The group sat around a small, sputtering heater in the shadow of a collapsed freighter. The orange glow of the heating coil bounced off the surrounding scrap, but it couldn't touch the chill that had settled into Kiron's bones.
Nel-Eak sat across from him, his eyes fixed on the silver coin he had given Kiron back in the Pit. He flipped it over and over between his fingers—a motion that seemed as natural to him as breathing, even if he didn't know why.
"You said I'm the shadow that follows the King," Nel-Eak said quietly, his voice cutting through the hum of the heater. "But shadows are cast by light. I look at my hands, and I don't see light. I see scars. I see a man who knows how to break things."
Kiron looked at Nyra. She gave him a sharp, warning glance—a silent plea to keep the lid on the box. But Kiron felt the "Lament" vibrating against his shins, and the black veins on his arms were humming. The Underworld was built on the truth of the dead; he couldn't build his throne on a lie to the living.
"You weren't my friend, Nel-Eak," Kiron said.
The coin stopped mid-flip. Nel-Eak looked up, his expression unreadable.
"We met three days ago in the Scra-Valkun," Kiron continued, his voice steady. "You weren't there to save me. You were a bounty hunter. You were tracking me because the Celestials put a price on my head that could buy a continent."
Taz let out a small, nervous breath. Nyra's hand drifted toward the hilt of her blade, her eyes locked on Nel-Eak's daggers.
"You mocked me," Kiron said. "You told me you could take my head and be a rich man by midnight. You forced me into that fight with the Raiders just to see if I was worth the effort of capturing."
Nel-Eak stared at him. He didn't look angry. He looked... hollow. "And the memory? The one I gave the Echo-Walkers to wake you?"
"I don't know exactly what it was," Kiron admitted. "But they called it a 'Shadow-Knight's shame.' You gave up the very thing that defined you—your history, your reasons for hunting me—just to pull me out of the stone. You traded your past for my future."
A long silence stretched between them. The wind outside whistled through the vents, sounding like the distant ghosts of the Gnash-Groves.
"So," Nel-Eak said finally, his voice a low rasp. "I am a traitor to my own profession. A man who abandoned his prize to save a boy he was supposed to kill."
"You chose to be more than a vulture," Kiron said. "I don't know why you did it, and now, neither do you. But that choice was yours, even if the memory of it is gone."
Nel-Eak looked at his daggers. He slowly stood up, the serpent-scales on his coat catching the dim red light of the heater. He walked to the edge of the freighter's shadow, looking out toward the Marrow-Mines on the horizon.
"A man without a past is a dangerous thing, Nori-K," Nel-Eak said, using the mirrored name Kiron hadn't even told him yet. "But a man with a past he hates is worse. Maybe I didn't give that memory away to save you. Maybe I just wanted to be free of myself."
He turned back to Kiron, his face half-hidden in the dark.
"The truth doesn't change anything. I am still the shadow. But now I know that I am a shadow by choice, not by history. We go to the Mines at dawn."
Nyra exhaled, her shoulders finally dropping from their defensive hunch. "He's taking it better than I expected."
"He's not taking it," Kiron whispered, watching Nel-Eak stand guard at the perimeter. "He's just filling the hole with something else. Loyalty is easier to carry than guilt."
As the group settled into a fitful sleep, Kiron clutched the hilt of Lament. The "Decline" was quiet for now, but he could feel the gravity shifting. The Marrow-Mines were close. The air was getting thicker, smelling of deep earth and ancient, cooling blood.
The entrance to the Underworld was waiting, and it required a toll that even a King might not be able to pay.
Coming up: The "Marrow-Mines." The group begins their descent into the deepest pits of the world, where "Heavy-Taint" distorts time and the walls are made of the fossilized bones of the first Gods.
As they descend, the "Lament" begins to glow with a strange, pulsing violet light that acts as a compass. Should Kiron trust the sword's directions, or is the blade leading them into a trap designed to consume their remaining humanity?