2025-10-09 21:50:16“Don’t say it, Karan. Whatever promise you’re about to make, I’ve heard it before.”
Serah’s voice was flat, her eyes fixed on the endless plain that stretched beneath the cliffs. Dawn burned
behind them, cold and crimson.
Karan tightened his grip on the reins. “I wasn’t offering comfort.”
“Good,” she said. “Because it dies fast out here.”
They had been riding for three days without pause. The air grew heavier with each mile east, where the
land fell away into the Hollow Basin an expanse of black sand and bone-white stones said to hold the first
Dortracy graves.
Varr rode behind them, his usual chatter gone. Even he felt it—the weight of old things buried too long.
Serah broke the silence first. “You’re sure this is where he sent his hunters?”
Karan nodded. “Raikor’s men don’t vanish by accident. He’s searching for something.”
“The Thorn of Kor’Vareth,” Serah murmured. “The horn that calls the storm.”
Karan’s jaw tightened. “Then we reach it first.”
She looked at him sharply. “And if it’s not a relic? If it’s a curse?”
Karan’s eyes flickered with something darker. “Then I’ll make it mine anyway.”
By midday, they reached the basin’s edge. The wind was still here—unnaturally so, like the air itself was
holding its breath.
Below lay a field of pillars—stone markers carved with Dortrac runes, each one tilted, eroded by time. Between them, bones glinted like glass beneath the black dust.
Varr dismounted, swallowing hard. “You didn’t tell me we were walking into a graveyard.”
Serah’s voice dropped. “We don’t speak loudly here. The wind carries words to the dead.”
Karan brushed past them, his gaze locked on the far end of the valley. “Then let them hear.”
The descent was slow. The deeper they went, the colder the air became. Strange carvings appeared on the
stones—scenes of warriors kneeling before a horned stallion, eyes blindfolded, blades pointed to the earth.
Serah traced a finger along one of the runes. “These markings… they’re older than the first tribes.”
Karan glanced over. “You can read them?”
“Enough to know they warn of something buried beneath the sand.”
“Warnings don’t stop the desperate,” Karan said. “Or the damned.”
He moved ahead, the faint wind tugging at his braid—the one he had begun to grow again since his exile ended.
Varr kicked at a half-buried skull. “I don’t like this, Karan. Feels like the air’s watching us.”
Karan smiled without warmth. “That’s because it is.”
They reached the center of the basin by dusk. The ground was smooth there, untouched by wind. In the
middle stood a single monolith—twenty feet high, cracked through the center like a scar.
At its base lay a pit filled with ash and the remnants of melted bronze.
Serah knelt, brushing away dust. “This isn’t natural. Someone dug here… recently.”
Karan crouched beside her. “Raikor’s men.”
He touched the ground—it was still warm.
Varr looked around uneasily. “If they took the horn, we’re too late.”
“No,” Karan said. “He’s too proud to use it in secret. He’ll test it in front of the clans. That means it’s still here—or it killed the ones who found it.”
Serah looked up sharply. “You think the dead took them?”
Karan’s voice was soft. “The dead never leave what’s theirs.”
The night came suddenly, swallowing the basin in shadow. They made camp near the monolith, though
none of them truly rested.
The air grew colder still, until their breath came in clouds. The horses refused to eat.
Serah sat close to the fire, her eyes unfocused. “I can feel it,” she whispered. “Something beneath us.”
Karan looked into the flames. “You’ve felt it before?”
“In dreams. Since the ruins.” Her voice trembled slightly. “Each night I hear the same thing—a voice calling through the wind. Yours, maybe. Or his.”
“Raikor?”
She shook her head. “Kor’Vareth.”
Karan’s hand tightened on his sword hilt. “The stallion calls to no one.”
“Then why does the storm whisper your name?”
He had no answer.
The fire hissed. A faint tremor rippled through the ground.
Varr jolted upright. “Did you feel that?”
The ground shifted again, more violently. The horses screamed. The sand at the monolith’s base began to sink, swirling inward like a whirlpool.
Karan stood, drawing his blade. “Move!”
The sand exploded outward. A shockwave threw them all to the ground.
When the dust cleared, a dark pit yawned where the monolith had been wide and bottomless. From
within came a dull hum, like a heartbeat buried in the earth.
Serah gasped. “The horn.”
Karan stepped forward. “Stay here.”
“Karan”
He ignored her and descended.
The air inside the pit was suffocating. The walls pulsed faintly, slick with ash and old blood. The deeper he
went, the louder the heartbeat became, echoing inside his skull.
