I'm thrilled to finally share a teaser of my dark fantasy project, The Girl Who Ran With Monsters, with you! And here's music to accompany your reading:
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Prologue
On the summer solstice
The last Shield shall rise
From the depths of the Earth
To meet her Death
To meet her Death
Marked by Blade
Bound fast by Darkness
Forevermore she shall roam
sowing terror among us all
And blood shall flow
And blood shall flow
Hush now, dear child
For the gods that reign
Are mere parts
Of a whole
Shattered in two
Shattered in two
Arthystian Folk Song
Chapter 01
-- Darkness --
It is widely known among scholars that when an angry horde of peasants commits a witch to the fire, nine times out of ten, they murder a woman entirely untouched by magic. The tenth is usually an accident.
It is widely known among peasants that when a witch is caught, she screams her innocence to the end.
He didn't need to hurry. They'd start the fire with or without him, although without was decidedly more likely. The night was young, and so was the bloodlust.
The scene before him had a symmetry to it: a circle of silhouettes, illuminated by firelight, surrounding a solitary figure bound to a stake. He'd seen it countless times. This was how yoomens burned their fears and doubts. A dance of cowardice and ignorance, shrouded in the stench of terror and righteousness, of wood smoke, wet wool and boiled leather. He could taste their conviction on the wind, bitter as unripe berries, sharp as new-forged steel.
The village clung to the edge of survival, its mud huts hunched against the wind like half-starved beasts. Smoke from cooking fires rose thin and weak. The crowd's clothing told its own story — leather worn thin, wool darned until the original fabric became a distant memory.
Even their hatred smelled of desperation.
At the heart of the village, the pyre lay like an open wound, oozing light into the night. An elder paced around it, singing incantations that would have been laughable if not meant as a prelude to murder.
The woman at the stake struggled and sobbed as they stacked more kindling around her feet.
'She cursed my cows! Dried up like autumn leaves, they did!' a shriek cut through the drizzle. The accusation met with murmurs of agreement from those eager to pile their grievances upon the pyre: failed crops, stillborn sheep, fever dreams, wayward husbands.
'Get on with it,' someone among the spectators muttered.
His lip curled. Always in such a hurry to destroy what they don't understand.
The woman's eyes never dropped to meet those of her accusers. Instead, she stared upward, past the reaching branches of the eglé trees to where the night sky should be, would be, if not for the impenetrable veil of clouds. What did she see there? Some last hope of rescue? Or simply a desire to gaze at anything other than the faces of those who had once called her neighbour, friend, daughter, sister, wife?
The drizzle intensified, hissing against the kindling. The yoomens wiped the rain from their faces and pulled their caps lower, eager to see this through. Not much entertainment to be had in a place like this, other than hard work, gossip, and roasting a witch.
Strange, how it was always the females they burned.
'The elements protect us,' the elder declared, thrusting his staff toward the reluctant flames, 'and the righteous prevail! The One God wills it!'
He scoffed. Righteousness had always been a convenient excuse. For the killing, the torturing, and the banishment of his kind. Yoomens draped the cloak of righteousness over all scytha, choking their numbers until only a fraction remained.
The crowd shifted uneasily as the woman's gaze dropped from the sky and swept across their faces. Now she looked, truly looked, at each surrounding figure. One by one, she met their eyes, and one by one, they turned away. Whether it was from guilt or fear, he cared little.
He observed and reported back.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
He did not sympathize.
And he certainly was no one's saviour. The emperor would be pleased to hear of another village policing itself. Governance through superstition was cheaper than maintaining garrisons, after all.
His gaze lost itself among the ancient eglé trees. His kind considered these giants sacred. Their massive trunks had once housed the dead, each family member granted a chamber carved with loving care into living wood. Each chamber sealed with a tapestry woven from threads provided by those left behind. Final gifts of love and memory.
After losing his mothers, he'd spent uncounted nights imagining their bodies transforming into blossoms in a tree's living heart.
But the eglé hadn't bloomed in nearly a thousand winters, and their trunks had forgotten the weight of the dead.
Now, they were firewood, building material, or simply in the way.
A laugh as bright as a bell pulled him back to the present, and he watched as a young boy threw kindling onto the unlit pyre, then dashed back to his father who beamed with pride at the boy's enthusiasm.
