1 Prologue - Ashes and Shadow

The acrid scent of smoke lingered in the late summer breeze like a half-forgotten memory.

A lone hooded figure climbed steadily up the steep mountainside of Pellinor's Peak. It was the tallest among the mountain range that lined Nemoro's eastern border, yet oddly the only one with access to the valley beyond it, and past that, the ruins of a former kingdom named Empyrean, and past that, the Silent Sea. Few men dared brave Pellinor's perilous passes and rocky trails, which narrowed to no more than six inches wide with a bare cliff face on one side and a sheer drop on the other. The way becomes nigh impossible during winter amid the ice and snow.

Yet Tamuryn had made the pilgrimage for the first time fourteen years ago, then seven years ago, and once more on this day of the summer solstice. He kept his hood up not for want of warmth, but a force of habit, having grown accustomed to shielding the raw, glistening web of scars from an old, terrible burn that marred the left side of his face and extended, coiled and serpentine, down the entire left side of his body. Just a few minutes of the noonday sun in all its glory was enough to set the old scars ablaze. There was little by way of shade this high up the mountain, as the lush verdant pine forests gave way to scattered junipers and withered shrubbery.

He kept his gaze down. His eyes - one a dark brown and the other a milky blue that was nearly blind - remained fixed on the ground beneath his feet as he took one step after another. Strapped across his back was a threadbare rucksack and an enormous sword, five and a half feet long, encased in a faded scabbard of tawny leather that clanked softly with each step he took. The climb felt more strenuous on his legs this year, and he wondered if it was the effect of his old wounds, or perhaps age had finally caught up to him, after thirty-eight years. As the sun swung westward and Tamuryn's legs grew heavier under him, he pushed back his hood and saw, snow-capped and imposing, the jagged zenith of Pellinor piercing the afternoon sky.

It did not appear so far now. At this height the clouds that shrouded the mountain turned into mist that coiled by his feet. He paused for a moment to revel in the view of the landscape below - one that few but the eyes of birds and perhaps aeromancers of old have known. To the northwest, the dark and foreboding Ravenswood, its ancient pines and firs stretching for thousands of leagues to the distant glacial mountaintops of Aeolia. From the southern edge of the forest emerges the silver thread of the Lierre River, twisting ever more westward, through the grassy plains and rolling knolls of Sunridge, diverging briefly to feed Willowlake to the south before returning to the Whispering Sea. The river continues west for a hundred more leagues before crashing into the foamy rapids of the Shearwater just before Everis.

A chill breeze cooled the sweat on Tamuryn's skin, signaling the lateness of the hour. With renewed vigor, he hurried up the remainder of his ascent and half-ran, half-slid down toward the valley. The smell of smoke grew stronger in his nostrils, and he knew that he had to hurry, or else he would miss the Burning.

The sun was a low, molten disc in the sky by the time Tamuryn crashed through the undergrowth and out into the open basin at the foot of Pellinor. He stood upon its upper rim and gazed down upon a rippling crimson sea. It rustled quietly in the wind, the sound of thousands of tree branches brushing against each other. And in the wake of the wind, countless red flower petals twirled and danced in the twilight.

The smell of smoke was so pungent that it verged on suffocating. There was no fire in sight, for this was the scent of fireflower trees, native only to Empyrean, and believed to be extinct with the fall of its home country. Hundreds of trees filled the valley, their branches thick with blooms, forming an impenetrable canopy. The brilliant red of the flowers stood out all the more so against the contrast of the charcoal grey tree trunks, which appeared nearly black in the twilight.

As always, Tamuryn felt a pang of nostalgia and loss settle with the weight of Pellinor upon his chest. He closed his eyes against the vivid red of the four-petaled flowers, and saw in his mind, of the same hue, a woman's hair, billowing like silk behind her, along with the sound of her laughter, like a bubbling brook, which once captivated the hearts of many men. These trees, his memories, and the two young children in his care were all that remained of her. It was all he could do, in the end, to tend to this grove as he had tended to her children, if only to feel some small part of her presence once more.

A sudden hiss cut through the silence, followed by fiery sparks that shot through the air in golden arcs.

