Prologue: Strange Crossing

The Sunless Singer

No sun shined on the Obsidian Isle. No moonlight dappled along the smooth black glass of the citadel, resting on the crumbling edge of a steep cliff. No gentle breeze brushed against Pyra as she stepped out onto the balcony. An expanse of purple sky loomed overhead, shifting in valefire as if she stood in the basin of a deep blazing brasier.

Her vision fell along the vast distance from the balcony to the churning waters as valefrost lifted and rose in purple vapors and collected in a dense fog gliding along the surface. The viscous waters of the Starlight Sea held millions of dazzling, twinkling dots of light from bioluminescent jellyfish or spiraling gelatinous plankton colonies. These floating nomads glowed all throughout the expanse like wavering constellations.

The island approached its new destination. The sea waved under the rocks of this cursed land like a ship cutting through the chop. Valefrost pooled and misted up the black crags running through the waters like upstretched claws. Dreamscapes of lush forests and steep valleys floated oddly on the waves and crashed along the shore, eaten in the wake of the isle.

Tall fins skimmed the water. Leviathans broke the surface, letting out guttural wails, as their long black bodies twinkled in the sloshing sea. They shot out plumes of water as their front and back flippers paddled in rhythm with the powerful strokes of their wide flukes. Larger than whales with massive snake-like bodies, they carried rows of razor-sharp teeth in their elongated jaws. With deep intakes of breath, they dove back into the depths while belting out their submerged war-song.

Aethereal winds whipped harshly around Pyra and danced her bright blue hair over the jagged fins of her earlobes. She rubbed her hands along the indigo-colored skin of her face, pressing into her eyelids, high cheek bones, and black lips. She lightly tapped her pointed fingernails over the gills of her neck.

She wore a black skinsuit made from the rubbery flesh of a leviathan, and it held tight to her shoulders, abdomen, and thighs. It V-cut at her calves and forearms to leave room for her fins. Her webbed feet and hands were both left exposed. A black battle cloak hooked at her neck, and it was heavy from the hardened scales of a sea serpent. Those thick, rigid pieces of plate occasionally clicked together as she moved, and they gleamed oily under the purple sky.

The beating of drums pounded from somewhere deeper in the citadel, and muffled wails erupted from the inner halls. Turning back to the sleeping chamber, dozens of enclosures rose from the ground like bath tubs, but they were not filled with water but aetheric-slime. Several nude dorians suspended in the viscous purple fluid as if they floated in the sea, and their bodies rocked in this substance along with the movement of the island.

A krumos emerged from his sleep enclosure. Covered in an icier, hydrating slime, the milk-toned muscular creature lifted to his feet. His hardened skin bore many white scars and chipped fins, and unlike Pyra, black eyes rested over a raised snout and a jaw of sharp teeth. With no earlobes nor facial expressions, the being was like if a shark and a dorian produced a hulking, battle-hardened beast-man. He let out a vibrating grunt of excitement as he left the slime on his skin as he climbed out.

Another krumos brushed past her forcing her to step out of the way. He wore green sea-serpent armor and a finned bone helmet with a seaglass visor descending from the forehead to his nose, while carrying a jagged spear tipped in seaglass. Several feet taller than her, a potent odor rose off him making Pyra’s nose curl. She’d never gotten used to the creatures of colder waters, especially airing out here away from the sea.

Back to her enclosure, a small bin sat on the floor held her only belongings. She leaned forward and ran a hand along the polish of her black-bone lyre on its stand. It offered a modicum of comfort even though she hadn’t played it in years. She vowed to herself she would only pluck a melody again when her and those around her could freely enjoy the song. Leaving her instrument behind, she picked up a sheathed iron dagger, and strapped it around her thigh. She lifted a similar finned helmet and slid it on her head. The visor covered her nose while keeping her mouth exposed, ready for war-song.

Pyra passed a sailsinger woman, named Niv, with black hair, light skin, and green eyes. She wore the same skinsuit as Pyra, though its legs fed down into black ankle-high leather boots. Her battle cloak was adorned in red serpent’s scales. With her helmet, she barely looked human. A jagged, white scar ran down the length of Niv’s tanned chin and arced all the way to her throat—a remnant of a healed wound that should have been fatal.

