Trees became sparse and twisted by wind. Human structures disappeared one by one until there was nothing beyond the carriage windows but stone, grass and distant slopes beneath a gray sky.

Jeane noticed Julian shifting.

"How is the wound?"

"Delighted."

She looked at Antonius.

"He shouldn't be here."

Antonius continued reading.

"The assignment requires four."

"It requires four combatants."

"It requires four DeRose."

Jeane's eyes hardened.

Those were not the same statement.

Julian understood that.

So did she.

Geen opened his eyes.

"Arguing now changes nothing."

Julian looked at him.

"Reassuring."

Geen ignored the tone.

"We retrieve the artifact and return."

"What artifact?"

Antonius turned a page.

"Information is compartmentalized."

Julian stared.

"This is a family mission."

"Correct."

"And he's family."

Jeane's interruption made Antonius finally look up.

For the briefest moment, husband and wife regarded one another across the narrow space.

Then Antonius closed the document.

"A relic recovered from structures beneath Fort Giden."

"What kind?"

"Unknown."

"Who wants it?"

"The Council."

"Why?"

"Unknown."

Julian blinked.

"And we're going anyway."

"Yes."

A smile with no humor touched his mouth.

"Fantastic."

Antonius reopened the file.

Conversation concluded.

Four hours after leaving the manor, the carriage stopped.

Fort Giden waited outside.

◇ ◆ ◇

The name suggested walls.

Barracks.

Watchtowers.

A fort.

What remained was mostly stone.

Ruined foundations clung to a bleak slope as though some older structure had been swallowed by the mountain and humans had once attempted, unsuccessfully, to claim the entrance. Moss covered broken blocks. Part of an old defensive wall had collapsed into brush.

Beyond it opened the cavern.

The entrance was enormous.

Cold air breathed from the darkness.

It smelled of wet earth.

Iron.

Something older than either.

Julian stepped down from the carriage.

His hand went unconsciously to the wound beneath his coat.

Geen joined him, gaze fixed on the cave.

"Fort Giden?"

"The fort was here," Antonius said.

He pointed toward the ruined stone.

Then toward the opening.

"The complex beneath it predates the Alliance."

Julian looked into the dark.

"That's much better."

"Old records suggest ritual use."

"Even better."

Jeane checked the straps around her Liwet daggers.

"Stay close."

Julian glanced at her.

"To whom?"

"Someone capable of carrying you out."

Geen made a quiet sound.

Julian looked at him.

"Was that a laugh?"

"No."

"Almost human."

"Equipment," Antonius ordered.

There it was.

The end of joy.

They entered.

◇ ◆ ◇

The darkness inside Fort Giden did not begin all at once.

Daylight followed them for a while.

Then became gray.

Then became a memory.

Lantern light replaced it.

Phosphorescent growth clung to portions of the walls, casting sickly blue-green color across stone. Some passages were clearly natural, their surfaces broken and irregular.

Others were not.

Those walls had been cut.

Not recently.

Not by anyone Julian recognized.

Geometric impressions repeated at shoulder height in certain corridors, half-erased by mineral deposits.

He ran gloved fingers over one.

"Writing?"

"Possibly," Geen said.

Julian glanced back.

Geen had drawn nearer without announcing it. In the cold cavern light, his perfect posture looked even more unnatural.

"Can you read it?"

"No."

"A historic moment."

Geen's stare promised future violence.

Jeane stopped ahead.

"Both of you."

Julian shut up.

For approximately thirty seconds.

Then Geen's lantern found the first skeleton.

The dead adventurer sat collapsed against a wall, armor rusted almost completely through. One hand still rested around the remains of a sword.

Several more bodies lay beyond it.

Some human.

Some difficult to classify.

Julian stared at the corridor.

"So when the briefing said abandoned—"

"It meant abandoned," Antonius replied.

Julian gestured toward the dead.

"They appear committed to the property."

Antonius crouched beside one body.

He examined the armor.

Then the stone around it.

"No recent decay."

"Comforting."

"The artifact is likely still undisturbed."

Julian looked at him.

