Guhile stood on the mountainside, watching Mosiah burn.

  Smoke rose in black columns that stained the sky. Even from three miles away, he could smell it: burning flesh, charred wood, the acrid stench of dragonfire. His dragon was gone. Dead. The first to fall, brought down by those cursed harpoons before it had even reached the square.

  All he could do now was watch. Watch and wait while Nakar’s yellow dragon finished what they’d started.

  Or tried to.

  The yellow dragon was diving toward the square where Leelinor fought. Guhile could see it through the smoke, a massive shape plummeting toward the elven king. Finally. After all this, they’d kill him. Leelinor would die and Kareed’s vengeance would…

  Something flew.

  Guhile didn’t see it clearly. Just a dark streak cutting through the smoke, moving too fast to track. It hit the yellow dragon mid-dive and the beast’s roar changed, became something else, something wrong.

  The dragon’s wing buckled. It began to fall, not diving but tumbling, out of control.

  “What…” Guhile took a step forward, hand reaching out uselessly. “What was that?”

  Beside him, Nakar stood perfectly still, eyes closed, completely focused on maintaining his mental link with the dragon. His hands were clenched into fists, knuckles white, sweat running down his face despite the cold mountain air.

  Guhile grabbed his shoulder. “Nakar! What happened? What hit your dragon?”

  No response. Nakar’s breathing was shallow, rapid, his entire body trembling with the effort of staying connected to the beast’s mind as it fell.

  “Nakar!” Guhile shook him harder. “We need to move! Leelinor is still alive down there! We need to…”

  The yellow dragon hit the rooftops below. Even from three miles away, Guhile felt the impact through the soles of his boots, a tremor that ran through the mountain stone.

  Nakar’s eyes snapped open.

  Then he started screaming.

  Not words. Just a raw, animal sound of rage and pain. He dropped to his knees, hands clawing at his head, and began pounding the ground with his fists. Once. Twice. Again and again, each impact hard enough to split skin, blood running between his fingers.

  “Nakar!” Guhile knelt beside him, grabbing his wrists. “Stop! What happened?”

  Nakar’s eyes were wild, unfocused. He was gasping for air like a drowning man. The mental link with the dragon… he was still connected, feeling everything the beast felt as it died.

  Guhile slapped him across the face. Hard.

  Nakar blinked. His breathing slowed. The wildness in his eyes receded slightly and he jerked his hands free from Guhile’s grip. His fingers moved in a sharp gesture and the connection severed. The ogre collapsed forward, catching himself on his hands, head hanging between his shoulders.

  “What happened?” Guhile’s voice was quiet now, careful. “What killed your dragon?”

  Nakar was silent for a long moment, just breathing. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper. “A weapon.”

  “What kind of weapon?”

  “I don’t know.” Nakar pushed himself upright, wiping blood from his knuckles onto his pants. “I’ve never seen anything like it. A harpoon. Massive. Made from some kind of stone that…” He stopped, eyes distant, remembering. “It punched through scales like they were parchment. Went straight through the wing membrane, shattered bone. The dragon couldn’t recover.”

  Guhile’s jaw tightened. “How many?”

  “What?”

  “How many of these weapons do they have?”

  “At least two.” Nakar looked down at Mosiah, at the smoke, at the square where his dragon lay dead. “They hit mine twice. Both shots from different angles. There’s more than one launcher.”

  “My dragon went down the same way.” Guhile’s voice was bitter. “First shot, straight through the chest. It was dead before it hit the ground.”

  Nakar’s expression shifted, became grim. “Then they have at least three launchers. Maybe more.”

  “We need to tell Kareed.” Guhile was already moving, pulling a small obsidian shard from his belt. “Now. Before this gets worse.”

  He pressed his thumb against the shard and spoke three words in the old language. The air in front of them rippled, then tore, opening into a vertical slash of darkness. Through it, Guhile could see Kareed’s war room: stone walls, maps spread across tables, torches burning in iron sconces.

  Guhile took a breath and stepped through.

