Prologue
Notes from Myra:
On the fell creatures that lurk in the dark
The cataclysm was meant to be the end.
It should have been the end.
The darkness should have taken what it has taken and left the world with what it has left.
But it has not.
It seeps into the world as a poison would a wound.
It festers.
What should lurk in the lands of old now spreads.
Death is coming to all with a heartbeat.
Darker things crawl out from the depths.
Nightmares made flesh and worse
Pray for there is naught much else to do. Pray and hope this darkness doesn’t find you. If it does.
Run.
Run to the light.
Run whilst there is still light to run to. Then pray that these horrors do not find you.
The Second Coming of Darkness
On the spine of the mountain range a vast pool lay cradled in black stone, its surface holding the silver of the moon as if it had bled into the waters. The light was pale, spilling across the water in a trembling sheet of silver that broke the moment something beneath it moved.
The surface split with a quiet sound as gasp for air and a splash, and she stepped out of it.
Water clung to her, trailing down the lines of her body, dripping from her fingertips, her elbows, the ends of her soaked brown hair that hung heavy against her back. A net slung over her shoulder sagged with the weight of oyster shells, their rough edges knocking softly together as she moved. The cold didn’t seem to touch her. Or if it did, she ignored it.
Myrah paused at the edge of the pool, the moon catching on her face. The right side bore the damage from a battle long ago, the skin drawn tight and smooth where an eye should have been, sealed as though the world had simply decided she no longer needed it, the cheekbone sunken in from when it had refused to heal properly. The light didn’t soften it. It never did.
It only sharpened the silver that glowed on her skin.
Eight pieces of it, melted and bound into her skin long ago, catching the moonlight. Two resting against her shoulders, curved slightly with the shape of bone beneath; two along her forearms, where the metal seemed almost to pulse faintly with her movement; two pressed into the sides of her thighs; and two more embedded along her calves, following the line of muscle. They didn’t gleam cleanly. The light bent strangely across them, like it wasn’t entirely welcome there.
She shifted the net from her shoulder and crouched. One oyster was plucked free, turned once in her hand, then forced open with a practiced twist that cracked the shell apart with a muted snap. Inside, nestled in the slick curve of its flesh, a pearl burned.
Not with soft light but with a glow that rivalled the stars.
Her fingers closed around it, and she crushed it in her palm.
The glow burst between her knuckles, bleeding through the gaps as something beneath her skin answered it—the runes embedded in her palms and the back of her hand flaring to life and uttered a word.
She pointed at the ground.
The rune took.
Three vertical lines carved themselves into the earth, the middle one longer than the others, crowned with a singular arrow and then it bloomed. A white flame surged upward in a whispering crackle as it caught the air, burning without smoke.
Myra stepped into its edge, letting the glow wash over her. The water began to leave her slowly. She reached back, gathering her hair in both hands and wringing it out, streams spilling down and vanishing into the stone at her feet. The fire painted her in stark light, every line of her, every piece of silver, every imperfection laid bare.
Her gaze lifted.
East.
Where the horizon simply… stopped. Where the sky should have stretched, where stars should have scattered across the dark, there was only black. Not night. Not shadow.
Something thicker.
Something that swallowed the light.
She watched it for a moment too long.
Then she turned away.
Her clothes were waiting where she’d left them. Travellers’ wear. A fitted undershirt of dark, worn fabric that clung close without restricting, layered beneath a heavier, weathered vest reinforced with stitched leather panels across the ribs and shoulders. Trousers followed, thick enough to guard against stone and brush, fitted tight at the calves and looser at the thighs for ease of motion, laced and strapped where needed. Everything was muted in tone—greys, deep browns.
She dressed quickly, not wanting to linger in this place of light and dark.
The belt came next, broad, sturdy, worn smooth in places from years of use. Two blades hung from it, each the length of her forearm, their handles wrapped and rewrapped, the metal dulled deliberately to avoid catching light. Tools more than weapons. Or maybe both.
Then the coat.
It fell heavy across her shoulders, long enough to brush the backs of her calves, its fabric thick and weather-beaten, lined inside with something softer that had long since lost its original texture.
Gloves last—tight at the fingers, reinforced at the palms.
She returned to the fire and lowered herself beside it, the net of oysters dragged closer. The small knife appeared in her hand almost without thought, blade slipping into the seam of another shell. A twist, a crack, the wet sound of it opening.
Another pearl.
She worked methodically, prying them open one by one, extracting the pearls and dropping them into a small silk pouch that rested at her side. Each one made a soft, almost hollow sound as it landed.
Every few seconds, her eyes lifted.
East.
Always east.