Only Antonius could examine a corridor full of corpses and discover good news.

Jeane noticed the look.

She said nothing.

That was worse.

They continued downward.

The air grew colder.

Julian's breath began fogging.

The passage divided twice, then three times. Antonius chose routes using marks Julian could not see or logic he did not explain.

Eventually, the corridor widened.

Then vanished entirely.

Julian stopped at the edge of the opening.

The cavern beyond was impossible.

It rose higher than the manor and stretched farther than their lanterns could illuminate. Natural columns climbed into darkness. Stalactites descended like teeth from a ceiling lost hundreds of feet above them.

Metal glimmered among rubble on the ground.

Old coins.

Broken weapons.

Fragments of armor.

And in the center of it all—

something breathed.

The ground trembled.

Once.

Twice.

Jeane's hand moved toward her weapons.

Geen's entire body went still.

Antonius whispered one word.

"Positions."

Two enormous yellow eyes opened in the dark.

The Steppe Dragon rose.

Julian had heard the name before.

That did nothing to prepare him.

Its scales looked like moss-covered stone, layered thick across a body too large to belong underground. Spines ran along its back, several glistening with dark venom. When it lifted its head, its jaw opened wide enough to swallow a horse.

Julian's mouth went dry.

"There was a dragon in the briefing?"

"No," Geen said.

"Wonderful."

The beast roared.

Sound punched through Julian's chest.

His ears rang.

Jeane moved first.

Her dark skirt snapped around her boots as she drew both Liwet daggers.

Water gathered from the damp cavern air.

Not a little.

A wall of it.

"Move!"

The Steppe Dragon's tail swept across the chamber.

Jeane crossed the daggers.

The water compressed.

A violent shock wave exploded against the beast's flank.

The dragon shifted sideways, claws carving trenches through stone.

Geen was already running.

He drew his paired field blades and entered the creature's reach with horrifying confidence.

Silver arcs cut across green-black scales.

Blood struck the floor.

It hissed.

Antonius drew Gilty Defender.

The golden blade reflected no lantern light.

It produced its own.

He intercepted the dragon's descending jaw with a strike that sent sparks and fragments of scale across the chamber.

For several seconds, Julian forgot to breathe.

This was House DeRose.

Not portraits.

Not reputation.

Not his father's lectures.

This.

Three people moving against something that should have made humans insignificant.

Jeane redirected.

Geen cut.

Antonius controlled space.

They understood one another with the precision of violence practiced for years.

Julian stood behind a broken column with one hand around a dagger.

The comparison was obscene.

The dragon shifted.

Julian moved farther behind cover.

Shame burned hotter than fear.

What exactly was expected?

Should he run forward and stab one scale?

Perhaps the monster would die of embarrassment.

Geen's blade bit into its foreleg.

The dragon screamed.

Then inhaled.

Orange light appeared beneath the scales of its throat.

Antonius saw it.

"DOWN!"

Fire filled the cavern.

Jeane reacted instantly.

Water collided with flame.

Steam detonated outward.

Julian threw an arm across his face.

Heat became pressure.

Pressure became a crack loud enough to split thought.

The ceiling moved.

"No—"

Stone fell.

Enormous sections of rock collapsed between Julian and his family.

He ran.

A slab struck the ground before him.

Dust swallowed everything.

Julian hit the floor.

The roar of the dragon became muffled.

Then distant.

Then buried behind stone.

He coughed until his throat burned.

"Mother!"

No answer.

"Geen!"

Something struck rock on the other side.

Then Antonius's voice, faint through the barrier.

"Julian!"

"I'm here!"

"Stay where you are."

Julian stared at the wall of rubble.

Of course.

Stay there.

Wait.

Do nothing.

Let the real DeRose solve the problem.

"Can you clear it?"

"Not while the beast is active."

A second roar shook dust loose.

Jeane's voice followed.

"Julian, don't move! We'll come back for you!"

He pressed one hand against the rock.

"Fine."

No one could hear how bitter the word had become.

Julian stepped away.

The lantern near him had broken during the collapse.

