Shadows Of Elarion

Blackness opened in a jagged line, swallowing tiles and the fallen brass instruments. Heat rolled from the crack, carrying the stink of old metal and something mineral and bitter. The boy screamed. Runa crossed the widening gap in two strides, caught him by the collar, and hauled him against her chest.

The woman released her brother only when the stone beneath him collapsed. He dropped with a cry into the dark.

“Go!” Runa shoved the boy toward the stairwell. “Down and out. Don’t stop for anyone.”

The woman struck Runa’s shoulder. “You let him fall!”

“I kept your son alive.”

“He’s not my - ”

The observatory’s central floor burst upward.

Stone fingers punched through the tiles. The old astronomer tumbled backward as a massive hand rose beneath him, each finger jointed with slabs of black granite. Runa threw herself forward and dragged him clear. The hand closed on empty air with a crack like thunder.

Then the colossus climbed from below.

Its head struck the domed ceiling and shattered it. Moonlight poured through the opening, silvering a face without eyes, without mouth, carved in the likeness of a crowned warrior. Chains of ancient bronze hung from its shoulders, snapping one by one as it rose. Runes glowed between the plates of its body, red as coals beneath ash.

The boy fled down the stairs.

Runa planted herself between the colossus and the others, though the blade at her hip looked like a splinter beside its knees.

“Come on, then,” she growled.

The colossus turned its head toward her.

A line opened across its face. Not a mouth. A seam.

From within came a voice that was more vibration than sound.

“Bearer.”

Runa’s skin tightened.

The old astronomer stared at her. “It knows you?”

“It knows nothing.”

The colossus lifted one foot.

Runa grabbed the astronomer and ran.

The stairwell twisted through the observatory’s outer wall, narrow enough that her shoulders scraped the stone. Behind her, the colossus moved with terrible patience. Each step collapsed a section of the tower. Dust boiled through the stairwell. The woman screamed somewhere below, and the boy shouted for her.

Runa reached the landing and found the stairs gone.

A gap yawned before her, dropping into the observatory’s lower vaults. On the far side stood a sealed door marked with a circle of five points. Beneath it, a thin blue light pulsed through the cracks.

The astronomer coughed behind her. “The fragment.”

Runa glanced back. “You knew it was here?”

“I knew what was sealed beneath us.” His hands trembled as he pushed himself upright. “The old kings built Veyrhold around it. They called it a safeguard.”

“Safeguard against what?”

The colossus’s hand punched through the wall above. Stones rained across the landing.

“Later,” Runa said.

She slung the astronomer’s arm over her shoulders and looked at the gap. Three paces across. Six paces down.

The colossus tore wider the wall behind them.

Runa shoved the astronomer toward the door. “Jump.”

“I am seventy years old!”

“Then die arguing.”

She pushed him. He landed hard on the far side, rolled, and struck the sealed door. The blue light flared.

Runa ran.

The landing crumbled beneath her boots as she leaped. Her fingers caught the opposite ledge. For one instant, her body swung above the vault. Heat blasted her face. Below, something vast shifted in the dark.

The astronomer seized her wrist.

Runa pulled herself up just as the stairwell collapsed. The colossus’s arm vanished beneath falling stone. Its roar shook the bones of her skull.

The sealed door opened.

Beyond lay a round chamber untouched by dust. Five empty sockets ringed the walls. At its center, suspended above a black stone pedestal, hovered a shard of pale crystal. It was no larger than Runa’s palm, but light moved inside it like a storm trapped beneath ice.

The astronomer crawled toward it.

“No,” Runa said.

He stopped. “It must be taken.”

“By whom?”

The colossus struck the chamber wall. Cracks raced across the ceiling.

The old man looked at her then, and fear overcame whatever reverence had held him upright. “The one it calls bearer.”

Runa crossed the chamber. The fragment’s light sharpened as she approached. Cold prickled across her knuckles. She remembered the empty star above Veyrhold, the people crying in the streets, the stone thing waking beneath their feet.

“What happens if I touch it?”

“Perhaps Elarion survives.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then none of us will have time to regret it.”

The wall burst inward.

The colossus forced its head through the opening, granite shoulders grinding against the stone. Red light burned in the seam of its face. It reached for Runa.

She seized the fragment.

Pain tore through her hand.

The chamber disappeared.

Runa stood beneath a sky crowded with stars. Five lights burned in a vast circle around a darkness shaped like a throne. One star went out. Then another. Four fragments appeared in distant places: beneath drowned halls, within a forest shrine, under a kingdom of salt, and in a place where no living foot had ever walked.

A voice whispered from behind the dark throne.

The Hollow King is not the first king to wear a crown.

Runa turned, but saw only a pale hand closing around a sword of shadow.

Then the vision broke.

She came back screaming.

The fragment had fused to her palm. Lines of blue-white light raced up her arm, forming a mark like a five-pointed star beneath the skin. The colossus recoiled. Its hand struck the pedestal instead, crushing black stone into splinters.

“Runa!” the astronomer shouted.

The chamber buckled.

Runa grabbed him by the collar and dragged him toward a narrow passage opening behind the pedestal. The colossus clawed after them, its fingers scraping sparks from the walls.

“Where does this lead?”

“Outside the western cliffs.”

“Good.”

“It was sealed for four hundred years.”

“Then hope the seal is tired.”

They plunged into the passage. It sloped sharply downward, slick with condensation. Runa half carried, half dragged the astronomer while the observatory collapsed behind them. The noise followed through the rock: grinding stone, breaking bronze, and the colossus’s wordless fury.

At the passage’s end, a slab blocked the way.

Runa pressed both hands against it. The fragment burned in her palm. Blue light spilled across the stone, revealing the same five-pointed circle carved into its surface.

“Move,” she snarled.

The slab did not.

Behind them, the tunnel shook. A crack opened along the ceiling. Pebbles struck Runa’s shoulders.

The astronomer touched the mark on her arm. “Think of the fragment.”

“I’m thinking of using it to hit you.”

“Think of opening the way.”

Runa clenched her fist.

The blue light surged. The slab split down the middle and fell outward into the night.

They emerged onto a narrow ledge above Veyrhold. Fires burned below where the town’s roofs had collapsed. People fled through the streets, carrying children and bundles. Above them, the broken observatory leaned against the dark sky like a dying giant.

The colossus rose through the ruin.

Its upper body emerged from the shattered dome, framed by moonlight. The red runes across its chest flared once, then dimmed. It looked toward Runa.

Not at the town. At her.

The mark on her arm answered with a bright pulse.

Far beyond the ridge, a second light appeared in the sky - green, thin, and moving against the stars. Then another. Three shapes descended through the darkness, too narrow to be birds and too deliberate to be falling stones.

The astronomer saw them and went pale.

“What are they?”

“Hollow King’s hunters,” he whispered.

Runa looked down at the fragment fused to her palm. Its inner storm had settled into four distinct points of light, each one beating faintly like a distant heart.

“You said it was a safeguard,” she said.

“I was wrong.”

The hunters turned toward the ledge.

Runa drew her sword with her unmarked hand. Below, the colossus began climbing toward them, dragging half the observatory in its wake.

“How many fragments?” she asked.

The astronomer’s gaze fixed on the lights within her palm.

“Five.”

Runa watched the hunters descend and felt the mountain tremble beneath her boots.

“Then we find the other four before they find me.”

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters and about 9,625 words in the full book.