The fire burned white and steady, the only defiance against the dark that waited at the edge of the world, and she sat there within it, half in the light, half already claimed by something else, listening to the quiet as if it might break first.
She fell into a rhythm.
Crack. Twist. Pull. Drop.
Each oyster gave way beneath her hands, each pearl slipping into the silk pouch with that same hollow note, but her pace shifted without her meaning it to—faster, sharper, less careful. The knife worked quicker than before, her fingers following, the motions tightening as something old and unwelcome pressed at the edges of her thoughts.
Being this close to the cataclysm always did that.
It wasn’t the darkness itself.
It was the memory of what used to be there.
Her gaze lifted again, drawn east despite herself, to where the mountains broke against that consuming black.
She could remember towering trees with bark like glassed amber, veins of soft gold light threading through them, pulsing slow and steady like a heartbeat beneath the surface. Their canopies stretched impossibly high, leaves catching the light—greens too deep to name, blues that shimmered into violet, every branch dripping with bioluminescent blooms that swayed even when the wind didn’t touch them.
The air had been thick with it—magic. You could breathe it and feel it settle into your bones.
And at its heart—
The Pyxis tree.
Not just large. Not just old.
It dwarfed the mountains themselves, its trunk so vast it seemed to curve with the horizon, roots burrowing deep into the world. Its branches pierced the sky, vanishing into cloud and light, and carved into its living body was a city. Not built on it—but within it. Towers grown from its wood, bridges woven between its limbs, windows glowing warm against the endless green. A place that felt eternal.
Untouchable.
But it wasn’t— the eternal was mortal.
Somewhere.
That tree was still out there.
Lost in the dark.
And the forest—
Her fingers stilled for just a second before she forced them to move again.
The forest wasn’t a forest anymore.
Whatever had swallowed it had twisted it into something else entirely. Creatures roamed there now, things that didn’t belong to any world that should exist. Foul in a way that went deeper than rot or decay. Like death had tried to imitate life and failed.
She wasn’t afraid of the dark but of the things that lurked within it.
The wind dropped.
Cold crept in, not the biting chill of high altitude or night air, but something heavier. It slid over her skin like a presence, colder than ice yet somehow thicker, pressing in around her, sinking into the spaces between breaths. It wasn’t natural.
Myra rose to her feet slowly, the last oyster slipping from her grasp.
Her eyes lifted to the sky.
The moon flickered.
Then vanished.
The stars followed, one by one, until the sky above her became an empty, suffocating void. The silver pool behind her turned black in an instant, its surface swallowing what little light remained.
Her eyes narrowed.
The hairs along her arms and the back of her neck rose.
The fog came without warning.
The fog came rolling in like a wave.
It wrapped around her, devouring the edges of the world until she could barely see beyond the length of a sword. Sound twisted within it, something out there moved, every small movement echoing in the opposite place to the last sound.
Her hand lifted instinctively.
The white fire still burned.
She reached toward it, fingers curling slightly, and the flame bent—folding inward, compressing as though pulled by something unseen until it settled into her palm. It didn’t burn her. The light pooled there, contained, casting just enough glow to push the darkness back a fraction.
Her other hand moved without hesitation, drawing one of the blades from her belt. The metal caught the faint light and answered it, runes etched down its centre flaring into a dim, steady glow that cut a narrow line through the black.
Her eyes moved constantly.
Left. Right. She spun around. Heard a chattering sound in the dark behind her. Turned again;
She began stepping back, placing each foot with care. The edge of the pool was somewhere behind her—one wrong step and she’d be in it. The tunnel entrance wasn’t far. She needed to try and make a break for it.
Or die here.
Something moved.
Not in front of her.
To her left.
The sound came sharp and sudden, like the rasp of a final breath dragged through a ruined throat—
She turned just as it lunged.
A shape wrapped in black cloth tore through the fog, its form half-formed, edges unravelling as it moved, and she reacted instantly—her palm flared, the light surging outward in a violent burst that struck it mid-motion.
It didn’t fall.
It unmade.
Gone in an instant, scattered like ash.
Another sound—closer this time, to her right.
A scream—no, a whinny—
A horse.
But it wasn’t.
It came out of the fog at full force, its body barely held together, skin sloughing from bone as it charged, hollow eyes burning with something that wasn’t life. Myra pivoted, blade flashing in a clean, brutal arc that cut through its neck.
The form collapsed as soon as steel met it, dissolving before it could hit the ground.
A shriek tore through the air—high, piercing, jagged—and something flew at her. A figure, vaguely human, its shape stretched and broken, glowing a sickly green that bled into the fog around it.