  -----

  The portal spat them into the war room and Guhile’s boots hit stone. The air here was cooler, stale, heavy with the smell of old parchment and lamp oil. Kareed stood at the center table, studying a map of Eldoria’s northern territories. He didn’t look up when they arrived.

  “Report.” His voice was calm, almost bored.

  Guhile straightened despite the exhaustion weighing on every muscle. “The distraction is complete, Master. Mosiah burns. Thousands dead. The capital will need weeks to recover, maybe months. They’ll be too busy treating the wounded and calming the populace to…”

  “Did you kill Leelinor?”

  The question cut through Guhile’s report like a blade. He stopped mid-sentence, mouth still open.

  “Well?” Kareed still hadn’t looked up from his map. “Did you kill him?”

  Guhile’s mouth went dry. “We tried, Master. The dragons were closing in when…”

  “I didn’t ask if you tried.” Kareed’s voice was quiet. Dangerous. “I asked if you killed him.”

  “No, Master. He survived the…”

  Kareed’s head snapped up. His eyes were already glowing with magic, pale blue light spilling from his irises like water from a broken dam. He stood slowly, each movement deliberate, controlled.

  “You tried.” The words came out flat. Cold.

  “Master, we…”

  “YOU TRIED TO KILL MY BLOOD.”

  Kareed’s voice didn’t rise but the words hit Guhile like a physical blow, driving the air from his lungs. The room’s temperature dropped. The air grew heavy, oppressive, pressing down on Guhile’s shoulders until his knees wanted to buckle.

  Guhile dropped to one knee, head bowed, staring at the stone floor. “Master, I thought… the mission was to…”

  “The mission was to create chaos. To distract. To burn and terrify.” Kareed’s boots appeared in Guhile’s vision, three feet away, approaching with slow, measured steps. Each footfall echoed in the silence. “Not to kill Leelinor. Not to touch my sons. Not to spill a single drop of my family’s blood.”

  The boots stopped directly in front of him.

  “You will not kill any of my blood, Guhile. Not Leelinor. Not his sons. Not a single member of my traitorous family will die by your hand.” Kareed’s voice was ice. “Only I have the right to exterminate my own lineage. Only I can end what I began. And when I do, when I’ve killed every last one of them with my own hands, then and only then will I have earned the right to rule what remains. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Master.” Guhile’s voice was barely a whisper. “Forgive me. I should never have presumed…”

  “Master.”

  Nakar’s voice, rough but steady. Guhile heard the ogre step forward. Brave or stupid. Probably both.

  “There’s something else you need to know.”

  Kareed’s boots shifted, turning toward Nakar. “Speak.”

  “They have a weapon. Something new. It killed both dragons.”

  Silence. Guhile kept his eyes on the floor, didn’t dare look up. He could feel Kareed’s attention shift, could almost see the ancient mind working behind those glowing eyes.

  “Both?” Kareed’s voice was quiet. Dangerous.

  “Yes, Master. Both dragons are dead.”

  The silence stretched. Guhile counted his own heartbeats. Five. Ten. Fifteen.

  When Kareed spoke again, his voice was soft as silk over a knife’s edge. “How is that possible? Two months ago they had nothing capable of bringing down a dragon. We scouted their defenses. We watched them for weeks. They had archers. Cavalry. Basic siege weapons. Nothing that could…”

  “It’s a harpoon launcher,” Nakar interrupted.

  Guhile winced. You didn’t interrupt Kareed. Ever.

  But Nakar kept going, words tumbling out. “Massive. Fires projectiles made from some kind of rare stone that pierces dragon scales. I’ve never seen anything like it. The stones… they’re not from Eldoria. They’re…”

  “From the desert.”

  A new voice. Guhile’s head turned slightly, just enough to see a figure emerge from the shadows at the room’s edge. Harueel. Tall, lean, his skin the deep red of his people, black hair falling to his shoulders, golden eyes bright in the torchlight.

  Kareed turned toward him. “Your people don’t make weapons.”

