Night had fallen heavy over the shattered outskirts of the capital, but the darkness was not empty. It pulsed — alive, breathing, carrying the weight of a broken empire and the quiet stirrings of something that refused to die. Kael moved through the ruins with a steadiness that bordered on defiance. Every cracked stone, every scorched column, every collapsed archway whispered of a life he once protected and a throne he once feared to claim. But tonight, everything was different. Tonight the shadows were no longer enemies. They were witnesses.The wind pushed softly through the hollow ribs of the fallen towers, carrying the low hum of distant patrols. The enemy’s soldiers were out there, sweeping the night with torches and iron-tipped silence. But they did not see Kael. They never saw him now. Not since the oath he made beneath the mountain. Not since the day Serin took her first step toward the mantle destiny had hidden from her. And not since the moment the rebellion stopped being su

Night laid its cold veil across the broken ridges of the Eastern Front, the shattered stone still warm in places where fire had passed only hours before. Smoke drifted upward in lazy spirals, carrying with it the metallic scent of burned steel and the heavier ache of the dead. Kael moved through the ruins slowly, not with caution, but with the deliberate stillness of someone who had learned long ago that silence was its own form of loyalty. Every footstep fell like a memory, steady and unhurried, as though he refused to let the battlefield decide the pace of his breathing.He should have returned to camp hours ago, but something in the wreckage called to him — something quieter than danger, deeper than fear. A pull he had felt only a few times in his life, always right before the world tried to break him.Serin’s voice echoed faintly in his memory. “You can’t save ghosts, Kael.”But ghosts, he had always believed, sometimes saved him.A piece of twisted metal caught his sleeve as he s

Night had fallen heavy on the fractured capital, a night so dark it felt carved out of grief. The ruins still breathed with distant smoke, the final echoes of the battle that had reshaped the city’s bones. Yet beneath the devastation, something stirred—a pulse, subtle at first, then growing, like an old heart remembering its rhythm after a long silence. It was the pulse of an empire refusing to die.Kael moved through the abandoned council chamber with steps that carried no triumph, only the weight of everything he had been forced to accept. The massive doors behind him groaned shut, muffling the voices of the wounded fighters and the loyal remnants who waited for orders. Torches lined the crumbling marble walls, their flames flickering wildly, throwing shadows that danced like memories too stubborn to fade.He did not sit in the central throne—not yet. That seat had taken too much from too many. Instead, he paced slowly, running a hand over the broken carvings on the wall, pausing wh

The storm had retreated hours ago, leaving the world washed clean in a silver sheen. The air carried that strange calm that always followed chaos — a trembling stillness, as if the wind itself held its breath. Camp lanterns swayed in slow arcs, their dim glow catching the edges of tents and wet earth. Somewhere in the distance, a lone animal cried out, then silence reclaimed the night.Kael walked alone along the ridgepath, his boots sinking into the softened mud with each step. He didn’t hurry. There was no reason to. The message he carried in his mind wasn’t something that could be outrun, or ignored, or forced into clarity. It sat there like a stone lodged beneath the ribs, cold and solid and unwelcome.Someone in the inner circle had betrayed them.Not in a loud way, not in the dramatic, dagger-in-the-back manner Kael had learned to expect from enemies. No. This betrayal was quiet. Thin. A strand barely visible unless you stared long enough to see where the threads didn’t match. O

Night had settled over the valley with a heaviness that felt almost deliberate, as if the shadows themselves were bracing for what they knew was coming. The campfires burned lower than usual, their glow stretched thin across the cold earth, leaving wide pockets of darkness between tents. Even the wind held its breath. And in that still-born quiet, Kael felt the disturbance long before he heard the footsteps approaching. Instinct sharpened his spine. He turned slowly, one hand already drifting toward the dagger at his belt, but he didn’t draw it—not yet. Something in the air shifted, almost like a ghost pushing through a door that was never meant to open. Serin sensed it too; she stepped beside Kael, not touching him, but close enough that he could feel her readiness. “Someone’s here,” she whispered. Her voice was steady, but her breath wasn’t. From the far edge of the camp, a figure emerged from the tree line. Hooded. Limping. Moving as if made from raw pain and stubborn will. The gua