2025-10-09 22:05:36“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.”
Karan’s voice was quiet, but the rage in it made the air tremble.
Serah stood before him, the lion-fang pendant glinting in her hand. Around them, the dawn wind tore at the tent flaps. Warriors outside pretended not to listen, but every soul in the camp held its breath.
“I hid it because you wouldn’t have listened,” she said.
“I did listen,” he replied. “I trusted you.”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “And I saved your life—twice.”
He took a step closer. “While serving the Lion-King?”
Serah’s jaw tightened. “I served Raikor once. Before you killed him. Before he became whatever walks the sands now.”
The admission cracked the silence like thunder.
Karan’s hand went to his sword, but he didn’t draw it. “So all this time—your loyalty, your help—it was guilt?”
“It was choice,” she said sharply. “Raikor believed in domination. You fight for survival. Don’t confuse the two.”
He studied her for a long moment, then turned away, voice low. “You speak of choice, but you wear his mark.”
Serah glanced at the pendant, then closed her fist around it. “Because the past still has teeth.”
Outside, a horn sounded. Distant, but growing louder.
Varr burst into the tent, panting. “Riders! From the south! The Lion’s army—they’ve found us!”
Karan’s head snapped up. “How?”
Varr’s eyes shifted uneasily toward Serah.
Karan’s heart went cold.
She met his gaze. “It wasn’t me.”
“Then who?”
A scream cut through the camp before anyone could answer.
The Dortracy warband erupted in chaos. Flaming arrows streaked through the sky, slamming into tents and wagons. Horses screamed as riders poured over the dunes armored in gold and black, banners of the Lion-King whipping in the wind.
Karan drew his curved blade. “To the lines!”
Varr rallied the men, shouting orders in Dortrac: “Var’shek! Var’shek dor! Hold the wind!”
Karan cut through the oncoming riders like a shadow, each swing a flash of steel and fury. The ground trembled beneath the clash of hooves and thunder.
He found himself face-to-face with one of Raikor’s lieutenants, a giant man with a lion-mask helm. Their blades met with a screech of metal.
“Where is he?” Karan demanded.
The warrior laughed. “The Lion wears your brother’s face. He waits for you at the crown of bones!”
Karan’s blade drove through the man’s chest before he finished speaking. The blood hissed as it hit the sand.
Serah fought beside him, moving like lightning—her blade twin to his in rhythm and rage. For a moment, they were one against the storm.
When the last rider fell, the plain was strewn with corpses and broken banners. Smoke rose to the sky like a funeral pyre.
Varr limped over, bleeding from a shoulder wound. “Someone led them right to us. They knew our route, our numbers everything.”
Karan’s gaze went cold. “Find who wasn’t where they were meant to be.”
They dragged the traitor from the shadows an hour later—Torran, one of Karan’s scouts. His face was bruised, his mouth still bleeding from where Varr had struck him.
“They took my son,” Torran spat. “The Lion’s men said they’d free him if I”
Karan silenced him with a raised hand. “Your son’s blood is not on my sword. But your choice is.”
Torran fell to his knees. “Please. Mercy.”
Karan’s expression didn’t change. “The plains don’t forgive betrayal.”
He turned away, leaving Varr to finish it. The sound of steel through flesh followed a moment later.
Serah watched in silence. When he finally met her eyes, there was no victory left in either of them.
That night, the camp was silent except for the crackle of dying fires. The survivors counted their dead while the storm whispered through the dunes.
Karan sat apart, staring at his hands. The blood there felt heavier than usual—thicker, darker.
Serah approached quietly, her cloak brushing the sand. “You did what you had to.”
“Did I?” he murmured. “Every time I kill a man, the storm inside me grows louder. Sometimes I think it’s laughing.”
She knelt beside him. “The storm doesn’t laugh, Karan. It remembers.”
He looked at her then, really looked. “And what does it remember about you?”
Her expression flickered. “That I once believed Raikor could save us. That I was wrong.”
He reached out, brushing his thumb against the faint scar on her cheek. “Then help me make it right.”
She caught his hand, holding it for a moment longer than necessary. “There’s something you need to see.”
She led him to the edge of the dunes. Below, in the moonlight, the remnants of Raikor’s old fortress shimmered like broken glass a sea of bones and stone.
“That’s the Crown of Bones,” she said. “The Lion-King’s stronghold now. He’s gathering the clans who refused your call.”
Karan stared at it, jaw tightening. “How many?”
