Gareth walked the road to Baron Hulh’s manse, his horse, Ladybell, remaining back in Meadowtint. The blight had claimed her, leaving her suddenly sickly and strange. If she heard his commands, she ignored them, rendering her useless as a mount.

  Gareth had spent two days protecting Meadowtint, watching and waiting for the demon to cross the creek and assault the village. To Gareth’s frustration, he never did. The blasted monster had slipped into the Aurora Woodlands, not to return. Where the demon went next would be anyone’s guess, which meant the nearby villages needed to be warned, and his failure reported to Baron Hulh.

  “The people suffer greatly in Vestor,” he muttered as he approached the surrounding iron fence. “Must you add to their troubles, demon Nick?”

  When he reached the gate, Gareth froze. The latch was broken, and several bars were dented inward from a great impact. His stomach clenched.

  Did you come here? he wondered. But even if Nick had, there shouldn’t have been any threat to the baron. Each of his house guards would be enough to protect him, and then there was his bodyguard, Logrif. The paltry demon had no chance to win a battle against him…then again, while Logrif would easily win a fair battle, the demon was a trickster and had shown himself capable of learning at a frightening pace. Gareth pushed the gate open, and his calm walk became a jog until he reached the manse.

  The door was broken inward, from some sort of impact. It hung awkwardly from the upper hinges, the lower ones torn from the wood entirely. A body lay in a dried pool of blood within the entryway. Flies buzzed about it.

  “Damn it,” Gareth muttered, reaching into his satchel to pull out a spare shirt and holding it to his nose. The body was bloated from exposure, the smell rancid. Gareth feared it would not be the only one he found. He was immediately proven right once entering, a second servant lying slumped against the wall. A hole was torn open in his chest, leaving a vacant cavity between his mangled ribs. The innards had spilled onto his lap—that which wasn’t smeared across the wall.

  A tremendous impact, but leaving no trace of the source, like stone or metal would, he thought. No burns, either. Not fire. Not lightning. Water, then, or ice.

  He stepped over the corpse, past the entryway, and into the main hall. Immediately, his heart sank. A corpse lay awkwardly on his back, legs bent at the knee and tucked underneath. The clothes were how Gareth first identified him as the slain baron. His face was horrifically mutilated, his jaw broken and hanging from only one hinge. The tongue was half-severed and hung like a rotting sausage out the side where the cheek and lips had been torn.

  “You murdered him,” he whispered. His hands clenched into fists. “Invaded his home and murdered him. Why? What sick pleasure do you find in this destruction?”

  He stood, the pit in his stomach hardening. He had to check for survivors, even if he knew there would be none. The entry hall was wrecked, and past an overturned table he found another corpse, this of the bodyguard, Logrif. His body sported multiple wounds, including a deep gash in his chest. None were worse than the hole opened in his throat.

  “Even you,” Gareth said, shaking his head. Logrif had been one of the strongest warriors he had ever met, a man who could have become a knight in service of the god-king if he had so desired. Instead he’d cut his teeth slaughtering bandits in the west, scoring a recorded dozen kills before he’d even turned eighteen. Studying the wounds, Gareth again decided steel was not responsible for many of them. Ice; it had to be ice.

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  You never showed any affinity for magic, Gareth thought. Have you learned, Nick, or did you have help?

  Both options were terrible, and he could not decide which was worse. He walked the rest of the manse in a daze, his mind hardening against the horrors. He found more dead guards, two in the dining hall and another at a prison cell. Gareth gathered them in a pile outside, carrying the corpses and pretending to be indifferent to the smell and rot. Logrif and the baron joined the pile, as did two more servants he found. Eight bodies. Eight lives lost to the meaningless rage of a demon.

  Gareth bathed the corpses in wine from the cellar, and when night fell, he lit the pile with a torch. There were too many bodies for him to bury. A pyre would have to suffice.

  Nervousness overcame Gareth as he watched the corpses burn. Either the demon had gained access to magic or he now had an accomplice. The threat was multiplying, and he had failed to properly contain it. Looking up to the black sun forming a hole in the night sky, he swallowed down his fears.

  “So be it,” he muttered, and fell to his knees.

  It was a prayer meant to be used most sparingly. Its only required component was a flame, and what source could be more appropriate than the corpses demon Nick had left behind? Bowing his head, Gareth laid his hands flat on the grass before him, and in the courtyard of the now empty manse, he called out for his god-king.

  “My master, my champion, my liege, my king, my god,” he prayed as the heat of the pyre washed over him. “I beseech you, hear my cry, and look upon a servant most humble and desperate.”

  With held breath, he waited for an answer. There was no guarantee of one. The god-king bore a thousand duties in Castle Goltara, least of which was maintaining his imprisonment of the black sun. The cowardice in Gareth hoped he would receive no answer, but that cowardice was denied. The flame of the pyre swirled together, burning higher as it charred the corpses to ash and bone. Gareth’s hairs stood on end, and it felt like the shine of the stars dimmed beneath a new light blossoming within the fire. A golden light, one most holy.

  And then the fire hardened, taking shape, becoming the form of God-King Vaan to tower above Gareth, thrice his height. Additional colors seeped in amid the yellow and orange, hardening into golden skin, gold-filigreed armor, long red hair, and a face so handsome it defied all attempts to properly convey it in painting or statue. Vaan held an enormous sword in his hand, True Faith, the blade that had severed the head of the Sinifel Empire.

  The fire spoke.

  “Speak, knight, and explain why you beg for my attention.”

  Gareth lowered himself closer to the grass, not even daring to look upon the visage of his god-king.

  “A demon has appeared in the west,” he said. “I have slain him many times, but he always returns, and now he has slipped my grasp and ventures deeper into Vestor. Worse, I fear he is growing stronger, and even possesses allies.”

  “A demon?” The fire crackled. “Look upon me, Sir Gareth.”

  He obeyed. Fear held a savage grip on him, but he met those golden eyes and refused to cower.

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “Suffer not this demon to live,” Vaan ordered. “I shall send one of my Harbingers to aid you, but it will take time for them to arrive from Goltara. Until then, stand tall in the face of this threat. Slaughter the demon, and all who would aid him. This is your trial, Sir Gareth, one you must conquer.”

  The fire quivered, the image starting to break apart.

  “Do not fail me, knight.”

  And then the prayer ended. The flames flickered away so that only ash and bone remained. The night was deep, the stars bright. Beneath their light, Gareth wept for the lives lost to his weakness. He pleaded for forgiveness for his failures. He begged for the strength to overcome his terrible foe. There would be no sleep for him, only gratitude for the acknowledgment and whispered devotions to embolden his resolve. He did not sleep, nor leave the light of the stars.

  Come morning, Gareth resumed his hunt for the demon.