DARK WAR REBORN; From Magicless Boy to World's Hidden Hope

Chapter 7: The Gates of Hidden Plague

The road to Hidden Plague climbed steadily through pine-clad hills, the air growing thinner and colder with every mile. Snow lay thick on the ground now, muffling the world into silence. Wayne and Calley had been traveling for weeks, hunting small game, melting snow for water, avoiding roads and villages. Calley’s gift had grown stronger in fits and starts: she could summon fire reliably now, and once, when Wayne twisted his ankle on icy stones, a soft golden light had flowed from her hands to knit the bone whole.

They spoke little of the future. Only of the next meal, the next shelter, the next step toward the great white city where the Conclave held court.

At last, on a morning when the sky was the color of polished steel, they crested the final ridge. Below them sprawled Hidden Plague, its towers of pale marble rising from the valley floor, walls gleaming like frost, banners of silver and blue snapping in the wind. The great gates stood open, guarded by sentries in white cloaks.

“We made it,” Calley breathed, her voice trembling with relief.

Wayne managed a tired smile. “Almost. Come on.”

They descended the switchback path toward the gates. The pendant at Wayne’s throat felt warm, as it often did when danger lurked nearby, though today he attributed it to the nearness of so much magic.

They were fifty paces from the gate when the black riders struck.

Six of them erupted from the treeline on the left, cloaks streaming like smoke, horses lathered and wild-eyed. The same faceless helms, the same aura of cold dread that had burned Norwick. Wayne’s blood turned to ice.

“Run!” he shouted, drawing his sword.

Calley’s blade cleared its scabbard a heartbeat later. They stood back-to-back on the open road as the riders circled them with swords of black iron gleaming.

The first rider charged Wayne. He parried desperately, steel ringing, but the force drove him to one knee. Calley loosed a bolt of fire that scorched the rider’s cloak and sent his horse rearing. Another rider lunged at her; she ducked, slashed low, and opened the beast’s foreleg. It screamed and crashed to the snow.

They fought like cornered wolves. Wayne’s training under Alard kept him alive, parry, riposte, footwork all drilled into muscle memory. Calley’s magic flared: bursts of flame that drove riders back, a shield of shimmering heat that turned blades aside. For a few frantic minutes, hope flickered.

Then the leader dismounted.

He moved with inhuman grace, drawing a long blade that drank the light. Shadows coiled around him like living things. He spoke a word in a tongue that hurt to hear, and Calley’s next firebolt guttered out mid-air.

Wayne lunged at the leader, blade high. The dark mage sidestepped lazily and drove a fist into Wayne’s chest. Pain exploded as his ribs cracked. He flew backward, hitting the frozen ground hard with breath driven from his lungs.

Calley screamed his name. She hurled herself at the leader, sword blazing with white-hot fire. He caught her wrist mid-swing, twisted cruelly causing bone to snap as her blade fell. Shadowy bonds snapped around her arms and legs, dragging her to her knees.

Wayne tried to rise. A rider’s boot pinned his sword arm. Another blade pressed to his throat.

“The boy is not needed alive,” the leader said flatly.

As the sword rose Wayne stared up at it, thoughts of his father, Calley and Alard flashing through his mind along with regret sharp as the blade itself.

Then the pendant blazed. White-hot light poured from the crystal, searing the riders’ eyes. The blade halted inches from Wayne’s neck. Something surged through him, it didn’t seem like magic, not as he understood it. It was deeper, older, like the memory of sunlight in his bones. Cracked ribs knit with audible pops. Blood ceased flowing from a dozen cuts. Strength flooded back into limbs which had gone cold and numb.

The rider above him staggered. Wayne rolled, seized his fallen sword, and drove it upward through the gap in the man’s mail. Hot blood sprayed across the snow.

The leader snarled. “Enough. Take the girl. Leave the boy for the crows.”