Pyra considered vocalizing to Niv in friend-song to bridge the silence between them, but every time she opened her mouth, nothing escaped. She couldn’t think of anything that would endear herself to Niv or to do the same in return. All they could do was discuss memories of the past that were better left buried. They marched on in silence down the stairwell and out to the patio under the dome.

Hundreds of warriors moved along the empty space under the dome, many land-folk but mostly sea-folk. No sculptures nor furniture of leisure dotted the patio, and Pyra crossed the barren marble to pass beyond the tall support columns into the gravel of the front yard. Tables held trays of fish, some seared and some raw. The land-folk hurried to the spread, their battle cloaks clacking together, as they vied for the cooked food. The krumos did not fight them for it as they grabbed the uncooked flesh and chomped them down, bones and all.

Pyra snatched two cooked ones off the tray and delicately consumed fish flesh. Purple steam trailed off the silver scales, and she ate in the aether to ready her body for the task ahead. The flesh was soft and flakey as she bit and ripped chunks of meat, and her fingers held on tight to the green leaf wrapped at the tail. It was messy business to eat while marching, but there was no time for an intimate banquet—nor would there ever be.

Gazing up over her shoulder, three winged figures stood atop the high tower. The Fallen watched out on the soldiers’ march. Muscular and imposing, a massive helmed knight in dented black armor bore three swords sticking out of his back. Long black-purple wings of translucent valefire extended up from his shoulders, and they folded down to drape along his back like a cape. He held aloft his black blade and pointed it out toward the silent volcano as its shadowy crags of the caldera loomed in the distance.

Another winged figure wore a cloak of shadows, as if he’d been made from the absence of light. He stood over seven-feet tall, and as his long wings of valefire extended as he stepped off the tower and glided overhead like a silent eagle. The Abyss’s long cloak of shadow whipped out over the sky almost as if it moved not in wind but with terrifying purpose.

The last figure that stood there wore a lavish silk doublet and a feathered cap. Heavy chains draped like a scarf on his shoulders, and it trailed down to wrap tightly to his ribs. Even with his arms secured tightly to his sides, the being was anything but harmless. The Torment’s features were mostly pale and unassuming. His hair did not drape down out of his cap as he’d kept it closely shaved. His wings were the most lithe and elegant, and when he leapt from the tower, it was more like a long continuous leap than actual flying. His wings twisted out from his back like long trails of purple smoke. The heavy chains on his body rattled along the night.

As the warriors walked the mountain path, an emptiness clawed its way into Pyra’s chest. Each staggering step felt as if she walked in someone else’s body, listless in someone else’s life. Her feet led her all the way to the purple sands of the beach. Before her, rising pillars of jagged stone stood clutching bands of steaming valefrost. As Niv stood beside her, she fought the urge to get closer to the woman’s warmth.

“You can ask me,” Niv whispered.

Pyra didn’t respond, at first. She glanced about to find the target of the woman’s words. She finally decided Niv spoke to her. Pyra hesitated before humming a response.

“What’s left of my humanity?”

Pyra fully faced the woman and gazed into the soft pools of her eyes. She wasn’t beautiful in a classical sense of the word. No sculptor would choose Niv as a model, but the woman was ravishing in a ravaging way: scarred, hardened, resilient, and unwavering. Niv was not a sun set but an immense cliffside where the sun would catch. Though she didn’t smile, her eyes widened in a welcoming way.

A soft glow pulsed in Pyra’s chest.

Tears trailed down Niv’s face, as even cliffsides let rainfall slide down the rocks. Pyra tossed the fishbones off into the springy grass of the beach, and she engaged in hurried friend-song. She hummed at first, a warmth spreading through the air within the vibrations. Her throat vocalization grew louder yet remained tonally consistent, like a mantra.

Niv shook her head. “I’ve not forgotten what it means to live. Even if that means that I must die to do it.”

Pyra’s song ceased, and she trembled at the words. Niv couldn’t be saying those types of things. It shouldn’t have been possible, not under The Torment’s dark influence.

Pyra worked her mouth around the land-folk language, her voice nearly unfamiliar to her own ears. “I don’t understand.”

Niv said nothing. They both watched the land now stretching on before the pillars of stone. Valefrost choked the beach, obscuring all of them in thick, purple sea smoke flowing out to this new, strange place ahead. The buzzing of war-song filled the air and mingled with ghostly melodies of the leviathans’ wails.

