Lastlight's Revenant #16

Sylrithiel found Garran in the church’s ossuary, where the bones of long-dead saints stared hollow-eyed from their niches. She moved like smoke between the pillars, her runes pulsing faintly—not with power, but with something hungrier.

“I need one final ingredient,” she said, her voice the scrape of a blade being drawn.

Garran didn’t look up from whetting his sword. “What kind?”

“An Arcane Heart.”

The whetstone stilled. Garran’s reflection glared up at her from the blade—a distorted thing, all scars and suspicion. “Never heard of it.”

“You wouldn’t have.” Sylrithiel’s fingers traced the air, weaving shadows into the shape of a six-faceted crystal. “Elven-made. A prison for souls, or a cradle for newborn magic. Facless demons use them to anchor their rifts.” She closed her fist, crushing the illusion. “I’ve felt one before the walls fell. In the duke’s quarters.”

Garran’s knuckles whitened around the sword hilt. “You’re suggesting we raid a dead man’s chambers.”

“The duke has no use for it now. Nor will his children.” Her smile was a needle-thin thing. “Unless you’d prefer to explain to Edric’s ghost why we let his city burn over sentimentality.”

The whetstone screeched as Garran dragged it down the steel one last time. “This ritual of yours—it’ll give us time to reach the ruins?”

Sylrithiel’s shadow stretched unnaturally long in the candlelight, licking at the saintly skulls like a wolf testing a cage. “Oh, it’ll do far more than that.”

Somewhere above, a child whimpered. The sound seemed to decide something in Garran’s face. He sheathed the sword with a finality that rang like a tomb door closing.

“Show me where.”

...

The banquet hall's double doors hung broken on their hinges, like the wings of a butchered bird. The stench hit Garran first - not the coppery tang of fresh blood, but the sweet-rot reek of meat left three days in the sun.

Sylrithiel stepped over the threshold without hesitation, her boots crunching on shattered crystal goblets. Garran's gaze, against his will, dragged toward the high table.

The Duke of Vaeldrith still sat in his carved chair, his body folded into a grotesque parody of royal posture. The Hollow King's magic had compressed him like parchment crumpled in a fist - his jeweled doublet split at the seams, his bones jutting through skin turned the color of spoiled milk.

His hands, forever frozen mid-gesture, clutched the air where his goblet had been.

Still holding court, Garran thought bitterly. Even in death.

"You didn't expect him to die like this," Sylrithiel observed. Not a question.

Garran's gauntlet creaked as he flexed his fingers. "No man does. One moment scheming to carve up a kingdom..." He kicked aside a noblewoman's severed hand, the fingers still glittering with rings. "The next, you're just meat for flies."

The elf's laugh was the sound of icicles breaking. "The Hollow King savors such ironies. He could have slaughtered them all in an instant. Instead, he let them see their ambitions crushed before snuffing them out." She nudged a headless corpse with her toe. "Frivolous creature."

Garran's jaw tightened. The Duke had been a fool, his rebellion doomed from the start. But the way his body had been posed, the meticulous cruelty of it - this wasn't just execution. This was theater.

And we're the next act.

"Doesn't matter," he growled, turning away. "Get your artifact. We leave."

Sylrithiel's shadow stretched unnaturally long as she moved toward the Duke's private stairwell. "Such pragmatism. I wonder - would you mourn if it were a better man sitting there?"

Garran didn't answer. The truth was in the way his hand never left his sword hilt as they passed the dead.

...

The door to the duke’s quarters swung open on silent hinges.

Garran’s sword was halfway drawn before his mind fully processed the scene.

The Duke lay sprawled across his canopied bed, head propped upon the lap of a trembling woman. Her fingers—too long, too pale—pressed a blackened grape to his lips. The Duke’s jaw slackened, the fruit rolling into his open mouth, juices like congealed blood dribbling down his chin. His eyes were glassy, unblinking. Dead. Had been for days.

And yet, the woman cooed to him, stroking his hair as if he were merely sleeping.

"Vulgar thing."

Garran’s lunge was pure instinct. Sylrithiel’s enchantment—a flash of gold along the blade—caught up a heartbeat later. The Faceless wearing the Duke’s skin didn’t even have time to sit up before steel sheared through its neck. The head struck the bedpost with a wet thud, the face still frozen in mock serenity.