The crowd stirred as an elder stepped forward and raised his arms. 'I declare thee witch and heretic! Thou shalt burn!' The torch never wavered as torrential rain began hammering down. The flame guttered but held.
An eerie calm washed over the woman's expression. He saw acceptance there, but mostly hopelessness. She seemed to have stepped outside this realm of horror. For a heartbeat, he remembered another fire, another time. Before he'd become the Emperor's Eye. Before he understood it's sometimes best to watch the world burn.
In their own way, the eglé seemed to remember. Their bark had grown darker, as though absorbing the soot of a thousand such scenes. Or perhaps that was merely his imagination. A dangerous luxury for one in his position.
He returned his attention to the woman on the pyre as her gaze travelled past the elders, past the gathered crowd, and came to rest precisely where he stood.
Her eyes widened. As though he was the horror and not the crowd.
She wasn't wrong.
Shadows rippled around him like spilt ink as he stepped into the firelight.
As one, the crowd shrieked, 'Darkness! It is Darkness! The Eye of the Emperor!'
The torch descended toward the kindling.
Flames leapt.
The yoomens scattered like fleas, stumbling over each other, their children, and their own feet, as the homespun of their witch caught fire. Their reaction to him was tediously familiar in its stupidity. As if running could save any of them. They were like those little creatures they brought along when they invaded his world: rabbits. Quick to mature, quick to breed, quick to snuff out. And always fleeing from something.
Why they were still hollering about him, he had not a clue. The first rule of hiding was to shut up. But they made it sound as though they were calling to him. Asking him to wring their scrawny necks.
'Darkness!'
'It is Darkness!'
This was the name he'd accepted, though it wasn't his. Never would be. Everyone who knew his true name had long since turned to soil inside the eglé.
Yoomens believed that he commanded shadows, commanded darkness itself. The notion was as absurd as the name they'd given him.
He was the silence between heartbeats, the pause between is and might be. He was the living echo of all that had been before light carved reality into pieces. He was the vast darkness holding galaxies together.
Light was merely the youngest child of creation, a brief interruption in the universe's natural state. He existed in the fertile void where all potential resided, in the honest space beneath illusions. He was the primordial darkness that had birthed the stars themselves.
When he chose to be unseen, it wasn't shadow play but remembrance — becoming what the universe was before the first dawn splintered reality. He was truth stripped bare, the raw state of existence before light learned to reflect and refract and scatter itself into what yoomens called reality.
Like the depths of earth where roots speak in secret languages and the vast emptiness between stars, he was both absence and presence. Not the darkness that light cast out, but the primordial nothing from which everything emerged.
And yet, none of that mattered.
Not when one emperor after another held his leash.
He did not wait for the witch to cease her screaming and turn to ash. He had seen enough.
Nine centuries of watching, and not once had he witnessed a yoomen wield what they considered magic.
This time was no different.
Chapter 02
-- Thirteen --
Thirteen eyed the hallway, counting heartbeats between guard rotations.
The silhouette of the night guard passed the bend, his shadow stretching past sconces on the wall, then vanishing along the corridor. She slipped from her hiding spot behind the salt barrels, dirty feet silent on cold flagstones.
Behind her, the kitchen slept. Copper pots hung in neat rows. The massive hearth, banked for the night, exhaled faint warmth and scents of ash. Gone were the shouts, the clatter, the endless demands that filled her days from sunup to long past sundown.
She crouched in what she'd once believed was a dead end. Her fingers tested the familiar notch in the stone floor. A slab shifted as she increased the pressure.
Thirteen glanced over her shoulder a final time, then slid into the hollow below.
Her body remembered the way even in darkness. Three paces forward. Sharp right turn. Duck under the low-hanging metal thing that had once split her forehead open. That wound had earned her thirteen strikes for 'shirking duties' when dizziness slowed her work.
The passage narrowed, its walls smooth and strange. Not stone like the castle, not wood like the outbuildings. Too bright and shiny to be iron but familiar to the touch. Cold yet somehow warm after contact. She'd spent hours running her fingers along these surfaces, memorizing every curve, every seam, every oddity.
