Bonds of Chaos (Threadlight Book 3) Read online

  Copyright © 2022 by Zack Argyle

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to reality is coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  www.zackargyle.com

  Cover illustration by Ömer Burak Önal

  Cover design by Zack Argyle

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Story So Far

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  BONDS OF CHAOS

  ZACK ARGYLE

  THE STORY SO FAR

  VOICE OF WAR

  While expecting their first child, Chrys Valerian and his wife, Iriel, attended the Rite of Revelation for their friends, Luther and Emory. When the child is revealed to be an achromat (brown eyes), he is blinded and taken to be a priest of the Order of Alchaeus. Outside the Temple, Iriel almost loses their child but is saved by a stranger who also gives Chrys a thread-dead obsidian dagger.

  Chrys goes on to investigate the Bloodthieves, where he rescues a young girl named Laurel, who runs away back to her home in the Fairenwild. When she returns to Zedalum, she loses her position as a Messenger, and also loses her best friend, a chromawolf named Asher, as he returns to his pack in the wild.

  Eventually, Chrys discovers the truth of the Bloodthieves, that they are headed by an Amber threadweaver named Alabella, and fellow high general, Jurius, is working for her. Chrys’ son, Aydin, is born and they take him in for his own Rite of Revelation, where they learn that, not only is he an Amber threadweaver, but Father Xalan is a Zeda spy. They run away to the Fairenwild where Chrys, Iriel, and Aydin narrowly escape Jurius with the help of a pack of hungry chromawolves and Laurel, while Father Xalan is captured.

  Laurel brings Chrys and his family to Zedalum, where they meet the Elders and learn about Amber threadweavers and the coreseal. Shortly after, Chrys’ mother, Willow, arrives and shares the truth: Chrys was born in Zedalum. They soon realize that Father Xalan is really Pandan, Willow’s brother and Chrys’ uncle. They devise a plan to rescue him. Laurel and Willow recruit Chrys’ old crew (Luther, Laz, and Reina) to break out Pandan from Endin Keep’s prison.

  At the same time, far to the south in Cynosure, Alverax Blightwood wakes up in a pit of bones. He soon discovers that he is an Obsidian threadweaver and decides to use his new power to get revenge on Jelium (an Amber threadweaver) for killing his father. The plan backfires and he narrowly escapes. He decides to leave Cynosure and head north. The leader of the caravan betrays him and hands him over to Alabella, who takes him into the Bloodthieves.

  While Laurel, Willow, and the crew try to break out Pandan, they come face to face with High General Henna. She chases them through the keep, and Willow leads the group to Jurius’ room. When he emerges, a fight ensues, and Jurius kills Pandan. Then Laurel kills Jurius, and in his final moments, he turns the dagger around and stabs Laurel in the heart.

  Alverax joins Alabella and a small army of Bloodthieves into the Fairenwild, where they set fire to the forest. The people of Zedalum abandon their treetop homes, dropping down onto the Wonderstone so they can flee. The Bloodthieves attack the unarmed Zeda people, and Alverax watches in horror.

  When Chrys brings down Iriel and Aydin, the child’s Amber powers lash out and bind Iriel and the baby to the Wonderstone, crushing them. Chrys, in an attempt to save them, finally gives into the Apogee and shows amazing powers as he slaughters dozens. He seeks out Alabella but is bound by Amber threads while she flees.

  Alverax rushes forward when he sees a woman and child dying and uses all of his power to break the threads of the wonderstone. The earth shakes.

  In the end, Laurel is still alive, but she has lost her ability to threadweave and is in the care of Alabella. Alverax is alive, heading west toward Felia with the Zeda people. And Chrys—still controlled by the Apogee—abandons his family and heads east.

  The epilogue concludes with an odd woman exiting a holy cave in the Wastelands, looking for her brother.

  STONES OF LIGHT

  With the Apogee firmly in control, Chrys Valerian heads east over the mountains, picking up two soldiers—a man and woman—along the way. They arrive in Kai’Melend, the home of the wastelanders, and it is revealed that the Apogee is in fact an immortal wastelander god named Relek, and his sister, Lylax, is there waiting for him, having recently been released from her underground prison when the coreseal was destroyed. Relek and Lylax transfer their souls into the bodies of the Alchean soldiers, leaving Chrys for the wastelanders to do with as they please.

  While imprisoned, Chrys meets Roshaw and three others. They make a plan to escape, using Chrys’ Sapphire abilities and the aid of the chief of the ataçan, named Xuçan. Their plan is thwarted when they are forced to fight wastelanders in a pit near the Endless Well, a lake-sized hole in the ground with seemingly no bottom. After defeating several opponents, Chrys fights one of the corespawn, which he is unable to kill. He is saved by his mother, Willow, who wields Chrys’ old thread-dead obsidian dagger.

