Kael Shadowthorn's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

Kael reached the bone tree at dusk. It rose pale and dead in a bare field, its bark white as old teeth. The crypt door sat in the ground below it, iron and cold. He crouched behind a stone and watched the branches. Somewhere up there the guardian waited. It would strike the moment his hand touched the door. He needed to draw that strike before he stood in the open. But he had nothing to send in his place. A twig snapped behind him. He spun, sword half-drawn. A white wolf froze three paces off, hackles up. Then a woman stepped from the pines. Blue hair, blue ranger armor, a bow already strung in her hand. An arrow rested on the string, aimed at his throat. "You wear Aldric's mark," she said. Her eyes flicked to the scar on his palm. "So do I. He sent me east months ago. I've watched this tree for six days." She lowered the bow an inch. "I'm Lyra. That thing in the branches has killed two men who came before you." Kael kept his blade up. "Then you know I can't touch the door." "I know it strikes at movement near the door," Lyra said. "Not at the door itself." She knelt and drew a curved shape in the frost. "It watches the ground there. If something else moves first, it commits. Then it needs a breath to strike again." That breath was his opening. Kael looked at the wolf, then shook his head. He would not spend it. He pulled his cloak free instead and bound it tight around a fallen branch, shaping a rough man. "We give it a target." Lyra crept left with an arrow nocked. Kael carried the dummy to the field's edge, then flung it hard at the crypt door. It tumbled across the frozen ground and struck the iron. The tree moved. A gray shape dropped from the branches, fast as a hawk, and slammed the cloaked branch into splinters. For one breath it crouched over the wreck, confused. Lyra's arrow took it in the shoulder. It shrieked and reeled back. Kael was already running. He hit the door, wrenched the iron ring, and heaved. Cold air rushed up from the dark below. He dropped through and Lyra followed, the wolf leaping after. The door boomed shut above them. They stood on stone steps in total black. Kael struck flint and lit a torch. The stairs fell away into a long stone hall. Somewhere below waited the black arrow. "It heals," Lyra said behind him. "By the time we climb back out, it will be waiting again. And now it's angry." Kael looked down the stairs. He had drawn the guardian's strike and lived. But he had traded one door for a locked crypt with no other way out.