Chapter 1 The Dead Have No Secrets

The dead were supposed to be silent. That was the first lesson every corpse collector learned. The second was never to look into their eyes.

Zevran Mordis ignored both.

The crimson dawn stretched across the battlefield, turning black blood into shimmering red. Smoke still curled from shattered siege towers, and the bitter scent of burnt flesh lingered long after the fighting had ended.

Around him, dozens of corpse collectors moved across the wasteland with iron hooks and battered wooden carts. The Great Houses didn't pay them to mourn the dead. They paid them to make them disappear.

"Quit staring and move!" a gruff voice barked.

Old Garrick limped toward him. His broken horns and bent back showed decades of hauling corpses, but his eyes remained sharp.

"The sun's already up," Garrick said. "If House Nocthar's officers arrive before we're finished, they'll dock our pay again."

Zevran lowered his gaze and nodded. "I'm moving."

"You always say that."

Garrick shoved an empty cart toward him. "North ridge. That's where most of the bodies fell."

Zevran pushed the cart over the uneven ground, the wheels rolling over broken weapons, shattered shields, and severed limbs without slowing. Crows circled overhead, their cries swallowed by the endless silence that always followed war. He hated that silence more than the battle itself. During war, everyone screamed. Afterward, no one did.

He stopped beside a young soldier wearing House Nocthar's black armor. The demon's eyes remained open, his sword still in his hand. He hadn't died in fear, but in surprise.

Zevran crouched beside him. "I'm sorry," he murmured, though he never really knew why he apologized. The dead never answered.

He pried the sword loose, placed it in the salvage pile, then lifted the body onto the cart. Everything valuable belonged to the House. The corpses were all the collectors could claim.

He pushed onward. The battlefield seemed endless. Thousands had died here yesterday when House Nocthar fought House Morvain over another border dispute. People like Zevran never knew why wars began, only where they ended.

A shout rose from the eastern slope. "I found another survivor!"

Several collectors rushed toward the voice, but Zevran didn't move. Survivors rarely lived long out here. If they belonged to the wrong House, soldiers finished the job before questions could be asked. He kept working, body after body, cart after cart, apology after apology whispered under his breath.

By midday, sweat clung to his neck despite the cold wind. His stomach growled and he ignored it, because food came after work, and only if there was enough pay, and only if the overseer decided they hadn't worked too slowly.

He reached a shallow crater near the northern ridge, and unlike the rest of the battlefield, it was strangely untouched. No broken wagons. No shattered weapons. No blood. Just one body lying in the center, and that alone was unusual enough to make him stop.

Zevran climbed down carefully. The demon wore neither House colors nor armor, only plain black robes covered in dried ash, his face peaceful, without a single wound on him. Nothing at all.

Zevran circled the body slowly. "How did you die?" The question slipped out before he realized he'd asked it. His eyes drifted to the demon's hands, long fingered, clean nailed, without a single callus. Not a soldier. Not a laborer. Not a noble either. Something about him felt wrong in a way Zevran couldn't name. The battlefield was littered with violence, yet this corpse looked as though it had simply fallen asleep.

Footsteps crunched behind him. "Found something?" It was Garrick.

Zevran stepped aside. "I can't find any injuries on him."

The old man glanced down for barely a second before grabbing Zevran's shoulder, hard. "Leave it."

"What?"

"I said leave it." For the first time, Zevran heard fear in Garrick's voice. The old demon glanced around before whispering, "Load every other corpse. Not this one."

"Why?"

"You want to keep breathing?"

"...Yes."

"Then stop asking."

Garrick turned and started climbing out of the crater. After a few steps he stopped, and without looking back, said quietly, "Some bodies aren't ours to touch." Then he walked away.

Zevran stayed where he was. The wind grew stronger, and ash drifted across the silent corpse while his curiosity fought against his common sense. Garrick had raised him after his parents disappeared, and the old demon had never spoken to him that way before. He knew he should leave. Instead he took one cautious step closer, then another.

The corpse's eyes were still open, still looking up at the dark red sky. Zevran sighed. "No one should be left like this." He reached down to close the demon's eyes, and the instant his fingertips brushed the cold skin, his vision exploded.

A deafening sound echoed inside his head, not screaming, not thunder, but something heavy striking stone. Once. Twice. A third time. Darkness swallowed everything, and then rows of towering pillars rose out of the shadows, endless and ancient and broken. Massive black chains stretched across an endless hall. Twelve enormous thrones stood in a circle, every one of them empty, the floor beneath them cracked and stained with old blood. Somewhere in the darkness, footsteps echoed, slow and measured.

Zevran tried to move, but his body refused. A voice rang through the hall, not loud, yet carrying an authority that pressed against his chest like a weight. "So." Silence followed, and then another voice answered from somewhere unseen. "Still no successor."

Everything shattered, and the vision was gone.

Zevran stumbled backward, gasping for breath, his heart pounding so violently he thought it might burst through his ribs. The battlefield returned around him. He stared down at the corpse. It hadn't moved. Had he imagined the whole thing?

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and laughed, a short, nervous sound. "I need sleep," he muttered, then reached for the body again. This time nothing happened. Just cold skin.

He grabbed the corpse beneath its shoulders, and the moment he lifted it, something small slipped from inside the black robe and landed softly on the ground. A coin, he thought at first, but it wasn't a coin. It was a perfectly black disc, smooth as polished glass, with an unfamiliar symbol pressed into one side, a pair of balanced scales.

Zevran frowned. He had worked battlefields for years and knew every crest belonging to the Nine Great Houses. This symbol belonged to none of them. He glanced toward the hill where Garrick had disappeared, then bent down and closed his fingers around the black disc. It felt strangely warm, almost alive.

The wind died. Every crow fell silent.

Then, somewhere beyond the northern mountains, a deep bell rang.

Garrick stopped halfway up the hill.

He turned.

His face went completely pale.

"Zevran!" he shouted.

"Throw it away!"

Before Zevran could react, the black disc burned in his palm.

A drop of his blood fell onto its surface.

The symbol of the scales began to glow.

Far away...

Inside the highest tower of House Vaelmor, an ancient black crystal shattered.

An old demon slowly opened his eyes.

"Impossible..."

"The Court has chosen a successor."