And still, she could not identify what kind of metal it was, let alone what the tunnels were made for.
These narrow tunnels existed only in the oldest part of the castle. She had no name for them. They simply were. She used them to add a little…something to her life. A secret breathing space, perhaps a map to a freedom she could never claim.
She crawled on hands and knees now, following a gentle slope downward. The tunnels branched in patterns she'd learned by heart over countless midnight wanderings. Left at the crossing with the strange round window into nothingness, covered in something as smooth as a mirror.
Two rights at the place where the tunnel widened enough to sit upright. Straight past the dead end with the thing that looked like a thousand knives laid out in the shape of an open flower and set into the wall.
The castle held countless mysteries — strange carvings, walls that hummed when pressed, lights in deep, smooth boxes that glowed without flame. No one would ever explain such things to kitchen slaves. Those who knew would waste no breath on her.
And she wasn't stupid enough to ask.
The ache in her knees began to grow as she continued to navigate the darkness by touch and memory. The tunnels smelled of dust and something else — something ancient yet oddly clean. Not the stink of the kitchens or the sweaty staleness of the slave quarters, but something that reminded her of lightning storms.
She paused at a junction, fingers finding the small scratches she'd made on the left wall. Three horizontal lines — her marker for the path toward the north tower. Not today. She wanted the east wing, where the visiting nobles were housed. Two vertical marks on the right passage, these led to her destination.
The tunnel narrowed further, forcing her to crawl on her belly like a snake. She was careful not to hit her head against the ceiling. The confined space would magnify even the slightest sound.
In her mind, she counted turns and intersections, mapping each choice against the castle above. She'd spent many winters piecing together matching points between her hidden realm and the world visible to all others.
The air changed subtly. Less dust, a hint of soap and perfume. She was at the guest quarters now. Through tiny holes in the tunnel floor, she could glimpse fragments of the rooms below as she moved. A corner of a bed. The edge of an ornate table. A woman with a pretty hairdo pacing back and forth, humming.
She stopped at one such opening and pressed her eye against it. Voices murmured below, too faint to make out words. A woman laughed — a real laugh, not the brittle sound the kitchen girls made when trying to please the guards.
Thirteen lingered, savouring the moment. Free people laughed differently. She collected these sounds like others might precious stones, storing them away, examining them, wondering how they would feel in her own throat.
The tunnels curved upward now, leading to a narrow shaft. Here, she could stand for the first time since entering. Her spine popped as she stretched and her hands found the familiar metal rungs embedded in the wall. She climbed silently, counting each step until she reached the thirty-fifth rung, then pushed against the small trapdoor above.
It opened into a forgotten storage space behind the arras in the eastern corridor. Thirteen emerged like a ghost and knocked dust from her threadbare homespun. She secured the trapdoor, brushing dirt into its cracks to conceal it.
She intended to keep it that way.
Through a small gap in the stone wall, she glanced across the eastern courtyard. The sky held the deep blue of approaching dawn, stars fading one by one. She savoured the view and longed to feel the wind on her face.
She watched the stars a moment longer, adding their pattern to her mental collection. Not much time remained before the castle stirred to life. Soon the corridors would fill with servants, guards would change rotations, and she would need to be back in the kitchens before the head cook took inventory of his slaves.
Thirteen slipped back toward the trapdoor, her temporary freedom nearly spent.
That's when she heard the voice of the emperor seeping through the walls. 'You took your time.'
'A witch, you say?' the emperor asked.
Thirteen pressed her eye closer to the small opening in the wall of the throne room. This wasn't her first time here. Some might call what she did spying, but she had no such intent. She merely wanted to…what? Learn? Expand her small world? Have a little adventure?
But she'd certainly be put on the chopping block for treason if she were ever caught.
'Yes, my liege.'
She strained her eyes but couldn't see who had answered. The voice was that of a stranger and seemed to carry the weight of ancient stone, hard and unyielding.
'I haven’t heard of a witch being put to the stake for…hm. A winter or two, at least.' Emperor Uileb's massive, greying moustache bobbed as his jaws worked through the supper arranged on a gleaming white platter.
