Heaven's Betrayed King

Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7: The Vanishing Trick

Kyran's POV

The pillar of light swept across the final stretch of forest and devoured the distance toward our wagon in a matter of seconds.

I stayed standing on the driver’s bench, watching the beam while my battlefield instincts flared, analyzing the rhythm of the pulse rather than bracing for a lethal impact. It was a soul-signature scanner. It hunted a specific kind of aura instead of burning everything in its path.

“What is that light?” Ris asked, scrambling backward against the cargo chests.

“Get into the footwell,” I ordered, grabbing his collar. “Do not speak.”

I shoved him down onto the boards beneath the bench and dragged a filthy horse blanket over both of us. I crouched over the boy in the dark space and forced the Resentment Core to contract, dragging every thread of dark energy deep into my chest and smothered the glow until only a regular unremarkable mortal heartbeat remained on the surface.

My soul once belonged to a Sovereign but it now hid inside a starved mortal shell layered with corrupted energy. I gambled on the theory that the array sought pure celestial signatures and would ignore a twisted resentment aura.

“I can’t breathe,” Ris choked out.

“Hold your breath,” I warned. “Do not move a muscle.”

The light washed over the wagon and unnatural heat prickled against my skin through the blanket. I kept my breathing shallow and counted the seconds as the beam hesitated directly above us. Three seconds passed in silence before the beam finally continued its sweep south.

“Is it gone?” Ris whispered.

“Wait,” I commanded.

I listened to the groan of unseen chains echoing through the sky as the floating pavilion banked away toward the western mountain pass. The pressure lifted from the air, the horses shuddered back onto their feet and crickets stuttered into a chorus in the grass around us. I threw the blanket aside and hauled Ris up by his tunic.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

Ris wiped his sleeve across his face, smearing a trail of crusted blood under his nose. “I think I am fine. What was that thing?”

“Something hunting a ghost,” I answered. “We are fortunate that we do not match the description.”

“A ghost?” Ris coughed. “That fortress was looking for a dead man?”

“Something like that,” I said as I grabbed the reins and snapped them over the horses. “Sit down and keep quiet. We need to move.”

The wagon jolted forward onto the dirt road and we pushed through the remainder of the night at a hard pace while I kept my eyes on the dark trail, turning over the implications of the scanner.

The Magocracy Inquisitors rarely descended this deep into mortal territory. They needed a reason tied directly to the Nine Heavens. The disturbance likely connected to Drustan’s unstable integration of my stolen divine bones rather than my survival. The traitor sat on the throne and realized his body rejected the marrow.

“You know what that flying fortress was,” Ris said as he pulled his knees to his chest and watched me. “You didn’t even look surprised when the light came down.”

“I have seen them before,” I replied.

“No mortal slave sees an inquisitor pavilion and lives to talk about it,” Ris countered. “Those ships belong in the old myths.”

“I told you the slave died in the quarry,” I said. “You should stop asking questions you are not prepared to hear the answers to.”

“I helped you bury the mine,” Ris argued. “I am sitting on a wagon full of stolen goods. If they catch us, they will kill me just as fast as they kill you. I deserve to know what we are running from.”

“We are not running from them,” I said, keeping my gaze fixed on the road ahead. “They are searching the dirt for a celestial signature. They will not find one here.”

“Because of whatever you did back there,” Ris concluded. “You hid us from a divine array.”

“I masked our presence,” I corrected him. “The Inquisitors rely on their instruments. If the instrument registers a stray dog, they ignore it and keep flying. We are just a stray dog.”

“I don’t feel like a dog,” Ris muttered.

“Then you will die quickly,” I stated. “Surviving requires knowing your exact place in the mud until you have the strength to stand up. You stand up too early and they cut your legs off.”

Ris fell silent and stared out into the dark trees. The hours bled together into a cold exhausting march and we did not speak again until the sky turned purple. Dawn broke over the eastern horizon, painting the clouds in pale light. We crested a low dirt ridge and looked down at the river basin.

Oakhaven spread out below us. The river docks bustled with activity as barges drifted against the wooden piers with dozens of small merchant vessels unloading crates onto the cobblestone shores. I halted the horses at the top of the ridge and studied the single trade road leading down into the town.

A long line of carts and freight wagons choked the path while provincial soldiers manned a makeshift checkpoint at the town gates. They wore chainmail over red tunics and held spears leveled at the drivers. The guards dragged cargo nets off the carts, pried open wooden crates and dumped goods onto the dirt for inspection.

“They are searching the trade line,” Ris noted with his voice shaking. “The soldiers never set up barricades at the lower market. They only collect taxes at the upper fort.”

“Something changed,” I noted.

A merchant in a blue coat who stood beside his cart a few paces ahead of us turned around and glared at the soldiers below.

“This is madness,” the merchant complained. “I have apples rotting in the sun while these fools play customs officer.”

“What are they looking for?” I asked the man.

The merchant scoffed and pointed down the hill. “Crystal smugglers. The governor issued an emergency decree at midnight. Every road is blocked.”

Down at the gate, a broad-shouldered captain dragged another driver down from his seat by the collar then drew his sword and pointed it at the frightened man’s chest.

“No crystal-bearing freight passes this gate without a sealed license from the governor’s office!” the captain shouted with his voice carring clearly up the hill. “Any wagon caught concealing unregistered ore will have its driver arrested on the spot. The crown will seize the cargo. Open those crates!”

Ris grabbed my arm.

“Drax,” he whispered. “We don’t have a license. We don’t have any forged papers.”

“I am aware,” I replied, watching the soldiers pry the lid off a chest and throw the contents onto the street.

“We have two chests of raw stabilizing crystal sitting right behind us,” Ris hissed as he glanced over his shoulder at the canvas tarp. “They are going to search the wagon. We need to turn around right now.”

I looked behind us. Three more merchant carts had pulled up onto the ridge, boxing our wagon into the line with the drivers behind us yelling for the line to move forward. There was no space to maneuver the horses and the narrow dirt road offered no alternate paths down the hillside.

“We cannot turn back,” I said.

“If we stay in this line, they will hang us before noon,” Ris panicked. “I am too tired to fight an entire garrison. You cannot fight thirty armed men in broad daylight with a sword.”

“I did not plan to fight them,” I said.

The merchant in the blue coat stepped closer to our wagon.

“You boys carrying something you shouldn’t?” the man asked, eyeing the tarp. “If the guards catch you with contraband, they’ll lock you in the fort dungeons. You better abandon the cart and run for the trees.”

“Mind your own business,” I snapped at the merchant.

The line shifted forward. The cart ahead of us rolled down the hill and the drivers behind us shouted again. I snapped the reins and guided the horses forward a few paces until we sat trapped between the rock wall of the ridge and a steep drop to the river below.

“Drax, do something,” Ris begged. “The gate is only fifty yards away. The captain is looking right at us.”

I stared down at the checkpoint. The captain wiped sweat from his brow and gestured for his men to approach the next cart. He locked eyes with me from the bottom of the hill as I sat on top of the stolen cargo with no escape route and no allies, waiting for the soldiers to march up the road and tear the canvas away.

“Stay quiet,” I told Ris. “And let me do the talking...”