Forty-three days.

  That's how long I'd been traveling north since leaving Millhaven. Forty-three days of walking through forests, crossing rivers, avoiding main roads, hunting whatever crossed my path. Forty-three days of nothing but my own thoughts, the whisper of wind through trees, and the occasional scream of whatever I decided to kill.

  I'd stopped counting after the first week, but the number stuck in my head anyway. A tally mark for every sunrise I woke up alone, every sunset I watched in silence, every night I sat by a fire with no one to talk to but myself.

  Not that I wanted company. People were liabilities. Weaknesses. Every person I'd ever trusted had either betrayed me or died, and I wasn't about to repeat that mistake. Solitude was safer. Cleaner. No one to stab you in the back if there was no one standing behind you.

  But fuck, it was getting old.

  I sat by another nameless campfire in another nameless forest, watching the flames dance while I cleaned Nightfall for the third time that day. The blade didn't need cleaning—it absorbed blood instead of being stained by it—but the ritual gave me something to do with my hands. Something to focus on besides the oppressive silence that pressed in from all sides.

  "You know what the problem with revenge is?" I said to the sword, my voice sounding strange after hours of not speaking. "It's boring as hell when you're not actually doing it. Just walking, hunting, walking some more. Same shit, different day."

  Nightfall didn't respond. Obviously. It was a sword, not a person, and I wasn't crazy enough to think it could talk back. But sometimes I pretended it could hear me anyway, just to break up the monotony.

  "I mean, don't get me wrong," I continued, running the cloth along the blade's edge. "I'm getting stronger. Faster. Better at magic. Every creature I kill, every bandit I drain, I'm one step closer to being unstoppable. But it's all so... repetitive."

  The fire crackled. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance. The silence pressed in harder.

  I sheathed Nightfall and leaned back against a tree, staring up at the stars through the canopy. They looked the same as they had in my previous life. Same constellations, same cold indifference. The universe didn't give a shit about my revenge, my pain, my existence. It just kept spinning, uncaring.

  "Maybe that's the point," I muttered. "Maybe the whole universe is just as empty and meaningless as everything else."

  My voice echoed back to me from the trees, and I realized with a jolt how pathetic I sounded. Talking to myself like some lonely hermit, philosophizing about the universe to a sword that couldn't hear me.

  I was fourteen years old—physically, at least—and I was losing my fucking mind.

  No. No, I wasn't. I was fine. This was fine. Solitude was a choice, not a curse. I didn't need people. I didn't need anyone. I was stronger alone, more focused, more dangerous. The moment I let someone in was the moment I gave them power over me, and I'd learned that lesson the hard way.

  I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but the silence followed me into my dreams.

  The nightmare was always the same.

  I was back in my previous life, standing in that apartment, watching her—my lover, my betrayer—move toward me with something dark in her eyes. Before I could react, she grabbed my jaw and wrenched my head back, exposing my throat.

  The blade came across fast and deep, and I felt the hot spray of blood as she cut through everything. My windpipe. My arteries. All of it.

  But worse than the pain was her smile.

  It wasn't the smile I remembered. It wasn't human. Her mouth stretched too wide, her teeth too sharp, her eyes too black. A monstrous grin that belonged to something that had never been human at all. She stared into my eyes as I choked on my own blood, and that smile—that impossible, wrong smile—burned itself into my mind.

  "Why?" I tried to ask, but only blood came out.

  She leaned close, her breath hot against my ruined throat, and whispered something I could never quite remember when I woke up. Something that made my skin crawl even in the waking world.

  Then the darkness took me, and I woke up gasping.

  The fire had burned down to embers. The forest was dark and still. And I was alone.

  I sat up, breathing hard, my hand instinctively going to Nightfall's hilt. The blade's presence was cold and familiar, grounding me in reality. Just a dream. Just a stupid fucking dream.

  But the words lingered.

  You were always alone.

  "Shut up," I said to the empty air. "Shut the fuck up."

  I stood and kicked dirt over the embers, plunging the campsite into darkness. I didn't need light. I didn't need warmth. I didn't need anything except the power to destroy everyone who'd wronged me.

  And I definitely didn't need some dead bitch's voice in my head telling me I was lonely.

  I grabbed my pack and started walking. It was the middle of the night, but I didn't care. Movement was better than sitting still, better than thinking, better than feeling that hollow ache in my chest that I refused to acknowledge.

  The forest swallowed me whole, and I let it.

  Three weeks later, I killed a man for asking my name.

  It wasn't planned. I'd stopped in a small trading post—barely more than a few buildings clustered around a crossroads—to buy supplies. Food, mostly. I could hunt, but sometimes it was easier to just trade coin for dried meat and bread.