  Chrys, Willow, and Roshaw leap into the Endless Well where they discover the home of the third immortal, Relek and Lylax’s brother, Alchaeus. He helps them hide, teaches them about theoliths (giving all three access to Sapphire, Emerald, and Obsidian), and takes them to the Convergence, a dome of warbling threadlight that bends space. Before they use it to travel to the Fairenwild on their way to Felia, they make a plan to create a new coreseal with the help of Alabella, the Amber-eyed queen of the Bloodthieves.

  Back in Alchea, a thread-dead Laurel finds herself in the care of Alabella. Her withdrawals are tempered with the use of transfusers, but she still craves her threadweaver life, and Alabella has promised her a new theolith. Together, they travel to the Fairenwild in search of a cache of infused gemstones, where Laurel finds her home destroyed and her people gone. Instead of finding a cache of theoliths beneath the coreseal, they find a corespawn. They flee back to Alchea, and that night an army of corespawn wages war, devastating the nation.

  Alabella offers her transfusers to Malachus, which will grant more soldiers the ability to see the invisible corespawn. However, when no second corespawn attack comes, Alabella and Laurel flee. While leaving Endin Keep,
they run into Luther, who stole his son back from the priests and fled to Laz’s cousin’s farm. Laurel and Alabella travel to Felia and run into a pack of displaced chromawolves. Laurel finds her young chromawolf friend, Asher, and they form a bond. After arriving in Felia, she finds her brother just in time to watch their grandfather pass away.

  After destroying the coreseal and fleeing with the Zeda, Alverax travels to Felia, where he meets the empress and her younger sister, Jisenna. They become friends, and he learns about the sacred nature of Obsidian threadweavers—as the right hand of the Heralds—in the Felian faith. When the empress is killed, Alverax is blamed and he narrowly escapes with the help of Iriel. The Zeda are imprisoned because of his actions, so he sneaks in through long pipes under the palace to convince Empress Jisenna, the Mistress of Mercy, to exchange his life for theirs. She agrees, and then, during his execution, allows him to live.

  The truth is quickly learned when an army of corespawn attacks Felia with creatures as large as buildings. Watchlord Osinan, the head of the Felian faith, fights the corespawn alongside Alverax, wielding a thread-dead obsidian blade called the Midnight Watcher. He is mortally wounded and, before he dies, he names Alverax the next Watchlord.

  When the corespawn return to Felia, Alverax is at the head of the army, Laurel and Asher have joined the fight, and Chrys, Willow, and Roshaw are on their way. When all seems lost, two figures fly in from the east and fend off the corespawn. They claim to be the Heralds, healing the wounded with golden water, then take to the palace where they kill Empress Jisenna. At the same time, Laurel finally takes revenge on Alabella so that the Heralds can’t use her powers. Chrys rushes to the palace, saves Iriel and Aydin, then they all head to the docks. As they board the Pale Urchin, Alverax—still shocked from the death of Jisenna—discovers that his father, Roshaw, is still alive.

  CHAPTER 1

  General Thallin clutched the hilt of his blade, torn between faith and honor, between the very gods he worshiped and the moral weight of his own soul.

  He looked at the five women kneeling before him—the elders of the Zeda—then out over the imprisoned crowd behind them. The sun was high, and a light breeze blew through the Felian courtyard from the west. Thallin hated what he had to do. But even more so, he hated himself for doubting the Heralds. So, he pushed aside the unrest, the fear and doubt, and breathed in his lifelong beliefs, letting them fill the cracks that ran through his soul.

  The youngest of the elders, a woman in her early forties, looked up at him with tears streaming down her cheeks as he approached. "Please, I have a daughter."

  Thallin clenched his jaw and ignored her words, refusing to let them shake him. Not now. Not in the midst of the first true trial of his faith.

  "Please," she said again.

  He drew his blade, and the familiar weight in his palm brought him comfort, reminding him of old doubts he'd fought through before. Doubts that he had overcome. Today, he would do the same.

  This was his path.

  The blade was his instrument, and he was ready to play its godly song.

  In a blur, he lunged forward with perfect form and pierced the young elder through her heart. He retracted his blade, blood dripping from its edge, and watched as she toppled to the dirt.

  "Gale take me," one of the other women cried under her breath. Somewhere farther back, amid the throng of Zeda, each of them bound and awaiting their fate, screams called out into the mid-afternoon sky.

  He knew he should turn away, move on and forget. Instead, he stared at the elder's body until it stopped quivering. Her eyes were open, her brown tunic stained red. Helpless. He closed his eyes to pray for strength, and the irony of it broke his heart.

  The next closest elder was a larger woman with a certain kindness in the wrinkles of her face. Though her lips quivered, she kept her head high. "You don't have to do this," she said.

  Thallin took a step closer. "I will do whatever my gods ask of me."

  He lunged again and felt a swelling of emotion in his chest as he watched the second woman fall to the grass.

