The rain fell like iron tears on the Road of the Drowned, and Vorn Lachrym moved through it as though the world itself had become a single, unbroken lament. It was not water that came down from the sky that night, or not only water. There was something else in that downpour, something viscous and ancient that clung to the skin, left a silvery trail when it ran, and filled the breath with a metallic taste of old blood and salt. The villagers of the region called it "the tears of Mor'thu" and avoided touching them at any cost. They said that anyone who felt them long enough began to hear the voices of the drowned, those who had died in the marshes around the Cathedral of Vel'Sharoth, dragged down into the depths by hands no one could see, hands that seized ankles and pulled while the mud closed over the mouth and the light of day withdrew forever. Vorn Lachrym did not care about the voices of the dead. He had been hearing them for seven years, since the night he had taken up the sword and the world had grown a little narrower and a little darker.
The road to the cathedral was little more than a track of mud and broken bones, winding between dead trees whose branches twisted like the fingers of the hanged. No bird sang in that region. No insect hummed. There was only the monotonous sound of the rain, the crush of boots in the mud, and the constant whisper from the sword slung across his back, a long black blade called Lament, whose voice was as familiar as his own heartbeat.
"You're close," said the voice, low, almost tender, as if speaking to a lover. "I can feel its pulse beneath the earth. Like a diseased heart beating in a rotting chest. You feel it too, don't you? That tingling in the scar. That taste of ashes in your mouth."
Vorn did not answer. He had learned, over the years, that answering only encouraged the voice. And the voice, when encouraged, became... creative. It began to describe the things he preferred to forget: the smell of his father's blood on the kitchen floor, the weight of his mother's body in his arms, the way the medallion of the Relic Hunters of Aldramar had gleamed in the torchlight while Dorian laughed and said everything would be all right. Vorn pulled his waxed-leather hood lower over his face, shielding his eyes from the acid rain. The vertical scar that cut through his left eye, from brow to cheekbone, a pale line against his dark skin, throbbed in the damp. It was an old wound, but it had never healed completely. It never let him forget. Every drop that ran down it seemed to open the skin again, as if time itself refused to let the mark fade.
Ahead, the road opened into a clearing. At its center stood a gallows. The body hanging from it had been there long enough for the crows to have done their work, but not so long that the bones had fallen. Enough remained to make out: a man, tall, wearing the remains of a tunic that had once been blue. A medallion hung from his neck, swinging in the wind, and the metal gave a dry sound each time it struck his hollow chest.
Vorn stopped. The rain ran down his chin and dripped into the collar of his cloak. The sword's voice spoke again, this time with a note of feigned curiosity.
"Do you know him?"
Vorn did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the medallion. It was a familiar symbol: a seven-pointed star within a circle. The emblem of the Relic Hunters of Aldramar. The guild to which he himself had once belonged, before everything fell apart. Before the blood on the floor. Before the sword. Before the voices.
"Well, well," the voice went on, and now there was an almost sensual pleasure in the way the words took shape. "It seems someone got here before you. Someone who was also looking for the cathedral. What a delicious coincidence."
Vorn approached the gallows. The rope creaked in the wind. The body swayed slightly, as if it were alive, as if it were trying to speak. He recognized the face then, or what remained of it. The jaw was dislocated, one eye was missing, the skin of the neck had darkened and shrunk, but the half-moon scar on the chin was still there.
Dorian Vex.
Dorian had been his partner. Not a friend, since Vorn had no friends, but a partner. They had hunted together for three years, shared danger and blood, saved each other more times than either could count. Dorian was the kind of man who laughed in the face of danger, who made jokes while he bled, who believed the world could be mended if someone would only try hard enough. Dorian believed in many things. He believed in redemption. He believed in second chances. He believed that Vorn could still be saved.
Now Dorian was dead, hung up like a warning, and Vorn knew exactly what that meant.
"He came after you," said the voice, and this time the tone was almost compassionate, which made everything worse. "To save you, perhaps. Or to stop you. Hard to tell with these heroic types. They always confuse the two."
Vorn closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, there was no sorrow in them; there was something colder, more calculating. The sorrow had been burned out of him long ago, along with everything else that had made him human. He cut the rope with a quick movement of his knife. The body dropped to the ground with a wet thud, and mud splashed onto Vorn's boots. He knelt beside the corpse and closed the dead man's eyes with two fingers. The skin was cold and slick.
"I'm sorry, Dorian," he murmured. "You shouldn't have come. I told you not to come."
"Touching," said the voice, sarcastic. "Now can we move on? The Heart of Vel'Sharoth won't wait forever. And I'm hungry."
Vorn stood. He removed the medallion from Dorian's neck, not out of sentiment, but because it might prove useful. The metal was warm to the touch, as if it still carried the heat of the body. Then, without looking back, he continued on his way. The cathedral awaited him, and the past could rot in the mud along with everything else.
The Cathedral of Vel'Sharoth rose against the sky like an open wound. There was no other way to describe it. Its gothic towers, once majestic, now leaned at impossible angles, as though melting under the weight of centuries of curses. The broken stained-glass windows glowed with a sickly inner light, red, purple, bilious green, casting patterns that moved across the outer walls like worms crawling over stone. Black vines covered nearly the whole structure, but they were no ordinary vines. They pulsed. They had thorns that looked like teeth. And when the wind passed through them, they made a sound that was almost a whisper, almost a lullaby sung by throats that no longer had tongues.
Vorn stopped before the iron gates. They were rusted, twisted, but still closed. Ancient chains sealed them, but the chains were broken, not by force, but by something that had corroded them from the inside out. The metal bore the marks of fingers, as if someone had gripped the bars and squeezed until the iron gave way. The marks were too deep to be human.
"Interesting," said the voice. "It seems someone got here before us. And did not come out. Pity. I did like surprises."