Prologue
The shadows in his chambers breathe. Not in the way real things breathe. But in the way nightmares do. Slow. Inevitable. Pressing in from the corners of the room like the tide coming to swallow him whole.
Rayner sits curled in the farthest corner, arms wrapped tight around his knees, chin tucked low, like maybe if he folds himself small enough, the dark won’t see him.
He hasn’t slept in two nights. Not since he stole the key. Not since he opened the portal.
The object lies across the room where he threw it, innocent-looking now. Just a curved sliver of silver etched with ancient glyphs. One of the five old portal keys, tucked away in the Grand Hall’s reliquary under the careful watch of the palace’s Keepers of Secrets, in a spot that a curious, clever fourteen-year-old should never have been able to break into.
But he had. He had. And it had worked.
The portal had bloomed open with violet light and humming power, and he’d stepped through without thinking, drawn by the promise of elsewhere. Of forbidden knowledge. Of proving that he was more than the heir. More than his father’s shadow.
He’d only meant to look. Instead, he found something waiting.
He can’t describe it. Not fully. A presence, not a being. It didn’t speak. Not in words. But it had seen him. And it had smiled.
It followed him back.
And now… now it lives somewhere inside his skin. Thin as silk at first. Just a sliver of cold. A strange thought. An extra heartbeat in the silence.
But it’s growing.
Every hour, it pushes harder against the walls of his mind. Like it knows something is coming.
Like it knows that tomorrow, on the eve of his fifteenth birthday, he will shift into his adult form. The first true shift. His body will break, reform, rebuild, grow. And that fracture, he knows it, will be wide enough for the thing to slip through.
That’s when it will take him.
He doesn’t know how he knows. Just that he does. He doesn’t want to believe it. He tells himself he’s strong. Stronger than whatever parasite has rooted itself inside his soul. And he’ll be stronger after that adult-shift. And then, after his second shift, when he gets his wolf at the next full moon, he’ll be stronger than anyone. He’ll be able to handle it then. He just needs time. Time to understand it. Time to hide it. Time to beat it.
But his skin already feels too tight.
His thoughts already twist, coiled like barbed wire.
Sometimes he can’t tell where his fear ends and its hunger begins.
He should tell someone. Confess. Beg his father, King Logan, for help. His mother would cradle his face in her hands, would say it’s not too late. They’d summon the Keepers of Secrets. The High Healers. They’d extract that being and send it back to where it came from and lock away the key.
But then they’d know. They’d know what he did. That he disobeyed every sacred law. That he had used a portal key without permission, without really knowing what he was doing, and opened a portal to a realm that should never have opened.
They’d never trust him again.
They’d never crown him.
So he keeps quiet.
The door is locked. The curtains drawn. Outside, the capital is beginning to stir. Drums echo faintly in the distance, preparations for the Festival of Fights already beginning. The rhythm of tradition. Of unity. Of joy at their crown prince coming into his adulthood.
Of the world that will be his to rule.
Unless he breaks.
Unless he lets it in.
Rayner curls tighter into himself. The whispering starts again, faint and oily, like wind through broken glass. But it’s coming from inside his mind, or maybe behind it. He presses his palms to his temples and tries not to cry.
Just one more night. Just one more night and then…
He flinches.
He thought he heard a laugh.
