Bjorn Shadowborne died in the mud of Crackleflat, a knife in his back. He came back wrong. His body was gone. What rose was a shadow shaped like a man, thin and dark, cast on the ground even when no one stood there. He remembered the face above the blade. Ragnar Bloodhand, who had called him brother. Bjorn wanted only one thing now. He would find Ragnar and kill him. But first he had to survive the sunrise. The eastern sky went gray. Then pale gold. Light crept across the flat ground toward him. Where it touched his edges, his shadow-flesh thinned and burned. Pain like boiling water ran through him. He had learned this in the night. Sunlight would erase him. He needed darkness, and there was none. No cave. No wall. No roof. Just open field and a rising sun. Bjorn ran. His feet made no sound. Ahead stood a dark shape against the growing light. A thicket. He reached it and stopped cold. The plants were huge. Green stems thick as tree trunks twisted upward. At their tops gaped mouths lined with jagged leaf-teeth. One head turned toward him and hissed. A vine lashed out and snapped where his arm had been. He threw himself flat. The mouths could not see a shadow well. But they felt movement, and they felt heat. Bjorn had no heat. He pressed himself into the ground and slid between the writhing stems. Teeth clashed above him. A jaw closed on empty air. Deep inside the thicket, the tangled vines blocked the sun. Cool shade fell over him. The burning stopped. He had found his refuge. Then he heard the second sound. Bone scraped on bone. Something walked in with him from the far side of the thicket. A hound made of scorched bones stepped through the vines. It had three skulls, each with hollow eyes that glowed like coals. Fire ran through the gaps in its ribs. The plants did not strike it. They shrank back from the heat instead. The beast had come to the shade for the same reason he had. It smelled the dark thing hiding there. Three skulls turned toward Bjorn at once. It lowered its heads and growled from all three throats. Bjorn had no weapon. He had no body to bleed. But the fire in that hound was light, and light could kill him. He did the only thing left. He flung himself against the nearest plant stem and drove it hard. The wounded head screamed and swung down, snapping at the hound. Fire and teeth met in a mess of snapping jaws. Bjorn slid past both, out the far gap the hound had opened. He stood in a new place, hidden from the sun by a bank of dead earth. The thicket roared behind him. The bone hound had his scent now. Bjorn was safe from the light. But something was hunting him through the dark, and the dark was the only place he could live.