She stepped into it instead of away.
The blade drove upward, cutting through its centre, the light along the runes flaring brighter as it passed through. The creature split apart, its scream cutting off mid-sound.
More.
They came from everywhere now.
From the edges of the fog, from beneath it, from above where there was no sky to hide in.
She moved.
A step back turned into a pivot, the blade sweeping low to sever another shape at the knees before it could reach her. She dropped immediately, rolling beneath something that lunged overhead, the air tearing where she’d just been. Her shoulder hit stone, momentum carrying her through as she twisted back to her feet in one motion.
Light burst from her palm again, a controlled blast this time, driving three of them back, their forms shredding under the force of it, edges tearing apart like smoke caught in a gale.
They just kept coming.
Myra shifted her footing, breath steady but tightening, blade angled low as she pivoted, cutting one down mid-lunge, the runes along its edge flaring as it passed through the creature’s torso. It split without resistance, dissolving into the black—but another filled its place before the remnants even faded.
The ground moved.
Not a tremor.
Not a crack.
It rose.
Her balance snapped out from under her as the stone beneath her feet surged upward, a violent, unnatural motion that forced her back a step, muscles tightening as her body fought to compensate. It felt like standing on something alive.
She lunged away.
The stone erupted fully, tearing free of the ground in a grinding explosion of rock and dust, forming into something vast. A creature of jagged boulders and fractured slabs, its body barely held together by the force that animated it, cracks glowing faintly with a dull, suffocating light. Its form towered above her, massive limbs dragging against themselves as it pulled free, its head twisting toward her with a sound that was half stone grinding, half something trying to scream through it.
The sound tore through the fog, deep and shuddering, vibrating through her chest more than her ears.
Its fist came down.
Fast.
Far too fast for something that size.
Myra sprang backward, light on her feet, her body lifting just enough to clear the impact as the ground where she’d been shattered beneath the force. Stone exploded outward, fragments tearing through the fog as the creature’s weight crashed down.
She landed.
The air shifted behind her.
She dropped.
Something passed overhead with a rush of displaced air, close enough that she felt it skim the top of her hairt. She twisted as she moved, catching a glimpse of it as it turned.
Reptilian in the length of its body, its limbs too long, too jointed, its back hunched and uneven like something had tried to force it into a shape it couldn’t hold. Its skin—if it could be called that—hung in loose, torn layers, revealing glimpses of something darker beneath, something that pulsed faintly as it moved. Its head snapped toward her, jaw splitting too wide, lined with teeth that didn’t sit right in its mouth.
It lunged.
She rolled right.
Then the stone creature’s fist came down again, she rolled just as it smashed into the space she’d just vacated, the impact sending a shockwave through the ground that rattled up her spine even as she came out of the roll on one knee, blade already rising.
No space.
No time.
Her hand snapped forward, fingers carving through the air in a motion she’d done a thousand times—
The rune formed.
A shield.
Lines of white light etched themselves into existence in front of her, forming a curved veil that shimmered like glass. The next impact hit it immediately—first the reptilian creature, then a hit from the larger one—and the shield held, the force rippling across its surface, light flaring violently where they struck.
Her arm strained.
Another pearl crushed in her palm, the glow flooding outward, feeding the rune as her other hand cut sharply through the air again, layering another pattern over the first.
The shield shifted.
Collapsed inward.
And then—
It burned.
White fire surged outward in a violent bloom, consuming everything caught against it. The reptilian creature didn’t even have time to recoil—its form disintegrated instantly, torn apart by the blaze. The fragments of the stone creature blackened where the light touched them, cracks racing across its surface as it recoiled, its massive form staggering back with a grinding roar.
Myra didn’t wait to see if it would fall.
She moved through the opening she’d created, feet barely touching the ground as she cut left, then forward, blade flashing. One creature fell—another—she pivoted, light bursting from her palm again in a focused strike that drove a cluster of them back, their forms shredding under the force.
She ducked under a grasping limb, twisted, drove her blade upward through something that screamed without sound, then ripped it free and turned again.
Still more.
Always more.
The fog shifted around her, thicker now, pressing closer, and beneath it—
A sound.
Low.
Wet.
Then—
Laughter.
It echoed through the darkness, deep and hollow, reverberating through the air like it came from everywhere at once. It rolled through her bones, settling there, dragging something cold and instinctive up from deep within her chest.
It didn’t belong to anything she could see.
That was worse.
Myra stilled for half a second.
The dread hit first, sinking into her spine before she could stop it. Fear followed, threading through her limbs, whispering something she didn’t want to hear.
She forced it down.
Forced herself to turn.