  The merchant was friendly. Too friendly. He smiled when he saw me, asked where I was headed, commented on the weather. Normal small talk, the kind people did to fill silence.

  "What's your name, son?" he asked as he wrapped my purchases.

  I froze.

  It was such a simple question. Harmless. But something about it—the casual assumption that I'd answer, that I'd share something personal, that I'd let him into my life even for a second—made my skin crawl.

  "Does it matter?" I said coldly.

  He blinked, surprised by my tone. "I suppose not. Just making conversation."

  "Don't."

  The merchant's smile faltered. He handed me the package, and I could see the wariness in his eyes now. Good. He was starting to understand.

  Stolen story; please report.

  But then he made a mistake.

  "You know, you remind me of my son," he said quietly. "He's about your age. Travels alone too, thinks he doesn't need anyone. But everyone needs someone, kid. Even people like you."

  I felt something snap inside me.

  "People like me?" I repeated, my voice dangerously soft.

  "I just meant—"

  "You don't know anything about me. You don't know what I am, what I've done, what I'm going to do. You see a kid traveling alone and you think you understand? You think you can give me advice?"

  The merchant took a step back. "I didn't mean any offense—"

  "Grasp of the Grave."

  The black chains erupted from the shadows before he could finish his sentence, wrapping around his throat and lifting him off the ground. His eyes went wide with terror as the life force began draining from his body, feeding into me.

  "You want to know my name?" I said, watching him struggle. "I don't have one anymore. I'm just the thing that's going to burn this world down, starting with everyone who thinks they can understand me."

  He tried to speak, but the chains tightened. His life force flowed into me, warm and intoxicating, filling the hollow space inside my chest with power instead of connection.

  When he finally went limp, I let the body drop and walked out of the trading post without looking back.

  No one tried to stop me.

  I was fifteen now, physically. The merchant's life force had pushed me further along, my body continuing its accelerated growth. I was taller, stronger, my features sharpening into something that no longer looked quite so childlike.

  Good. The older I looked, the less people would underestimate me.

  I'd left the trading post behind and returned to the wilderness, to the solitude I'd convinced myself I preferred. But the hollow feeling in my chest hadn't gone away. If anything, it had gotten worse.

  I tried to ignore it. Tried to bury it under training, under hunting, under the constant pursuit of power. I developed new spells, pushing my magic further than ever before.

  "Void Embrace," I whispered, extending my hand toward a tree.

  Dark energy flowed from my palm, wrapping around the trunk like a living thing. The tree withered instantly, its life force consumed so completely that even the wood turned to ash. Not just death—erasure. Complete and total annihilation.

  It was beautiful. Terrifying. Exactly the kind of power I needed.

  But when the spell faded and the silence returned, the hollow feeling came back stronger than before.

  I found myself talking to Nightfall more often. Not because I thought it could hear me, but because the sound of my own voice was better than the oppressive quiet.

  "You know what's funny?" I said one night, sitting by yet another campfire. "I spent my whole first life surrounded by people, and I was miserable. Now I'm alone, and I'm still miserable. Maybe the problem isn't other people. Maybe it's just me."

  I laughed, but it sounded bitter even to my own ears.

  "No, that's bullshit. The problem is definitely other people. They're weak, they're treacherous, they're liabilities. I'm better off without them."

  The fire crackled its agreement.

  "But sometimes..." I trailed off, staring into the flames. "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have someone who couldn't betray me. Someone who was bound to me so completely that treachery wasn't even an option. Not a friend—fuck that—but a tool. A weapon that happened to be shaped like a person."

  I shook my head. "That's stupid. People aren't tools. They're always going to have their own agendas, their own desires. The moment you trust them is the moment they stab you in the back."

  But the thought lingered anyway, worming its way into my mind like a parasite.

  What if there was a way? Some kind of binding that made betrayal impossible? Not friendship, not loyalty—those were illusions—but something more fundamental. A contract that couldn't be broken, a chain that couldn't be escaped.

  I'd heard stories about slave contracts. Magic that bound one person to another, making disobedience physically impossible. The church condemned it as evil, which meant it was probably effective.

  "No," I said firmly. "I don't need anyone. Not even a slave. I'm fine alone."

  But my voice lacked conviction, and I knew it.

  The breaking point came two weeks later.

  I'd been tracking a group of bandits—six men who'd been terrorizing travelers along the northern road. Easy prey, or so I thought. But when I finally caught up to them, I found something unexpected.

  They had a prisoner. A girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, bound and gagged in the back of their wagon. She was beaten, bruised, her clothes torn. And when she saw me, her eyes lit up with desperate hope.

  She thought I was going to save her.

  The bandits noticed me at the same time. Their leader—a scarred man with a missing eye—drew his sword and grinned.

