Page 125 of A House of Gold
My blood chills. "The Vault? Why?"
But he's already gone, running toward the sounds of fighting I can now hear echoing through the halls.
Collectors. I thought they only came when you denied the seven a debt.
Are they trying to steal Croesus's souls? or?
Oh Gods.
They're not after his collection. They're after me?
I should run back to my room like Nat said. Should lock myself in, hide, let Croesus and his people handle this.
Instead, I run toward the fighting.
The entrance hall is chaos.
Servants lie motionless on the floor, their bodies wrapped in what looks like living shadow. More servants are fighting, moving with inhuman speed and precision, wielding weapons I've never seen them carry before. Not servants at all, I realize. Guards. Croesus's personal guard, disguised as staff.
And in the center of it all is Croesus.
He's magnificent and terrible.
His power fills the room like pressure before a storm. Gold light pours from his hands, from his eyes, from his skin. As I watch, one of the shadow creatures, tall, humanoid, but wrong in ways that hurt to look at, lunges at him. Croesus catches it mid-leap.
The creature turns to solid gold.
It happens in a heartbeat. Living shadow to perfect golden statue, frozen mid-attack. Croesus shoves it and it shatters on the floor like glass.
But there are more. So many more.
They're pouring in through gaps in reality itself, tears in the fabric of the house that shimmer and pulse like open wounds.Collectors, Nat called them. They look like people-shaped holes in existence, darkness given form and hunger.
And they're not going for the collection, or Croesus’ vault.
They're coming toward me.
"Raven, RUN!" Croesus's voice cuts through the chaos.
I try. I spin, looking for an exit, but the shadows are everywhere. The doors I came through have sealed themselves. The house is in lockdown, keeping the threat contained.
Keeping me trapped with them.
One of the creatures breaks through the defensive line. It moves faster than anything that size should move, flowing across the floor like spilled ink. I raise my ritual knife, useless, but it's all I have, and the creature reaches for me.
Its touch is ice and void and wrong.
I try to do what I always do when faced with sin, absorb it, pull it into myself, purge it later. My power reaches out instinctively, trying to take the darkness into my body where I can control it.
But there's nothing to absorb.
Not sin. Not emotion. Not even malice.
Just... emptiness.
Void.
The realization hits a split second before the agony does.