Her mouth watered. There was roast kurpu, its six wings reformed into a crown. She'd seen cooks prepare meals as elaborate as this during her rare and brief stints in the emperor's kitchen. His kurpu, she knew, was stuffed with small songbirds and rare mushrooms from the old forests surrounding the castle. The meat would be tender enough to eat with a spoon, seasoned with spices worth more than her life.
The steaming soup next to it looked innocent enough until she spotted tentacles scooting around the edge of the bowl. Cave-dwelling eels were considered a delicacy since they only bred once every seven winters. Their phosphorescent blood would make the broth glow faintly blue when stirred.
But it was the small bread that made her heartache. Not the regular dark loaf, but white bread so fine it could have been made from clouds, served with butter sculpted into tiny flowers.
A small part of her was glad she didn't work in the emperor's kitchen, even though the slaves there were fed better than those in the common kitchens. Working there would have prevented her from exploring the castle at night or using the warm ashes of the kitchen hearth as a bed.
Everyone knew Uileb had a habit of staying up until the first rays of sunlight touched the horizon, eating an elaborate meal, then remaining in his bed long past noon.
Everyone knew the emperor was afraid to sleep in the dark.
Below the dais, a dozen advisors sat at a large table strewn with maps, papers, inks, and quills. Chins tucked in, eyes half-shut, fingers curled around jugs of mead. Listening. Each plotting the moves of whatever insidious scheme they were brewing up.
'Are you certain she was a witch?' the emperor asked.
'The villagers shouted it loud enough,' the stranger replied.
'So she’s dead?' Caidh was a man who liked to see defenceless creatures suffer. Older slaves had told Thirteen that as a child, Caidh would skewer and roast small creatures while they were still alive.
He had acquired a more brutal and diverse set of tastes as an adult. Thirteen was glad she'd never crossed his path. But then, she knew she was somewhat safe. Too dirty. Too lowly a creature.
'She was on fire.' A dry retort from the stranger. And not the first in that tone! Who would dare speak to the emperor with anything less than deference? She pressed her face harder against the grate and forced her gaze downward. Still, she couldn't spot the man who spoke. Her curiosity was nearly unbearable. Someone with courage! Here at the castle of all places! She imagined the man as perhaps the commander of forces in one of the borderlands. Someone with intricately hammered armour, a longsword, and a large horse. Someone free and independent.
She slid her gaze toward the emperor and his advisors. They seemed strangely oblivious to the man's tone.
A soft clank of cutlery announced the end of the emperor's supper. A servant rushed to the first step of the dais and fell to his knees. He held up a bowl of water, a white napkin neatly folded over his wrist. At a 'hum' from the emperor, the servant climbed the three steps to the throne on his knees, eyes downcast, his posture folded into submission.
While not spilling a single drop from the bowl.
A truly acrobatic feat. Still kneeling and averting his gaze, he lifted the bowl onto an enormous oak dining table that ten servants had carried in earlier. Emperor Uileb washed his hands and dabbed them dry.
The servant scooted back down the dais.
All slaves and servants knew that one's continued survival directly depended on how deep one was able to stoop. They were property from birth to death. Furniture had more value than their bodies.
The cool edges of the tunnel dug into Thirteen's bony ribs as she breathed carefully. Below, Emperor Uileb lounged on his ornate throne while his advisors stirred to attention.
One called Neas sat apart from the others, his expression carefully neutral. 'The northern provinces grow restless, Your Majesty,' he said, his voice carrying the tone of a man accustomed to delivering unwelcome news without personal consequence. 'Another five per cent tax increase may prove... problematic.'
Thirteen shifted to take the pressure off her ribs, careful not to scrape against the sides of the cramped space. She'd learned which sections creaked and which remained silent. The trick was distributing her weight evenly.
The emperor's son, Uileb II, straightened his spine with the eagerness of a rat detecting maggot cheese. 'My liege, perhaps a military demonstration would remind them of their obligations? I could lead—'
'The North remembers the last demonstration all too well,' Caidh interrupted. 'Perhaps something more...intimate would serve better. I have methods that leave no visible marks.'
She could only wonder what those methods might entail, but surely they left behind broken souls and vacant eyes.
Below, the advisors continued their posturing, verbally circling each other like starving dogs, each vying for the emperor's favour. She'd watched this dance dozens of times. It rarely changed, and though she'd long since found it uninteresting, it was an opportunity to gather information. Knowing who was in favour and who had fallen from grace often meant the difference between a tolerable day and a beating in the kitchens.