  “No.” Harueel’s expression was troubled. “We don’t. Especially not weapons designed for surface warfare. My people haven’t left the underground cities in generations. We have no reason to craft weapons specifically to fight dragons. We have no dragons in the deep places.”

  “Then how…”

  “They’ve formed an alliance.” Harueel moved to the table, fingers tracing the map’s edge. “Eldoria and my people. Somehow, they’ve convinced the underground cities to share resources. To share knowledge.” He looked up at Kareed. “That shouldn’t be possible. My people don’t trust outsiders. They don’t involve themselves in surface conflicts. For them to do this…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

  Kareed stood perfectly still.

  Guhile counted three heartbeats.

  Then the rage came.

  Kareed raised both hands and energy whips materialized in the air around him, crackling with pale blue light that painted the walls in flickering shadows. They lashed out, striking everything within reach. The table. The walls. The floor. Maps burst into flames, parchment curling and blackening. Stone cracked with sounds like breaking bones.

  A minotaur guard standing near the door opened his mouth but a whip caught him across the throat and severed his head from his shoulders. The head hit the floor with a wet thud. The body stood for another heartbeat before collapsing.

  An ogre warrior turned to flee. Another whip wrapped around his torso and squeezed. Guhile heard bones crunch, heard the warrior’s scream cut short as his ribcage collapsed inward, piercing lungs and heart. He fell, blood pouring from his mouth in a dark flood.

  Guhile tried to rise, to back away, but two whips shot forward faster than thought. They wrapped around him and Nakar both, lifting them off the ground. The energy burned where it touched, searing through clothes, biting into skin. Guhile gasped, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think through the pain.

  “USELESS!”

  Kareed’s voice was a roar now, all pretense of control abandoned.

  “WORTHLESS! WEAK!”

  He slammed them both against the wall. Stone cracked behind Guhile’s back. The impact drove air from his lungs. Then Kareed pulled them back, suspended in midair, and slammed them again. And again.

  “Why did I share my power with beings as pathetic as you? Why did I waste centuries building an army from the dregs of the world when I should have done this myself from the beginning?”

  He hurled them across the room.

  Guhile flew, weightless for a heartbeat, then hit the far wall hard enough to crack stone. His vision went white. When it cleared, he was on the floor, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. Every breath was broken glass in his chest. Beside him, Nakar groaned, trying to push himself up on shaking arms.

  Through blurred vision, Guhile saw Kareed standing in the center of the devastation. His chest heaved. The whips still crackled around him like living things, hungry for more.

  “This will take longer now.” Kareed’s voice was quieter, but somehow that made it worse. “We need a new plan. A better plan. We need to move faster but we also need information. We need to find these weapons. Learn how they work. Destroy them before we make our real assault on Eldoria.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Harueel, who had remained perfectly calm throughout the outburst, cleared his throat gently. “Master, I believe I can help with that.”

  Kareed’s glowing eyes snapped to him. “How?”

  “I know how the weapons work.” Harueel stepped over the minotaur’s headless corpse without looking down. “They’re called targeting systems. Someone near the target uses a magical device to lock onto the dragon’s position. The device sends a signal to the harpoon launcher, guiding the projectile to its target. It’s old technology. Very old. My people invented it thousands of years ago for hunting the great worms in the deep tunnels.”

  “And?”

  “And we need to find out where these launchers are positioned. How many they have. How many of the targeting devices. If we can destroy the launchers and kill the operators, the weapons become useless.”

  Kareed was quiet for a moment, thinking.

  Then he turned. One of his whips lashed out, wrapping around Guhile’s throat. Guhile was dragged across the floor, boots scrabbling for purchase on blood-slick stone. He tried to rise but the whip pulled him forward, faster, until he was kneeling at Kareed’s feet.

  “You will find them.”

  Kareed’s voice was cold, precise, each word a chisel carving commands into stone.

  “You will open a portal back to Mosiah. You will locate every single one of these weapons. You will count them. You will identify their positions. You will discover how many operators they have trained to use them.”

