Prologue
The night held its breath.
A dark, moonless silence pressed over the clearing where two monstrous shapes strained against iron chains, their roars shaking dust from the waves of the savannah grass. The air smelled of scorched fur and fear. The groans and huffs of exhausted men filled the night air, their steaming breaths filling the night sky.
The boy stood at the edge of the clearing—barefoot, chest rising and falling too fast—holding his breath as a wave of heat rolled toward him from the beasts.
One was male, massive, powerfully muscular with a charcoal-black coat that shone like polished obsidian. His silver-white mane seemed to glow from within, shimmering each time he snarled. The other, a sleek female, paced and twisted her neck anxiously, her golden eyes scanning the shadows as if searching for someone—or something.
A soft click of heels echoed behind the boy.
His mother emerged from the dark like a blade sliding from a sheath.
Peris.
Tall. Elegant. Terrifying.
She wore her authority like a second skin, her back straight, her hair braided tightly into a crown, and her expression carved from stone. The long coat draped over her shoulders carried the faint scent of gunpowder, steel, and a perfume only highborn women ever dared to wear. Her eyes, however—sharp, calculating, unflinching—belonged to a soldier.
They always had.
“Do not tremble,” she said, stepping beside him without looking at him. “They smell fear. And they feed on it.”
“I’m not afraid,” he lied.
Peris allowed herself the smallest smile—half pride, half pity.
“You should be.”
She stepped forward, the lantern in her hand illuminating the creatures. The chains holding them rattled as the male lunged, teeth clashing, heat shimmering around him like a furnace. The boy flinched.
Peris did not.
“These,” she said, her voice low and steady, “are not animals. They are remnants.”
She nodded toward the lion pair, her shadow stretching long behind her.
“Long before you were born, before I was born, before your grandfather put a spear through his first beast, there were the lions of Tsavo.”
The boy swallowed. He had heard the stories—every hunter child had—but hearing it here, in the presence of the monsters, made the tales feel too real.
“Those weren’t ordinary lions,” Peris continued. “They were men—humans—twisted by the spirits that drift on the astral plane. Tricksters. Devourers. Whisperers.”
She circled the chained werelions, her lantern casting flickers of gold in the female’s frantic eyes.
“When the railroad was being built, the spirits slipped into hungry, angry men... and what rose from their skins were creatures that tasted blood and never hungered for anything else.”
She paused at the male. He snarled at her, flames dancing faintly in his throat.
Peris didn’t blink.
“They killed dozens before your lineage hunted them down. But spirits never die. They wait. They watch. And sometimes...” She touched the male’s forehead gently, almost lovingly. “Sometimes they choose a new vessel.”
The boy’s chest tightened. “So they’re like the Tsavo man-eaters?”
“No,” Peris whispered. “They are worse.”
She turned to him then and reached into her coat. What she pulled out gleamed white under the lantern light.
A seme. Double-edged. Hiltless. Deadly.
She placed it in his hands. Fingers cold. Touch steady.
“Tonight,” she said, “you become a hunter.”
His heart hammered. He looked around, his body shivering uncontrollably from the number of bodies strewn over the forest floor, blood seeping into the earth. He looked back at them, the lions, the spirits. Tonight will live in his memory, the sounds of screaming men and women, the smell of thick blood dripping; he knew it would haunt him forever.
“Mother... they’re too strong. I—”
The male roared again, blasting another wave of heat at him. The female snarled, tugging her chains as if trying to shield her mate.
Peris lifted the boy’s chin with a single finger.
“We do not kill for pride,” she said softly. “We kill because someone must.”
She pointed at the creatures.
“End one. Learn its weight. Know its fear. And remember—monsters do not pity you. Do not pity them.”
The boy stared at the seme, then at the beasts.
The female werelioness met his gaze—eyes wide, terrified, searching. Not a monster’s eyes, he thought. A prisoner’s.
But Peris’s voice cut through his hesitation like the blade in his hand.
“Strike, my son.”
The boy raised the seme.
The monsters roared.
And the night swallowed the rest.
