2025-10-09 21:35:32“Move again and I’ll cut your throat, rider.”
The voice was low, cracked like old leather. Karan froze, half-awake, the edge of a knife kissing the skin
under his jaw. Dawn light seeped through the tall grass, painting the plains in bruised gold.
He didn’t blink. The hand holding the knife trembled just enough for him to know, whoever this was, they
were desperate, not skilled.
“You’d better kill me fast,” Karan murmured. “Because when I open my eyes fully, you won’t get a second try.”
The knife pressed harder. “Big words for a slave with no braid.”
Karan turned his head slowly until his eyes met those of his captor: a thin man, sunburned, his cheeks
hollow. Chains still hung from his wrists. Another escaped slave.
Karan let out a short breath that might have been a laugh. “Then you know the scent of fear when it isn’t yours.”
The man hesitated, then stepped back. “You killed the guards,” he said. “I saw you. From the pit.”
“I killed the ones in my way,” Karan replied, standing. His muscles ached, and the gash on his shoulder burned, but his mind was clear. “Who are you?”
The man lowered the knife. “Name’s Varr. From the coast. Was a fisherman before they caught me.” He looked at the blood-crusted blade in Karan’s hand. “You planning to keep running?”
Karan glanced east. The horizon shimmered with heat and dust. “Running? No. I ride.”
He whistled once—a short, sharp note. The stolen horse appeared from behind the rocks, white flank streaked with sweat. The animal nickered and lowered its head, already bound to him by instinct and the whisper of the old words.
Varr stared. “You spoke to it.”
“I bound it,” Karan said simply, touching the horse’s mane. “Dortracy tradition. A child is tied to a horse at birth. Their souls run together.”
Varr gave a thin smile. “And what happens when the horse dies?”
Karan met his gaze. “Then so does the rider.”
For a moment, neither spoke. The wind whistled through the tall grass, carrying the smell of rain and iron.
Varr finally said, “You’re heading east. Toward the Storm Clans.”
Karan’s jaw tightened. “Toward a debt.”
“Then I’ll come.”
Karan turned to him, amused despite himself. “Why?”
“Because the men who bought us will keep hunting. And you”—Varr gestured at Karan’s tattoos, his
blade“you look like someone they’ll chase harder than the rest. Better to run with the storm than against it.”
Karan gave a small nod. “Then ride if you can keep up.”
They moved fast through the morning, following a narrow trail of dry riverbeds. Karan rode ahead, scanning the horizon; Varr followed on foot, light and quick despite the chains still dangling from his wrists.
The plains changed as the sun climbed—grass giving way to stone, then to cracked earth. Somewhere far north, thunder rolled again, but the air stayed dry.
Karan’s mind was elsewhere—on the flash of his brother’s face, the moment the braid fell, the sound of their father’s voice silenced by shock.
Raikor’s betrayal was not just personal; it had been ritual. In Dortracy law, cutting a warrior’s braid was to strip him of his spirit. It was a death performed in daylight.
He had been killed once. He would not allow it twice.
By noon, the heat shimmered off the plains like fire. They found an abandoned waystation—just a
crumbling ring of stones and the bones of an old campfire.
Varr collapsed in the shade, panting. “You don’t stop, do you?”
“Storms don’t stop,” Karan said, scanning the horizon. He saw nothing—no banners, no riders—but the
feeling of eyes on him lingered.
He crouched and drew a pattern in the dust: three interlocked lines forming a spiral.
Varr frowned. “What’s that?”
“The mark of the Sky Stallion,” Karan said. “Kor’Vareth. The wind-god of the plains. He rides above us when
we fight.”
“Your people worship a horse?”
Karan smiled faintly. “Not a horse. The first rider.”
He wiped the mark away, rising. “Eat if you have food. We move again when the sun drops.”
By sunset, the horizon glowed blood-red. The first vultures circled overhead, silent as omens. Karan had
just dismounted to check the horse’s hooves when he heard the whistle—sharp, rising, familiar.
A hunting signal.
