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Instead, they plan to cheat the system, to trick the crown, the realm, even the Fates themselves. By finding the softest, most vulnerable hearts in the cosmos—humans—they’ll attempt to forge false bonds strong enough to awaken the Prime’s magic.
It’s a dangerous gamble. But they are Lords of Nightfall. And they don’t lose.
Yet as the SoulTakers draw closer, and the realm’s edges begin to fray, one truth becomes clearer than ever before.
If they fail to unite, if the balance tips too far, if love is only a lie, then Nightfall will be destroyed.
And with it, every world connected to it.
Including ours.
Prologue: Kael
Kael: Lord of Water
Ever since the Prime fell, the realm has been bleeding slowly.
Nightfall still wears its old shapes—rivers where rivers should be, courts where nobles still sit, forests where children run—but the seams show.
Bright places gutter.
Songs forget their words.
We walk our homeland like men counting the ribs of a ship after the storm.
So I made a pact with my brothers because pacts still smell a little like hope.
Alaric of Air.
Thorne of Fire.
Dagan of Earth.
And me, Kael of Water.
Four Lords, four borders, one enemy that eats memory and leaves hollow shells behind.
Together we might push it back.
There’s a catch, of course. There always is.
Only one can wear the crown. Only one takes on the heaviest thing in Nightfall—binding the realm back into one body.
Four of us stand at the gate to that awful honor.
Alaric has already shifted the world a half degree softer. He found his viyella—his true mate—and fate handed him a miracle for the trouble.
Dragonlings, two of them, kindling where we’d had ashes for an age.
I know Alaric best. He wears wind like skin and reads danger like a poem.
If Nightfall needs him, he will answer. I believe that.
I also watch him with something that isn’t simply brotherly—because he has what I want, and luck makes the rest of us hungry.
Thorne will object loudly and with smoke.
Dagan will be put out—stone has a long memory for slights.