At last, he saw it.
The Horn of Kor’Vareth lay embedded in stone a black, twisted shard the size of a man’s arm, humming with light that flickered like lightning.
Karan reached out, fingers trembling. The air crackled around him.
For an instant, he saw flashes visions of riders burning, storms devouring armies, his brother’s face crowned
in fire.
Then another voice cut through it.
“Do not touch it.”
He turned sharply.
Raikor stood at the mouth of the pit, framed in silver light.
For a heartbeat, Karan couldn’t breathe.
“You…” he whispered. “You followed me.”
Raikor descended slowly, his armor glinting. “I led you here.”
Karan’s mind raced. “The scouts—the tracks—you wanted me to find it.”
“Of course,” Raikor said. “Only one bloodline can wake the horn. Ours.”
His voice was calm, almost tender. “It needed both of us, brother.”
Karan backed away, blade raised. “I’ll kill you before I help you.”
Raikor smiled faintly. “You already have. You just haven’t realized it yet.”
He extended a hand. “Together, Karan. With the horn, we can end the tribes’ endless wars. No more blood, no more chains.”
Karan stared at him, torn between memory and rage. “You burned them, Raikor. You call that peace?”
“I call it cleansing.”
Lightning flared above, thunder rumbling through the pit. The Horn pulsed brighter, feeding on their words.
Raikor stepped closer. “You were always the better fighter. I was the better thinker. Together, we were unstoppable.”
“You betrayed me.”
“I freed you from weakness.”
Karan’s sword trembled. “You cut my braid. You made me a ghost.”
Raikor’s smile vanished. “And yet, here you are chasing ghosts.”
For a moment, the silence between them was louder than any storm.
Then Karan struck.
Their blades met in a blinding clash of sparks. The Horn screamed, its light flaring white. The ground shook violently.
Serah’s voice echoed from above. “Karan!”
He couldn’t hear her. All he saw was his brother’s face, his own blood reflected in those cold eyes.
Raikor disarmed him with a savage twist. “Still too slow,” he hissed, slamming Karan to the ground.
Karan’s hand groped blindly and found the Horn.
The moment his skin touched it, the world exploded.
Light poured through him cold, searing, alive. He screamed as visions flooded his mind: the ancestors, the storm, the great stallion rearing in fire.
Raikor’s voice broke through the roar. “You fool! You can’t control it!”
But Karan rose. The wind bent around him, his eyes burning white. His voice was not entirely his own when he spoke.
“Kor’ath vekh dor’varan. Blood remembers.”
Raikor stumbled back. “What have you done?”
Karan raised the Horn. Lightning erupted from its tip, striking the heavens. The basin shook as the storm awakened massive, endless, divine.
Raikor’s scream was lost in the thunder.
When it was over, the pit was silent. Smoke curled from the shattered stone. The Horn lay cracked in two beside Karan’s body.
Serah rushed down, kneeling beside him. “Karan”
He opened his eyes weakly. “The storm… it heard me.”
She pressed her forehead to his. “You’re bleeding.”
He smiled faintly. “Then the plains live again.”
Above them, lightning still danced in the clouds unnatural, alive.
And somewhere in the distance, Raikor Dor’rak rose from the shadows, his face burned, his eyes filled with something new—fear.
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Chapter Forty-Three: The Salt Magistrate
“Do not let the horses taste that wind,” Vael said.A door hung in the air ahead of them, a perfect bar of pale light set upright on the salt. It did not gleam. It absorbed. Heat slid toward it and went quiet. Sound pressed close to the ground. Every grain of the desert seemed to wait for permission.Lyra shifted Aren higher against her side and felt the faint hum of the Ember Crown through cloak and leather. The ring’s small coal breathed like a steady child. Kael rode behind her knee, one hand on the mare’s mane, the other resting on the edge of her saddle, counting the beats of hooves as if they were notes he could name.Karan eased forward until Kor’Vareth’s shoulder was even with the door’s shadow. The stallion’s coins clicked once, then stilled. Salt air lifted and dried the sweat at Karan’s temples, leaving a thin crust that stung. The light-bar widened until it matched a city gate. The desert in its frame did not move.Rael’s column took the right. Serah drifted left with two
Chapter Forty-Two: The Closing Gate
“Hold him,” Lyra said.The softened pane stiffened, cold biting the gums. The winter lion reeled from the crack’s blow, claws carving frost. The gate began to knit. Beyond it the litter juddered on light-ropes, half in the mirror’s world, half in the ash camp where brass and geometry posed like weather. The child blinked into borrowed brightness.Karan set his hands beneath Lyra’s elbows without taking the lamp, steadying her bones. The Ember Crown stayed itself—a refusal given shape. In the ring a coal glowed like a saved breath. Vael held a low horn-note. The wedge kept hunger behind bit and knee. Serah watched the seam where snow fell straight.Kor’Vareth stamped; coins stilled. The lion held, frost unraveling from the round wound.“Make the invitation louder,” the smith said.Lyra lifted the lamp so the gap faced child and sky. She formed the word her mouth knew without lips: come. The plate turned a breath toward lion, then boy, a compass testing two norths. The ember clarified.
