The King's Guard

Chapter 20

The informant, if that’s what he truly was, called himself “Dag.” He was middle-aged, gaunt, with hollow cheeks and a scar that carved a pale line from temple to jaw. He stood like he was already halfway to running, eyes twitching from corner to corner, the whites showing just a little too much. Every few seconds, he’d glance over his shoulder, as though the darkness behind him might come alive.

“They’re coming for me,” he muttered, voice dry and gravelled. “I sold things I shouldn’t have.”

Kael stepped forward, boots crunching softly on the grit-strewn floor. He kept his tone even, careful not to startle the man further. “We’re not here to judge. We’re here to get you out. But you need to hold up your end. The intel. You said you had it.”

For a moment, Dag didn’t answer. His mouth twitched like he was working up the courage to say something else but he thought better of it. With a jerky movement, he reached beneath his weather-stained cloak, fingers trembling, and drew out a small shard of blackglass data.

Reyna stepped forward, wordless, and accepted it from him. She turned slightly away, her gloved fingers sliding the shard into the side of her reader. A faint, cold-blue light illuminated her face as lines of data flickered to life: coordinates, dossiers, partial transmissions, half-corrupted manifests and encrypted lists.

“This is real.” Reyna said, her voice a mix of surprise and grim confirmation.

Then the floor beneath them jolted, followed by a muffled boom that surged up through the stone.

A shockwave punched through the tower’s base, erupting outward. The lower wall split open with a thunderous crack. Concrete and ferroglass exploded inwards. The blast tore them apart like scattered leaves.

Kael hit the ground hard, ribs bruising against fractured tile. Dust filled his lungs. He coughed, gagging through a mouthful of grit, rolling to find his footing amid a storm of falling stone.

Outside, through the gaping hole, shadows poured through the mist like water through a sieve: fast, deliberate shapes. Half a dozen. Maybe more.

“Ambush!” Kyna’s voice rang out from somewhere above, cut by static and panic.

Kael staggered to Reyna’s side, grabbing her by the arm. Shapes blurred at the edge of his vision: armoured figures clad in matte black plating, visors reflecting nothing, moving like wraiths. Cold, clean precision. Not mercs. They were duly trained.

Squad Gamma’s scouts opened fire from the flanks, but it was a stalling effort. They were overrun in seconds, screams silenced by blade or shock round.

Kael reached instinctively for the hilt at his back, but before his fingers even closed around it, something else surged up inside him. A pressure. A hum beneath his skin.

The Temporal Rift.

He hadn’t meant to open it. But it was already there, responding to the panic, the urgency, the threat.

His vision fractured. The world around him bent: colours bleeding at the edges. Sound stretched thin. Time staggered, reversing just slightly like a wheel slipping in reverse.

The Rift groaned.

But it showed him.

He saw the second wave cutting across the ridge. A sniper repositioning, low to the left, hidden in the high undergrowth. Jared’s escape route already compromised. Darius—no signal. Gone.

Kael’s breath hitched.

“Reyna! Cover right! Kyna, shield now!” he shouted, voice echoing strangely in the slowed frame of time.

They moved instantly without further questions. Reyna pivoted, rifle already lifted. Kyna turned, braced her arm, and activated her pulse barrier—light flaring in a sharp arc as incoming fire met the translucent field.

The first wave faltered. Some stumbled back, thrown by the sudden resistance.

Dag ran.

Kael saw it through just the corner of his eye, the cloak disappearing into the grey mist, legs pumping. Kyna swore and gave chase, weapon drawn, vanishing after him.

Kael clenched his jaw, feeling the Rift stretch inside him, thin and unstable, like a thread on fire. His nose began to bleed. Limbs locked.

Then something snapped.

The Rift collapsed like a sinkhole. Kael’s balance gave way. He dropped to one knee, disoriented, trying to find his breath. Everything was too loud, too bright, then nothing at all.

He didn’t even register the attacker closing in until Jared appeared from the smoke, shouting.

