8 thornhaven, p.1
8 - Thornhaven, page 1
part #8 of Thornhaven Series
THORNHAVEN:
SEASON EIGHT
(THORNHAVEN – BOOK EIGHT)
MORGAN RICE
Morgan Rice
Morgan Rice is the #1 bestselling and USA Today bestselling author of the epic fantasy series THE SORCERER’S RING, comprising seventeen books; of the #1 bestselling series THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS, comprising twelve books; of the #1 bestselling series THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY, a post-apocalyptic thriller comprising three books; of the epic fantasy series KINGS AND SORCERERS, comprising six books; of the epic fantasy series OF CROWNS AND GLORY, comprising eight books; of the epic fantasy series A THRONE FOR SISTERS, comprising eight books; of the science fiction series THE INVASION CHRONICLES, comprising four books; of the fantasy series OLIVER BLUE AND THE SCHOOL FOR SEERS, comprising four books; of the fantasy series THE WAY OF STEEL, comprising four books; of the fantasy series AGE OF THE SORCERERS, comprising eight books; of the fantasy series SHADOWSEER, comprising five books; of the WISH series, comprising twelve books; of the SWORD OF THE DEAD series, comprising five books (and counting); of the fantasy series OATHBORNE, comprising ten books (and counting); of the epic fantasy series ELEMENTAL HALL, comprising five books (and counting); of the fantasy series IRONHOLD, comprising twelve books (and counting);and of the young adult epic fantasy series THORNHAVEN, comprising ten books (and counting). Morgan’s books are available in audio and print editions, and translations are available in over 25 languages.
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Copyright © 2025 by Morgan Rice. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SERIES BY MORGAN RICE
THORNHAVEN
IRONHOLD
ELEMENTAL HALL
OATHBORNE
SWORD OF THE DEAD
WISH
SHADOWSEER
AGE OF THE SORCERERS
OLIVER BLUE AND THE SCHOOL FOR SEERS
THE INVASION CHRONICLES
THE WAY OF STEEL
A THRONE FOR SISTERS
OF CROWNS AND GLORY
KINGS AND SORCERERS
THE SORCERER’S RING
THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY
VAMPIRE, FALLEN
THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
Faye Wilderpath stood at the edge of the western tower, her fingers curled around the rough stone of the parapet. Below her, Thornhaven sprawled—no longer the school she once knew but a fortress preparing for war. The early morning light cast long shadows across the grounds, highlighting the jagged edges where reconstruction efforts continued and the strange, shimmering barriers of containment magic that now sectioned off parts of the compound. She watched a patrol of three humans and two Netherkin Scouts move in perfect, practiced synchrony along the southern wall—a sight that would have been unimaginable mere months ago. The wind carried the scent of ozone and something else, something wrong, a lingering reminder of the Void Shaper's brief but devastating presence.
Her gaze drifted to the eastern quadrant, where a portion of the central fortress had collapsed during the attack. Workers swarmed the area like ants, their movements careful and measured as they handled the affected rubble. The stones themselves had been altered by the Void Shaper's power—some existing partially out of phase with reality, others aging and de-aging in unpredictable cycles. Even from this distance, Faye could see the protective gloves and masks the workers wore, shielding themselves from the time-warped debris that could age a person decades in seconds or leave them trapped in a moment that stretched on for hours.
"At least they've made progress," she murmured to herself, remembering how the area had looked weeks ago—a wound in the academy's heart, the rubble pulsing with otherworldly energy.
Where classrooms and training areas once stood, makeshift laboratories now dominated the western grounds. Glass domes and runic circles contained experiments too dangerous for conventional spaces. Thornhaven's remaining students and masters worked alongside visiting scholars, all seeking understanding of the threat that had touched their world so briefly yet so profoundly.
Faye's eyes narrowed as she spotted Knows The Truth emerging from one of the laboratories, its tall, gaunt form unmistakable even at a distance. The Netherkin Mage moved with that unsettling fluidity that still sent a shiver through her, despite their weeks of alliance. The translucent skin of its face rippled slightly as it turned toward the tower where she stood, and Faye felt the faint brush of acknowledgment across her consciousness—not words, but a sentiment: awareness, respect, urgency.
She inclined her head slightly, knowing the Mage would perceive the gesture. Their uneasy alliance had grown stronger through necessity, but trust remained fragile, especially among the masters who remembered decades of fighting the Netherkin as enemies, not allies.
A flash of memory intruded—not her own, but something gleaned during that terrible moment of connection with the Void Shaper. Countless worlds spread before her like jewels, some burning, some frozen, some twisted into configurations that defied comprehension. And watching it all, entities of such vast intelligence and indifference that merely perceiving them had nearly broken her mind.
