Soul of the Crow: An Epic Dark Fantasy (Reapers of Veltuur Book 1)

them just assumed the baby didn’t survive since few people ever saw her afterward. And by few people, I mostly just mean my father, mother, brother, myself, and Esabel.
With Gem being such a well-kept secret, now her execution will be much easier on my father. No one will protest—not that they would’ve anyways, given our archaic laws around people like her whose only crime was being born a little different.
No one will care.
No one will know she’s dead.
“Save pincess!” Gem shrieks, pulling me from my thoughts.
“What?” I ask, despite hearing the words clearly. But they feel like a directive, like she somehow knows what’s about to happen and is asking me to save the princess, to save her.
She waves the doll in her hand. “Garden saves pincess.”
My brow twists. “The garden? How would the garden save you?” My eyes pop wide when I realize the slip. “Her. How would the garden save her?”
Fortunately, Gem doesn’t think anything of my mistake. With a dramatic sigh, she shakes her head. “No, Garden—” She pauses, thinking so hard that her face pinches and she pops her tongue out. “Gardenen.”
I have been fluent in Gem-speak since she learned her first word when she was fourteen months old: babba. No one could figure out what it meant. Not Mother, not Esabel, and especially not Father. But the way her eyes lit when she said it, I knew she was talking about me, her brother. We’ve always had a special connection, the outcasts of the family.
But in this I have no idea what she’s trying to say.
Sensing my complete obliviousness, Gem runs over to a bookshelf and grabs one of the divine scriptures, a book bound by vellum too thick for her tiny grasp. She fumbles with it, squeezing it to her chest as she waddles over to me and plops it into my lap. I flinch, both because it is a sacred text and only a few of them exist, but also because the weight of it knocking into my ankles kind of hurts.
I pick it up and read. “Scriptures of the Divine Altúyur: Stories of Reapers, Guardians, and Other Beings.” My eyes narrow, searching for the answer that I’m afraid isn’t there. Then it hits me. “Oh! You were talking about the Guardians.”
Gem nods, a dimple on either side piercing her plump cheeks. “Gardenen!”
With our shared understanding, we resume playing. I deepen my voice and pretend I’m a Guardian rescuing the princess doll before she plummets off a cliff—which is really just Gem’s cot. But as I whisk the princess doll to safety, I’m struck by a wiggling idea, one that won’t stop burrowing in my mind, begging for my attention. My steps finally slow.
A long time has passed since there had been any talk of Guardians, after they died off centuries, maybe millennia ago. Some of them come up in folklore and history chapters, but they’re never prominent in the story, so much so that even despite my rigorous education I’m not even sure I remember what the Guardians used to do or what purpose they served besides the vague memory that they were protectors of some kind.
I set the doll on Gem’s bed and go back to the book.
“Store!” she gasps in anticipation of a story. She races alongside me, eager to listen.
A smile breaks my consternation. “Sure, Gem. Let’s read a story. What about something about the Guardians?”
“Gardenens!” The sound of her clapping is barely audible behind her squeals.
I flip through the old text, searching for the section telling the story of the Guardians. Considering each section is separated by an illustration, I know it won’t be too difficult to find.
When I reach the dark scribblings of a demon of shadows, dressed in red with a crow perched on its shoulder, my heart stops, as do my fingers. I take in every detail. The hooded cloak that covers most of the face but not the terrifying beak or ravenous eyes, its grotesque claws reaching out toward the reader, the way the creature seems fetid despite only being on a page. Reapers are prominent in many a cautionary tale, and they have always haunted my nightmares, but I suppose the sight of this one terrifies me even more today. It is like staring into my sister’s future, her terrifying, abrupt, dismal end.
Desperate to erase the chilling image and thoughts from my mind, I nearly tear the next page when I turn it. I flip through the book with more fervor, blinking at each section only long enough to determine if it is what I am searching for or not.
“Gardenens!” Gem shrieks when the glowing man appears on the pages.
He’s is modestly armored, draped in white robes even whiter than the beaches of the Coast of Dreams.
I turn the page and begin to read.
“As the population of Tayaraan grew, and the Altúyur’s great winged reach fell short of the many needs of the people, they selected delegates to act on their behalf. They called upon the most noble and benevolent of mortals, bestowing upon them their gifts of healing and protection, and thus creating the very first Guardians.
“Among the people, the Guardians were symbols of hope and peace. They traveled across the kingdoms curing every ailment known to humankind.”
The book goes on to detail some of the most renowned Guardians in Tayaraan history, Lilliytha, the Guardian who saved Oakfall from a meteor shower that would’ve cost our kingdom thousands of lives, and Kiernan, a Guardian to the royal Halaud family—my ancestors—who cured them of a pandemic that swept through the city.
The more I read, the more it all comes back to me, like clouds clearing from the sky. But at every sentence’s end, my memory of it starts to fade again. It’s like the Divine Sungema doesn’t want the story to be remembered.
Flustered by my forgetfulness, I focus even harder as I read the next story.
“Like all of the other Guardians, Tamzal had a healing touch. If someone was ill, he could leech