Chapter Forty-One: The Measuring Hand
“Touch him and I burn,” Lyra said.The crack above the basin bent like a finger and reached down through the cold, a straight line of angled light that was not weather. It wanted to write Kael’s name without asking. At the lion gate, the mirror brightened. White silk stirred. Ash banners rose. The litter slid forward, ropes taut, geometry humming.Karan stepped ahead without lifting his hands. He kept them open and low, the way Vael had taught him to handle a stallion that remembered wounds. Lightning gathered in his breath but did not show.“Stay small,” he said. “Breathe with your mother.”Kael leaned into Lyra. She felt his heartbeat through her cloak. His head tilted, listening under the noise. The ropes on the far side were singing to him, promising weight to carry so others could rest.Vael raised her horn and did not blow. She watched riders, not sky, found the places fear might borrow their hands, nodded once. The herd moved as one. Hooves placed softly. Spears lowered to thig
Chapter Forty: The Ember Crown
“Walk when it opens,” Vael said.The glass did not shatter. It softened and parted, a winter curtain drawn by an invisible hand. Cold air rolled through the gap and laid a clean taste on every tongue. A frost-white lion stepped forward, quiet, the horn on its brow shining as if it had stored a season under skin. Coins in Kor’Vareth’s braids chimed once, then fell still. The riders lowered their spears to knee height and waited for the stallion to move.Kor’Vareth went first. He tested the edge with a forehoof and placed weight without hurry. The world held. Karan followed on the smoke stallion, then Lyra with Kael in her arms, then Serah and Vael and the Dortracy line behind them. They crossed their own reflections into air that smelled of pine and stone.Beyond the gate lay a narrow basin roofed by iron sky. The glass ribs ended at a shelf of dark ground scattered with white grass. A thin stream ran with the sound of wire brushed by careful fingers. The winter lion stood on a low ris
Chapter Thirty-Nine – The Lion Reforged
“What’s on the lake?” Serah asked.“Not ash,” Vael said. “Not riders.”The black glass field shivered as if a fingertip tested its skin. Far out, something pale slid beneath the crust, a shadow traveling under a mirror. The forge breathed slow.Karan did not reach for lightning. He stood in the doorway with his hands open, letting the desert pass through him. Lyra lifted her mantle so the open circlet rested where any archer could see it. Kael leaned at her hip, listening to a song only he could hear.“It swims,” he whispered. “Not in water. In words.”The smith wiped her palm on leather and watched the lake. “If it favors glass, it favors reflection. It will try to turn you back into yourselves.”“Then we don’t look,” Serah said.“You look,” the smith replied. “And you don’t blink.”Three billets lay on oiled cloth, dark as river stones. Oathsteel was still a promise.Outside, Kor’Vareth stepped onto the nearest ribs and put weight down carefully. Coins in his braid clicked as hair b
Chapter Thirty-Nine – The Lion Reforged
“What’s on the lake?” Serah asked.“Not ash,” Vael said. “Not riders.”The black glass field shivered as if a fingertip tested its skin. Far out, something pale slid beneath the crust, a shadow traveling under a mirror. The forge breathed slow.Karan did not reach for lightning. He stood in the doorway with his hands open, letting the desert pass through him. Lyra lifted her mantle so the open circlet rested where any archer could see it. Kael leaned at her hip, listening to a song only he could hear.“It swims,” he whispered. “Not in water. In words.”The smith wiped her palm on leather and watched the lake. “If it favors glass, it favors reflection. It will try to turn you back into yourselves.”“Then we don’t look,” Serah said.“You look,” the smith replied. “And you don’t blink.”Three billets lay on oiled cloth, dark as river stones. Oathsteel was still a promise.Outside, Kor’Vareth stepped onto the nearest ribs and put weight down carefully. Coins in his braid clicked as hair b
