The air in the Sapphire Port of Oakhaven tasted of salt and impending rot. While the inland cities panicked over the fading sun, the people of House Nyros watched the sea. To them, the ocean was the only thing that didn't need light to be powerful. It was deep, it was dark, and it was patient.
Lady Lyra Nyros stood on the deck of *The Sea-Wraith*, her family's flagship. At nineteen, she was already more comfortable on the rolling deck of a ship than in the cushioned parlors of the capital. Her hair was the color of sea-foam, a pale, greenish-silver that marked the pure bloodline of the Nyros lords, and her eyes were a restless grey.
"The tide is pulling out further than it should, My Lady," her captain, an old salt named Hake, muttered. He pointed a gnarled finger toward the horizon. "When the sun dims, the moon gets hungry. The water is retreating. It's a bad omen."
"Everything is a bad omen these days, Hake," Lyra replied, her eyes fixed on the distant silhouette of the Royal Palace atop the cliffs. "The King is dead, the Sun-Glass is broken, and Princess Elara is looking for someone to blame. She's already seized the Thorne grain-ships in the harbor. We're next."
"They wouldn't dare," Hake spat. "House Nyros controls the trade routes. Without our fleet, Oakhaven starves in a week."
"Elara isn't thinking about trade, Hake. She's thinking about survival. She knows that whoever holds the remaining Sun-Glass controls the heat, and whoever controls the heat controls the people. She doesn't want our ships; she wants the Sun-Pearls in our vaults."
Lyra felt the heavy weight of the locket beneath her tunic. It wasn't a Sun-Pearl. It was something far older, a relic her father had retrieved from the Sunken Trenches before his 'accidental' drowning three years ago. It was a compass, but it didn't point North. It pointed toward the strongest source of Pure Light in the world.
And for the last hour, the needle had been spinning frantically toward the Dead-Barrens.
"Ready the crew," Lyra commanded, her voice dropping to a whisper. "We slip anchor at midnight. No lights. No bells."
"Where to, My Lady? The blockade is tight."
"We aren't going to the open sea, Hake. We're going to the Mouth of Sorrows. We're going to follow the needle."
***
Deep beneath the ruins of the Broken Ribs, Caspian Thorne was crawling through a history the world had forgotten.
The crevice he had fallen into didn't lead to a simple cave. It opened into a vast, subterranean hall of white stone. The architecture was alien—curved walls that looked like the interior of a giant ribcage, etched with symbols that pulsed with a faint, bioluminescent blue.
Caspian leaned against a wall, clutching his right arm. The Sun-Sickness was spreading. The golden veins now reached his elbow, and the skin felt as though it were being turned into molten lead. Each beat of his heart sent a jolt of heat through his nerves that made his vision swim.
He pulled the vial from his pouch. It was no longer just amber; it was swirling with streaks of white fire. Uncorking it had changed the substance inside. It was reacting to the environment, or perhaps, it was reacting to *him*.
"You can't stay here," a voice echoed through the hall.
Caspian spun around, his obsidian sword *Shard* clearing its scabbard in one fluid motion. The movement cost him—his right arm buckled, and he nearly dropped the blade.
A figure emerged from behind a massive, curved pillar. It wasn't an Echo, and it wasn't a soldier. It was a girl, perhaps no older than sixteen, wearing robes of tattered grey silk. Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent, and her eyes were completely black—no iris, no white, just two voids.
"Who are you?" Caspian rasped, his throat dry from the cold.
"A remnant," she said, her voice sounding like several people speaking at once. "I am the Keeper of the Ribs. And you are carrying a piece of a dying god. It's eating you, little wolf."
"It's Sun-Glass," Caspian corrected, though he felt his resolve crumbling. "It's a fuel. My father sent it to me to keep it out of the hands of House Valerius."
The girl laughed, a sound like dry leaves skittering over stone. "Fuel? Is that what the children of the Summer call it? It is the blood of the sky. And you have spilled it. By opening that vessel, you've told every Shadow in the world where you are. The Silver Masque is above us now, listening to the stone. He cannot find the entrance yet, but he will."
Caspian looked up at the ceiling. He could hear the faint, rhythmic thud of the Moon-Drake's heart through the rock. The girl was right. The ruins were a fortress, but they were also a trap.
"How do I stop the Sickness?" Caspian asked, gesturing to his glowing arm. "If I die, the light goes out anyway."
"You don't stop it," the girl said, walking closer. She didn't seem to walk so much as glide across the dust. "You balance it. The Light is fire, but you are a Thorne. You come from the roots, the earth, and the cold. To survive the fire, you must embrace the frost."