Only the faint glow from the cavern walls remained.

Then he heard footsteps.

Not behind the rubble.

Ahead.

Julian turned.

There was a corridor at the far side of the chamber.

He could have sworn it had not been there before.

A figure stood inside it.

A woman.

Or girl.

The distance made age difficult to judge.

Her skin looked almost white in the dim light.

Long black hair spilled over a dark, old-fashioned dress whose silhouette belonged more naturally to a funeral portrait than a buried cave.

Something red glinted where her eyes should have been.

She was smiling.

Julian's dagger came up.

"Who are you?"

The figure tilted her head.

No answer.

"Are you trapped down here?"

Her smile widened by the smallest amount.

Then she turned.

Black hair vanished around the corner.

Julian stared.

Behind him waited several tons of stone and a dragon.

Ahead waited a mysterious woman who had apparently decided the impossible corridor required no explanation.

Every surviving instinct reached the same conclusion.

Do not follow her.

Julian followed her.

◇ ◆ ◇

"Wait!"

His boots struck smooth stone.

Not natural stone.

The passage had been built.

Its walls curved too perfectly. Dark marks ran through them in lines that seemed to change whenever Julian looked directly at them.

The woman remained ahead.

Always ahead.

Never running.

Never close enough.

"Stop!"

No answer.

Julian rounded another bend.

His abdomen pulled sharply beneath the bandage.

He slowed.

The figure vanished.

"Great."

He took another step.

The floor disappeared.

There was no crack.

No warning.

One moment stone existed beneath his boot.

The next, nothing did.

Julian fell.

His shoulder struck the side of the shaft.

Then his hip.

Then his back.

The final impact erased the world.

◇ ◆ ◇

Pain returned before sight.

Julian opened his eyes to absolute darkness.

Breathing hurt.

That was the first useful piece of information.

The second arrived when he attempted to move.

Something inside him was broken.

Possibly several things.

His hand found the side of his head.

Wet.

Warm.

Blood.

"Perfect."

The word barely escaped him.

His voice sounded too small for the dark.

Julian tried pushing himself up.

A sharp sensation tore through his ribs.

He collapsed again.

For several minutes there was nothing but breath.

In.

Out.

Less each time.

No lantern.

No path.

No voice from above.

No family.

The absurdity almost made him laugh.

Eighteen years spent failing to become the person House DeRose wanted—

and Julian DeRose was going to die because he followed a pretty stranger into a hole.

An elegant conclusion.

The laugh came anyway.

It turned into a cough.

Blood filled his mouth.

Then the fear arrived.

Not dramatic.

Not heroic.

Animal.

His fingers scraped weakly over the stone.

He did not want to die there.

And that realization angered him.

All those years telling himself nothing mattered.

All those mornings pretending apathy was armor.

All those jokes designed to make failure look voluntary.

Death stripped them of elegance.

It was not freedom.

It was an ending.

And if Julian died in that hole, everyone who had ever judged him would receive the cleanest conclusion possible.

The powerless DeRose finally encountered something he could not survive.

Antonius would bury him.

Jeane would cry.

Juny would lose a brother.

Geen might even regret a few words.

Then the house would continue.

Julian would become an explanation.

A cautionary anecdote.

Proof that the bloodline had been right to expect little.

His nails dragged against stone.

No.

A woman's voice answered from the darkness.

"That is better."

Julian froze.

The voice did not echo through the chamber.

It seemed to speak inside him.

Close to the bones.

"Who's there?"

A soft laugh.

Ancient amusement.

"You followed me willingly and only now ask that question?"

Julian's breathing sharpened.

The woman from the corridor.

"Show yourself."

"Commanding."

Something moved where there should have been nothing.

"Especially for a dying boy."

Julian swallowed blood.

"Then stop wasting my time."

Another laugh.

This one warmer.

Interested.

"Good."

A dim crimson glow appeared several feet away.

It revealed no torch.

No flame.

Only the suggestion of a face.

Pale skin.

Black hair.

Red eyes.

A smile containing the faintest glimpse of sharp canine.

