The battlefield still smoked, a graveyard of steel and ash. Where the Shadowlord had fallen, the ground itself seemed scorched beyond recognition, as though the earth had tried to reject his existence. His flames no longer roared, yet the air remained heavy, clinging with the scent of burning flesh and charred stone.Elias stood among the ruins, his sword lowered, the faint glow finally fading from its edge. Around him, silence hung—a silence too vast, too heavy—until the cries of the living broke it apart.The freed soldiers staggered, blinking as though waking from a nightmare. Some collapsed to their knees, clutching their heads. Others screamed in anguish as memories returned: the battles they had fought, the innocents they had slain, all under the Shadowlord’s binding will. The chains of the Crown were gone, but what remained was worse—freedom without forgiveness.Helena leaned against a broken pillar, her armor scorched, one side of her face streaked with soot. “We won,” she sai

The refugee camp stirred long before dawn. Smoke curled from dying fires, the air heavy with the smell of damp ash and unwashed bodies. As Elias, Helena, Marcus, and the child Lira prepared their meager supplies, whispers followed them like a tide.“Don’t go,” one man pleaded, clutching Elias’s sleeve with trembling fingers. “We need you. The council is in ruins. You’re the only one they’ll listen to.”Another spat in the dirt. “He’s running. Just like before. He’ll leave us to starve.”The crowd pressed closer, torn between desperate hope and bitter resentment. Some knelt, murmuring blessings. Others raised fists.Elias mounted his horse, his voice steady but distant. “I am not your king. My fight lies west.”A murmur of fury rose at that, but Helena’s hand fell to her sword, her glare enough to silence it. Marcus swung onto his own mount, his limp obvious even from horseback. He muttered to Elias, “One day, you’ll have to stop running from their crowns.”Elias gave no answer. He onl

The fire had gone out, snuffed as though the night itself had swallowed it. Darkness surged over the camp, broken only by the faint glow of the massive shadow figure looming above them. Its eyes burned like coals in a furnace, molten and hateful.Elias gripped his sword, but even the blade’s faint light seemed to quiver in the presence of such vast power. Helena drew Lira against her chest, shielding the child. Marcus stood to Elias’s right, sword already raised though his knuckles whitened with strain.The shadow tide whispered as it moved, countless voices overlapping in a chorus that made the ground tremble. The towering figure bent low, its words rolling through them like thunder:“Elias.”The sound of his name carried accusation, recognition, and hunger all at once.Elias’s breath caught in his throat. “What are you?” he demanded, though his voice cracked under the weight of it.The vast shape leaned closer, its features still vague and shifting, yet the sense of a face hovered—l

Only the thin glow of distant campfires marked the enemy’s position across the ridge. From where they crouched in the jagged rocks, Elias could feel it—like a heartbeat buried in the earth. The fragment. It pulsed against his senses, a constant drumbeat that whispered to him alone.“We’re close,” Elias murmured. His voice was tight, his jaw clenched. “Too close.”Helena knelt beside him, eyes narrowed on the flicker of orange flames below. The wind caught her silver hair, streaked with ash from their long march. “How many do you see?”Marcus scanned the camp through a slit in the rocks. “Two score at least. Heavily armed. And disciplined.” His tone was grim. “Not raiders—soldiers. They move with precision.”“That means they’ll be harder to break,” Helena muttered. She adjusted her gauntlet, the metal worn but polished, as though readying herself for the inevitable.Lira sat a little apart from them, her eyes distant. She hugged her knees, rocking faintly as though listening to somethi

The mountains rose from the plain like broken teeth, black against the reddening sky. Wind hissed through the gullies, carrying the scent of frost and sulfur. No birds sang here; even the air seemed reluctant to move.Elias tightened the strap of his cloak as they climbed the first ridge. Each step crunched on frost-bitten rock. Behind him, Marcus carried Helena on a makeshift stretcher of spears and canvas. She drifted in and out of fever, her face drawn and pale. Lira walked ahead of them, her staff leaving faint trails of light on the ground that faded as quickly as breath on glass.“How much farther?” Marcus called.Lira didn’t turn. “The mountain answers to no distance. It ends only when it wants us gone.”Marcus muttered a curse. “Comforting.”Elias glanced back. “Save your breath. We’ll need it.”He looked up at the peaks again. The highest of them was crowned by a swirl of gray mist that never seemed to shift, no matter how strong the wind blew. Somewhere beneath that shroud w