“Hey! Are you alive in there?”Everett slowly lifted his head. He listened for a few seconds, to know where the voice was coming from. “Come on. Give me some sign that you're alive.”Everett turned toward the iron bars.A guard stood outside the cell, taking a better look at him. When Everett moved, surprise crossed the man's face before it turned into amusement.“Ha! So, you're still alive.”Everett said nothing.The guard's smile faded.“What is wrong with you?” he demanded. “You were found in the Northern Wasteland without armor or a weapon, and you were half dead. Most men would be begging for water by now, but you've been lying there as if none of this concerns you.”Everett barely listened. Questions were already crowding his mind. Where was he? Why did his entire body hurt? And why could he remember almost nothing?The guard shook the bars.“Are you deaf? Or do you think you’re too important to speak to me?”Everett looked at him properly this time.The guard was thin with a b

Darian, Everett, and the blue-eyed girl left the underground tunnels and emerged into the grounds of the Sovereign’s castle.They had barely stepped outside when the large bell above the castle gates began to toll.The girl stopped and looked toward the castle.“Darian, you and Everett will have to wait outside. The Sovereign wants me to report to him alone.”Darian nodded, then glanced at Everett.“Then what should I do with him?”“Take him somewhere nearby. I won't be long.”She turned toward the castle gates and walked away.Everett watched her disappear through the large doors before looking around. He was still trying to understand the world around him. The castle grounds were nothing like the underground prison where he had spent the past days.There were statues scattered around the grounds, most of them depicting warriors carrying swords, shields, and other weapons. Some stood alone, while others were carved alongside another warrior, as though they had fought together.Everet

Three months of training had finally started to show results.Everett could now hold the two-handed sword without immediately dropping it. He could swing it with some control, defend himself for longer, and even force Darian to take him seriously during certain moments of their sparring sessions.But Darian had made one thing clear.This was only the beginning.It was early morning when Darian opened Everett's bedroom door.The door swung open with enough force to wake anyone who might still have been sleeping.Everett looked up at him.Darian stood there silently for a moment.“Morning training time,” Everett said, stretching his jaw. “I'm ready. Are we going?”“Yeah. We're going,” Darian replied. “But not to our usual training ground. Follow me.”Everett frowned.He had assumed they would be heading toward the lakes for their morning workout, but Darian took him in a completely different direction.As they moved through Veyrith, Everett found himself looking around more than usual.

After the hard training and the effort he had put into building his shelter, Everett finally fell asleep, expecting to wake the next day and continue the harsh and dangerous training that waited for him in Mage-Mountain. The long walk through the forest, the exhausting exercises, the uncertainty of his situation, and everything he had been carrying in his mind had left him more tired than he realized. As he slept, the unfamiliar songs of the birds filled the forest while the waterfall provided a steady sound in the background, almost like a quiet symphony. There was something strangely calming about it, and before long, Everett had fallen into a deep sleep.For a while, there was nothing but darkness.It was the same blackness he had been seeing whenever he slept, an empty space without a beginning or an end. Everett had become used to it, but this time something suddenly appeared inside the darkness.A glowing female arm covered in strange tattoos.The image flashed before him so sud