And saw them.
Not a handful.
Not a wave.
A wall.
The fog shifted, parting just enough to reveal them—shapes upon shapes, every twisted, broken thing she had ever faced crawling out of the dark. Some half-formed, some solid enough to cast shadows against the faint light still clinging to her. Creatures that dragged themselves forward on limbs that shouldn’t work, others that moved too smoothly, too quickly, their forms flickering at the edges like they weren’t fully there.
They surrounded her.
Every direction.
No gaps.
The laughter came again.
Closer this time.
And beneath it—
Something watching.
Not with eyes.
But she felt it.
Myra tightened her grip on the blade, the runes along it flaring brighter as the light in her palm burned hotter, pushing back just enough of the dark to give her space to breathe.
Just enough.
Then her weight shifted, preparing to run.
Her breathing stayed steady, but faster now, each inhale measured, each exhale quick.
She reached for another pearl.
Her hand dipped into the pouch, fingers closing around one without looking. She crushed it against her palm, the glow flaring violently as the rune there ignited again. Her arm shot upward—
The air answered.
For a single, fragile moment, the fog above her split.
Light carved through it in a narrow column, pushing the darkness back just enough to see the tunnel.
The fog surged immediately, closing in around the gap she’d made, but she didn’t wait to watch it happen.
She ran.
Boots struck stone hard and fast, her body leaning forward, pushing every step to its limit. The darkness followed, not chasing—but consuming, swallowing the space behind her, stretching toward her heels as if it were reaching out to swallow her whole.
A shape lunged from the side—she didn’t slow, her blade cutting across it mid-stride, the impact barely registering before it vanished. Another came low—she jumped it, landing unevenly but forcing herself forward again, refusing to lose momentum.
The tunnel mouth loomed ahead.
Behind her, the fog pressed closer, the sounds rising into a chaotic chorus of rasping breaths, broken cries, things that almost sounded natural but weren’t.
She didn’t look back.
She just ran, the light in her palm flickering against the dark as it tried, and failed, to swallow her whole.
The dark still gave chase into the tunnel, pressing close behind her—the door, she needed to reach the door. The entrance guards were still there, slumped against the rock, heads dipped forward, tankards tipped at their feet, breathing slow and heavy like the world wasn’t ending a few steps in front of them.
“Seal the doors!” Her voice cracked through the tunnel like a blade striking stone. “Wake up and seal the bloody doors, you drunken oafs!”
They jolted awake in a mess of limbs and curses.
The first—broad even for a dwarf, beard braided thick with iron clasps, one eye still half-swollen from a fight he probably didn’t remember—scrambled to his feet with a grunt. Brakka. Always stationed where he shouldn’t have been trusted to stand still. The second—leaner, but no less solid, his beard shorter, tied tight against his jaw, rings glinting along his ears—Feldrath—blinked hard, trying to drag himself into sense as the urgency in her voice cut through the fog of ale.
“What—what in the—”
“Door!”
Brakka staggered once, caught himself, then threw his weight onto the lever set into the wall, muscles straining as the mechanism groaned to life. Feldrath stumbled past him, grabbing the secondary crank, turning it with both hands as the gears deep within the mountain began to shift.
The door answered.
A massive slab of carved stone, circular and ancient, etched with runes began to turn. It didn’t slam shut—it sealed, grinding into place, echoing through the tunnel.
Myra didn’t wait.
She crushed another pearl in her palm, light flaring, the rune burning through her skin as she slammed her hand against the door. Two patterns ignited across the surface, lines cutting into the stone like molten silver, holding her hands up as if she was stopping something from pushing onwards.
The door began to shake as if giant fists were pounding it. Dust rained down from the roof.
“Myra—what in the blazes is going on?” Feldrath s voice wavered, the last of the drink draining from it as he looked past her at the rattling stone door.
“Oh, you know,” she muttered, breath still steady despite the sprint, eyes already flicking toward the lights coming from the city beyond, “second cataclysm.”
Brakka barked a short, disbelieving laugh that died halfway out. “You serious?”
She turned just enough for them to see her face. “Does it look like I’m bloody unsure?”
Silence hit harder than the door.
“Evacuate Thrak’Vaz,” she said.
Korin hesitated. “You said the sun stone should keep everything out—”
She flicked her head around. “Do you want to be swallowed up by the darkness,” she said, “because I will open that door and let you check.”
They didn’t argue again.
They ran.
The echo of their boots vanished deeper into the city as Myra pushed forward, the faint glow of her runes casting long, uneven shadows along the tunnel walls.
