Chapter 1

They knew it was coming.

Velius Pyre and the people of Farreach had prepared for months. They patched the walls, rationed the grain, sharpened the same tired spears until the metal grew thin, and some, like Pyre and the rest of the colony’s militia, prepared for the battle to come against the Devourers, even if it was doomed.

There were also those who had given up, those who waited for their world to end, rejecting the hope that the Heavenly Host may intervene.

Pyre despised them. He wasn’t stupid. The other colonies were gone, one by one, their last messages carried by wind-battered couriers and crackling crystal relays.

But that didn’t mean it was over.

The Heavenly Host could intervene, and there was still faith that Karastella, the cosmic being the colony worshipped, would act in the end.

Even if it seemed their world was folding in on itself, there was still hope, hope that Karastella would intervene in the end if only they could show her they were worthy.

Farreach must hold. The words had started as something Pyre told himself in the sleepless hours, the starless nights that brought a bitter cold that hung over the colony like a vengeful mist every morning.

“Farreach must hold.”

The words became a quiet chant on Pyre’s tongue as the sky turned the color of rotting twilight, a spoiled dusk as the sun’s light bled through ash-haze in sickly bands, as storms came without warning and emptied themselves over the tight-packed cobblestone streets.

The final rains came in hard, slanting sheets, hammering the thatched rooftops, driven by a wind that smelled of salt and old smoke. Water ran along the alley gutters and overflowed the catch basins carved into the courtyards, the training yards turned to slick mud, the crops ruined.

The bells of one of the Karastella cathedrals cut through all of it.

The first toll was low and heavy, a sound that seemed to crawl out of the earth itself. It rolled through the colony’s bones, through stone and timber and the ribs of its people, inspiring Pyre one fateful morning as his hands tightened on his practice spear.

He felt the vibration through the haft as he went through the drills, his mind the most focused it had been despite the storms, despite so many in the colony giving up.

We must hold, he reminded himself, Pyre aware that Farreach was at the edge of the known realm, nothing but treacherous mountains and forests beyond.

The second toll came sharper and as a surprise.

Ahead, Master Jorren lowered his spear.

Their leader stood in the mud with them, gray hair slicked to his skull, ridges like pale ropes across his forearms. He held his shield high in a guard position, as if the bells were background noise and nothing more. “The hour of preparation has ended,” he said finally. “Now begins the night of reckoning.”

Around him, the training ring went still. Men and women lowered their shields. The youths, the last handful of them, straightened without quite meaning to.

Old Danar stepped up. “It must be three rings. Two does not mean that—”

The third toll cracked the air, the final signal. The sound broke into a ragged, iron scream that told every soul in the colony the same thing—their outer defenses had failed.

Pyre drew a breath and forced his fingers to ease.

White-knuckled fear helped no one. His entire life had been a battle against unknown forces, be it from the mountains and forests beyond the colony, where terrifying monsters held the land hostage, or from the other colonies, whose wars had touched his faraway home numerous times.

“To the walls,” Master Jorren rasped, his eyes hardening. “The Devourers will be here soon. Rena, Pyre, next to me!”

Pyre stepped into the line beside men older than his father had lived to be, shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield. Rena Jorren took her place on his left. Her shield shook once as she raised it, then steadied.

“You hear where they started?” she asked him, eyes forward. “Dad didn’t say.”

Pyre closed his eyes for a moment as he recalled the direction of the sound. The bells had their own language. The Karastella cathedrals that surrounded Farreach all had purposes, but three tolls from the deepest bell meant only one thing: enemies were approaching, and Pyre was sure that the sound had come from the south.

“East wall,” he said. “Marshside.”

Rena swore under her breath. “The marsh? I thought so as well. Blasted fate, why couldn’t it be from the Plains Gate?”

“We move toward the eastern wall,” Master Jorren said, his voice carrying down the line. “Eyes up front.”

Pyre lifted his shield. Around him, the light rain eased to a fine, cold mist that clung to skin and cloth. The sky churned in slow, ugly movements above, clouds smeared with ash.

He pictured the outer wall and the marsh beyond, the place he had crossed too many times to count, the broken pylons still jutting from the murk, the forest thinning where the old garrison sank into the mire. Out there, the land sagged and pooled, water and rot swallowing what remained of the last colony.

Pyre braced himself when the bell rang again, an indisputable warning.

The sound hit hard, a bright peal that cut through the dull, steady weight of the earlier tones. Shutters slammed across the colony. Somewhere else, a baby started crying and didn’t stop as Pyre and the rest of the militia continued their push toward the eastern wall, mud sucking at their boots. Rain dripped from eaves in uneven threads, and somewhere nearby, a door slammed and was barred.

Master Jorren’s expression never changed. “Breach confirmed,” he said loud enough for all to hear. “The outer garrison is falling back to the inner holds, and the troops at the eastern wall are prepared for the worst.”

“Karastella—” Old Danar started to say.

“Our job is the same as it has always been,” Master Jorren said, interrupting him. “With or without one of the Heavenly Hosts. We stand with them regardless, for each other. We stand with Farreach forever. Hold the narrow ways. Don’t get clever. Don’t get heroic. If you die, make it cost the Devourers more than it cost us. Line. Advance. We push them back. With Karastella at our side, we push them back!”