“Thousands,” she said softly. “And he has the priests now, the Voice of the Storm. They believe Raikor has become the god you defied.”
He felt something inside him fracture. “He was never a god. Just a man too proud to die.”
“Then make him die properly this time,” she said.
Karan’s hand went to his sword. “At dawn, we march.”
The sun rose over the dunes like blood spilling across the sky. The Dortracy rode in silence—fewer than a
hundred men left, their armor scorched, their eyes hollow.
Varr rode beside Karan, grinning despite the odds. “If we die today, Stormborn, at least it’ll be somewhere the gods can hear us.”
“They already can,” Karan replied.
As they neared the fortress, they saw the enemy army waiting. The Lion-King’s forces stretched across the horizon tens of thousands of men, banners gleaming gold in the wind. At their center stood the throne of bone and iron.
And upon it—Raikor.
Alive.
Or close enough.
His armor gleamed, his braid longer than ever, his eyes burning with golden light. He looked down upon Karan and smiled, as if death had been nothing but a brief inconvenience.
“Brother,” he called. His voice rolled like thunder across the valley. “You keep following me into graves. Does it make you feel alive?”
Karan’s answer was a whisper only Serah heard. “No. But killing you does.”
He raised his sword. “Dortracy! Var’ash dor’rai! Blood for the plains!”
The charge broke like a tidal wave.
The battle that followed was legend. Lightning carved the sky as the brothers clashed once more—storm
against storm, fury against divinity.
Karan’s men tore through the Lion ranks, but the enemy kept reforming, driven by Raikor’s impossible presence. Every strike of his blade brought thunder. Every scream of his army echoed the storm.
Serah fought her way toward the throne, blood running down her arms. She saw Karan and Raikor collide again and again—sparks, dust, the sky splitting open.
When she reached them, she shouted over the roar. “Karan! The priests—they’re channeling him! You have to break the circle!”
Karan turned, saw them—three old men kneeling in the bone dust, chanting in the Lion tongue: “Kor’veth nai, dor sa’ar! For the Lion’s will, we serve!”
He cut through them in three strikes. The chant broke.
Raikor staggered, the golden light in his eyes faltering. “No—no!”
Karan’s sword flashed once more.
The blade sank deep into his brother’s chest.
Raikor gasped, blood staining his armor. “You… think this ends me?”
Karan whispered, “It ends us.”
He twisted the blade. Lightning erupted from both men, the force of it tearing through the valley. The Lion banners caught fire, the fortress split in two, and every warrior—Dortracy and Lion alike—fell to their knees before the storm that swallowed both brothers whole.
When the light faded, Raikor was gone.
Karan lay among the ruins, barely breathing. The sky was clear for the first time in weeks.
Serah crawled to him, tears streaking her blood-stained face. “Karan—please, stay with me.”
He smiled faintly. “The storm’s quiet now.”
She gripped his hand. “You stopped him.”
He looked past her, toward the horizon. “No. The storm just chose again.”
His eyes fluttered closed.
Serah bent over him, sobbing. Then she felt it—the wind shift, soft at first, then fierce. Karan’s braid lifted, threads of lightning flickering through it.
His chest rose once.
The storm whispered his name.
“Dor’Karan… Stormborn… King of Nothing.”
When the survivors found her at dawn, Serah was still beside him, holding his lifeless hand.
In the distance, the plains burned gold.
And the legend of the Stormborn spread once more, whispered by wind, carried by thunder, remembered by blood.
