A Black Sun Descends

Prologue

The men of the King’s Guard stood atop the citadel wall and watched Aranthia burn.

Below them, the city bloomed in fire. Not wild, not wanton, but deliberate. The flames moved like something returned, threading the temple quarter as if seeking old scars, retracing the bones of rites long extinguished. Smoke rolled upward, thick as boiled blood, and the night sky was gone. In its place, a vault of ash and bruised light, as if some ancient wound had reopened in the heavens.

The heat cracked the stone. Rafters split like snapped ribs. Ash fell not in flakes but in veils, slow and ceaseless, like a winter the world had tried to forget.

Dorian stood at the parapet, gauntlets resting on the black stone, worn smooth by the centuries. That stone had watched empires kneel. Had tasted sweat thick with blood. Had borne witness to older fires.

To his left, Veyrion stood unmoving. The mage’s bone yellow cloak stirred in the updraft, one pale hand raised, fingers drawing slow glyphs in the shimmering air. He did not speak. He was listening, not to the wind, but to whatever remained beneath it.

Behind them, the King’s Guard watched in silence. Some leaned on spears. Others crouched beside the wall, smoking, hands trembling just enough to betray them. A few drank openly. They were not afraid. Fear is a thing you feel before it becomes part of you. Their eyes were long hollowed.

“Gods save us,” Brom muttered. “They’re roasting a pig down there.”

“That ain’t a pig,” said Jorrick.

A pause.

“Right,” Brom said. “Bastard’s got hands instead of trotters.”

The men laughed, low, bitter. The kind of laugh men make when they’ve nothing left to offer but the noise. And still they watched.

“You smell that?” someone muttered. “Burning piss and lavender. That’s the foreign quarter.”

“Better than the last one,” said Jorrick. “Burnt milk and wet dog.”

Brom drew on his pipe, smoke leaking from the side of his mouth. “Old Aranthia. A city for all people…And all their smells.”

A voice behind them, “You remember when they started coming in? The first wagons?”

“The priests with bone needles through their cheeks?”

“The bastards with six stringed flutes that sounded like cats screaming?”

“And the children. Eyes like coals. Never spoke. Never blinked.”

“And that crone with the basket of pickled hands.”

“Aye,” said Jorrick. “She was a treat.”

They chuckled. But none of them smiled.

Below, the fires surged. Through the black gauze of smoke, shadows moved, dancing or fighting or both. Something was being dragged through the square. A mound of limbs swaddled in silk, hauled by children whose laughter had no tune, only rhythm. Echoes of songs no man remembered singing.

“You see that?” Brom said. “That’s the high court. They’re pissing on the steps.”

“At least someone’s making use of it.”

“They’re shitting in the fountains too. Filling the holy wells with blood.”

“That’s not new,” said Jorrick. “The priests have been doing that for years. We just stopped noticing the stench.”

Dorian remained silent.

He saw them clearly. Not refugees.

Exiles.
Memories in flesh.

The seekers.

They’d come by the hundreds, then thousands. Barefoot. Veiled. Blood slicked and chanting. Savages fleeing a land they’d already gutted, dragging their ghosts with them. And the gates had opened. Not to defend, but to redeem. The child king had smiled from his marble roost and called it a new dawn.

But the dawn that rose over Aranthia was black from first light.

They hadn’t come seeking shelter.

They’d come to finish what they started elsewhere. To take. To erase. To make the city forget what it had once been.

“The way they pray,” someone muttered. “Saw one slit his tongue and scream into the gutter.”

“Call that a prayer?” Jorrick said. “I call that a waste of a good scream.”

“They slaughter goats at the crossroads,” said Brom. “One tore its throat out with his teeth.”

“Savages,” Jorrick spat. “No tribe. No tongue. Just fire and hunger and gods older than memory, older than names.”

“They sleep in the gutters. Eat rats raw. Draw their sigils in shit across the city stones.”

“Better artists than the guild, I’ll give them that.”

They laughed again. A brittle sound. Not joy, just habit.

And under the laughter, it began.

Chanting.

Low. Rhythmic. Like stones grinding in the throat of the world. Not one voice but many, wrong tongues, wrong syllables, and yet it moved with purpose, with unity, like a thing rehearsed for centuries. A hymn with no melody.

For an instant, the darkness between the stones seemed to listen.

Dorian listened, too.

He did not speak. But something behind his eyes dimmed, like a fire drawing in upon itself.

Brom stepped close. “You hear it, don’t you? Louder now. Every night.”

“They’re not praying,” said Jorrick. “They’re calling.”

“Calling who?” someone asked.

Brom’s voice came flat, final. “Not who.”

A silence settled over them.

Heavy as ash. Still as cloth on a corpse.

Far below, the western gate tower screamed and folded in on itself. A bloom of fire rose, and for a heartbeat it held shape. A figure crowned in antlers, arms wide in benediction or ruin. Then gone.

“We let them in,” someone muttered.

“No,” Dorian said.
Quiet. Final.
“We invited them. Same as before. Same as always.”

He stepped back from the wall.

“They’re not refugees,” he said. “They’re revenants. And they’ve come to collect.”

The Guard turned to him.

“What now, Commander?” Jorrick asked.

Dorian looked to the mountain road. Last road left, last road out.

“We gather what we can,” he said. “Those who still follow.”

“And the rest?”

He did not flinch.

“We leave them to their gods.”