Movement behind a pillar caught her attention. Half-concealed in shadow stood the one figure even the emperor's advisors gave a wide berth.
Darkness.
He stepped forward, closer to the advisors and the emperor. As though the entire world was his for the taking, he strode to the table where the advisors sat. With casual insolence, he picked a dried fruit from a bowl, tossed it in the air, and caught it in his mouth.
Thirteen's body froze. Terror had its claws in deep.
With his back to her, she couldn't see his face, but she was certain the advisors only dared to take cautious breaths the moment Darkness swallowed his food.
All except Caidh, who seemed entirely bored by the scene.
Thirteen had to force herself to blink. She'd never laid eyes on Darkness before. Everyone in the castle had an opinion on his appearance, all differing, but none hit the mark.
He stood perfectly still, draped from head to toe in a fabric so black, it seemed to absorb all light. The shadows around him made her heart stutter. They weren't behaving as shadows should.
They moved. Stretching, contracting, coiling like living things, they extended across the floor toward the advisors, who had resumed their bickering, oblivious to the shadows slithering at their feet.
'I believe,' the emperor said, silencing his advisors with a lazy wave, 'that my Eye has something to contribute.'
The advisors fell silent, turning their attention back to Darkness. Caidh raised his brows at the creature. Was the man trying to get himself killed?
Thirteen tried her best to keep her breathing under control as Darkness stepped around the table, the shadows moving with him like faithful hounds. She nearly wet herself when she finally glimpsed his face.
It was as if the night were swallowing her whole. His skin, hair, even his eyes were the deepest black. She'd seen a broken onyx blade once, and this creature…this monster...was at least a hundred shades darker.
Although he had no irises, no pupils that she could discern, she felt his gaze sweeping the room. His movements seemed oddly deliberate, each a carefully considered choice.
'The discontent spreads beyond the North,' Darkness said. 'It has reached the eastern villages as well.'
His voice would haunt her nightmares, that she knew with absolute certainty.
'Impossible,' Uileb II scoffed. 'We've had no reports—'
'You've had no reports because the messengers were intercepted,' Darkness replied evenly. 'Their heads were removed before they could deliver the news.'
She couldn't tear her eyes away from this…being. He wasn't yoomen. Couldn't be. She'd heard people say he was older than the castle. Older than dirt. Impossible. But when he spoke, the words emerged low and precise, each syllable carved from time itself. She'd heard people say that Darkness knelt for the emperor. Uileb enjoyed seeing people kneel. But why a creature such as him would kneel for any man, Thirteen could not fathom.
Her breath froze in her mouth. Her throat closed. The shadows around him began to expand outward. One tendril of darkness stretched toward the wall where she was hiding. It was small, faint. Barely noticeable.
Her heart jumped into her throat. Everyone knew what Darkness did to those he caught breaking the law. The kitchens buzzed with horrifying stories, how he could extract truth with a single touch, how he could strip flesh from bone with a single look, how he fed on the blood and terror of his victims.
She strained to track the tendril of shadow, unable to tell if it crept closer to her, along the wall. She wished she could make herself smaller, invisible. She wished she could flee without making a noise.
She held her breath until her lungs burned. Caidh's voice rose with indignation, but Thirteen couldn't focus on his words. Her bladder threatened to betray her as a sliver of shadow reached through the grate, probing one of the small holes directly before her face.
Her body screamed to move, to scramble backwards and find another path through the castle's hidden arteries. But terror and common sense allied to root her in place.
All she could do to not wet her britches was tell herself that shadows had no eyes.
The tendril paused. Then, impossibly, it shifted, as though looking directly at her. Her vision narrowed to that single point of shadow that promised death within its depths.
Darkness tilted his head, angling toward her hiding spot. The movement was subtle, anyone not watching would miss it, but for Thirteen it resounded like a thunderclap.
He knew.
She would die. Before sunup.
Enjoy the cinematic edition as I write this story:
The first 7 chapters of the cinematic edition are now live:
Annelie Wendeberg
All chapters are proofed before posting, and new chapters are added frequently.
