Page 114 of Heart Cradle
Hold.
Stop.
Stay.
The figure froze mid-sprint, suspended unnaturally in mid-air, limbs rigid and trembling. It hung there for a heartbeat, caught in the invisible threads of intention.
Eiran’s eyes narrowed. “What in the fuck?”
With a sickening snap of force, the figure broke free and it dropped to the floor in a crouch, then rose, too fluidly, too silently. Still wrapped in black, still featureless. It began to prowl forwards. This was no ordinary attacker, no assassin from the Pale Court, this was something else. Eiran lowered his stance, shifting the sword in his grip. His blood sang with fire, ice, wind and steel. Whatever this was, it had come too close.
Eiran was not one to run, but now he did. Not from fear for himself, but from fear for what lay behind him. For Maeve, for their unborn future. For the very heart of Melrathen slumbering within ancient walls now defiled by a thing that should not exist. His boots pounded the stone corridor as he tore through the east wing, the shadowy mass close at his heels, silent and shapeless but full of purpose. The corridors blurred, twisting faster with every turn. He hurled intention magic over his shoulder, wards and flares designed to stagger and to slow. Some worked but most fizzled. The thing moved like smoke and shadow, slipping past enchantments like sand through fingers.
He didn’t look back, he only ran harder.“Xelaini.”
“Here.”Her mind met his like the snap of a bowstring.“The thunder is awake. Their paired know. You must draw it out.”
“I am. Heading to the eastern courtyard.”
He tried, truly tried to describe what chased him, but the words wouldn’t come. It was shadow and smoke, yes, but also hunger, rot and death. Like a nightmare glimpsed just before waking, remembered only as a brief shudder. He reached the courtyard doors, tall, rune-bound, sealed with ancient fae script. He thrust his palm forwards, shouting with his will and the doors burst open in obedience.
Cool air hit him as he sprinted into the open night, and Xelaini was there. She dove, claws extended, not to kill, but to catch. She snatched him carefully, talons curling around his form without breaking flesh, lifting him from the ground and into the sky. Swinging up, he found the saddle on memory alone. His breath came ragged, not from the run, but from the fear still tearing at his ribs.
Below them, the thing emerged into moonlight. Eiran squinted at the creature stood still now, massive and rippling with unnatural motion. Like a bear made of vapour and rage. Mist slithered from its form like steam from a carcass. It didn’t breathe, it simply existed.
“What is it?” he asked aloud, voice hoarse.
Xelaini spoke, not through the bond, but aloud, voice reverberating in her throat like thunder entwined in lace. “I have not seen one before, but from the old tales told to me by the elders, that is a skeld.”
Her words felt heavy.
“They are formed of the earliest demonic death magic,” she said. “Older than dragons, certainly older than the fae. The gods fought them before our realms were born. They come from fear and nightmare. They were banished long ago.”
Eiran’s mouth was dry. “I thought they were stories, Xel. Firelit warnings from Nanny to keep children quiet at night.”
“I think they multiply by touch.”
He flinched. “How?”
“If one touches a fae,” she said grimly, “the fae does not die. They feel joy, utter bliss. An unbearable pleasure and when it ends, they are no longer.”
Eiran’s stomach turned. “They become that?”
“Yes,” she said. “And the only way to kill them, truly kill them, is with steel forged with intention. Driven by certainty.”
He swallowed hard. “Then I have to end it.”
“I will do what I can to keep it pinned,” Xelaini said. “Be careful, Little One. I have grown… fond of you.”
She reared back and released a roar that split the sky and flames engulfed the skeld, blue and crackling with wild magic older than fire itself. The creature writhed, held by searing chains of arcane heat. Eiran leapt from her back, landing on the scorched stones.
After ten paces, he drew his sword and charged.
The skeld surged but fire held it. Eiran struck, blade slicing through haze, memory and hate. It screamed, enraged as Eiran twisted away from its grasp, dodging not claws, but tendrils of dark reaching death. He could not let it touch him, but a moment, that’s all he needed. He reached inward andcalled the dagger at his hip, the blade ripped from its sheath, shot through the air, and drove deep into the skeld’s chest, where a heart should have been. It shrieked and buckled.
Eiran spun and called the second. This one sliced across its throat with lethal precision and the skeld finally dropped. A dying thing flailing against inevitability. It howled, a noise that should never have belonged to the world, then it stilled. Its shape hardened as the mist faded and the rot dissolved, and what remained was a boy.
A young Avelan soldier, no more than sixteen.
