Chapter Text
Long Ago
"I am called Ren," the mask spoke. The voice was a gravel-grind of authority. "But that is not my name."
Karrst shivered, and it wasn't from the wind. He looked at the corpses surrounding them—the men he and Filin had slaughtered—and then back at the nightmare in the cloak.
"You're Karrst, and your younger brother here is Filin. Good to meet you both. We've been looking for you for a while."
This is the fear: It is a cold stone in the belly. It is the realization that when a nightmare says it has been looking for you, it has already found your soul.
"Looks like we got here just in time." The giant looked at the red stains on the white snow—the harvest of Karrst’s rage.
"What is this? Sector Security almost had us, and you guys swoop in and start...shoving them back," Filin blurted out. His voice was thin, a reed snapping in a gale.
"Yeah. Secs wants you two badly. Word is you've killed what...At least a hundred people?" The warrior’s voice held a dark, jagged edge of amusement. "But we want you too. We could work with you. Make you one of us. A Knight of Ren."
Ren turned his head. The universe tilted. He was looking only at the older brother now. He was looking at the power.
"We have a friend."
This is the Shadow: It lives in the space between heartbeats. It is the itch in Karrst’s palms that makes the world move when he wills it. It is the secret he thought was his alone.
"He told us about you, Karrst. Said you could touch the shadow. Do things..."
A heavy metal hilt tore itself from Ren's belt, dancing in the air, mocking the laws of the physical world. "...Like this. Is that true?"
Karrst felt the Reach stir within him. He reached out with his mind, grabbing a jagged shard of ice, forcing it to mirror the weapon’s dance. "Yeah. I can. I don't call it that...But yeah."
"That's good. That's really good. We can all do it. It's like... a requirement to join."
Filin stood up then. He didn't have the Shadow. He only had the cold and the desperate need to be anywhere else. "We'll join you. We'll follow you. Just get us out of here."
Ren let out a soft chuckle. It was the sound of shifting tectonic plates. He ignited the blade.
The snow bled.
"You don't follow me, friend. You follow this." He brought the humming, spitting beam of crimson close to his hand. His voice became a whisper, a holy secret shared in a cathedral of ice. "The Ren. The Ren doesn't stop and worry about what it's burning or the right or wrong of it, or the goals it might achieve. The Ren is just as it is. It lives, and it consumes, and it doesn't apologize. It is its nature and nothing else. I believe in that principal in a deep, deep level."
He touched a hand to his scarred chest. "In fact, I've dedicated my life to it."
Then, the red line shifted. The heat scorched Karrst’s chin.
"You could do that, too. Bathe yourself in the shadow, fight its battles, preserve its tools, eat what it sends you. All we need is a death."
Karrst’s mind raced through a gallery of his own sins. "A death? I've killed more people than I can count. That's why these fools want me dead. Why did you come for me, right?"
"No." The voice was an abyss. The red blade moved, settling its lethal weight toward the younger brother. "A good death."
The world stopped. Karrst looked at Filin. Filin looked at the blade.
"My... brother," Karrst whispered.
This is how a heart breaks: It doesn't make a sound. It just freezes.
A flash of movement. Not the red blade, but the dull steel of a knife. Karrst didn't even feel the steel slide between his ribs. He only felt the sudden, shocking silence of the Shadow leaving his body. He slumped into the slush.
Filin stood over him, breathing hard, his eyes bright with the fever of survival. "There. Done. Get me the hell out of here."
"Oh, Filin..." Ren sounded almost tired. "You've got the attitude, and that's good. I respect that. But you can't touch the shadow."
The red blade flared.
The end of Filin was a moment of heat, and then nothing at all.
The other Knights emerged from the mist like ghosts of the apocalypse.
"Didn't work out?" Trudgen asked.
"No, Trudgen. But that's all right. If it were easy to join us, everyone would do it." Ren looked at the two bodies—one a master of the Shadow who lacked the will, the other a man of will who lacked the Shadow. "The master will find us, someone, soon enough."
"What now?"
Beneath the mask, the man who was called Ren felt the hunger of the flame.
"Let's go find something to burn."