He drew his shakar instantly. “Riders,” he said.
Varr went pale. “How many?”
Karan listened. The sound of hooves was still distant, but growing. “Six. Maybe seven.”
They had no time to run. He led the horse behind a ridge of rock and motioned for silence.
The riders appeared moments later—scouts bearing the Storm Clan’s crimson banners. His brother’s men.
They rode slowly, scanning the ground, their tattoos gleaming in torchlight. The lead rider halted near the ridge, dismounted, and bent to examine tracks in the dust.
Karan recognized him: Jarak, once his sparring partner, now a hunter for Raikor.
“Varr,” Karan whispered, “stay down.”
But the fool shifted, and a pebble clattered down the rock.
Jarak’s head snapped up. “Who’s there?” he barked, drawing his curved blade.
Karan moved before thought. He rose from behind the ridge, shakar in hand, and struck like the wind.
The first blow took Jarak across the throat. He gurgled, collapsing. The others shouted, chaos erupting.
Varr scrambled up, snatching the fallen man’s knife. “They saw us!”
“Then kill fast,” Karan said, swinging into the saddle.
The fight was brief and savage. Dust, screams, blood. The curved blades clashed under the dying sun. Karan moved with the precision of memory, every cut a line in an old song.
When it ended, the ground was slick with crimson. Only one rider remained alive, pinned beneath his fallen horse. He spat blood and cursed in Dortrac.
Karan dismounted and crouched beside him. “Tell Raikor,” he said softly, “that the slave he sold still rides.”
The man glared up. “He will take your head and your horse, traitor.”
Karan leaned closer, voice low. “He’ll have to catch me first.”
He slit the man’s throat with calm precision.
Varr stood watching, pale and silent. “You don’t hesitate,” he said.
Karan wiped his blade on the dead man’s cloak. “Hesitation is for men who expect mercy.”
He turned to the corpses, searching until he found what he wanted, a leather satchel marked with the seal of the Storm Clan. Inside, a sealed parchment. He broke it open.
His brother’s handwriting.
Karan Dor’rak is to be captured alive. The traitor bears the Mark of the Lost. Return him to the capital for judgment by the High Circle.
Karan read it twice, then burned the parchment in the campfire’s first spark. The flames licked upward, devouring his brother’s words.
Varr looked uneasy. “There’s a bounty on you.”
“There’s a debt on him,” Karan said.
He stared into the fire as the wind shifted. Sparks danced into the dark. Somewhere far off, thunder rolled again.
The horse stirred, ears flicking. Karan felt the tremor in his own bones.
He whispered under his breath in Dortrac: “Kor’ath vekh. Shor valen dor.”
(Blood for the wind. The storm remembers.)
Varr sat down beside him, rubbing his wrists. “What happens now?”
Karan’s eyes stayed on the flames. “Now the plains will burn until every clan knows my name again.”
“And your brother?”
A muscle ticked in Karan’s jaw. “He’ll learn the price of chains.”
The firelight painted his face in gold and scarlet. His eyes reflected both.
When dawn came again, the plains were quiet. The bodies of the riders lay half-buried in dust. Karan
mounted his horse, the wind whipping through the ragged ends of his hair.
Varr climbed onto another horse scavenged from the dead. “Where to?”
Karan looked north, where the storm clouds gathered thick and black. “To the old river. There’s a place
where the clans trade and the exiles gather. If I’m to take back what was stolen, I’ll start there.”
Varr smirked weakly. “A slave and a fisherman walk into a city of killers. Sounds like a bad song.”
Karan allowed a ghost of a smile. “Then let’s give them a verse they’ll remember.”
They rode together into the rising light, the plains opening before them like a sea. Above, the first lightning forked across the sky—bright, violent, a promise.
And far behind, unseen in the morning haze, a single rider watched them from a hill. A woman cloaked in
gray, her hair braided in gold, eyes sharp as obsidian.
She whispered to her horse in Dortrac: “Vesh’kor raen. The Storm rides again.”
Then she turned her mount and vanished into the wind.
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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
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