  Three older women still knelt before him. One with wrinkles deeper than the ocean floor. Another with fury brewing in her Emerald eyes. And the last looked to her fallen friends with a sadness that permeated every line of her posture and expression.

  He approached the closest—the oldest of the five—and she opened her eyes at the sound of his footsteps. They were blue as the sea, and beneath their careful gaze, her lips curled into a smile. "I commend your faith," she said, taking a breath and offering a slight nod. "I am ready."

  Thallin squeezed the hilt, letting all of his guilt seep into the polished steel. The old woman knelt reverently before him, a paragon of peace.

  Faith is not meant to be easy, Thallin’s mother had once said.

  With a swift strike, he cut down the elderly woman.

  Faith is meant to try you.

  His stomach churned, and a dark cloud swirled in his mind.

  He kept his eyes down, focused on his blade as he wiped blood on his pant leg.

  "Violet," the next elder said with a growl.

  Thallin did not look away from the sharp edge of his sword.

  "Ivy and Ashwa," she continued. "Those women had names!"

  He ignored her and set his feet.

  "Violet, Ivy, and Ashwa!" she screamed.

  "QUIET!" Thallin roared, finally bringing himself to look at her. The fire in his eyes clashed with hers. "You will die today, and you will be forgotten."

  "And you will be damned," she spat.

  He swung his blade and watched her corpse collapse face-first to the dirt.

  Adrenaline flowed through his veins, burning him from the inside. He clenched his teeth with such ferocity that his jaw felt like splintered wood.

  One more.

  One more and his test was over.

  The Heralds would see his faith.

  The final elder was a kind looking woman with soft, blue eyes. She looked at him with a profound sadness, like a mother who'd lost a child and blamed herself. The last death seemed to have hit her the hardest.

  He took a few steps, and, as he set himself in front of her, she dropped her gaze to the ground. There was nothing about her that looked dangerous, no sign of evil or darkness. He didn't want to hurt her. An enemy in battle was one matter, but an old, grieving woman? It choked him from within. He'd always imagined exercising his faith would fill him with joy, but all he felt was a thick darkness deep in his core.

  Tears dripped down the woman’s cheeks, but she said nothing. She simply stared, shoulders slumped with age and grief.

  The sword in his hand seemed to grow heavier with each moment. He feared that if he delayed, the weight would overwhelm him.

  He lunged forward, fighting himself more than any enemy, and met her eyes as the steel cut flesh.

  Wide-eyed, her lips moved.

  I forgive you.

  His heart swelled as the sword drove into her chest. She stared at him, choking, blood dripping from her chin. And, somehow, even through the pain and the sorrow, she looked peaceful. Content, despite the cold steel between her ribs. As she finally collapsed to the earth, her lips curled into a smile.

  Thallin dropped to his knees. A flood of tears pressed against his skull like a dam ready to burst. He fought their release with every measure of strength he contained.

  He hated himself for being so weak.

  He hated himself for having such feeble faith.

  He hated himself...

  He would be better. He had to be.

  "Stand up, Thallin Haichess," Relek said, draped in black robes. The second Herald, Lylax, stood beside him. A pale yellow crystal hung from a silver necklace that swung over her white robes.

  Thallin lifted himself to his feet with the tip of the blade dragging against the ground and turned to the Heralds. "My gods, I have done as you asked."

  “You have done well,” Relek said, voice deep, prismatic eyes gleaming in the sun
light. He turned away from Thallin, toward the newly instated Watchlord, Rastalin Farrow, whose face brimmed with haughty pride as he stood in his black and gold garb. “Has he not done well, Watchlord?”

  Rastalin lifted his chin. “He has done sufficiently well, my god.”

  “It is rare to find such devotion,” the Herald added. “In the days ahead, we will need a man like Thallin by our side. A man whose actions speak louder than his clothing.”

  The Watchlord shifted in his boots.

  “Thallin,” Relek said, turning away from the Watchlord, “I am afraid this day may grow longer. I have two further requests.”

  “Of course,” Thallin said, bowing his head with his blade ankle deep in the dirt. “Anything.”

  Relek’s face grew still, his eyes void of emotion. “The Watchlord is meant to be the right hand of the Heralds, but this man,” he gestured toward Rastalin, “is unworthy. Take his life, and take his place.”

  Thallin turned to Watchlord Rastalin. The look of arrogance was gone. The fire in his eyes had gone cold. There was only fear. Rastalin reached for the sword at his side and pulled it from its sheath. Thallin took a step forward.

  Something about the movement of the sword as it lifted in defense relieved Thallin. This man was not innocent. He was not valiant. This man was a coward. A nobleman who’d never had to sacrifice anything. Not for Felia. Not for the Heralds. Thallin hated this man. He hated how Rastalin spoke and how he walked. He hated that Rastalin wore the Watchlord clothes that once belonged to Alverax.