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Chapter Twelve – “The Sands of Prophecy”
“The wind remembers every hoofprint, even those of ghosts.” “Water… we need water!” The cry rose from the back ranks as the Dortracy caravan dragged through the sands. The storm had carried them east — into the desert the shamans called Sareth Vaal, the Veil of the Gods. The air shimmered with heat; the horizon bled gold. Karan rode at the front, his stallion Kor’Vareth glistening with sweat, mane braided with black cords. The horse’s flanks bore old scars — the marks of their bond. Every Dortracy warrior carried such marks: one on the palm, one on the chest, where their horse’s first blood had touched them as infants. It was not mere tradition. Among the Dortracy, to lose one’s horse was to lose one’s soul. “Slow the march,” Karan ordered, voice cutting through the wind. “The herd breathes as one, or not at all.” He dismounted, running a hand along Kor’Vareth’s neck. The stallion pressed its muzzle against his shoulder — an intimate gesture, almost human. Their breaths
Chapter Eleven – “The Storm Throne”
“From death’s ashes, a storm remembers its name.” The wind screamed over the plains, tearing at banners blackened by ash and rain. Where once the Dortracy tents had stood, only mud and smoke remained. In the ruins, a lone rider moved among the dead, his horse limping, breath ragged. The sky above was the color of bruised iron. “Leave them,” Serah whispered, her voice hoarse. “They’re gone.” Around her, the survivors of the Blood Oath war limped through the wreckage. Men who had followed Karan Dor’rak now walked with hollow eyes, muttering the same curse: The gods have turned their faces. It had been three nights since Karan fell—pierced through by Raiko’s blade and swallowed by the storm that followed. The battle had ended in chaos: thunder tearing open the sky, flames devouring the plain, and then… silence. But silence was never simple among the Dortracy. In the center of the battlefield, where the lightning had struck, the ground pulsed faintly with warmth. Beneath the
Chapter Ten – “The Blood Oath”
The plains were black with thunder again.Rain hissed against scorched sand, washing the blood from the bones of men who had died twice once for kings, and once for ghosts.At the center of it rode Serah.Her cloak streamed behind her like tornstormcloud, her braid bound in silver thread, the faint glow beneath her skin pulsing with each heartbeat. To those who followed, she was no longer merely the Stormborn’s companion. She was the voice of the storm itself.They called her Kor’Serah, the Lightning Bride.But to Varr, who had known her before gods began whispering her name, she was still just the woman who buried a man she loved and refused to let him stay dead.The Dortracy camp lay beneath the ruins of the old fortress — Raikor’s fortress, once the Lion’s Crown. Smoke rose from cooking fires, the smell of roasted horseflesh thick in the damp air. The warriors sat in silence, sharpening blades, their tattoos glistening with rain.Serah stood before them on the old altar stone, her
Chapter Nine – “The Judas Pact”
The storm was gone.For three days, the sky over the plains stayed. clear, the air heavy with ash and silence. The bodies of men and horses lay scattered across the dunes like broken offerings to gods that no longer listened.Serah buried Karan herself.No priest, no song — only wind and salt on her lips. She tied his braid with a strip of her cloak, whispered the old Dortrac words over his grave.“Kor’vaan et shaar dor’kai. The wind knows your name.”When she was done, she stood there long after sunset, watching the last of the embers fade from the horizon. The storm might have chosen another, but the plains had not yet forgotten the man they had called Stormborn.Behind her, Varr limped forward, his arm bound in a blood-soaked sling. “The men are restless,” he said quietly. “They think the gods abandoned us. Some are saying Raikor’s spirit walks again.”“Let them talk,” Serah replied. “Fear is all they have left.”He studied her face. “And you? What do you have left?”She looked at
Chapter Eight – “The Price of Crowns”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.”Karan’s voice was quiet, but the rage in it made the air tremble.Serah stood before him, the lion-fang pendant glinting in her hand. Around them, the dawn wind tore at the tent flaps. Warriors outside pretended not to listen, but every soul in the camp held its breath.“I hid it because you wouldn’t have listened,” she said.“I did listen,” he replied. “I trusted you.”Her gaze didn’t waver. “And I saved your life—twice.”He took a step closer. “While serving the Lion-King?”Serah’s jaw tightened. “I served Raikor once. Before you killed him. Before he became whatever walks the sands now.”The admission cracked the silence like thunder.Karan’s hand went to his sword, but he didn’t draw it. “So all this time—your loyalty, your help—it was guilt?”“It was choice,” she said sharply. “Raikor believed in domination. You fight for survival. Don’t confuse the two.”He studied her for a long moment, then turned away, voice low. “You speak of choice, but y
Chapter Seven – “The Lion’s Reign”
“Speak again, and I’ll feed your tongue to the horses.”The threat cracked through the war tent like thunder. Karan’s voice was low but laced with a quiet rage that silenced the gathered chieftains. The smell of smoke and blood hung thick in the air, mixing with the iron scent of tension.Before him, twelve Dortracy warlords sat around the firepit, their braids heavy with silver rings, their bodies inked with symbols of conquest. They were supposed to be allies—bound by the storm they had survived together but already, the fragile unity was splintering.A chieftain with a lion pelt over his shoulders leaned forward. His name was Korvak, a brute with amber eyes and a smile too sharp to trust. “You’ve killed your brother, Stormborn. The plains are yours now. Take the crown, or step aside for those who will.”Karan didn’t move. His hair, uncut since rebirth, hung in thick braids down his back—each streaked with ash from the battlefield. “There is no crown for me.”Korvak sneered. “Then w
