Chapter 1 The River of Tears
The River of Tears was a cursed place. It was said that the water remembered every soul lost to it, whispering their names in the dead of night. Some claimed the river ran silver under moonlight because of the grief it carried. Others, the ones who feared stories were too close to truth, whispered a darker tale.
They said the river had once been a vein of the lost kingdom itself ,its waters tinged gold with the blood of the fallen.
I stood at its edge, my reflection a ghost in the rippling surface. The night was cold, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and distant death. Somewhere behind me, the remnants of my people slept, hidden beneath the land that had swallowed us whole centuries ago. If I failed, they would sleep forever.
“An Angel of Death should not look so lost.”
I did not startle at the voice. It slid through the darkness, smooth as a dagger slipping into silk. I knew who it belonged to before I turned.
Kale, the King of Blood, stood at the other side of the river. He did not belong to the shadows, and yet they clung to him, curling around the edges of his crimson cloak. His eyes,dark and burning watched me with something too dangerous to be curiosity, too knowing to be pity.
“You are far from your throne, King,” I said, tilting my chin. “Or do you seek to drown in the very river your kind has filled with my dead?”
He smirked. It was the kind of smile that made men walk into traps willingly. “A fair warning. But if I wanted to kill you, Runa, you wouldn’t have heard me coming.”
A strange chill ran through me at the sound of my name in his mouth.
My fingers twitched toward the dagger at my hip. I could have thrown it. I could have sent it slicing through the air, aimed for the space where his smirk met his throat.
Instead, I asked, “What do you want?”
He tilted his head, the soft glow of the river painting his sharp features. “To see you.”
I laughed, though there was no humor in it. “You stand at the edge of war, and that is all you have to say?”
He exhaled, stepping forward until the tip of his boot touched the water. He should have sunk. He should have drowned. But the river stilled beneath him, as if afraid.
“You misunderstand,” he said. “I came to see what kind of death I will be facing.”
The wind howled between us, a silent warning. I could feel the weight of my people’s history pressing against my back, whispering their curses against his name.
But I did not look away.
I would be their vengeance.
And Kale, King of Blood, would be their ruin.