  The whip tightened around Guhile’s throat, cutting off air. His vision started to gray at the edges. His hands scrabbled at the energy, trying to pull it away, but his fingers passed through it like smoke.

  “And you will report back to me with this information. Do you understand?”

  Guhile couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, but he nodded frantically.

  “You have five days.”

  Kareed released the whip. Guhile collapsed, gasping for air that tasted like copper and ash.

  “Five days to give me answers. If you fail again, if you return without complete information, I will kill you myself. Slowly. And I will make sure you watch as I do the same to everyone you’ve ever cared about. Do I make myself clear?”

  Guhile pushed himself to his hands and knees, coughing. Blood ran from his nose where it had hit the floor. “Yes, Master,” he rasped. “Crystal clear.”

  “Then go. Now. Don’t come back without answers.”

  -----

  Guhile staggered to his feet and pulled out the obsidian shard with shaking hands. His fingers were clumsy, numb. He whispered the words and the portal tore open again, showing the mountainside overlooking Mosiah’s burning ruins.

  He stumbled through without looking back.

  Nakar followed, limping, one hand pressed against his ribs where the whip had burned through to bone.

  The portal closed behind them with a sound like tearing silk.

  On the mountainside, the cold mountain air hit Guhile’s face and he collapsed to his knees. His stomach heaved and he vomited, bile and blood spattering the stone. His throat still burned where Kareed’s whip had wrapped around it. His ribs ached with each breath. Blood ran from his nose, dripping onto the stone beneath him.

  Five days.

  He had five days to find weapons he’d never seen before, count them, map their positions, identify their operators, and report back to Kareed with complete information. Five days or he would die screaming while everyone he’d ever cared about was butchered in front of him.

  The problem was simple: he didn’t care about anyone anymore.

  Not really.

  There had been people once. Friends. A woman he’d loved more than his own life. A brother in all but blood. But that was before. Before the rejection. Before the humiliation. Before he’d learned what it felt like to be invisible while standing in a room full of people who claimed to love him.

  Guhile pushed himself to his feet, legs shaking. Below, Mosiah still burned. Smoke rose in black columns that stained the sky. Even from three miles away he could smell it: burnt flesh, charred wood, dragonfire. The stench of success, incomplete though it was.

  Nakar stood a few feet away, silent, staring down at the ruins where his dragon lay dead.

  “We need to move,” Guhile said. His voice was hoarse, raw. “Five days isn’t enough time to scout the entire city. We need to be smart about this.”

  Nakar didn’t respond.

  Guhile walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. From here he could see the central square where Leelinor had fought. Two dragon corpses lay sprawled across collapsed buildings, massive and broken. Warriors moved around them like ants, weapons glinting in the firelight.

  And somewhere down there, Leelinor was still alive.

  The rage came then, sudden and hot, burning through the exhaustion and fear. Leelinor had survived. Again. Just like he always did. The golden son. The hero. The man who could fall from the sky, break half his bones, and still stand up to command an evacuation like some kind of immortal saint.

  Guhile’s hands clenched into fists.

  “I almost had you,” he whispered. “The dragons were right there. One more second and you would have been ash.”

  But that wasn’t true and he knew it. Even if the harpoons hadn’t hit, even if the dragons had reached Leelinor, somehow the bastard would have survived. He always did. It was his gift. His curse. The thing that made him untouchable.

  Nakar moved beside him. “Where do we start?”

  Guhile pulled the obsidian shard from his belt again and began tracing runes in the air. The portal started to form, tearing reality like cloth, showing a different angle of the burning city, closer this time, near the western wall where the harpoon launchers would likely be positioned.

  But before stepping through, Guhile stopped.

  His hand hung in the air, trembling. He stared at the portal, at Mosiah beyond it, and suddenly he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

  The memories came flooding back, unwanted and unavoidable.

  -----

  Years Ago: The council Hall

  The council hall blazed with white crystal light that caught in the polished marble and threw it back in a thousand fractured reflections. Ecos sat at the high table, robes white as winter snow, hands folded with the patience of someone who’d outlived wars and plagues and the rise and fall of kingdoms. Zeeshoof sat at his right, ancient even among elves, eyes sharp despite the centuries behind them.

