The sun hadn’t climbed far when riders appeared on the road. Imperial colors — silver and crimson — snapping against the wind.Kael watched from the field’s edge, hand resting on his sword hilt. The villagers stopped their work to stare. Soldiers in polished armor didn’t come to Ashvale. Not unless there was trouble.The lead rider dismounted, helmet under his arm. His face was sharp, his expression sharper. “Kael Ardent?”Kael didn’t answer at first. The soldiers’ formation was too precise, their silence too heavy. He’d worn that silence before.“Depends who’s asking,” he said.“I am Captain Soren of the Second Imperial Guard. By order of the High Council, you are summoned to the capital.”Whispers rippled through the crowd. Kael kept his tone even. “The Council doesn’t summon farmhands.”Soren’s gaze flicked to the training yard where the ground still bore scars from the raid. “Farmhands don’t cut down twenty men in the dark with a blunt sword.”Kael said nothing.Soren stepped clos

Kael had been a soldier, a strategist, a weapon — but it was the streets that reminded him how survival really worked. Ashvale’s alleys were the same as he remembered: narrow, loud, and hungry. The war hadn’t touched them, not really. It didn’t need to. Poverty was its own kind of battlefield. He moved quietly, hood up, boots leaving shallow prints in the mud. The Council had delayed his deployment for “strategic reassessment.” He knew what that meant — surveillance. Varic was watching, waiting for him to make the wrong move. So Kael made no moves that could be seen. Instead, he listened. Rumors traveled fast through the gutters. Someone was buying weapons in bulk. Someone else was paying orphans to spy on patrol routes. The city’s underbelly was stirring, and it wasn’t for rebellion. Not yet. At a corner near the butcher’s stall, a small hand tugged at his coat. A boy, maybe ten, with sharp eyes and quicker fingers. Kael caught his wrist before the child could steal his co

The old workshop was silent except for the rain tapping the roof. The map lay open on the table between Kael and Taren, its lines drawn in fading ink, its meaning buried under centuries of dust. But the mark—the flame inside the circle—still glowed faintly in the dim light, as if it was alive.Taren rubbed the back of his neck. “So… what exactly are we looking at?”Kael didn’t answer immediately. He was tracing the edges of the parchment with a gloved finger, eyes sharp, mind racing. “The first time I saw this,” he said slowly, “was in a war council. Varic had it locked in a vault under the Imperial Hall. He called it a relic. Said it held the key to ‘restoring order.’ I didn’t know what he meant then.”“And now?”“Now,” Kael said, leaning closer, “I think it’s something older than the Empire itself.”Taren frowned. “You sound like the monks.”“Maybe they were right.”The air in the room felt heavier. Kael lifted the corner of the map. Beneath it, a second layer of parchment was hidde

The night stretched long and tense. The rain had stopped, but the world still smelled of smoke and fear. Kael, Seris, and Taren moved through the ruins beneath Ashvale’s old chapel — a place most thought collapsed years ago.Their boots splashed in shallow water as torches flickered against stone walls. Symbols marked the bricks — the same circular sigil from the burned letter, carved deep, glowing faintly as if alive.Taren’s voice echoed softly. “You sure this is where it is?”Seris nodded. “Varic built this place long before the war. The Council called it a records vault. But it wasn’t for paper.”Kael brushed his fingers over one of the sigils. It pulsed under his touch, faint and warm, like the beat of a heart. “It’s alive,” he muttered.Seris gave him a sidelong look. “Not alive. Bound. There’s a difference.”They reached a massive iron door buried at the tunnel’s end. Its surface was covered in scratches — claw marks, deep and desperate. Kael pressed his hand against it. The wa

The road to the capital was long and cruel, a scar that cut through fields of frost and memory. Kael walked it in silence, each step a reminder that he no longer moved as a soldier following orders — he moved as a man rebuilding purpose.Taren trudged behind him, muttering about the cold. Seris kept pace at Kael’s side, her cloak fluttering like a shadow’s wing. The three of them had left Ashvale before dawn, leaving only footprints and unanswered questions behind.“Tell me again why we’re walking into the Empire’s jaws,” Taren said, kicking a stone down the path.Kael didn’t look back. “Because that’s where the heart rots first.”Taren groaned. “You always talk like that when you’re about to do something suicidal.”Seris smirked faintly. “He’s always about to do something suicidal.”Kael almost smiled. Almost. But the weight of what waited ahead pressed too heavily against his chest. The capital wasn’t just another city — it was the center of every lie that built his first life. The