Echo Fort

Vesper staggers to Wrathbane with her sisters' blood freezing on her skin

Vesper has been walking through a blizzard since Dalia and Moraine died protecting her from Cayde — an Avanis spy who had infiltrated Stormfell by murdering and impersonating a dead nobleman.

Vesper staggers to Wrathbane with her sisters' blood freezing on her skin

Vesper has been walking through a blizzard since Dalia and Moraine died protecting her from Cayde — an Avanis spy who had infiltrated Stormfell by murdering and impersonating a dead nobleman. Their blood still paints her frozen body. She uses her Succubus allure to overpower city guards and crashes into Prince Dragor's chambers, confessing everything: Cayde's treachery, the archways beneath Never Keep, a Dragon, Vampires. Dragor has a Cyclops claw through her mind for every detail, then beats her and chains her in his dungeon. He declares her dead to the world. But rather than execute her, he forces a star oath: she will hunt the escaped Dragon and return it to him. Only then may she pursue the vengeance consuming her. Her grief must wait.

Kaiser's soul-tie drags Everest to him against her every will

At Never Keep, Everest Arcadia — a Cascadian Raincarver and rare Aquina Leopard shifter — wakes to find her body no longer entirely her own. The Fury named Kaiser Brimtheon has cast a soul-tie during the Vampire attack, making her his Fearsire. His possession controls her limbs. A burning magic called Nightfire simmers in her veins, growing more agonizing with each day she refuses his summons. When she finally yields, Kaiser strips her to her underwear and cleans her wounds with an unsettling gentleness. Then he forces her to shift into Leopard form and cross the rooftops back to her quarters unseen. She lunges at him with her dagger before leaving. The Nightfire drops her to her knees. She cannot strike the man who murdered her mother. Not yet.

Beneath Never Keep, an ancient entity confirms Everest's prophesied power Kaiser leads Everest through hidden passages beneath the Keep to a sealed chamber requiring an elixir his mother helped him brew. They descend into a void-like space where an entity of unimaginable power suspends them in darkness. It speaks in a language that plants itself inside their blood: it is chaos, the undoing of all, and the Reapers are nourishing it toward crossing into their world. When Everest demands to know if it is the Void from the Elysium Prophecy, the answer rewires everything she believed about herself. It is no Void — she is. The power to destroy all power lives inside her. Kaiser's wild gamble is confirmed, and every nation in The Waning Lands would kill to wield…