A blur of motion.

Blade driving down, not into Kael, but into the soldier bearing down on him.

Steel split armour with a wet crunch. The attacker crumpled at Kael’s side, faceplate cracked and lifeless.

Jared didn’t so much as look at him.

“I’m not dying in this swamp,” he muttered, teeth clenched, ash and sweat streaking his face.

Then he was gone, already turning to cover the next angle.

By the time they dragged Dag back and cleared the last hostiles, the cost was steep. Two squads down. Four confirmed dead, others injured. They withdrew, slipping through the crumbling treeline until they found a low rock face and a narrow crevice that led to a shallow cave. Cold, dark, dry.

Safe for the moment.

Drones swept the canopy overhead, engines whining faintly. Inside, the cave walls absorbed the sound.

Reyna sat with Kael near the back, away from the light of the readers and the whisper of comms.

She didn’t speak right away. Just took his hand, slowly turning it over. His fingers trembled—not from fear, but rather from strain.

“You used it again,” she said, almost gently.

Kael nodded. His throat felt raw. “Had to. We wouldn’t have made it.”

Reyna didn’t argue. She didn’t reassure him either.

“But someone saw.” she added after a moment.

Kael followed her gaze.

Across the cave, Jared leaned against the wall, arms crossed watching him.

Outside, the wind picked up.

A small tracker, no bigger than a coin, lay half-buried in the dirt where Dag had stood flashing red.

The rain had let up just before dawn, leaving behind a slick sheen across the Academy’s stone courtyard. Fine droplets clung to every surface: window ledges, slate tiles, the iron rail that Kael now leaned against, arms folded, eyes fixed on the mist curling over the training fields below like slow smoke.

The air carried the scent of wet stone and cold metal.

Darius had summoned them not long after the Black Dagger mission. The old commander’s tone had struck a strange chord far from reassuring. Kael remembered the way he’d looked at him in that debriefing room.

“You performed well,” Darius had said, his voice even, unreadable. “But be aware, Kael. There are eyes on you. From above, below, and in between.”

Kael hadn’t replied, not because he couldn’t, but because any answer would have felt like stepping onto a floor he wasn’t sure was solid. Darius had already seen too much, and said just enough to confirm it.

Now, the courtyard below looked empty and quiet, but Kael knew better than to trust stillness especially after what he’d found near the tower.

He reached into the inner pocket of his uniform jacket, pulling out the small, dirt-flecked disc he’d retrieved after the ambush—half-buried where Dag had stood. The central diode blinked with a steady red pulse, slower than a heartbeat.

A tracker. But keyed to what? Or who?

Kael turned it over in his fingers. The metal was unfamiliar, lightweight, smooth as bone. He considered reporting it—but something in his gut said no.

It wasn't yet time.

He slipped it back into his pocket.

The encounter after the tournament came unbidden to mind, as it often did. It had lasted less than a minute, yet it stayed with him like something half-carved into memory.

It had been late: too late for drills, too early for patrols. Kael had taken a walk along the outer wall to clear his head, thoughts tangled after the Rift event. That was when he’d seen Jared— his posture unusually rigid, standing just inside the gate, speaking in hushed tones to a figure beyond the perimeter.

Kael had halted in the shadow of a broken column and observed.

The other figure had been robed, tall, utterly motionless. The torchlight didn’t touch its face if it had one. It stood like it had always been there, a fixed point around which everything else moved.

They’d exchanged few words. Just enough for intent to pass. A nod. A turning of shoulders. The robed figure slipped into the treeline like breath fading on a mirror.

Jared had walked away seconds later, unaware of Kael’s gaze tracking his retreat.

Kael hadn’t spoken of it. Not to Reyna. Not even to Kyna, and she usually spotted things before he did. But the image stayed lodged in the back of his mind like a shard of glass too deep to remove.

He exhaled slowly through his nose and stepped back from the railing, boots wet against the stone.

He headed inside.