The Abyss flew down and landed on the beach. Standing like a giant before them, his wings vanished in a puff of smoke, and all that was left was this pillar-like man in a long black cloak. He rumbled loud like thunder and crackled like lightning. “The time has come.”

The world around Pyra disappeared as a vast void enveloped her, as if she were in a deep unconsciousness while still alert. She couldn’t move as his echoing words washed along her body. She trembled in his presence.

An image appeared before Pyra: a pitch-black box, so deeply dark it looked to swallow shadow itself. Seeming big enough to hold something of value but small enough to carry in just two hands—the box had no opening. Covered in circular glowing sigils, the container iced along the outer walls with valefrost and burned along the top in valefire. For years, this was the image he’d given the warriors right before battle. Why The Abyss sought the mythic Shadesh Box, she hadn’t a clue.

“Find what I seek.”

The world swam back into focus, and everyone appeared around her once more.

The massive knight glided down on his burning wings, and he touched down on the sand with a heavy thud. Raising his gauntleted hand in the air, the ground underfoot shook. Out of the purple sand, ghouls rose as if out of shallow graves. Their putrid arms raked along the ground as they pushed up to their feet. With rusted armor and weapons, they stood up as hundreds of grains of sand tumbled back to the beach. They moaned and croaked out of their broken vocal cords, and Pyra couldn’t help but investigate the rotted flesh with mild interest. Her father might’ve been the physician of her family, but she still found anatomy to be a point of fascination.

Some of the ghouls wore tunics and sandals of the Cultivation Age. They carried chipped and broken short swords called gladiuses. Most of the ghouls wore the rusted plate and helms of the Honor Age, and they carried withered spears and pikes. A few even bore the more common garb of the current era, the Adventure Age, of leather armors, simple breastplates, or even no armor at all. The Fallen’s wretched minions staggered miserably toward the aethereal waves as if already beginning their death march to war.

The Abyss raised both his cloaked hands up into the air as all the living warriors on the beach shimmered in valefrost as their images shifted. Instead of the sea-folk and land-folk warriors, they all now appeared like undead soldiers of different generations. Folk in rusted armor, men in tunics and sandals with rotted flesh, and women in a ragged uniforms carrying broken rifles with sharp bayonets.

Pyra transformed into the illusion of a maige in long flowing black fabric and pale, rotted cheeks. Her facial features remained the same except now marred by the putrid visage of undeath. Niv wore a similar illusion, and the long white scar remained, except it now festered.

The Fallen stepped up next to Pyra, and she could clearly see the three long blades piercing into the backplate of his armor. He raised the faceplate of his helm, and a slight smile crossed his withered lips. He held up a curved obsidian war horn and blew into it making it bellow. The immense noise shook along the ocean waters turning from the valefrost purple to crashing green, whitecapped waves.

The veil opened.

Fresh salt air crossed the beach.

Moonlight shined down along the dark shore.

The Torment landed on the beach in his elegant attire, and with the barest of grins, his voice rose out over the crowd like a luscious melody, though there was a torturous strain to it. It was so soothing as he said, “Obey me. Find the Shadesh Box. Kill anyone who gets in the way.”

His smooth words washed over Pyra and filled her mind as if in intoxication. She could hear no other voice, and its message and intention struck true as it guided her hand. His eyes locked on Pyra, and she shivered to be under the gaze of those pitch-black eyes, as if they were made from obsidian.

Valefrost now poured across the docks and buildings beyond in its heavy, ghostly fog. The warriors leapt forward and were carried in bands of valefrost across the veil. Pyra lifted along the droplets of purple, momentarily as light as a drop of water herself, and gingerly stepped onto the hard timber of a dock.

Violence erupted like a tidal wave, and the people of this land washed away in the thrust of rusted steel and bash of gnarled clubs. Chaos sparked as hands severed in the cut of blades, and The Fallen swung his broadsword hard into a fleeing sailor. The man’s back opened like a crimson book, and he flopped down boneless to the wood in a thudding heap.

