Prologue

It was the loud slam of the front door that roused Amaris from her exhausted stupor. She gently massaged the side of her head as she glanced around her familiar surroundings. Amaris had fallen asleep on the small, rickety wooden dining table which was littered with her trove of unfinished notes and an unusually clean and open book. The dying fire in the shoddily constructed fireplace that rested in the center of the family room was barely an ember now. A tall, lumbering figure, obscured in the shadows, moved towards the center of the room.

“Dad, is that you?” Her voice was raw and dry. She raked her notes into an unorganized pile as she kept an eye on the tall figure. “What did I tell you about slamming that door?”

“I— Amaris, why are you still up?” Her father strolled over to the fireplace, throwing another couple logs on the dying fire. Slowly, the flames consumed the new logs and illuminated her father’s gaunt face. She and her father barely bore any resemblance to one another. Where her eyes were chestnut with a small golden ring around the edge of her iris, his were a deep sapphire color. Where her hair was a dark reddish-brown, his was sun bleached and blond.

“I wasn’t up by choice,” Amaris let out a deep sigh. Her father kissed her forehead before he pulled a chair over, placing it next to her. “Madam Lampin gave me a book to read before tomorrow’s recital. It’s dull, verbose, and it puts me to sleep.”

“V— Verbose?” He repeated the word clumsily, clicking his teeth once as he reached for the book. Amaris watched the firelight flicker across his face and into the deep grooves of his weathered skin. “Mari, I don’t know how a girl of ten and two can read something like this and understand it. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, even if I tried, but you are my little scholar.”

A faint, snarky smile arched across Amaris’ face. “Dad, you can’t read.”

“Oh, right. I guess that does make sense.” Her father let out a low chuckle as he nudged Amaris’ shoulder playfully.

A moment’s pause fell between father and daughter. Amaris watched her father, as if she hadn’t seen him in years. He had flakes of raw dough smudged behind his ear. Her heart felt like it had been punctured as he slumped back into his chair, exhausted.

“Will you be able to make it tomorrow?” Amaris asked in a meek, almost nonexistent whisper. She looked away from her father and back at the book that Madam Lampin had given her.

The fire crackled, as if it were giving some short response. The shadows danced along the table in a sinister, jagged pattern. She could have sworn she saw a pair of dark brown eyes staring back at her.

Her father’s voice faltered the smallest amount before he glanced away, “I— I can’t make it tomorrow. Mr. Reynolds said that I needed to work at first light to help with the deliveries. I know you were wanting me to go. I’m sorry, bug.”

Amaris dared not glance towards her father. She knew as soon as she did that the tears that were now forming in the corners of her eyes would spill over. Madam Lampin had finally seen her talent granting Amaris the lead role in this year’s production of “The Wild Queen of Lastria” after she had been passed up by all of her classmates for the last four years. A flicker of searing pain consumed her palm as she dug her nails a little too deep. With a broken tone, Amaris whimpered, “Dad, you promised you would be able to make it.”

Her father turned back towards her, placing a gentle hand onto her arm. “Mari, look at me.”

Amaris shook her head carefully, glancing up at the ceiling to keep the tears from pouring down her cheeks. The tightness in her chest only worsened as she continued to think about it. A burgeoning pressure gently formed in the inner part of her ear whispering some phantasmal nonsense to her. 

Her father tugged on her arm a little more firmly, “Amaris, look at me.”

She slowly scanned her father’s face. He wore a pained expression, but a sincere smile. A single tear trailed down her cheek. She spat, “What?”

“Mari, baby, I was joking.” Her father spoke gently as he wrapped her up in a tight embrace. “Mr. Reynolds just hired a new kitchen hand, so I will have more free time. For us.”

Amaris let out a huff of indignation as her head rested against his bony chest, “Dad, why would you do that!? You scared me!”

Amaris listened for his heartbeat as she often did as a child to calm down, but there was no pulse beating in his chest. Instead, Amaris found nothing more than a vast open silence. She ripped herself out of her father’s arm, scanning over him quickly with wide eyes. 

Her father asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Y— Your heart. I can’t hear it.” Amaris stammered as she felt the tears slowly roll down her cheeks. “Dad, are you okay?”

Her father gingerly grasped her hands. Amaris flinched at the touch of her father’s freezing skin. His light eyes scanned over her before he smiled at her and his eyes melted into an inky black darkness. In a quick flash, his fair skin dissolved into puckering patches of decaying grey skin festering with open wounds. Amaris let out a shrill scream, frantically trying to pull her hands away. The sinister smile remained firmly planted on her father’s broken visage as the bone in his neck forced its way out, allowing his head to fall gently to his shoulder in some sort of profane curiosity. Her father’s mouth opened wide and a rasping otherworldly voice poured out, “He dies because of you, you know that right?”

“What did… you say?” Amaris stuttered, losing her voice halfway through her sentence. The nightmarish form of her father gripped her wrists harder, making sure she remained with him. Her heartbeat almost drowned out her senses, but it was the icy pain radiating from her wrists drew her attention back to him.

“Listen, girl. Listen.” Her father boomed as his voice began to multiply and layer over itself in some sort of lulling rhythmic pattern.  

“You’re… hurting me,” Amaris managed to eke out. As if some vent had been flung open in the back of her mind, heat poured throughout her body and made its way to her wrists. Her father looked at her wrists and then back at Amaris. Her vision slowly blurred. Her eyes darted from edge to edge. His sinister smile faded and had been replaced with a look of disgust. She pleaded, “Let me go.”

“You aren’t listening,” Her father hissed, pulling her closer to him. His rank ragged breath left a burning sensation on Amaris’ cheek as it passed over her skin. Golden spindles of light erratically swirled inside his inky black eyes as he studied his daughter’s fading movements. “His eyes, focused and hungry, a deceit that will last eons. He realized what he held, what power he was gambling with, and what he stole from her…”

She tried to keep her eyes open, but the call of the void howled endlessly at her. Her eyelids drooped, trying to remain open by fluttering before they closed. Her father let out a growl as his hand latched around her throat, his nails digging into the back of her neck. His freezing grip halted any breath that would dare try to escape her lungs. He pulled his daughter closer and whispered in her ear, “Her firstborn also noticed what the thief stole, even death won’t stop him from stealing it for himself. Find it before he does. Protect the key of your realm. The eyes of the wolf, the soul of a poet, and the call of the kestrel, know they are just the beginning of the Second Age.”

Amaris clawed at his wrists, ripping tendon and sinew from his decaying body like butter. She begged him with her eyes to let her go, so that she may revive herself with a breath. The chirping of songbirds filled the room echoing off the corners of the small living space. Her father scowled at the sound. Amaris’ fingertips bit against the bone in her father’s arm, but he gave no notice. Her lungs were smoldering coals, just waiting to be smothered. 

“There is so much more you need to know,” Her father sighed as he tightened his grip. In a fluid motion, her father stood and violently shoved Amaris backwards in her chair, releasing her throat as he did. “So much you need to know, but there is so little time.”

Amaris braced herself for the impact, but her former home around her fell away in darkness. The wind seared the inside of her lungs as she fell through the tunnel of umbral shade into the open air of a land of perpetual twilight, made of paralyzing dull purples, biting blues, and covered in a wispy layer of white fog. As she continued her plummet to the ravaged graying earth, she could make out wickedly shaped mountains, mist filled ravines, and at the edge of the horizon stood an impossibly tall tower. Amaris grimaced at the sight of it. Every thought that remained in her head screamed at her to run, but she felt drawn to it. Drawn to seek it out. Amaris turned her head just in time to notice that the ground was only a few feet away.

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