Shatterheart

Prologue

     The sounds of pounding feet thumped out an irregular beat, like a drum being hammered at. Screams tore at her ears, the acrid stench of burning flesh seared her nostrils.

     Was it that dream again…? But everything…everything was so…real…

     She felt her chest heave soundlessly. She was running…without a clue where she was going.... People around her pushed in the opposite direction as they fled away from the burning buildings.

     A man dashed crazily past her, the fire from his jacket licking towards her. She flinched away as he screeched, then tripped and fell against the wall of a wooden house, sending it up in flames.

     Bile rose in her mouth, and she forced it back down. She had to keep going…she didn’t know why she was running towards danger rather than away.

     “Charge them!” she heard a male voice yell, familiar to her dream-self but she had no idea who it was. “Keep moving further in!”

     Panting, she forced herself forwards, finally bursting through the last of the crowd of panicked people and was presented with the image of a small group of towering men charging through the buildings, disappearing into the flames. No, she screamed silently, her heart aching but she didn’t know why.

     Her vision blurred, and she cried out, crumpling towards the ground. The ground rocked around her, and then she was on her feet again and her surroundings had changed…

     “I should have known that it would be you,” she heard herself saying, biting out the words with hatred. A sword was in her hand. The boy in front of her growled low in his throat.

     His lips drew back in a snarl—his fangs gleamed in the firelight, the only visible thing in his shadowed face apart from the whites of his eyes. It was always like that in the dream, she never saw anyone’s face, not even her own…

     “You are daughter of the devil,” he spat, like the words were poison. The veins of his visible skin darkened to a sickening black, like he was covered with a web of ink. Her breath caught in her throat. How…

     “What happened to you?” her eyes filled with unwanted tears, and she brushed them away angrily. He betrayed me, she reminded herself, sending the fury in her veins to an inferno. He’s a murderer. “You’re a monster,” she shouted, gesturing to the crumbling city. “Look at what you’ve done…”

     “You are the monster!” he yelled, and she drew back, shocked by the hatred in his voice. The black veins on his visible skin blurred, and she saw they were rising off him, twining around him like an evil shadow before they sunk into him, leaving no trace of their presence.

     The only sign that they had been there was when he raised his head, his suddenly visible eyes, even the whites, were an obsidian black that drank up the light.

     She was still paralysed with horror even as his claws, the tips lit with green fire, came sizzling down to slash open her cheek, glancing off her collarbone.

     And then she was on fire.

     Burning.