The prison smelled like wet limestone and regret, a really sharp contrast to how the city looked and felt. The kind that soaked into your skin and stayed there. Rhok sat on the cold stone floor with his back against a wall slick from dripping moss. He could still taste the crust of that stolen bread. Dry, hard, but warm, worth the arrest, barely.Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Two guards with twisted metal spears walked with a robed figure gliding down the hallway like she didn’t touch the ground. Her robes were ink black, soaked in moving script that crawled across the fabric like living calligraphy. A mask covered her face, porcelain white, inked with a single black dot on the forehead and lines trailing down the cheeks like tears, her mask bore no eyes and no mouth.She didn’t speak or rather, she didn’t have to.The guards pulled Rhok to his feet and shoved him forward.They led him through a narrow passage carved into the stone, glowing faintly with blue moss. The hallway op

Rhok was already regretting eavesdropping on the guards.Sure, at first it had been interesting, hearing about the Triarchy and their flashy titles. Zoryel, Master of Frost. Emek, the Embercaller. Tuwan, Lord of Storms. Big scary names, lots of elemental chest thumping. But then, like all men with too much time on their hands, the guards’ conversation had taken a hard left into the most boring topic possible, how bad their wives were in bed.By the third complaint, Rhok had decided the only thing more dangerous than the Triarchy was marriage in Seroth.He sat there in his cell, back against the cold wall, staring at the shadows dancing along the floor. He had been left alone since morning with no food, no questions, no beatings. The guards didn’t even seem to care he was here. It felt less like imprisonment and more like someone had told them, "Don’t touch him, he'll bite you."Boredom hit him like a slow poison. He started letting his mind wander, not into thoughts, but into the fain

The tunnels narrowed as Rhok followed behind Sayo. The stale air clung to his throat, tasting faintly of rust and something older, something that had been rotting long before either of them had been born. The Crawl Beneath was no ordinary prison passage, it was a graveyard that had been hidden long from the world.Their steps echoed in strange ways. Sometimes a sound would travel far ahead of them, bending around corners and coming back distorted, like someone whispering their own words back in mockery. Other times the air swallowed noise completely, leaving only the scrape of their boots and the faint drip of unseen water.Sayo walked with his head down, not because he feared getting lost, but because looking around too much down here could mess with your mind. You might see something you shouldn’t, things that weren’t fully human anymore.They passed one such figure. A man crouched, hidden in the shadows, skin stretched tight over bone, a pale arm fused with what looked like a jagge

After his encounter with the goddess, he thought it was a good idea to leave the crawl beneath and not keep searching around anymore, he held Sayo and melted into the shadows with him, teleporting themselves back to their prison cells.The shadows spat Rhok back into his cell like they were tired of carrying him. One moment he was in the mirror walled domain of Velmira, her voice still echoing in his skull, and the next he was standing in the familiar stink of stone, iron, and damp air.Sayo wasn’t far, Rhok could feel his presence the way a wolf can feel the heartbeat of prey through the snow. He had dropped the boy into his own cell before returning. A small courtesy. No need to drag him into what came next.Rhok sat down on the bench, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. Velmira’s words swirled like smoke in his head."Amongst the gods, there are those who cheer for you." But cheering is not saving, he had to remember that.He almost smirked. Gods cheering for him, that was r

The rain didn’t follow them past the edge of Zenyra. The shadows carried them far enough that even the storm’s growl was little more than a whisper in the distance. By the time Rhok and Sayo surfaced from the black shadows of the earth, the air was dry, sharp with the scent of dust and something faintly charred.Rhok straightened, rolling his shoulders as the last traces of magical suppression faded from his limbs. “So... where are we going?”Sayo glanced over his shoulder, his hood drawn low, his feet were quick over the uneven ground. “Somewhere no one thinks to search. Somewhere the where gods watch… but only in like... small pieces.”“Vague,” Rhok said with a smile. “I like it.”They moved through a dead stretch of hills, the grass brittle underfoot, the wind carrying the ghostly hiss of something burning far away. The land here felt wrong, not corrupted, exactly, but as if it had chosen to reject life.Finally, the boy stopped at the crest of a ridge. Below them stretched a walle