"Inheritance disputes," I murmur to the empty room, my voice barely a whisper of shadow and smoke. "How tediously predictable."
The pattern emerges with brutal clarity. A widowed woman remarries a man with property and a daughter. The daughter represents an obstacle to complete control of assets. Remove the father, claim guardianship, arrange a profitable marriage. The mathematics of human greed, calculated in drops of poison and measured in months of suffering.
Below, voices drift upward through the floorboards—the widow's tone sharp with sudden authority, the daughter's responses growing smaller with each exchange. The transformation has already begun. Grief makes mortals malleable, and this woman clearly understands how to exploit that vulnerability.
I straighten, brushing invisible dust from my coat as I consider the implications. The girl's thread of grief continues to burn against my consciousness, but now it carries undertones of something else—a growing awareness that her world has shifted beyond mere loss into active threat.
The covenant laws that bind my existence are clear on matters of justice and retribution. Contracts may be offered to those who seek redress for wrongs committed. The price varies according to the service requested, but the law itself remains inviolate.
If she calls, I will answer.
The thread of grief that binds me to this place suddenly flares with fresh intensity, pulsing like an infected wound. Through the stone walls, I sense the household's atmosphere thickening with tension—voices rising in the room below, sharp exchanges that carry the unmistakable cadence of predator and prey.
The widow's tone cuts through the floorboards with newfound authority. "With your father gone..."
The girl's responses grow quieter, more hesitant. Each word seems to cost her something vital, as though speech itself has become a luxury she can no longer afford.
The thread pulses again, stronger now, edged with something beyond mere grief. Desperation bleeds through the connection—raw and immediate. Yet she does not call my name. The formal invocation remains unspoken, though I sense it gathering force like storm clouds on a distant horizon.
Still, something compels me to follow the source. The pull defies my usual detachment, drawing me through shadow as surely as iron follows lodestone. I slip from the house unseen, tracking the girl as she stumbles through the back door into the fading afternoon light.
Her feet carry her with the blind purpose of the deeply wounded—up the rocky slope behind the modest dwelling, past scraggly thornbushes and weathered stone outcroppings. She climbs without looking back, her movements mechanical yet urgent, as though fleeing something that pursues her through the very air she breathes.
I follow at a distance, maintaining my position in the spaces between shadows where mortal eyes cannot reach. The hillside rises steep and unforgiving, but she ascends with the determination of someone who has nothing left to lose.
At the crest, she stops. The wind whips her dark hair across her face as she stares up at the sky, arms hanging limp at her sides like broken wings. For a moment, she stands perfectly still—a figure carved from stone and sorrow against the darkening heavens.
Then she opens her mouth and releases a sound that tears through the infernal planes like a blade forged from pure anguish.
The wail erupts from her throat with such force that it seems to rip something fundamental from her very soul. Itcarries no words, no coherent plea—only the distilled essence of loss so profound it transcends language itself. The sound claws its way skyward, a primal scream that speaks of injustice and abandonment and the crushing weight of a world suddenly emptied of meaning.
I feel it strike me like a hooked blade being lodged in my gut and tugging it apart. The emotion hits my chest with unexpected force, awakening something I had thought long dormant. In all my centuries of collecting mortal debts, I have never heard grief expressed with such devastating purity.
She collapses to her knees, the scream fragmenting into broken sobs that shake her entire frame. Her hands claw at the rocky ground as though trying to anchor herself to something solid in a world that has become nothing but shifting sand.
The invocation hovers at the edge of her consciousness. I sense it building like pressure behind a dam, waiting for the moment when desperation finally overcomes the last vestiges of hope.
The sight of her crumpled form, silhouetted against the dying light, strikes something uncomfortably close to my core. The raw vulnerability of her grief awakens an unfamiliar ache in my chest—a sensation I cannot name and dare not examine too closely.
I withdraw into deeper shadow, retreating to await the call that must surely come.
7
ILYRA
The settlement's pyre stands at the edge of our small community like a stone altar built for gods who have long since abandoned us. Elder Korven constructed it from river stones and clay mortar, creating a platform that rises waist-high above the packed earth. The wood—oak and pine gathered from the forest beyond the mines—has been stacked with the precision of someone who has performed this ritual too many times.
Father's coffin rests atop the carefully arranged logs, looking impossibly small against the darkening sky. The simple pine box that Jorik the carpenter fashioned in a single afternoon seems inadequate to contain a man who once filled rooms with his laughter, who could coax stubborn mules into cooperation and convince quarreling neighbors to share a drink.
"Ilyra." Elder Korven's weathered hand touches my shoulder. "It's time."
The torch feels heavier than it should, the oil-soaked cloth wrapped around its head flickering in the evening breeze. My fingers close around the rough wooden handle, and I notice howsteady my hands appear despite the tremor that runs through my entire body.
"He would want you to do this, child," Korven murmurs, his voice carrying the gentleness reserved for the freshly bereaved.
I step forward, the gathered settlement residents parting to create a clear path to the pyre. Their faces blur together—neighbors who shared harvest dinners, who borrowed tools and repaid kindness, who knew Father as more than just another struggling miner. Mrs. Thorne clutches her shawl tighter. Young Willem shuffles his feet and stares at the ground.
The torch trembles as I extend it toward the base of the pyre. The flame catches immediately, racing along the oil-soaked kindling with eager hunger. Orange light dances across the stone platform, casting shifting shadows that make the coffin appear to move.