THE CURSE OF LUST
Nothing was tidy.
Ashford's voice drew me back. "And while we examine these events, consider the stories whispered alongside history—legends that grew in the shadow of war. Accounts of spectral soldiers, creatures that struck fear in the night, even rumours of vampires and lycanthropes in the borderlands. Some claim myth arose to explain horrors that cannot be rationalised; others insist the world is wider, stranger, than history alone can tell."
My fingers tightened around the pen. Centuries of lived experience, of watching humans grasp at shadows while the truth prowled beneath, stirred in my chest.