The rest remained shadow.

Julian stared.

"What are you?"

Her head tilted.

"How boring."

"Demon?"

"Human beings do adore drawers. Demon. Spirit. Monster. God."

She stepped closer.

Or perhaps the darkness did.

"Put a name on something and suddenly the cage feels real."

Julian's vision pulsed.

"Not an answer."

"No."

His lungs stuttered.

The cold was growing comfortable.

Dangerously so.

The woman watched him.

"Do you want to die?"

Julian almost laughed.

"What kind of question is that?"

"One you have avoided for years."

His expression changed.

She saw it.

Enjoyed it.

Julian's voice became quieter.

"You know nothing about me."

"About you?"

The red eyes brightened.

"Julian DeRose."

His blood seemed to freeze independently from the cavern.

"How do you know that name?"

"You wear it like a wound."

The darkness around her gathered.

A long shape began to form between them.

A blade.

Black.

Not metal.

Not entirely.

It emerged from shadow as though night itself had learned the outline of a sword. Violet and crimson veins moved along its surface. The guard curved like black thorns around the suggestion of a broken rose.

Julian stared.

The woman looked delighted by his fear.

"You spend so much effort pretending your life means nothing."

The sword floated upright.

"And yet here you are."

Its point lowered toward his chest.

"Bleeding."

Closer.

"Terrified."

Closer.

"Still breathing."

Julian tried to pull away.

His broken body refused.

"What do you want?"

"Something interesting."

"Very specific."

Even now.

Even dying.

The sarcasm made her smile.

"Perhaps you."

Julian's eyes narrowed.

"For what?"

"That depends on what you become."

The blade stopped above his sternum.

"Choose."

"Choose what?"

"Life."

There was something obscene about the simplicity.

Julian stared past the weapon into those red eyes.

"And the price?"

She smiled wider.

"There you are."

"Answer."

"No."

His fingers curled.

"That's a terrible contract."

"It is not a contract yet."

The blade touched his clothes.

"At present, it is an opportunity."

Julian's sight dimmed.

The darkness at the edges began closing inward.

He thought of his father.

Not the lord.

The man who had looked at a bleeding son and calculated how many supplies he could carry.

He thought of Geen.

Perfect posture.

Perfect blades.

Perfect fucking timing whenever Julian needed to feel smaller.

Andrei laughing in the Academy.

Minerva staring at him because he had trusted her.

Reis discovering that fear did not make him useless.

Mirai saying it was not pity.

Jeane placing bread in his hand.

Juny asking why he had to go.

Fehrir tightening a bandage because someone had to keep him in one piece.

Small things.

Ridiculous things.

Life suddenly became full of them.

Breakfast.

Arguments.

Mud.

Bad jokes.

Someone waiting at home.

The right to hate tomorrow once it arrived.

Death could not give any of that back.

Julian looked at the woman.

"I want to live."

Her expression did not change.

"Again."

His jaw tightened.

"I want to live."

The cavern became utterly silent.

Then the woman's smile turned predatory.

"Good."

The Black Sword fell.

It entered Julian's chest.

There should have been pain.

Instead, there was invasion.

Cold became heat.

Heat became something too vast for either word.

Shadow flooded beneath his skin.

His spine arched from the stone.

The sensation was not merely physical. Something reached through flesh and touched places no blade should have access to.

Memory.

Instinct.

Fear.

Hunger.

His heartbeat staggered.

Then another rhythm seemed to answer it.

Julian tried to scream.

No sound came.

The woman's voice moved closer than breath.

"Do not disappoint me now."

Black lines flashed across his chest.

The sword dissolved.

Not vanished.

Entered.

The last thing Julian saw before consciousness broke was the woman's face finally emerging clearly from the dark.

Skin almost impossibly pale.

Black hair framing blood-red eyes.

A smile that belonged to something which had never once needed human permission to exist.

Then the world ended.

◇ ◆ ◇

Sunlight hurt.

Julian opened his eyes.

For several seconds, that made no sense.

There should have been stone above him.

Darkness.

Blood.

