The Lion & the Deathless Dark

Ten years later, Kyrene is a famed divine warrior known as the Vindica Ultis. The world is still in darkness, and the goddess Nyaxia continues her war against humanity through the deployment of vampires. Kyrene receives no payment for the assassinations Shiket demands and struggles to make ends meet. This forces her to take on lucrative side bounties. 

Accompanied by her sentient sword, Zefiah, Kyrene is in a cultist compound on a bounty-hunting mission for a warlord who wants a man named Gaveer Iron killed. Her found family is with her: Valentina, a 16-year-old machinist (crafter of technological weapons); Marko, a brutish fighter; and Mirie, a priestess. Kyrene kills one cultist to intimidate the others into revealing Gaveer’s location. The howls of approaching “soulless”—monsters created by vampires—create a sense of urgency. In the ensuing fight, Valentina is injured, and Marko arrives late and drunk. Just as they corner Gaveer, he escapes into the mansion.

With the soulless closing in, Kyrene discovers a cage holding a dozen prisoners who have been victims of the cult’s cannibalism. Many are severely mutilated and missing limbs. Knowing that she is Shiket’s warrior, the prisoners are relieved to see her, believing she will rescue them. However, Kyrene recognizes that their wounds would attract the soulless and endanger her party. She offers the prisoners a choice: a quick death or the freedom to attempt survival on their own. One man, a high-ranking acolyte of the goddess Shiket, gives Kyrene his sacred pendant. He tells her to think of them whenever she looks at it.

When Kyrene emerges from the house, she tells the idealistic Valentina that she released the prisoners, but they decided not to join their party. As Valentina’s injuries make her vulnerable to vampires, Kyrene and Marko track Gaveer into the forest. They find a freshly mangled human corpse just before a large pack of soulless ambushes them.

During the chaotic battle, Kyrene is separated from Marko. After she fights off the soulless, an unnatural silence falls over the woods. She then senses the presence of Shadowborn vampires nearby, their mind-altering magic already “encroaching on [her] thoughts” (23).

Two Shadowborn vampires attack Kyrene. She charges the female vampire first, but the male strikes her from the side before she can land her blow. She flees into the forest, injuring the male during the chase, then lures the female into a ruined building where she kills her. Before the male vampire can find her, someone grabs Kyrene.

Kyrene’s captor is the preternaturally beautiful Septimus, a Bloodborn vampire. When the injured Shadowborn, Miles, arrives with soldiers, Septimus pretends Kyrene is a human captive and sends them away. Septimus reveals he knows Kyrene has been taking bounties, which could anger her patron goddess, Shiket. He gives her Gaveer’s corpse and warns her that the goddess Nyaxia, the creator of the vampires, has ordered the Shadowborn to hunt Kyrene down at the location of her next mission, the Temple of Yiferis. As Kyrene reaches for Zefiah to kill Septimus, he vanishes.

Kyrene and her companions go to a remote inn to collect the bounty on Gaveer. She is forced to sell several items, including the prisoner’s pendant, to afford supplies and an essential medicine called hixis for Valentina. Once medicated, Valentina’s health and spirits improve. Kyrene asks Valentina to design a stringless crossbow small enough to fit on a belt that requires no manual loading, with bolts capable of piercing vampire hearts. Mirie expresses concern that Kyrene is angering Shiket by delaying her divine missions.

Valentina confronts Kyrene after learning that the innkeeper bought the gold pendant from her. Realizing it belonged to one of the prisoners, Valentina demands an explanation. In a drunken argument, Kyrene admits she killed the prisoners to ensure her group’s survival, telling a horrified Valentina that the cost of their lives is often the deaths of others. The fight escalates, and Kyrene declares she will go to Yiferis alone to face the Shadowborn threat she believes is waiting there. She orders Mirie and Valentina to travel to the fortified city of Hegaella for their own safety.

Lonely, Kyrene visits Marko’s room for one of their casual sexual encounters. She makes Marko swear to protect Mirie and Valentina on their journey to Hegaella, threatening him with retribution if he fails. 

The next morning, a sober Kyrene stands by her decision to send her friends away. After a tense farewell with Valentina, Kyrene gives Mirie one of her two divinely blessed gauntlets, knowing it will grant her Shiket’s protection.

Alone, Kyrene travels to Yiferis to complete her mission for Shiket. She enters a temple dedicated to the goddess Srana and kills one of Shiket’s former priestesses who had defected. To further appease her patron goddess, she also kills several of Srana’s acolytes, taking their heads and hands as offerings. She later rests at a boardinghouse, concluding that Septimus’s warning about the Shadowborn was a lie, as she has seen no sign of them. That night, the boardinghouse is attacked by a horde of soulless.

Kyrene fights her way out of the soulless-infested boardinghouse. In an abandoned building, she is ambushed by Miles, the Shadowborn soldier from the forest. Before he can attack, Septimus appears and kills him. Septimus reveals that the Shadowborn tracked the divine gauntlet Kyrene gave Mirie, leading them to Hegaella rather than Yiferis. Horrified that she has sent her friends into a trap, Kyrene desperately races to reach them.

Using a sorceress’s portal, Kyrene arrives outside the fortress-temple of Hegaella to find it destroyed. She briefly glimpses Nyaxia, the vampire goddess, surveying the massacre before disappearing. Inside the walls, Kyrene discovers a horrific scene of death and carnage. Guided by the gauntlet’s faint glow, she navigates through halls filled with mutilated bodies until she reaches a central courtyard. There, she finds the corpses of her friends: Mirie’s hand has been severed and her body badly mutilated, Marko was killed trying to crawl toward Valentina, and Valentina lies dead after killing a vampire in her final moments. Beside her body is a small, stringless crossbow. Overcome with grief and rage, Kyrene tells Zefiah to summon her patron goddess, Shiket.

When Shiket appears, she is dismissive of the massacre, scolding Kyrene for her absence and telling her to use the tragedy as fuel for vengeance. Realizing Shiket views her friends’ deaths as a mere tool for motivation, Kyrene attacks her. Catching the goddess off guard, she drives Zefiah through Shiket’s chest. In her final moment, Shiket grabs Kyrene, and both are engulfed in divine fire.

Kyrene awakens severely injured in a well-kept room. Zefiah is with her but seems disoriented. Fleeing the room, Kyrene is confronted by guards and then by Septimus. She escapes to an outdoor balcony overlooking a rocky sea. As she considers jumping, Septimus appears and confirms she killed Shiket. He offers her a “job,” implying a shared enemy, and introduces himself as the Prince of the House of Blood. Choosing vengeance over despair, Kyrene follows him back inside.