LordShadomizer's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Inside the sealed shrine, LordShadomizer felt a new pull. It was small, sharp, and his. Somewhere beyond the door, a piece of him hummed in the wrong hands. He reached through the mortal's eyes again. On the slope above, the hunters had raised a squat lodge of stone and heavy timber. Smoke rose from its chimney. Banners hung from its eaves. This was their camp now, dug in for a long siege. A hunter stepped out. Around his neck swung a carved bone pendant. It trembled with each step. LordShadomizer knew the tremor. It was answering him. Inside that pendant was a fragment of his shattered self, set like a stone in jewelry, worn as a trophy. Cold fury moved through him, quiet as frost. A door he could not open. A room bricked over, and a mortal wearing the key. He spoke into his bound servant's mind. The man on the ridge. The bone at his throat. That is mine. The mortal pressed against the chained door and watched through a gap. LordShadomizer pushed harder, learning the pendant's pulse, mapping the hunter who carried it. He could not take it tonight. He could not break the chains and walk out. But now he knew where the wound was, and who wore it. The shrine held. The siege thickened. And LordShadomizer, spent and sealed in, had found his next thing to take back.