Faye gasped, gripping the stone harder as vertigo swept through her. The healers had told her these episodes would fade with time, but three weeks had passed, and still they came, shattering her concentration when she least expected it.
Something warm pressed against her leg, and Faye glanced down to see Ember, her Fluxbeast, in its iridescent fox form. The creature's eyes, bright with an intelligence that transcended its animal shape, gazed up at her with concern. Ember had rarely left her side since the Void Shaper’s attack a few weeks prior, as if sensing that its presence helped anchor her to reality.
It did. Without Ember, Faye would’ve never survived the encounter with the Void Shaper. Something about the Fluxbeasts’ chaotic nature made them less susceptible to the mind-altering effects of the vast, ancient entities.
"I'm alright," she whispered, reaching down to stroke the oil-dark fur between Ember's ears.
The fox blinked and lifted its chin, clearly unconvinced. Faye smiled despite herself. After nearly twelve years together, Ember knew her too well to be fooled by false assurances.
She closed her eyes briefly, drawing in a deep breath of the morning air. Grounding herself. Present moment. Stone beneath her fingers. Wind against her face. Ember's fur, soft and real despite its intangible appearance, under her palm. The distant sounds of hammering, of voices calling instructions, of life continuing despite everything.
When she opened her eyes again, the world had solidified around her once more.
"Thought I might find you up here," came Ren's voice from behind her.
Faye didn't startle—she had sensed his approach in the way Ember's ears had pricked forward moments before. She turned to face him, taking in his appearance with a quick, assessing glance.
Ren Fernweaver looked as exhausted as she felt, with dark shadows beneath his golden eyes and a tension in his shoulders that never fully eased these days. New runic tattoos crawled up his forearms, glowing faintly with protective magic—additional safeguards he'd added after their encounter with the Void Shaper. Yet despite his obvious fatigue, his eyes remained alert, scanning the grounds below with the wariness of someone who understood exactly what they faced.
Ren came to stand beside her at the parapet. "There’s a group heading out past the wall to try to deal with some of the altered rubble on the other side.”
"Let me guess," Faye said with a wry twist to her lips. "We're not invited."
"We're still considered 'compromised,'" Ren confirmed, making air quotes with his fingers. "Apparently, having
There was humor in his tone, but it was hollow, like an echo in an empty room. Faye glanced at him and caught a fracturing in his gaze—a moment where his focus seemed to splinter, looking at something beyond the physical world around them. She recognized it because she had seen the same thing in her own reflection.
Upon learning that the Netherkin’s corruption followed patterns laid by Void Shapers, Faye and her comrades, thinking the corruption might be weakening the barriers between their world and the interstitial space between dimensions, had traveled to Tirimund to cleanse the heart of the ruined city. To strip away the Netherkin blight. To strengthen their world’s defenses—or so they had thought. But clearing the corruption hadn’t reinforced the boundaries between reality and void as they’d hoped it would. Instead, it had severed something crucial, and something vast, ancient, and unknowable had torn its way into Tirimund. Something that had unmade reality around them as it moved. Something without a definable shape or body, yet an overbearing presence.
A Void Shaper, who Knows The Truth, had called it.
The entity had moved slowly but inexorably across the continent, unraveling the world in its wake as it closed in on Thornhaven. It had attacked the outer wall, breaching the academy’s defenses. It had been impervious to all conventional methods of warfare; arrows had passed straight through its amorphous form, blades had been warped upon contact with its body, and no magic had been able to hold it at bay. It had only been stopped through Faye’s attempts to magically commune with it. Ren and Knows The Truth had combined their energy with hers, strengthening her Floral Manipulation until she was able to delve into the psyche of the Void Shaper.
They hadn't really talked about what they had seen inside the Void Shaper's consciousness. Not fully. Words seemed inadequate, trivial in the face of what they had experienced. Sometimes, in the quiet moments between them, Faye felt Ren about to speak of it, only to retreat into silence or deflect with humor. She did the same.
"How did you sleep?" she asked instead.
"About as well as you did, I imagine," he replied.
Faye nodded, understanding the unspoken. The nightmares. The moments of disorientation. The feeling of being untethered from reality, as if a part of her still floated in that vast, cosmic consciousness they had briefly touched. It had gotten better in the weeks since that connection; she had woken in the infirmary days later, and for days after that, the world had felt like a dream. She hadn’t been able to trust solid objects, hadn’t been able to look anyone in the eye for fear that their physical forms were nothing but an illusion. She felt more normal now, but the memories still lingered.
"I heard they're moving Elias today," Ren said quietly, as they watched Master Roarke restore order to the lesson. "To a more secure room in the eastern wing."