Niv walked the length of a neighboring dock and raised both hands in the air. As a sailsinger, the varying symbols inside circular dark lines, known as aema, fanned along her knuckles, and she focused on one and it began to glow and burn in the destructive valefire. Sea water rose on both sides to greet her outstretched hands. Ships rocked and strained against their mooring in the rising ocean. Purplish steam poured off her fingers as she pulled and lifted the water into the air to lash down with incredible force at a city watch. The man cried out as the water hit him like a cannonball, and it crushed into his chest sending him sprawling. Water hanging in the air hardened into ice, and she sent icicles hurling at terrible speeds to drive into the necks and chests of a crowd of guards.

Next to Pyra, a sailor stepped down a gangplank while holding tight to a pistol. The world blackened all around her, and all she could see now was this sailor. She had no desire to end his life, but The Torment’s words weighed down on her skull, making it feel like her neck would break. His voice sweetly whispered in her ear. “Kill any that get in your way.”

As the world swam back in focus, Pyra instinctively weaponized her war-song. Her vibrations deepening with enough force to push the fog of valefrost across his face. Though the man resisted, his mind fell under her control. The ensorcelled man turned his pistol and shot a woman in a peasant’s dress. Before the man could recover his wits, The Fallen drove his sword clean through the man’s stomach.

Pyra traveled farther along the docks as her whole body shook. A silent scream filled her head. She tried to force her muscles to stop moving. She resisted this call for carnage. “Obey.” The Torment commanded her with a sweet, lulling voice.

Pyra couldn’t deny The Torment’s words and mesmerized a woman with thick black hair and a horrified expression to strangle the man next to her, and though this woman screamed in terror, she obeyed. The woman grappled a young man, clutching her fingers into the soft flesh of his throat, and they struggled over a gangplank to tumble on the deck of a ship.

Hollow and deep, like the echoes rumbling from a sea vent, The Abyss’s laugh rattled from Pyra’s brainbox and down her spine. He enjoyed the violence, and even though she could not see The Abyss or The Torment in the fray of battle, she knew they were there somewhere along the fringe of it. They operated in slink and shadow while The Fallen dove into the clash with reckless abandon.

Pyra turned her attention to Niv’s dance along the cobblestones of the street as wind came to her call and lashed into the wood of a wagon, causing a rain of splinters. Her red-scaled battle cloak danced and snapped. Two guards raced around a corner to face her with cutlasses, and she swayed back and let the wind thrash and cut into their wrists. Her ballet moved in a beautiful anguish. She twisted like water. Dipped and flowed like wind. Called lightning as she danced fire off torches. As another guard stepped around the piling corpses at Niv’s feet, he raised his pistol. She could take him out with her eyes closed, but her dance slowed.

“No,” Pyra cried, but the distance was too great.

Niv didn’t face the guard.

“No. Please!”

Niv glanced over at Pyra and smiled.

As she halted her dance and stood upright, she closed her eyes. The man fired, and the metal dragon roared and smoked just as The Fallen, midflight, slammed his body into Niv, sending her sprawling on the ground. The bullet from the guard’s gun ripped into his arm, and he bellowed out in pain and rage. The guard tried to fire another loaded pistol as the thrice skewered knight cleared the distance and rammed the man through with his sword and hefted him high into the air. The guard’s blood rained on The Fallen as he howled with rage. He growled while violently tossing the man’s body to the ground, and he glared at the sailsinger.

Niv staggered to her feet, and she shied her eyes. Without another second of hesitation, she began her dance, again.

Pyra let out a ragged breath of relief, and she turned back to glance at the real ocean once more. It was so beautiful as it called to her. A leviathan, with an illusory rotted fin, crashed through a dock finger as folks flung through the air and splashed in the water. The beast thrashed as it chewed into one of the folks who’d fallen into the sea.

The Torment weighed on Pyra like a heavy anchor. As she flowed through the valefrost strangling the dockside of this city—a place she didn’t even know the name, she tracked the signs of life ahead that The Torment commanded her to snuff out. Screams wailed from somewhere in the night, and she followed them. From her hip, she drew her iron dagger. With a white-knuckled grip, she thrusted the blade into the belly of a passing militia man. His chubby cheeks reddened in a scream of pain as he tumbled to the ground. Pyra merely knelt to him and ended his song.

She cut and mesmerized her way along a path of unending death. The only melody within her aching heart cried for blood.