❝ ᴡʜᴇɴ ᴡᴇ'ʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏɴʟʏ ᴏɴᴇꜱ ʟᴇꜰᴛ ᴏɴ ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜱʟᴀɴᴅ, ᴡʜᴏ ᴡɪʟʟ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄʜᴏᴏꜱᴇ? ❞
Morana has mastered death, allowing her to become the most notoriously feared assassin on the island of Wyrith. She's able to control the remains of the dead whenever she pleases...
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The quickest way to the other side of Wyrith was to cut through the bustling main city and thriving towns. That meant hiding in the concealing shadows of cloaks, avoiding people where they could, and remaining quiet at all costs.
Morana had to pull Damian's hood further over his face on several occasions as they passed various landmarks tourists adored when they visited. The statue of the king who had saved the island from the torturous throes of death and the sparkling spires of Celnaer Castle were few of many the Fireborn found himself stopping before.
After several shoves in the right direction and an abundance of frustrated sighs, the two finally managed to leave the city behind without being seen. Now, only a few lone houses speckled the empty fields of the island's countryside. The assassin had taken this route to the ruins so many times that she knew the dirt paths like the ridges in her palm.
"How much further do we have to go, bone girl?" Damian asked in a whisper, uncertain if it was safe to talk.
Morana had enjoyed the silence that the pressure of being discovered had brought. It made it easy to forget there was the weight of a Fireborn slowing down the mission. "We're about halfway there now." She turned her gaze to the sun, squinting to calculate the time of day. The growl of Damian's stomach helped her to conclude that it was midday. "Did you not eat this morning?"
"I was too focused on sneaking out of the castle," he grumbled, the low sound rivalling his snarling hunger.
The necromancer let her hood fall and her purple braid spring free as they approached a village on the horizon. Surrounded by a low-rise, stone wall was a small collection of homes. A large gate was propped open at the entrance with sacks of flour, beckoning visitors inside.
Damian glanced between the village and Morana. "Will the people here not care about our identities?"
"The people here have been dead for centuries. I'm sure a few ghosts won't mind taking a peek at your face." As they got closer, the finer details of the village came into view. From afar, the nearby cliffs that overlooked the Molten Sea and the blue sky that swam above them made it look like a quaint place to live. Yet, up close, cobwebs embellished every corner, the stone wall had eroded to the hands of time, and not even the echo of footsteps could be heard from within.
The Fireborn Prince lowered his cloak too. "Why is it abandoned? This looks like a wonderful place to live."
"The inhabitants were either exiled or executed." Damian's brows furrowed, his head tilting as he attempted to figure out why. Morana saved him the thought. "They were necromancers, fire boy."
It didn't take a deep walk between the houses for whispers to begin to ring in the corner of Morana's mind — crackled noise that wasn't quite human. Cursed. Leave. The voices cried the same things over and over from corpses that had been left untouched for centuries. Necromancer souls always found a way to communicate through their power.