Pyre heard the distant clatter of boots on stone, shouted orders, the grinding of winches as blockades lifted into place across the main streets.

He glanced to the side.

There, under the overhang of the long barracks, sat those who wouldn’t be joining them in the final fight.

They were propped on benches and cots, men and women who had taken the draught. Their eyes were unfocused, pupils wide, movements soft and slow. Some watched the rain. Some stared at their hands. A few slept with their mouths open, faces slack. Clay cups lay beside them, emptied and streaked with the residue of the thick, bitter liquid the healers brewed in the lower ward.

No one spat at them. No one cursed them. Yet Pyre hated them still.

Master Jorren said taking the draught wasn’t cowardice. It was the point where a person’s will ran out before the war did.

But Pyre didn’t see it this way.

Why give in when there was still something worth fighting for? They were citizens of the Farreach, some of whom had joined Pyre on the first voyage to the new land; they were born for this, born to conquer the wilds, not roll over at the signs of an ancient prophecy. Why roll over? Why not show the Heavenly Host that they were worth saving?

Pyre’s jaw tightened as he saw one of the younger men blink at him through the haze. Cale. They were the same age. They had once raced down the harbor steps and dared each other to touch the rusted chains that marked the old waterline.

Now Cale sat wrapped in a gray blanket, cup still in hand, head leaning back against the wall as the bells’ toll echoed over them.

“Pyre,” Rena said quietly. “Don’t look at them. Focus your anger elsewhere.”

He turned back. Not because Master Jorren’s daughter told him to, but because the line was moving.

They filed through the central courtyard and onto a narrow lane near the eastern walls, the space flanked by tall, leaning structures that had once been warehouses.

The city’s inner layout had been designed with retreat in mind. Houses built close together. Paths that bent and twisted, forcing attackers to take corners blind. Barricade slots were carved into walls so boards and beams could be dropped into place at a moment’s notice.

Every surface bore marks of old fights. Scratches from claws. Stains that hadn’t quite washed away over the years. Stories of survival, of perseverance, of defiance.

Pyre marched in the second line behind the heavy-guard veterans. Old Danar stayed ahead of him, shoulders hunched, his shield scarred so deeply it seemed impossible that it still held together.

The bells fell silent.

In their place came a deeper and much darker sound, one Pyre felt more than heard: a low, distant roar that rolled over the rooftops.

The Devourers have reached the colony, he thought, gritting his teeth.

Master Jorren lifted his hand in a signal.

The small unit halted at a crossroads where three narrow streets joined. Ahead, another squad took position across the main approach, shields already set, spears angled over the lip of a makeshift barricade. To the right, runners dragged a cart into place to block a side lane.

“Pyre, Rena,” Jorren said, their leader never taking his focus off the gate ahead. “You’re with Danar’s battalion. Secondary line, fall back on my mark. Don’t break unless I say.”

They took up position facing the open street that led toward Marshside, the cries of the outer guards reaching their ears, blood-curdling screams and roars of creatures Pyre could only imagine.

Rena swallowed audibly beside Pyre. “They’re monsters.”

“We will survive, Rena,” was all Pyre managed to say as he shifted his grip on the spear, feeling the worn smoothness where his hands always settled.

“Remember your drills,” Jorren said, eyes fixed on the wide wooden gate at the end of the lane. “One step forward, on my count. Go for its bloody throat if it has one. Joints if it doesn’t. Eyes if you can reach them. If you can’t see where to strike, find a wound and make it worse. We do not break. We do not scatter. We do not chase. We hold the line.”

Pyre nodded once, Master Jorren’s words steadying him as they always had.

The wait that followed was excruciating, the anticipation of it all threading through the terrifying roars on the other side of the wall.

A new sound drifted through the rain, soft at first, almost curious. Then it thickened. A dragging weight, stone grinding, a wet scrape.

Shapes moved in the gray as something came over the wall.

Pyre gasped once he saw the first Devour.

Its limbs unfolded, too many for the body that carried them, each joint bending wrong. A head rose last, splitting, peeling apart, partially human, teeth glinting with something dark and viscous.

Stone hissed where the creature brushed the wall as it stopped, prepared to pounce.

The wooden gate behind the Devourers groaned under the pressure, the last real barrier between Marshside and the colony.

“It’s coming!” Master Jorren managed to shout as the wood doors exploded inward.

A heaving mass of bodies forced itself forward, shoving, climbing, collapsing, scrambling over one another just to get through the gap. They poured in like a tide trying to force itself through a funnel.

“Karastella, save us…” Rena whispered.

Pyre felt the tremor in her arm, felt the heavy lean of Old Danar bracing before him, felt the weight of the colony behind them—the exhausted, the dying, the ones who had given up, and the ones who had refused.

“Hold…” Master Jorren said.

The front rank locked shields.

Wind pushed down the lane as the Devourers surged.

The creatures struck like a living avalanche, limbs hammering their shields, bodies slamming into the barricade of men and wood, mud and will. The impact shook the lane, driving the first rank back half a step.

Pyre leaned in, spear angled, breath steadying, the pressure immense. The shield line bowed.

“Brace!” Old Danar shouted over the roar of the swarm.

The mass of Devourers writhed, pushing harder through the rain and muck, piling in until the whole lane dimmed beneath their bodies.

Master Jorren’s voice cut through the chaos, a blade of command. “Forward, now!”