It was Burning Day, which occurred once every seven years at sunset on the summer solstice. A small flame erupted from one of the branches deep in the grove, followed by another, and another. The fire spread at an impossible speed in ever-expanding loops until the entire grove of trees was alight in flame. There was magic in the flames, for they emitted not a trace of smoke.

The fire burned lower and lower until they consumed the very roots of the trees. The entire spectacle lasted no longer than an hour, and when it was over, a thick blanket of shimmering grey ash covered the valley floor in place of the fireblossom grove. By summertime next year, new saplings will have sprouted forth from the ashes, to grow, blossom, and burn once more in an endless cycle.

Darkness filled the valley as the sun diminished behind Mount Pellinor. Tamuryn knelt and scooped up a handful of ashes, reveling in the soft warmth. He brought them to his lips for the briefest of moments, before turning abruptly to start the journey home. Even in the night, he knew the path by heart and used the stars as guide. If he made camp at midnight, halfway up the wooded slopes, he would be home by dawn on the third day.

As a sickled moon cast its pale glow across the sky, Tamuryn saw in the half-light a flicker of movement at the far side of the vale. A trick of the light, he thought, and then froze.

There, across the field of ashes, stood a shadow. A shadow in the familiar shape and stature of a woman, with a mane of dark hair trailing behind her like a ragged banner upon a field of battle. Silhouetted in the moonlight, she appeared to be dressed in tattered rags that billowed all around her. Yet there was no wind on such a still night.

A wave of nausea swept over Tamuryn. He fought to swallow the bile and fear that rose up, unbidden, from the pit of his stomach. As he squinted with his one good eye, he realized that there was nothing human about the figure. What moved around her were tendrils of darkness that seethed and swarmed like a black and venomous miasma.

She took one unsteady step forward. A cloud of ashes rose up around her feet. She took another, moving with the uncertainty of a child taking its very first steps. As she drew closer, Tamuryn saw that she had neither eyes nor nose, merely a lipless mouth that opened into a grotesque imitation of a smile. And he saw, deep within that gaping maw, a horrible darkness that writhed with eagerness and hunger.

"Taaaaa.." Its lipless mouth spoke with a voice more horrible than any sound he had ever heard. It was the desolate rattle of dead leaves, cicada husks, and empty oceans. It was a sound that did not belong to the world of light and life.

Shade.

The word rose from the depths of his mind like a pale corpse emerging from silent water. He remembered learning about them a lifetime ago, as a much younger man, studying the ancient history of magic in the Library of Aludra, before that country, too, collapsed into ruin.

A creature born of darkness and despair, the failed summons of a spirit that has become twisted beyond all recognition after being forced to awaken from death's eternal slumber and torn between realms. Oftentimes it was the culmination of a sorcerer's ambition to cheat death, despite the certainty that whosoever calls forth the Shade would perish in unimaginable agony at the moment of summoning. For the creature only knows a terrible hunger. A hunger that drives its every action, purpose, and ambition - to devour all life.

They were the soldiers of Nebiros in the Age of Darkness, and they were legion, for all who fell to an army of Shades would reawaken to join the ranks of their former enemies. A thousand years later, in the Golden Age of magecraft, they were all but forgotten, mentioned only in passing in ancient myths or tales of horror to frighten unruly children into obedience. There remained few documented accounts within the scrolls that chronicled the Age of Darkness, or what remained of them after the fire the sinking of Aludra, and fewer still who survived an encounter with a Shade. Yet all the writings warn that a Shade will stop at nothing in its insatiable desire for life, for it craves the one thing that it can never have.

"Tam… ryn…" Again, the hideous voice.

And somehow it had uttered Tamuryn's name, and in doing so cast a spell over every nerve and muscle in his body. All he could do was stand, petrified, as the creature reached for him with unnaturally long fingers that tapered into dagger-sharp talons.

The distance between them closed with every hulking, hobbling stride. Sometimes it crawled on all fours, sometimes it walked on two feet, becoming more sure of its gait with each step it took.

Tamuryn felt his heart skip a beat, not for fear of his life, but because there was something undeniably familiar in the way it walked, the angle of its hips and shoulders, the peculiar way that the creature occasionally paused to tilt its head to the left… Hot bile rose to his throat, and with a realization more terrible than ten thousand Shades, he forcefully expelled the contents of his stomach all over his boots.