  Leelinor stood near the great map of Eldoria that dominated the far wall, armor polished to a mirror shine, the picture of a future commander. Twenty-three years old and already carrying himself like someone born to lead.

  Guhile stood before a shimmering projection of runes that hung in the air like frozen lightning, fingers ink-stained, eyes bright with the kind of hope that comes before you learn the world doesn’t care how brilliant you are.

  “If we fuse ARK veins with the lower ley-lines,” he explained, hands moving through the projection, rearranging the glowing symbols, “we can stabilize transport and shield work simultaneously. We could move troops across the kingdom in hours instead of days. Reinforce broken walls before the enemy even knows we’re there. Yes, it’s dangerous, but contained properly, with the right safeguards, the power output would revolutionize our entire defensive strategy. We could…”

  Zeeshoof raised a hand and the room went quiet.

  “Contained properly by whose definition?” he asked gently. His tone wasn’t unkind but it cut through Guhile’s enthusiasm like a blade. “Yours? You are young, Guhile. Brilliant, absolutely, but young. These are not toys. They are engines of catastrophe if mishandled. The ARK veins were sealed for a reason. Our ancestors feared them.”

  Another councilor, an older elf with gray in his beard, snorted softly.

  “Your ideas are too sharp,” he said. “You’ll cut us all open if we let you play with forces you don’t fully understand.”

  Guhile’s smile faltered. “With respect, I do understand them. I’ve spent years studying the old texts, the forbidden archives, the…”

  “Forbidden for a reason,” the councilor interrupted.

  Ecos leaned forward, his gaze kind but firm. He looked at Guhile the way a father might look at a son proposing something reckless and well-meaning.

  “Not yet,” he said quietly. “The kingdom is not ready for such risks. Our people have bled enough in the last war. We cannot ask them to bleed for experimentation, no matter how promising.” He turned, and the weight of his attention shifted away from Guhile like a sun moving behind clouds. “Leelinor, what do you think?”

  The room’s focus pivoted away from Guhile, away from the runes, toward the golden son.

  Leelinor hesitated. He looked at Guhile and saw the hope burning there, bright and desperate, and it hurt to answer. But he answered anyway, because that’s what Leelinor did. He gave the people what they needed to hear, even when it cost him.

  “I think Guhile’s work is remarkable,” he said carefully. “Truly. I’ve read his proposals. They’re… they’re beyond anything I could conceive. But if even he can’t guarantee absolute safety, then we should wait. Our people have bled enough for experimentation. We owe them caution.”

  Murmurs of approval rippled through the council. The decision settled like dust.

  Guhile stood there, smile frozen on his face, hands still raised in the air where he’d been gesturing. Slowly, he lowered them. Bowed.

  “Of course,” he said. His voice was perfectly controlled. “We wouldn’t want my dangerous theories to inconvenience anyone.”

  The meeting adjourned. Councilors filed out, some patting Leelinor on the shoulder, others nodding to Guhile with expressions that said better luck next time, brilliant boy.

  Later, in a quiet corridor outside the hall, Guhile cornered Leelinor.

  “You could have stood with me.” His voice was low, tight, barely controlled. “You could have said, ‘Let him try. Let us risk something for once.’ Instead you played the hero of the people again. Safe. Reasonable. Beloved.”

  Leelinor’s shoulders sagged. He looked tired suddenly, older than his years.

  “Guhile… I do stand with you. But I also stand with the farmers and children who would die if we miscalculate. I’m trusted with their lives. I can’t bet them on an ‘if.’”

  Guhile’s laugh was humorless, bitter. “And I’m trusted with what, exactly? Warnings? Footnotes in the archives? When they carve history into stone, your name will stand on the walls. Mine will be buried in the margins with all the other brilliant idiots who weren’t quite safe enough.”

  Leelinor reached out but Guhile stepped back, putting distance between them.

