THE LAST DAWN
Chapter 9: The Blood of the First
The room grew colder.
The torches burned lower. The shadows pressed closer. The hunger stirred deeper. Rowan stood at the center of the chamber, his knife in his hand, his heart pounding, his breath shallow.
The man in silver watched him.
“Become you,” Rowan said. “That’s what you want.”
“It is what the hunger wants. It is what the Council wants. It is what the world needs.”
“The world needs me to become a monster?”
The man shook his head.
“The world needs you to become a vessel. A vessel for the hunger. A vessel for the end. A vessel for the hope.”
“That’s not hope. That’s sacrifice.”
The man smiled.
It was a sad smile, small and tired and full of years.
“Sacrifice is hope. Hope is sacrifice. They are the same.”
Rowan looked at the book.
At the table.
At the shadows.
“The first sacrifice,” he said. “Morwen. She was the first to hear the hunger. She was the first to feed it. She was the first to become it.”
“Yes.”
“She was trying to save her children.”
“Yes.”
“Did she?”
The man was silent for a long moment.
“No. Her children died. The hunger consumed them. The same hunger that now waits for you.”
Rowan stepped closer.
The man did not move.
“Why did the Council summon me? If the hunger always wins, if the world always ends, if the sacrifice always fails—why did they summon me?”
The man’s silver eyes dimmed.
“Because they are afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of the end. Of the silence. Of the nothing.”
“But the end is coming.”
“The end is always coming. That does not mean we must welcome it.”
The torches flickered.
The shadows danced.
The hunger stirred.
Rowan felt it.
Inside him.
Sleeping.
Waiting.
“The Trial of Blood,” he said. “What is the trial?”
The man looked at the door.
At the blood.
At the pulse.
“The trial is to open the door. To walk through. To face what lies beyond.”
“What lies beyond?”
The man was silent for a long moment.
“Yourself.”