Unholy Hunger

A Dark Fantasy Romance

Unholy Hunger

✦

Some loves are not forbidden by men.

They are forbidden by gods.

•••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × ••••••

Before Time Learned to Count

•••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × ••••••

In the age before men gave names to the dark, there were nine gods of war. They did not love. They did not hunger. They simply were — vast and cold and endless as the space between stars, moving through centuries like blades through silk, leaving only ruin in their wake.

Kael was the seventh.

He was not the cruelest. That honour belonged to his sister, Vael, whose laughter could crack stone. He was not the most powerful — that was their father, the Warlord Eternal, whose name no mortal tongue had ever spoken and survived. Kael was simply the most thorough. Methodical. He came to battlefields like a physician comes to the sick — with precision, with purpose, with a complete absence of mercy.

He had never bled. Had never wept. Had never lay awake in the dark reaching for something he could not name.

Until he saw her.

•••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × ••••••

•••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × ••••••

"The gods have one law above all others: thou shalt not love what is made of dust. For dust returns to void. And when it does, it takes a piece of the divine with it — and gods were not made to feel that kind of absence."

•••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × ••••••

•••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × ••••••

He saw her in a vision. He had not been looking — he had been doing what gods do during peacetime, which is drift through realms like smoke through a cracked door, barely present, barely caring. And then the vision cracked open in his mind like an egg dropping onto stone.

A girl. A temple. A single candle that should have gone out hours ago but hadn't.

Her eyes were open. Staring at something he couldn't see — something that stared back from the dark. And her lips were moving, shaping words in Old Veth, the prayer-tongue of oracles, the language even gods found uncomfortable to hear spoken with too much certainty.

She was calling to the void. And the void — for the first time in an eternity — answered.

Not with silence. Not with nothing.

It answered with him.

•••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × ••••••

•••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × ••••••

•••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × ••••••

•••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × ••••••

•••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × •••••• × ••••••