Deep in the Heart of Sorrows, within a chamber of petrified trees and cracked statues draped in vines of thorns, they came like all the others—driven by whispers of glory, the promise of treasure, or the arrogance of assuming they’d be the ones to survive what the Heart of Sorrows had taken from so many before them. The floor was scattered with petals of once-white flowers, now bckened by rot.

  Hanging from the ceiling are long tendrils of decayed roots and ancient chains, barely swinging in the dead air. This is Lilliana’s sanctuary—her cathedral of silence.

  Six souls, worn but breathing, stepped into the chamber beneath a bck canopy of petrified trees. Thorny vines draped from broken stone arches like mourning veils, swaying though there was no wind. The air was still; a silence so complete it weighed on their ears like water pressing in from all sides.

  Tal and Joren, twins and healers of the Isha Order, walked hand in hand at the center. They whispered chants of protection, their silver staves casting faint halos of light with each step.

  Brayk and Solma, warriors cd in dented armor still slick with old blood, took the front. Their weapons gleamed, raised and ready. The relentless hordes of Lilliana’s armies had worn and dented their pte-mail after near-ceaseless battles. The weapons they’d entered with had nearly been broken under the weight of the blows dealt to the endless enemies that fell upon them. They’d had to take some weapons off of the undead as secondhand swords in case their own began to falter.

  Behind them, their caster, Elmin, muttered beneath his breath, raw arcane energy flickering at his fingertips like fireflies. Kerris, the roguish archer, shadowed the group like a second thought, her mismatched boots making no sound as she crept along the wall.

  “You feel that?” Kerris whispered anxiously.

  “No birds. No wind. No echoes. Nothing.” Elmin spoke through ragged breaths.

  “This pce is holy. I can feel it.” Tal said in awe.

  “You sure it’s not cursed?” Solma said fearfully. She knew something in this pce felt…wrong. Only silence followed.

  “This pce isn’t natural,” Kerris murmured.

  Elmin chuckled nervously. “You think the name ‘Heart of Sorrows’ was just for drama?”

  “No wind. No echoes,” Brayk repeated, eyes narrowing. “Not even our footsteps sound right.”

  Joren looked around, swallowing. “We should turn back.”

  It wouldn’t have mattered.

  A single bck petal fell from above and nded in Tal’s palm. She smiled. “This pce really is sacred.”

  Brayk’s reply was never heard.

  From the canopy above, a figure dropped like drifting silk. She nded without a sound—robes of white and red streaked with old ash and bck ichor, her bare feet kissing the stone floor. Her veil fluttered as if in water, and ichor coiled from her wrists and neck as though she bled ink. Not a sound escaped her, not even the rustle of her robes. Oily bck tendrils spilled gently from her sleeves and hair, and her face, serene—tranquil, even joyful—as she touched down.

  Lilliana.

  Without a sound, the killing started.

  Joren went first, stumbling backward. He reached to cast a protective ward, but his arm was severed mid-movement. Tal’s throat opened in silence; her body dropped to its knees, head lulled backwards, blood bubbling and running down her chest. Joren turned to cry out—but no voice came. A bck inky substance burst from his lips, and he colpsed beside her, clutching at the stump where his arm used to be.

  Elmin spun, eyes wide, shouting the first sylble of a fire spell—and choked. ichor poured out of his mouth, nose, ears. He spasmed, mouth bubbling with thick bck foam, hands cwing at his throat. Then…stillness. A final spray of bck mist burst from his chest.

  As panic sets in, the warriors took formation—bdes raised.

  “Form up!” Brayk roared, stepping over Tal’s body.

  Solma joined him, “She’s alone!”

  They were wrong.

  The ichor gathered, pulled together like water up a reverse stream—and from it, Mersk emerged. Grinning. Dark. Cloaked in stitched skins, with cracked and twisted bones fashioned into armor. His eyes were sunken pits, and bck threads writhed like veins across his arms. Behind him, white flowers bloomed with wet snaps. Death Blossoms—flesh-wrapped flora with gaping maws, their “petals” opening to reveal hands, jagged bones and twitching faces.

  “Back!” Solma shouted. “Fall back!”

  But Brayk charged instead, his sword raised high in defiance. He was fast.

  Not fast enough.

  A Blossom struck him with a flurry of blows—one, two, three cwing hands digging into his chest. He staggered. Then Mersk was there, behind him. A dagger through his back; another bde slicing upward. His hand reached Brayk, bck threads flowing from his hand into the gashes he’d torn into the body.

  Solma howled, cutting down a Blossom in two furious swings. She wounded a second. Nearly reached Mersk—Then Tal and Joren stood again. Their eyes vacant, dull smiles crawling across their faces. They walked to her, holding hands, chanting eerie incantations.

  Solma froze.

  The twins reached for her. She couldn’t bring herself to strike them down. And then she was pinned. Mersk’s bde cleaved through her shoulder, splitting her body into pieces he began to reanimate as she writhed beneath her fallen comrades.

  Only Kerris remained.

  She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t blinked. She watched from the shadows, heart pounding like a thunderous tempest. Her bow trembled feebly in her hands as she looked on.

  Lilliana stopped, turning to face her with a twitching snapping motion. She floated forward, her feet no longer touching the stone floor. Ichor curled around her like a gown. She smiled as if meeting an old friend in her garden.

  She knelt before Kerris; her hands drenched in blood, her ring a pale, greyish light amidst the chaos.

  “My little sparrow,” Lilliana whispered, brushing Kerris’s hair back with gentle fingers. Kerris’s eyes darted wildly as she sat petrified on trembling knees. “You watched. How pleasant it must be, making friends into memories. That is sacred. Watching means remembering, and memories live forever, do they not?”

  Kerris couldn’t speak. Words had frozen, stuck in her throat as she failed to gasp for air. The terror of what she’d witnessed had buried her beneath the sheer weight of the horror before her. The bodies of her friends, cerated and mangled, one by one returning as grotesque caricatures of themselves before her. She was helpless in the face of her tormentors with no chance of escape and no hope of rescue.

  “You may go,” Lilliana said softly. “So many lost souls come to these hallowed walls; tell them their Shepherd awaits.”

  Behind her, Mersk moved like a shadow. He knelt behind Kerris and pressed a single stitch of bck thread into the space between her shoulder bdes. She gasped—felt it snake under her skin.

  “You carry her mark now,” Mersk rasped. “It’ll grow on you.”

  Kerris stood motionless, her mind a bnk canvas, and then, without a word, she fled. She didn’t know how; one step turned into two, then ten, then a sprint through the silent dark.

  Behind her, the garden returned to quiet; the chamber was silent once more.

  And Lilliana sat among the corpses like a queen upon a throne, the twin healers at her feet like sleeping children. She whispered to someone still unseen: “Did you see, Zeek? I passed the test again. I’m keeping this pce safe.”