LOCATION: SHADOWEDGE — TWILIGHT POST (AFTERMATH)
Smoke clung to the trees like regret.
The ridge was quiet now—too quiet. No screams. No clash of glyphsteel. Just the slow, wet crackle of pyres burning the dead. Some still wore Hollow Creed colors. Others bore the crimson helms of the Iron Creed.
Victory had a smell—and it was blood trying to forget where it came from.
Lucan walked through it all.
Silent.
Measured.
A ghost in the shape of command.
Scouts stiffened as he passed. Some saluted. Some just stared, unsure if they were looking at the man they followed… or something colder.
He didn't stop. Didn't speak. He was counting—not bodies, but costs.
---
Not far off, Serin sat against a crumbled outpost wall. Her side was bandaged, one arm in a sling, but she still barked orders between pained exhales.
"No. Move the wounded out of the range of the eastern slope. I said move them, Rehn."
Rehn flinched, then nodded and scrambled off.
Jareth approached, wiping blood from his blade with a shredded cloak. He crouched beside her.
"They followed you," he said. "Held the line because of you."
Serin didn't look at him. Her voice was flat.
"They looked the Iron Creed in the eyes and froze, Jareth. Some of them… just froze."
She ran her thumb over a blackened glyph-stone. It didn't light up.
"I don't blame them," she added. "But I won't forget it."
---
At the higher ridge, Nareth and Zekk stood beneath the shattered flare post, glyphmaps hovering beside them. Zekk muttered something under his breath.
Nareth didn't answer. He was watching Lucan.
"He's not just going to lead us," Nareth said quietly. "He's going to reshape us."
Zekk frowned. "Into what?"
Nareth didn't reply.
---
By the treeline, Rivenna leaned against a burned-out trunk, Voidsteel blade resting across her lap. She was sharpening it slowly, methodically—like it hadn't just ended forty lives in the space of a whisper.
She didn't look up.
But her eyes flicked toward Lucan as he passed.
He didn't stop.
But he looked back.
Two ghosts. Two blades. No words. Just understanding.
---
A system ping cracked across Lucan's mind—cold, efficient, undeniable.
[FACTION STATUS: CONSOLIDATING]
[COMMAND STABILITY: +12%]
[WARNING: FRACTURE POINT NEARING]
Lucan's fists tightened. His eyes burned—just faintly.
He could feel it.
The edge of something deeper.
Darker.
Inevitable.
---
Serin watched the last Iron Creed corpse being dragged into the flames. The smoke rose, thick and bitter.
She whispered, barely loud enough for herself:
"We won back the woods..."
A pause.
Her grip tightened on her sword.
"But did we lose something else?"
---
LOCATION: ASHVALE — PRISON VAULT, COLLAPSED GATE CHAMBER
The blast hit like a whisper that decided it wanted to scream.
The mirrored glyph detonation flared in pale violet — not fire, not lightning, but memory weaponized. The lock on Nyza's chains cracked with a sharp, beautiful snap.
Stone groaned.
Steel shrieked.
Restraint sigils fizzled out like dying stars.
Nyza fell forward, hitting the ground hard — but laughing. Low. Breathless.
She didn't stop to savor it.
She moved.
---
Two guards outside the chamber turned at the noise.
Too slow.
Nyza slammed the first into the wall with a burst of kinetic glyphlight — the other went down with a whisper-slice of glassshard magic across the neck. Not lethal.
But permanent.
She grabbed the keys off one, snagged a cloak off the other, and sprinted through the narrowing tunnels.
No alarms yet.
But that wouldn't last.
Every breath was a countdown.
Every step was borrowed fate.
---
She burst out into the tunnel fork leading toward the old viaduct — freedom no more than sixty meters of corridor away—
And stopped.
Cold.
They were waiting.
Six of them.
Cloaked.
Still.
Silent.
Each bore the sigil of the Fourth Throne — Ashvale — etched into soulsteel over their hearts. Their armor shimmered with enchantments Nyza didn't recognize. Probably lethal. Definitely serious.
But they didn't move.
They didn't have to.
Because between them…
Stood her.
Halix.
Ruler of Ashvale.
Warden of the Fourth Throne.
Mother of Faith.
She didn't wear a crown.
She was one.
Her white steel-forged robes hung still. Her hands were bare — ringed in soulsteel, branded with judgment.
She looked at Nyza like one might look at smoke rising from a burned letter.
Annoying.
Predictable.
Expected.
One of the clerics stepped forward, blade already half-drawn—
Halix raised a single hand.
"Leave her to me."
No argument.
Just obedience.
---
Nyza didn't hesitate.
A flick of her wrist — a blast of mirror glyphs, fractal and razor-edged, fired toward Halix's chest.
Mid-air—
They shattered.
Unraveled.
The spell deconstructed itself as if ashamed to exist in her presence.
Nyza blinked. Fired again.
Glassstorm.
Smoke-blade.
Silence thread.
All three spells fizzled the moment they neared Halix. As if the air itself bent around her will.
"You think your little tricks make you special?" Halix's voice was low. Unimpressed.
Nyza darted left — fake feint, then upward.
Glyph-boosted sprint. Wall-jump. Dive-kick.
Almost behind her.
Almost.
Halix didn't turn.
She simply lifted a finger—
And gravity spiked.
Nyza hit the ground like a thrown stone.
She choked, clawing at her throat. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't move.
Her limbs went numb. Her heart slowed.
Halix stepped forward.
Kneeling.
Delicate.
Predatory.
Her fingers touched Nyza's forehead—two, only lightly.
A glyph flared.
Burned.
Nyza screamed.
She clawed at the floor, shaking—but the mark stayed. Branded deep. Soul-level.
"You ran," Halix whispered. "I walked."
Halix studied her from above.
Eyes calm. Voice colder.
"To think Mirrorhold thought you were their future."
Nyza froze.
Just for a second.
A breath caught in her chest. The flicker of something behind her cracked lips — not fear.
Surprise.
Not because of the insult.
But because Halix knew.
That line only meant one thing.
She knows my name.
Knows my blood.
Knows who I am.
---
Halix turned from her.
Her voice didn't rise, didn't need to.
"Chain her."
The Clerics obeyed.
Rings of soulsteel cinched tight. One looped her throat. Another her wrists. A third her ankles — not to bind movement.
To suppress will.
Then the chamber door hissed open.
Aelira stepped inside.
She didn't rush. Didn't announce herself. She just entered — like someone trying not to wake the dead.
Halix didn't turn to greet her. She didn't need to.
But Nyza lifted her head — barely.
Chains clinked.
Their eyes met.
And for the first time since the vault cracked open, something flickered in Nyza's gaze.
Not defiance.
Not hope.
Something crueler.
Recognition.
Aelira stopped a few steps away.
Her voice came quiet. Strained.
"…I'm sorry."
That was all.
Three words.
Small.
But they landed like a knife between ribs.
Nyza didn't scream.
Didn't cry.
She just… blinked.
Slowly.
Like something inside her had finally closed the door it had held open for too long.
And then her head dropped again.
Not in submission.
In silence.
Aelira didn't move closer.
Didn't touch her.
Didn't explain.
She just stood there…
Looking like she'd betrayed something more sacred than blood.
And for Nyza Velloren, that hurt worse than the chains ever could.