Garran barely reined in his fury, turning to the woman with forced calm. "Are you—"

Her shriek split the air, her face unraveling into something jagged and hollow. Claws lashed out, but Sylrithiel was faster. A twist of her wrist, and the demon hurtled backward, pinned to the wall by invisible force. Garran drove his sword into its gut, twisting until the thing spasmed and went still.

His grip on the hilt was bone-white. "Flthy creatures." The words scraped raw from his throat. "As if killing us is not enough. Now they wear our skins like festival masks."

Sylrithiel stepped over the Duke’s collapsed body, her skirts whispering against the blood-soaked rug. "The Hollow King crafted the first Faceless," she said, too casually. "They inherit his... proclivities."

Garran rounded on her. The question he’d bitten back for days finally tore free: "What is your history with that creature?" His blade, still dripping black ichor, pointed accusingly. "You know too much. And it looked at you like—" He searched for the word, finding only a soldier’s honesty. "Like you were old friends."

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.

Somewhere in the castle, a shutter banged in the wind. A hollow sound. A waiting sound.

Sylrithiel’s fingers stilled over the Duke’s nightstand. The air around her grew heavy, thick with the scent of frostbloom and something older—like the breath of a tomb first opened in centuries.

"The Hollow King was the greatest champion the elves ever knew," she said, her voice hollow as a bell struck in an empty hall. "And the architect of our ruin. Long ago." Her silver eyes flicked to Garran, sharp with warning. "It’s not a story for a blood-slicked room. When we find a real shelter and have time to spare... I’ll tell you."

Garran’s jaw worked. Every instinct screamed to demand answers—what champion? What ruin?—but the corpses around them were reminder enough of time’s scarcity.

He jerked his chin toward the ravaged chamber. "Then hurry."

Sylrithiel closed her eyes. The runes along her collarbones ignited, casting jagged shadows across the walls—a language of light and loss. Her hand drifted, palm-down, toward the floorboards near the Duke’s bed.

The wood groaned in protest as unseen force pried it upward, splinters raining onto the rug.

There, nestled in a lead-lined box, the Arcane Heart pulsed.

It was neither crystal nor flesh, but some wretched marriage of both—a six-faceted prism veined with threads of living shadow. It breathed, its rhythm slow and deliberate, as if savoring each beat.

"We have it," Sylrithiel murmured. She did not touch it. Instead, her hands wove a net of golden light above the box, her lips moving in silent incantation.

The prism shuddered, its shadows recoiling like whipped dogs.

Garran didn’t ask. He knew the look of a spell that tolerated no interruptions. Sword raised, he backed toward the door, eyes scanning the corridor for movement.

The castle held its breath.

...

The Duke’s palace gates loomed ahead, their wrought-iron bars twisted like the ribs of a gutted beast. Sylrithiel snapped the box shut, the final sigil flaring gold before fading into the lead-lined seams.

“There,” she said, tucking it into the folds of her robe. “Nothing will track its scent now. Not even—”

A thunderous thud shook the ground.

Garran’s head snapped up. A shadow darker than the smoke-choked sky blotted out the moon—something massive, winged, and wrong. It circled them once as it prepared to attack, its jagged silhouette cutting through the clouds like a blade through rotten cloth.

“Too late,” Garran growled, hand already on his sword. “Something caught the scent before you finished the spell.”

Sylrithiel whirled, her silver eyes narrowing. “Hide. Quickly. It won’t be able to—”

A roar split the night. Not the guttural shriek of a Maw-spawn, but something deeper, older—a sound that vibrated in the bones before it reached the ears.

The corpse-dragon dove.

It moved like lightning given flesh, its tattered wings folded tight against its skeletal body. Talons—long as scythes, black as a starless void—sank into the lesser drake’s back before it could flee.

The Maw-spawn writhed, its own wings beating frantically, but the dragon’s maw clamped onto its neck, twisted, and tore.

Black ichor rained down as the dragon wrenched its prey skyward, the drake’s death throes silent now, its spine severed. The victor ascended, its meal dangling limp, and vanished into the smoke.

Garran didn’t lower his sword. “You know what that is?”

Sylrithiel stared at the empty sky, her expression unreadable. “It was a dragon. Now?” She shook her head. “It’s missing something… something important.”

Garran’s grip tightened. “Will it be a problem?”

“Not an ally,” she said softly. “But not an enemy. For now, at least.”

Somewhere in the distance, the dragon screamed again—not in hunger, but in something almost like anguish.