“Bloody dwarves,” she muttered under her breath, voice low and edged. “Are you sure it’s a cataclysm?” she mocked. “Of course I’m damn sure.”
In front of her, something shifted.
A crack.
The runes she’d set into the door flickered.
Then again.
In front of her, something shifted.
A crack.
The runes she’d carved into the door flickered.
For a second, her mind refused to place it. The glow dipped, then steadied again, the lines of light trembling across the stone cracking along with the stone door.
That didn’t happen.
Runes didn’t falter.
The patterns were still there—perfectly drawn—but the light within them… it wasn’t holding the way it should.
Another crack spread across the surface of the door. Deeper.
Her breath caught.
No.
No—this wasn’t—
This wasn’t possible.
The light flared once—
And then dimmed again.
Myra’s stomach dropped.
A cold, hollow sensation that started low and sank straight through her, dragging everything else with it. She stared at the runes, at the fractures creeping between them, at the way the glow bled weakly into the stone instead of holding firm.
I’ve never… the thought started, but the words didn’t finish.
Because that wasn’t true.
Her chest tightened, something old and buried forcing its way up before she could stop it.
Her head felt light and the world began to spin.
She had seen this before.
Once.
A long time ago.
When the first cataclysm had come.
Her heart sank.
The runes weren’t enough.
They wouldn’t be enough.
Another crack split through the stone, wider now, the sound sharper as something on the other side struck against it.
Her gaze snapped toward what lay beyond the tunnel
The city.
People would never get out in time.
They were going to die.
Erased.
Like everything else the dark had ever taken.
Her hand dropped from the door.
There was nothing she could do here.
Nothing that would matter.
Another flicker. Another crack. The light along the runes fluttered again, weaker this time, struggling to hold shape against something that didn’t even seem to notice it.
Myra stepped back.
Then turned.
The hollow feeling didn’t leave. It settled deeper, heavier, pressing against her ribs with every breath she took.
She forced it down.
Forced all of it down.
There was still one thing that could hold.
One thing that had to.
The sun stone.
That was their only chance.
Her pace broke into a run before the thought had even fully formed, boots striking hard against the stone as she pushed away from the failing door, from the cracking light.
Behind her, the runes flickered again.
Then dimmed further.
And she didn’t look back.
She ran.
The tunnel opened, and the city revealed itself in a rush of carved stone and burning light.
Thrak’Vaz stretched vast and layered within the hollowed heart of the mountain, a city hewn, into every wall carved from the living rock,. Pillars the size of ancient trees rose from floor to ceiling, etched with stories that spiralled upward in intricate reliefs—battles, and kings.
Bridges spanned open chasms, connecting tier upon tier of stonework, while great halls opened like caverns within caverns, their ceilings lost to shadow above. Forges still burned, their orange glow clashing against the steady, golden light cast by embedded stones that lined the city’s spine, illuminating it in a warm brilliance that had never faltered.
Until now.
People were running.
Shouting and screams broke out across the stone streets, voices rising in confusion, in fear, in panicked edge of those who felt something was wrong but didn’t yet understand how bad it was. Families scrambled, guards barked orders that overlapped and tangled, the rhythm of dwarven life fracturing into chaos.
Myra sped through it.
She didn’t stop. Didn’t slow. Didn’t look at the faces turning toward her, the questions forming before they could be spoken.
There wasn’t time.
The cracks followed her.
At first, small—hairline fractures in the stone beneath her feet, spreading outward in jagged patterns that hadn’t been there seconds before. Then wider. Deeper. The ground trembled, a low, growing vibration that travelled up through her boots and into her bones.
The darkness had broken through the door.
Screams followed her but they were cut off too quickly.
Swallowed.
She didn’t turn.
The center of the city loomed ahead, rising into a vast open chamber that dwarfed everything around it. The altar stood at its heart.
Carved from a single piece of white-gold stone, it rose in layered tiers, each one etched with runes that pulsed faintly, their light soft but steady, feeding into the structure itself. Pillars curved inward around it, shaped like reaching hands or roots, their surfaces polished smooth, reflecting the glow that radiated from the object they held.
The sun stone.
It hovered just above the altar’s core, suspended in a lattice of light and carved bindings, its surface glowing like a captured fragment of the sun itself. Warmth poured from it , something that pressed back against the creeping wrongness spreading through the city.
It was still holding.
Barely.
She surged forward, boots striking the final stretch of stone, her hand already reaching—
The ground gave way.
Her foot hit nothing.
The world dropped out beneath her, the altar, the light, the city all tearing away as she fell, the glow of the sun stone vanishing above her in an instant as the darkness rushed up to meet her, swallowing everything before she could even cry out.
