The deeper Kael descended, the more the air thickened—old stone, old secrets, old dust that tasted of forgotten promises. His torch flickered against the claustrophobic tunnel walls, throwing long, restless shadows that trembled with every step. The passage had not been used in years, maybe decades, but it carried a familiarity he could not place, like a voice half-remembered from childhood calling his name in another room.The spy—Raven—walked three steps ahead, silent in a way that suggested she’d learned silence before she’d learned language. Her frame was lithe but tense, like she expected someone or something to step out from the darkness at any moment. Kael kept a hand on the dagger at his waist, not because he feared what lay ahead, but because in these narrow underground bones of the city, instinct was the only thing that still made sense.They reached the end of the corridor. A rusted iron door sat crooked in its frame, like it had been forced open in violence long ago and ne

Night had always belonged to the enemy.Ever since the capital fell, darkness had become their shield — their patrols roamed freely, their banners hung like black scars across the skyline, and the streets that once whispered with life had been reduced to quiet, fearful shadows. The people walked quickly, eyes down, voices clipped. The conquerors believed that silence meant surrender.They were wrong.On the hundredth night since the fall, something in the air changed.Not loudly, not suddenly — but the city felt it, the same way a forest feels the pressure shift before a storm. Windows shuttered earlier than usual. Merchants closed shop with a strange urgency. Even the street dogs disappeared beneath broken carts and stairwells, sensing something stirring beneath the surface.Kael entered the city through the old sewer tunnels, moving with the ease of someone who knew every forgotten artery of the capital. The underground passage was narrow, low-ceilinged, and slick with condensation.

Night pressed heavily against the shattered edges of the old citadel, the stones blackened and split as though they still remembered the fire that once devoured them. Shadows stretched long across the broken courtyard, swaying gently as the wind moved through open gaps where walls had collapsed. The place was half-buried, half-forgotten… yet unmistakably alive in its silence.Kael stepped over a fallen arch, boots crunching lightly over powdered brick. He knew this place better than he wished. It was here—before the fall, before the betrayal, before the capital crumbled beneath enemy flame—that he had once stood as heir, commander, and shield. And it was here that everything began to unravel.Tonight, he returned not as the prince he once was, not as the shadow leader he was becoming, but as a man who needed answers no sword could offer.Serin followed silently behind him, torchlight flickering across her face. “I still don’t understand why we had to come alone,” she murmured.“Becaus

The night draped itself over the broken skyline like a cloak soaked in old grief. The ruins of the capital still breathed — slow, exhausted breaths — the way a dying beast refuses to fully surrender. Fires no longer burned. Screams no longer echoed through the hollowed streets. But the silence itself had weight… as if the city were waiting for someone to unearth what remained buried beneath its bones.Kael stood at the threshold of the shattered eastern gate, the same place where he had once walked as a prince-general, before the empire drowned in betrayal. Wind swept through the exposed stone ribs of what used to be watchtowers, carrying with it the faintest murmur of memory.He had not returned here since the fall — not since the night everything collapsed beneath him.Serin stood behind him, silent, her cloak pulled tight around her shoulders. “You don’t have to walk in there alone,” she murmured.Kael didn’t turn. “I do.”Serin hesitated. “Because it’s your past?”“No.” His voice

Night pressed tightly against the fortress walls, a suffocating weight of silence broken only by the restless wind sweeping across the half-rebuilt battlements. The sky was moonless again, that familiar omen of shifting loyalties and unseen knives. Inside the war-room, a single lantern burned low, casting long shadows that stretched across the stone floor like black, watchful fingers.Kael stood over the map table, both palms braced heavily against the edge, his head bowed as if the parchment itself carried the world’s grief. He did not move when the door creaked open. He did not lift his gaze when footsteps entered. Only when the air changed — that subtle shift that comes when a very specific person stands behind you — did he speak.“You took longer than expected,” he said quietly.A pause.Then Mara’s voice: “I had to make sure I wasn’t followed.”Kael finally looked up.Her cloak was dusted with ash, her hair wind-blown and still smelling faintly of the smoke-heavy ruins she had tr