The creature recoiled at his sudden movement, and the spell that rooted Tamuryn in place was broken.

He staggered backward, away from the claw-like hands, and fumbled to undo the straps that tethered the sword to his back. With trembling hands he grasped the hilt of the mighty weapon and unsheathed the blade with a metallic hum that echoed through the ashen vale and rang, pure and true, like the singing of crystal bells. It pierced the night with an icy white gleam, resembling not so much the silver of steel but the color of starlight.

At the sight of sword and light the creature recoiled, curled in on itself, and its gaping maw opened even wider to unleash a bloodcurdling shriek of rage and despair. And in its voice, he heard, faint yet unmistakable, the sound of a bubbling brook, thousands of years away. He dared not speak her name, for naming such a creature would only magnify its power.

Yet there was not a doubt in his mind, that this creature's existence was a grotesque imitation of the woman whose memory brought Tamuryn to the grove of fireflowers.

Tamuryn lunged at the Shade, slashing wildly with his sword. The creature darted backward with surprising agility, yet the tip of the blade cut a jagged line from its hip to shoulder. Another shriek, one that chilled Tamuryn to the bone. The Shade did not bleed, yet the absolute darkness where it was cut by the sword was faded, more translucent, that he could almost see through the gaping wound to the world behind it.

It rose up, in doing so slowly swelled in size, until it reached the height of three men and towered over Tamuryn with outstretched claws and talons each the length of his sword. In a single fell swoop it engulfed Tamuryn in shadow.

There was darkness all around him, and silence. Yet it was far from comforting. It was the silence of oblivion and death.

Fragments of memories rose, unbidden, flitting in and out tauntingly at the edge of his remembrance: A fire that devoured an empire, and left nothing but ruin its wake, not even bones left to bury. A golden war helm, stained with blood and a strand of crimson hair, half-buried on a sandy shore and almost carried away on the receding tide.

And long before that, the Hall of Forbidden Sorcery in the Library of Aludra, ancient scrolls of death and rebirth from even before the Age of Darkness, spells of summoning, and necromancy, whose dark secrets not even the most powerful and cunning sorcerers of legend could fully unravel, being consumed by the hungry eyes of a budding young mage, deciphered and memorized, in secrecy, in the dark hours that lingered before the first light of dawn. Another dark night, years after the library, years after the war, in a dank cave beside a tempestuous sea- the golden helmet gleamed dully in the center of an intricate nine-sided star, a summoning crest drawn in his own blood.

He still remembered the words he told himself when every instinct in his body screamed against uttering the dark language of necromancy, which so few have spoken and even fewer have survived. What did they know, when they had lost so little, were willing to sacrifice so little. He was different, he was willing to give up everything. Surely that would be enough, more than enough.

And he was fool enough to believe that it was enough.

Here, all around him, devouring him, was his greatest mistake, and his greatest regret.

With all the strength left to him, Tamuryn charged at the darkness before him and pierced it with his sword. His entire body rattled with the resistance he met, as if trying to stab his way through solid rock. Yet he ground his teeth and forced the blade deeper.

The faces of two children rose to his mind - a girl of seven years, already beautiful, with amber eyes and flame-colored hair, and a boy two years younger, also amber-eyed, half-hidden under a mop of jet black hair. They were waiting for him, in the cottage by the sea, which now seemed so very far away. But he would cross oceans, continents, entire worlds if needed, to return to them. The light from his sword swelled to a blinding intensity, and with a sound like shattering glass the darkness disappeared.

He was met by the sound of the wind sweeping through the vale, the lingering scent of smoke, and the stars, cold and indifferent, blinking down at him.

Without a second thought he scrambled to his feet and clambered up the mountainside, crashing through the undergrowth and running blindly through the trees, slashing and hacking at low-lying branches with his sword like a madman. His breath came in short, rapid bursts. His chest burned with the exertion, yet he dared not stop running, even when he could no longer feel his legs. Even when he was well past the summit of Pellinor, even when his field of view darkened in his one good eye and faded to nothingness, even as his body collapsed to the ground, his mind continued to scream a single world - run.