Faye's heart twisted at the mention of their friend. Elias had been found wandering in the jungle three weeks ago, his mind shattered by a direct encounter with a Void Shaper as he attempted to journey to Thornhaven. Unlike Faye and Ren, who had at least had each other and the protection of the Nexus during their brief mental contact, Elias had faced the entity alone, unprepared, and unshielded.
The results had been devastating. The healers kept him under heavy sedation now, after his first conscious moments had devolved into endless, nonsensical babbling. Physically, he seemed to fluctuate between different ages — sometimes appearing as young as sixteen, other times as old as fifty — the changes occurring without warning or pattern.
"Sage hasn't left his side," Faye murmured. Their old friend had arrived at Thornhaven just yesterday, having traveled all the way from the northern territories when she heard about Elias's condition. "I visited them last night. She was attempting some kind of essence therapy, trying to stabilize his fluctuations."
"Did it help?" Ren asked.
Faye shook her head. "Not that I could tell. But Sage won't give up." She hesitated, then added, "None of us should."
Ren's hand found hers on the stone parapet, his fingers warm against her own. The touch was grounding, a reminder that despite everything they had seen and experienced, they were still here. Still themselves.
"Are you ready to discuss the expedition with the masters?" he asked after a moment.
Faye tensed slightly. The masters had called a meeting to finalize plans for the journey into the Netherkin otherworld—a journey that Faye knew was necessary but dreaded nonetheless. After what they had seen in Tirimund, the thought of venturing into an entire dimension corrupted by the Void Shapers was enough to make her stomach clench with anxiety.
"I'm worried they won't let me go," she admitted. "After the... incident with the Void Shaper, some of the masters seem to think I'm a liability. That I might still be connected to it somehow, or that I’m… weakened."
"Are you?" Ren's question was gentle, without accusation.
Faye considered the question seriously. "I don't think so. Not actively. But something changed in me that day, Ren. In both of us." She glanced at him. "You feel it too, don't you?"
A shadow passed over his face. "Like having a door unlocked in your mind that you can't quite close again."
"Yes," she whispered. "Exactly like that."
They fell silent, the weight of shared understanding heavy between them. Below, the activity of the compound continued—humans and Netherkin working side by side, united by a common enemy that threatened both their worlds.
"The masters are divided on almost everything these days," Faye said after a while. "Some want to fortify Thornhaven and wait; others want to seek out the Void Shapers and attack preemptively. Some trust our Netherkin allies, others see them as another threat." She sighed. "Every discussion about this expedition risks causing another fracture."
"But Voss already agreed with you," Ren reminded her. "And she's the one who matters most."
Faye nodded. Headmaster Elara Voss had been surprisingly supportive of the plan to venture into the Netherkin otherworld, perhaps because she understood better than most that traditional defenses would be useless against the threat they faced.
"Knows The Truth told me about the Vault weeks ago," Faye said, thinking of the conversations she'd had with the Netherkin Mage. "If it's anything like the Nexus—if it was created by the same ancient rebellion that first sealed away the Void Shapers—it could be our only hope."
The Nexus at Thornhaven, they had discovered, wasn't just a wellspring of magic but a monitoring point created during an ancient uprising against the Void Shapers. The Vault in the Netherkin dimension supposedly contained artifacts and knowledge from that same rebellion—perhaps even the means to seal away the Void Shapers once more.
"Will you be okay?" Faye asked, turning to look directly at Ren. "Going into their world?" Their last brush with the Netherkin otherworld had come in their third season, when they had been forced to undertake a haphazard rift dive. They hadn’t emerged on the other side of the rift itself, but whatever glimpses Ren had caught of the hostile dimension beyond had left him briefly shell-shocked.
Ren gave a hollow laugh. "Oh, sure. What's not to love about a nightmare dimension being actively unmade by cosmic horrors beyond comprehension? It'll be a delightful vacation from all this." He gestured broadly at the compound below.
Faye didn't smile. "I'm serious, Ren. The Netherkin fled their own world en masse. Whatever is happening there—"
"Is even worse than here," Ren finished for her. "I know." His expression sobered, humor falling away like a discarded mask.
Silence fell between the two of them. Faye glanced upward, at the sky above. The haphazard tears of the rifts were still visible in the sky, but the Netherkin's exodus had slowed to a trickle in recent days. Many of the masters seemed to take this as a good sign. Many of the masters seemed to regard this development as a positive thing—fewer Netherkin entering their world. But Faye couldn't help but see it as a sign of impending disaster. If the Netherkin had been fleeing their world before and had subsequently stopped, it wasn't a sign that the chaos had subsided. It was a sign that it was too late for escape. That the Netherkin otherworld was all but lost.
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