CONTENTS
Cover
Available from Titan Books
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Part One: The Knife of Dunwall
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Interlude
Part Two: The Collector
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Interlude
Part Three: The Homecoming
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Epilogue
About the Author
Also Available from Titan Books
Available from Titan Books
Dishonored: The Corroded Man
by Adam Christopher
Available from Titan Comics
Dishonored: The Wyrmwood Deceit
by Gordon Rennie, Andrea Olimpieri, and Marcelo Maiolo
Dishonored: The Peeress and the Price
by Michael Moreci and Andrea Olimpieri
ADAM CHRISTOPHER
TITAN BOOKS
DISHONORED: THE RETURN OF DAUD
Print edition ISBN: 9781783293056
E-book edition ISBN: 9781783293087
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: March 2018
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Editorial Consultants:
Harvey Smith
Paris Nourmohammadi
Special thanks to Harvey Smith, Hazel Monforton,
Brittany Quinn, and everyone at Arkane Studios.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2018 Bethesda Softworks LLC. Dishonored, Arkane, ZeniMax, Bethesda, Bethesda Softworks and related logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of ZeniMax Media Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
PROLOGUE
THE VOID
4,000 years ago
“It is a common story: A person has stopped breathing, pinned under carriage wheels or some other tragic happenstance, and is thought to be dead. But when the weight is removed—they make a quick recovery! But nonetheless, for a moment or two, this person was lost to us, lost to the world itself.
And what did they experience while in this temporary death? Darkness? Nothingness? No, indeed not! They tell us, as so many before have, that they were in a particular place, and can describe it vividly. And who among us does not know this place?
Have we not all seen it in our dreams? This place we share, in the farthest reaches of our minds. The realm where nothing makes sense, where one is at once both lost and at home. The Void.”
—WHISPERS FROM THE VOID, by Barnoli Mulani Treatise on the Physical Existence of that Foreign Realm [Excerpt]
The place is made of nothing but stone and ash, and is filled with nothing but the cold dark, and it smells of nothing but rust and corrosion, and it tastes of nothing but the sharp and sour tang of fear.
The boy stares up into the sky—although that’s not what it is. There is no sky, just a blank curve of curling gray smoke, heavy and foreboding, that stretches from here to the end of the world. This and the two curling arms of shattered stone, twisting like the twin trunks of a petrified tree over the head of the stone slab on which he lies, are all the boy can see. The hands that grip the sides of his head are as solid as the altar beneath him and just as cold, and when he tries to turn his head, the hands just press harder, the fingertips squeezing his temples until he thinks his skull will cave in.
So the boy stares up into infinite nothing above, the notsky that stretches above this forsaken place, this nowhere.
The Void.
The altar beneath him is cold, the stone so ancient it is more like metal, like it was carved out of a single lump of black iron, like the iron found in the hearts of fallen stars, the cold of it spreading through his flesh, soaking his very bones with a chill so deep it feels like he is lying on ice.
He tries to move his arms, but they are tied. His legs are also bound by rope, so tight and so rough that with every movement of his body the fibers carve into his skin, the burning pain as unbearable as the cold of the altar. He flexes his fingers, but there is nothing to hold, nothing to grip. The many golden rings that adorn each digit click hard against the stone.
But he did fight at first, struggling with all his strength as the cultists, their faces hidden in the deep folds of their lead-colored cloaks, carried him up the shallow stones and placed him on the altar. It was no use. There were so many of them, so many hands holding him, and while the boy was strong and while he writhed and screamed and screamed they held him with iron grips. He fought again as they tied him down on the slab, but all this did was exhaust what little energy he had left.
With their victim secured, the cultists had moved away. The boy had looked up, watching the congregation as they gathered on either side of the stone steps, their heads bowed, hands hidden in long, drooping sleeves. The boy began to scream again, his chest heaving as he drew in deep lungfuls of icy metallic air, but the men just watched in silence. When the boy was spent, his head fell back against the altar and two hands grabbed at him, pushing his skull down.
Now the boy blinks. If time passes here then he cannot count it, his mind fogged by the sickly sweet potions they made him drink and the colored sour smokes they made him breathe before bringing him to this awful nowhere. With the fight gone, his energy leeched by the desperate cold, the boy’s head begins to spin, so it feels like the Void itself is orbiting around
