I wake choking.
The bed beneath me groans like it's about to collapse, creaking with every twitch of my body. The mattress is nothing but straw and burlap, and it scratches my arms through my shirt. A storm claws at the shutters, the rain smashes against the thin wood, thunder rumbling like Bruis's bones cracking.
My chest hurts. My throat burns where that thing's tongue wrapped around it. When I touch my neck, I feel bruises raised like rope burns. I jolt with the memory of suffocating in that alley.
Lightning splits the sky. For a heartbeat, the dark room fills with light from a single lantern in the corner. Shadows stretch like claws across the walls.
I'm alive.
I don't know why. The sheets stink of mildew. Water leaks through the ceiling in slow drops that patter into a tin cup on the floor. The whole room rocks when the wind howls, like it's not a room at all but a coffin nailed together from rotten planks.
I sit up. Every muscle in my torso flares with pain.
There's only one chair in the room, pulled back from the bed. A figure sits in it. I didn't notice him at first because the fire that clings to him doesn't light the room like the candlelight does. It doesn't push back the dark, just lies in it.
White fire coils around his shoulders like smoke, curling along the tatters of his coat. Some of it trails off his white hair. The fire doesn't hiss or crackle. It just burns and waves as if it doesn't belong in this world at all.
The man doesn't move.
He sits there, hugging his sword along his chest. The blade is a dull steel, with faint chips along both edges. His head is lowered, and for a moment, I think he's asleep.
Then, thunder booms again, shaking the walls, and he lifts his gaze to me.
I freeze.
His eyes are not made for men. They don't catch the faint candlelight; they're bright blue hollow stars.
"You're awake," he says.
I don't answer. I can't. My tongue feels like lead.
The man of fire doesn't seem to expect words. He watches me like one watches a campfire.
"You see them," he says.
I'm not sure what to say, so I simply nod.
Does he see them as well? Does he have open eyes?
My throat feels like it's full of broken glass. When I try to speak, only a rasp scrapes out.
I swallow, and it hurts more.
"...How?" The word barely makes a sound. My voice cracks like a match that failed to light.
The man doesn't move. He stands still, watching me.
I try again. My hand grips the sheets. "You... saw it. The thing. The demon. You killed it."
"I burned it," he replies.
"Why?" My throat scrapes the word out. "Why did you save me?"
"I didn't save you," the man said, standing from the chair, walking toward me. "I ended the suffering of a hundred souls. You were caught in between its meal and the next victim of the Somata."
"Somata?" I ask.
"Whatever you call it—a demon, monster, creature, beast—whatever name the mundane gives the supernatural. I kill them. Humanity has one less devourer."
The man stares through me. His gaze is cold. There's no warmth. He looks around the room, slowly shifting toward me.
"This place, this Inn, won't keep you safe," he says. "The Somata will come again."
"Again?" I half-cry. " Wha–what do you mean those things will come again?" I pause, looking down, then to the man. "Who even are you? Why can you see them too? Why do they kill? What are they?"
The man stands over me, studying me with those hollow star-eyes, as if weighing my soul against a feather. "They're Somata. Beasts of grief and madness. They feast on the broken and hopeless. They're monsters of the night, the evil hidden in sight. They're creatures of despair, and the immortal predator of man."
His footsteps echo in the room, and the fire blooms slightly, rising more from his shoulders. His eyes glow under his shadowed face. Thunder cracks, and lightning comes through the shutter, illuminating the room, revealing what the dim lantern couldn't for a mere second. The man has a single, thick, serrated scar running from the tip of his chin to the bottom of his eye.
I lost sight of the scar just as the darkness consumed him again.
He stops just short of the bed. It's all silent, except for the deafening drip of rain striking the floorboards. He holds his sword, his grip tight enough to break the handle. An old, rusted chain wrapped around the man's hand, binding him to it. His eyes burn with a certainty so intense that it's burned into his soul.
"You ask who I am? I'll tell you. I am a damned man, cursed to live until I am extinguished, cursed to hunt the hunters of man. I am of the Dauntless; I am Ikaris, the Forsaken."
In a flash, the man, Ikaris, shoves the tip of his sword underneath my chin. My body freezes, my brain crafting a thousand ways to escape. To think of reasons or logic to keep me alive, believing my words could dissuade any harm toward me. And yet, my soul resonates with a wisdom, knowing from the look in Ikaris's eyes, nothing I could say would change what came next.
"Now tell me," Ikaris delivers, "Why is there a Seer in Bruis?"