Instead, pale sky showed through an opening nearby.

He was lying on cold ground near the mouth of a cavern.

Birds called somewhere outside.

Julian inhaled sharply.

No broken ribs.

He touched his head.

No wound.

His abdomen.

Nothing.

The bandage was still there.

So was the dried blood.

But beneath it, the skin had closed.

Completely.

Julian sat up.

Too quickly.

Dizziness nearly dropped him again.

"What…?"

His voice sounded wrong to his own ears.

He stared at his hands.

Then noticed what the right one was holding.

A sword.

Black.

Sheathed now.

The hilt felt cold against his palm.

Memory struck.

Red eyes.

Choose.

A blade entering his chest.

Julian nearly threw it away.

His fingers refused to open.

No.

Not refused.

He simply could not make himself do it.

A pulse moved beneath his sternum.

One beat.

Then his own heart answered.

Julian went still.

Another sound reached him.

Running footsteps.

"Julian?"

He knew that voice.

"JULIAN!"

Jeane appeared at the cave entrance.

She looked different.

Not injured.

Worse.

Exhausted.

Her black hair had been pulled back carelessly, white strands more obvious than Julian remembered. Dirt marked her face. Her clothes looked as though she had slept in them because there had been no reason to change.

She crossed the distance and hit him with enough force to hurt.

Her arms locked around him.

Julian froze.

Then slowly hugged her back.

"Mother?"

Jeane pulled away only to seize his face between both hands.

She looked at him as though checking whether sight could be trusted.

"You're alive."

Julian frowned.

"Yes?"

"You're alive."

Behind her came Geen.

His perfection had cracked.

Dust covered his coat. His hair was no longer immaculate. A shallow cut crossed one cheek.

For perhaps the first time in Julian's memory, Geen looked twenty.

Then Antonius appeared.

Even he carried damage.

One sleeve had been torn. Soot darkened part of his face. His eyes locked on Julian with an expression too complicated to immediately become judgment.

Julian looked between them.

"How long?"

Nobody answered.

His stomach tightened.

"How long was I down there?"

Jeane's hands trembled against his shoulders.

Geen looked away.

Antonius answered.

"Seven days."

Julian stared at him.

The words made no sense.

"No."

"We searched every accessible passage," Geen said quietly. "The collapse sealed the route you entered."

"Seven days?"

"Julian—" Jeane began.

"Seven?"

His gaze dropped to his body.

No starvation.

No infected wounds.

No broken bones.

Nothing.

Antonius saw the same thing.

Calculation returned to his face.

Not cruelty.

Worse.

Attention.

"What happened?"

Julian looked at him.

"There was…"

The memory felt impossible in daylight.

"A corridor."

Geen frowned.

"There was no corridor."

"There was."

"Julian, we mapped that chamber."

"There was a woman."

Silence.

Jeane's expression changed.

Antonius's eyes sharpened.

"What woman?"

Julian tried to answer.

Then Geen saw the sword.

His hand moved instinctively toward his own weapon.

"What is that?"

Julian looked down.

The Black Sword rested in his hand as naturally as though it had always belonged there.

"I don't know."

Antonius stepped closer.

"Give it to me."

Something moved in Julian's chest.

Not pain.

Refusal.

His fingers tightened around the hilt before he consciously decided anything.

Antonius noticed.

So did Geen.

"Julian," his father repeated.

"Not now."

The words left Julian's mouth colder than intended.

Antonius stopped.

For one strange second, none of them moved.

Then the world tilted.

Jeane caught him.

"Julian!"

His grip loosened.

The Black Sword fell.

It never struck stone.

Shadow rose beneath it.

The weapon dissolved into darkness before the others could reach it, black fragments vanishing like smoke pulled inward.

Geen stepped back.

"What the hell—"

Julian barely heard him.

His eyes were closing.

Jeane was calling his name.

Somewhere deeper than hearing, something else stirred.

A woman laughed softly behind his thoughts.

Satisfied.

Possessive.

Awake.

"There you are, Darling."

And Julian DeRose fell into darkness for the second time.

This time, he was not alone.