She pointed to a pool of dark, thick liquid in the center of the hall. It didn't reflect the bioluminescent light; it seemed to drink it.
"The Well of Tears," she said. "Drink from it, and it will chill your blood. It will slow the Sickness, but it will take something from you in return. Darkness always demands a price."
Caspian looked at the pool, then at his arm. The golden veins were starting to crack his skin, emitting a faint steam. He didn't have a choice. He knelt by the pool, cupped his left hand, and drank.
The liquid tasted of iron and ancient sorrow.
The effect was instantaneous. A wave of bone-deep cold crashed into the heat of the Sun-Sickness. Caspian screamed as the two forces collided inside his chest. It felt as though his heart were being forged on an anvil—hammered by fire, then plunged into ice.
His vision went black. When he opened his eyes, the golden veins on his arm had turned a dull, metallic bronze. The pain was gone, replaced by a strange, heavy numbness. He felt stronger, but his senses were... different. He could hear the movement of insects a mile away. He could feel the vibration of the drake's wings as if they were flapping against his own skin.
"The price has been paid," the girl whispered, standing over him. "You are no longer a man, and you are not yet a ghost. You are a bridge."
"What did I lose?" Caspian asked, his voice sounding deeper, colder.
"Your warmth," she said simply. "You will never feel the sun again, even if you find it. To the living, you will feel like a corpse. To the dead, you will look like a king."
Before Caspian could respond, the ceiling above them shuddered. A massive explosion of silver light tore through the stone, showering the hall with debris.
The Silver Masque descended through the hole, his silver armor gleaming with an inner radiance. He wasn't using a sword; he held a staff of white bone that hummed with a piercing, high-pitched note. Behind him, three Gold-Guards landed, their capes billowing.
"The Bastard still breathes," the Masque noted, his voice smooth and terrifyingly calm. "And he's been playing in the dirt. Look at his eyes, men. He's already turning."
Caspian stood up. He didn't feel the fear he had felt on the dunes. He felt a cold, calculated hunger. He gripped *Shard*, and for the first time, the obsidian blade didn't just absorb the light—it began to bleed a dark, shadowy mist.
"You want the vial?" Caspian said, his voice echoing with the same multi-tonal quality as the girl's. "Come and take it from the dead."
The Masque leveled his staff. "Kill the girl. Bring me the boy's head. The Princess is tired of waiting."
The Gold-Guards lunged. In the past, Caspian would have struggled to keep up with their elite training. But as the first guard swung his mace, the world seemed to move in slow motion. Caspian saw the gaps in the man's armor, the rhythm of his breathing, the frantic beat of his pulse.
Caspian moved like a shadow. He slipped under the mace and drove *Shard* into the guard's throat. The obsidian blade didn't just cut; it seemed to shatter the man's very essence. The guard didn't even scream; he simply dissolved into a pile of grey ash.
The other guards hesitated. They had never seen a man move like that. They had never seen a Thorne use the magic of the Barrens.
"He's a Necromancer!" one of them yelled, his voice cracking.
"No," the Silver Masque said, stepping forward as he raised his bone staff. "He's something much worse. He's a Sunless."
The Masque slammed his staff into the ground. A wave of silver force radiated outward, cracking the white stone floors. Caspian braced himself, but the girl in grey silk was gone. She had vanished into the shadows the moment the ceiling broke.
Caspian realized then that he couldn't win a direct fight against the Masque—not yet. He needed to get out of the ruins and find a way to the coast. If House Nyros was still loyal to the old ways, they might be his only hope.
He reached into his pack and grabbed a heavy stone, hurling it at a cluster of bioluminescent crystals on the far wall. The crystals shattered, plunging the hall into absolute darkness.
To the Gold-Guards, it was a blinding void. To Caspian, whose eyes had been touched by the Well of Tears, the room was still visible in shades of cold blue and grey.
He didn't stay to fight. He turned and ran into the deeper tunnels, toward the subterranean rivers that fed the Mouth of Sorrows.
Behind him, he heard the Silver Masque's cold, melodic laughter.
"Run, little wolf! Run to the sea! But remember—the tide is going out. And soon, there will be nowhere left to hide from the dark."
As Caspian plunged into the icy waters of the underground river, he clutched the vial to his chest. The Sickness was dormant, but the cold was growing. He was a Thorne without a House, a warrior without a sun, carrying the last hope of a world that was already turning its back on him.
And far to the South, Lady Lyra Nyros watched her compass needle lock firmly onto his position. The hunt was no longer just a royal decree. It was a collision of destinies.