They dragged Calley toward their horses. She fought, kicking and screaming, but the shadow-bonds held. One rider struck her temple with a gauntleted fist making her go limp.

Wayne charged. He cut down another rider, blade singing, but the leader turned and spoke a single word of power. Darkness slammed into Wayne like a wall, hurling him backward into the snow.

When his vision cleared, the riders were gone. Only hoofprints and Calley’s dropped dagger remained.

He screamed her name until his voice broke.

Then he rose, wounds gone, body thrumming with that strange alien strength, and staggered toward the gates of Hidden Plague.

The sentries saw him coming bloodied, wild-eyed, alone and leveled spears.

“Stand!” their captain barked. “Name yourself!”

“Wayne of Highcrest,” he gasped. “Son of Wade. I must see the archmages. My cousin, she’s been taken...”

They seized him before he could say more, dragging him through the gates into the city. He fought weakly, shouting about black riders, about Calley, but exhaustion and grief finally claimed him. Darkness swallowed him whole.

He woke in a white stone chamber, wrists bound with silver cords that hummed with warding magic. Three archmages stood over him, Elyra the High Seat among them all with faces grim.

“The spark,” Elyra said softly. “It came from you on the road. You are the source.”

Wayne shook his head frantically. “No. it was Calley! My cousin, she has the gift. The riders took her. Ramona’s servants. Please, send help! And my father, Wade, he’s here, isn’t he? Tell me where he is!”

Elyra’s expression did not change. “Your father is lost to us. Presumed dead or turned to the darkness. The spark is in you, boy. Late awakening is rare, but not unknown. We will test you.”

They did not listen to a word he said. Or would not listen.

The trials began that day.

They bound him to a circle of runes and poured raw magic through him, seeking the gift that refused to rise. Needles of light pierced his skin, drawing blood that steamed on the stone. They starved him, drowned him in illusions of fire and falling, whispered spells to force the power forth. When nothing came, no spark, no flame, they tried harsher methods: whips laced with silver, ice water, isolation in darkness that pressed like grave dirt.

Other protégés, youths in pale robes watched and whispered.

“The mund-born thinks he’s special.”

“His father betrayed the Conclave. Like father, like son.”

Wayne endured. Every lash, every mockery, he clung to two names: Calley. Father.

He demanded news of Wade daily. At first they ignored him. Then they lied saying Wade had fallen at Thorneford, or turned traitor. Wayne refused to believe.

Weeks bled away. His body grew lean and scarred, but the alien strength from the pendant never fully faded. It kept him alive when others would have broken.

Finally, after a trial that left him coughing blood onto the white floor, Elyra relented. Perhaps pity moved her. Perhaps she saw something unbroken in his eyes.

She took him to a quiet chamber high in the central tower and told him the truth.

“Your may yet father live,” she said quietly. “Captured when Thorneford fell and Ramona holds him in Alnor. We know because one survivor, a soldier who later escaped brought word before his wounds took him. Wade and Captain Garrick endure torment still. They have not broken.”

Wayne sank to his knees, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face.

“He’s alive,” he whispered.

“Yes. And now you know why we tested you so harshly. The spark on the road is your cousin’s, you claim? Might be real. But something else clings to you, boy. Something the trials cannot name. It is not the gift we know.”

Wayne lifted his head. “Then help me rescue them. Calley and my father. Give me mages, weapons, anything.” He paid no attention to what Elyra said as she did his.

Elyra’s eyes were old and tired. “We cannot strike Alnor yet. Ramona grows stronger daily. We watch. We wait.”

“Wait?” Wayne rose slowly. “I will not wait for a savior that may not even exist.”

That night, in the silence of his cell, he touched the pendant, now cracked from its single use, but still warm even as his heart was set towards his family and the oddness of his body.

Calley was in the north. His father was in the north. And something ancient stirred in his blood, answering the call.

The boy who had once believed himself ordinary was gone. In his place stood something new and very, very dangerous.