  "Well, well. What do we have here? You lost, boy?"

  I didn't answer. I was too busy staring at the girl, at the hope in her eyes, at the way she was looking at me like I was some kind of hero.

  She had no idea what I was.

  "Hey, I'm talking to you!" The leader took a step forward. "You deaf or just stupid?"

  I finally looked at him. "Let her go."

  He laughed. "Or what? You gonna fight all six of us? Kid, you're in over your—"

  "Shadow Step."

  I appeared behind him and drove Nightfall through his spine before he could finish his sentence. The other bandits barely had time to react before I was among them, the blade singing as it cut through flesh and bone.

  It was over in seconds. Six bodies on the ground, their life force flowing into me, pushing me closer to sixteen years old.

  The girl was staring at me now, but the hope in her eyes had been replaced by terror.

  I walked over to the wagon and cut her bonds. She scrambled away from me, pressing herself against the far side of the wagon bed.

  "Thank you," she whispered, her voice shaking. "Thank you for saving me."

  I looked at her—really looked at her—and felt nothing. No satisfaction, no pride, no connection. Just emptiness.

  "I didn't save you," I said flatly. "I killed them because I wanted their life force. You were just here."

  Her face went pale. "What... what are you?"

  "A monster." I turned to leave. "There's a town about five miles south. Go there. Don't follow me."

  "Wait!" She climbed out of the wagon, stumbling on shaky legs. "Please, I have nowhere to go. My family is dead, my village was destroyed. I could... I could travel with you. Help you. I'm good at—"

  "No."

  "But I—"

  "I said no." I looked back at her, and I let her see the darkness in my eyes. "I don't need help. I don't need company. And I definitely don't need some traumatized girl following me around thinking I'm going to protect her. I'm not a hero. I'm not your savior. I'm the thing that kills people like those bandits, and if you stay near me, you'll end up just as dead."

  Tears streamed down her face. "Please, I don't want to be alone."

  Something twisted in my chest—sharp and painful and unwelcome. I recognized it immediately and crushed it with everything I had.

  "Then find someone else," I said coldly. "Because I do."

  I walked away and didn't look back, even when I heard her sobbing behind me.

  That night, I sat by my fire and tried not to think about the girl. Tried not to think about the hope in her eyes, the desperation in her voice, the way she'd begged not to be alone.

  Tried not to think about how much I understood that feeling.

  "She was a liability," I said to Nightfall. "A weakness waiting to happen. I did the right thing."

  The sword didn't argue.

  "People like her, they get attached. They start to care. And then they use that care as leverage, or they get themselves killed trying to protect you, or they betray you when someone offers them a better deal. It's always the same story."

  The fire crackled.

  "I don't need anyone. I'm stronger alone. More focused. More dangerous."

  The silence pressed in.

  "I'm fine."

  The hollow feeling in my chest grew larger.

  I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but all I could see was the girl's face. The hope. The terror. The loneliness.

  I don't want to be alone.

  "Neither do I," I whispered to the darkness.

  Then I opened my eyes and forced the thought away with brutal efficiency. Weakness. That's all it was. A moment of weakness brought on by too much solitude, too much time inside my own head. I didn't need companionship. I didn't need connection. I needed power, and power came from standing alone.

  But even as I told myself that, I knew something had changed. The isolation that had once felt like armor now felt like a cage. The solitude that had once been a choice now felt like a sentence.

  I was sixteen years old—physically—and I was starting to understand that revenge was a cold companion. That power without purpose was just another kind of emptiness. That maybe, just maybe, there were things worse than betrayal.

  Like spending eternity alone with nothing but your own darkness for company.

  "No," I said firmly, standing up and kicking dirt over the fire. "I don't need anyone. I won't need anyone. This is just temporary. A phase. Once I'm strong enough, once I've destroyed my family and reshaped this world, I won't feel this way anymore."

  It was a lie, and I knew it.

  But lies were easier than truth, and I'd built my entire existence on them.

  I shouldered my pack and started walking north again, toward the next town, the next challenge, the next step on my path. Nightfall hung at my hip, cold and familiar. My magic thrummed beneath my skin, dark and powerful. I was stronger than I'd ever been, more dangerous than anyone could imagine.

  And I was completely, utterly alone.

  The forest swallowed me whole, and this time, I let myself feel the weight of it. Not for long—just a moment, a brief acknowledgment of the truth I refused to accept.

  Then I crushed it, buried it, locked it away in the same place I kept all my other weaknesses.

  Companionship was a liability I couldn't afford.

  Not yet.

  Maybe not ever.

  But the hollow feeling in my chest whispered otherwise, and no amount of power could make it shut up.