The first fire was small—no brighter than the flame of a travel candle—but it marked the beginning. Khaine stood alone beside it, watching the sparks flick upward into the night. The others slept or pretended to. Tents were pitched in the shadow of the old river outpost, the walls half-raised, the watch rotations set. Everything was in motion, everything slowly sharpening into form.But Khaine did not sleep. Sleep required softness, and softness was a language he had forgotten how to speak.The night air tasted of damp earth and faint woodsmoke. Somewhere beyond the camp, a night bird cried—a thin, lonely sound that echoed out toward the empty plains. Khaine’s eyes did not move. His hands rested lightly on his knees, his spine straight, his breath even. He looked like a statue studying a flame, not a man grieving what was taken.Footsteps approached—soft, cautious, deliberate. Only one person moved that quietly.“Mara,” he said, without turning.She sat beside him slowly, her cloak br

Kael traveled by night and slept in the hours when the world was least awake—just before dawn, when even the boldest thieves dream of softer lives. His cloak was plain now, cut of rough wool. His hair, once bound in royal braid, hung loose and unassuming. No one who passed him on the forest road would guess the weight he carried.The mountain valley gave way to scattered towns—small, bent places where the war had not struck openly but had left quiet hollows behind. Faces looked older here. Laughter was something people remembered rather than performed. Kael moved through them without lingering; silence was his shield now. But where he found need, he planted something small—coin here, a warning there, a whispered name passed carefully into the right ear.He was not gathering soldiers.He was gathering loyalty.The Whisper Market was held only once each winter, in a ruin of an old academy where vines wrapped the columns and snow gathered in broken windows. No sign marked the meeting pla

The forest pressed close around Kael as he and Torren followed the narrow path down from the ruins. Night settled fully now, thick and deep, and the moon was only a pale sliver caught behind clouds. They did not carry torches. Fire was a beacon, and beacons meant death. Instead they walked by memory, instinct, and the faint silver wash where starlight leaked through the canopy. Wind rattled the branches above—an old sound, older than kingdoms or wars—and for a moment Kael felt something like steadiness. The world would continue turning, even if thrones fell and empires collapsed.They reached a clearing where the ground dipped into a shallow ravine. A stream trickled there, soft as breath. Torren crouched first, checking the tracks in the mud, though Kael already knew what he would find—no soldiers. No scouts. No sign of pursuit. The mountain path was too obscure, too forgotten. Only those who remembered the old kingdom’s quiet places would know it.Torren nodded once. “We’re clear.”

The trap did not announce itself. It did not arrive in warnings or shouted alarms. It formed the way winter forms—quietly, while the world is looking the other way.Three days had passed since Kael and Serin’s training in the clearing. The camp had begun to breathe with a new rhythm, faster, sharper, sensing some invisible tension in the air. Whispers chased through the tents at night. Weapons were checked and rechecked. Scouts rotated in wider arcs. Everyone felt something was coming, though no one could name it.The mountains surrounding the valley where the rebellion camp hid were steep and jagged, their stone faces scored by time and wind. Pines clung to the slopes, roots gripping rock like desperate fingers. A river cut through the valley, its waters black and cold this time of year.It was here that Kael had made their refuge. And it was here the trap began.It started with a scout not returning.At first, no one thought much of it. Scouts sometimes took longer routes, hid thems

The mountains loomed like sleeping beasts of stone, their peaks hidden behind a curtain of mist. Snow drifted in slow, lazy spirals, the flakes catching faint light like falling embers from a dying fire. Deep within those mountains lay the old dwarven stronghold of Vhal Krad — abandoned after wars that had ended long before Lysander’s grandfather was ever born. What remained now was a labyrinth of tunnels and stone halls carved with precision no modern craftsman could match. Forgotten. Untouched. Waiting.It was here Lysander had led his followers — not an army, not yet, but a seed of one, hardened by loss and sharpened by purpose. They walked in silence, torches throwing long shadows across the carved walls. Every step echoed like memory trying to return.Mara moved beside him, though she had said little since the oath. The others followed a little further back — Kalen the scout, his eyes always cutting ahead; the twins, Sera and Daev, deadly and unpredictable; Rhyen, once a scholar,