  “I am your friend,” Leelinor said softly. “You know that.”

  Guhile held his gaze and something dark flickered behind his eyes, something cold and wounded.

  “I used to believe that,” he said. “I’m not sure I do anymore.”

  He turned and walked away, leaving Leelinor standing alone in the corridor.

  -----

  The white gardens

  The white garden arches were in full bloom, petals drifting through the air like slow snow. Elooha walked between them, sunlight caught in her hair, turning it to spun gold. Her hands were dusty with ink and chalk from the codices she’d been studying in the archives. She was brilliant in the quiet way that people often overlooked not flashy, not loud, but sharp and curious and relentless in her pursuit of knowledge.

  Guhile walked at her side, heart thudding like a child’s.

  “And then,” he said, almost shy, gesturing with ink-stained fingers, “if you rotate the star map just so, the constellations align with the old tribal marks of the First Peoples. It means they charted the sky long before we etched runes for it. Can you imagine? A shared language written in starlight, passed down across generations who never met but somehow understood the same patterns…”

  Elooha laughed softly, eyes bright with genuine delight.

  “You talk about the stars like you’re in love with them,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone so alive as when you’re explaining things no one else sees.”

  His cheeks flushed. “You’re the only one who listens long enough to let me explain them.”

  She stopped walking and turned to face him fully. For a heartbeat he drowned in the blue of her eyes, in the way she looked at him like he mattered, like his words weren’t dangerous or foolish but important.

  “I listen because it matters,” she said quietly. “Because you matter. Leelinor is brave. Ecos is wise. But you…” She poked his chest, right where his heart hammered. “…you see what’s coming before anyone else does. That’s a gift. Don’t let them make you think it’s a curse.”

  He almost said it then. I love you. The words clawed up his throat, desperate and terrified.

  Instead he asked, voice barely above a whisper, “And what do you see coming, Elooha?”

  She smiled a little sad, a little nervous, like she knew something he didn’t.

  “I see a future where the three of you keep this kingdom alive,” she said. “Leelinor with the sword, you with the runes, me with whatever’s left of my patience.”

  “That’s not an answer,” he said softly.

  “No,” she agreed. “It’s not.”

  Later that year, under those same arches, he watched her slip her hand into Leelinor’s.

  The council cheered. Bells rang across Eldoria. Friends embraced them both, laughing and crying with joy.

  Elooha rested her head against Leelinor’s chest as if it were the only place she had ever belonged. Her smile was radiant. Complete.

  Guhile stood at the edge of the crowd, clapping with numb hands while something shattered quietly inside his ribs, so thoroughly that he thought he might never feel whole again.

  Leelinor caught his eye across the distance, his expression hopeful, pleading. Say you’re happy for us.

  Guhile smiled back. It felt like lying on his own grave.

  -----

  The Sickroom

  Elooha lay in bed, skin pale as parchment, breath shallow and labored. The room smelled of herbs and desperation sage and rosemary and something bitter the physicians had tried that morning. Outside the door, priests whispered prayers. Physicians argued in low, tense voices about treatments that weren’t working.

  Leelinor sat at her bedside, fingers laced with hers, eyes ringed with sleeplessness. He looked like a man who hadn’t left that chair in days, because he hadn’t.

  Guhile stood in the doorway, watching.

  Leelinor looked up and there was no commander in his face, no heir to the throne only a man terrified of losing everything that mattered.

  “Guhile,” he said, voice rough with exhaustion. “You’ve read more than any of them. If this is some curse, some rune, some…” His voice broke. “Tell me. Tell me how to break it. Please.”

  For one insane moment, Guhile almost confessed. It was me. I twisted the wards. I made her weak. Every herb I recommended, every ritual I helped her perform poison dressed as medicine. The words surged up his throat and died there, strangled by something that might have been shame or might have been cowardice.

  He stepped into the room instead, voice steady.

  “I’m still searching,” he said. “There are rituals in the old texts. Dangerous ones. No one dares attempt them anymore. The price would be… high.”

  “Take it from me,” Leelinor said immediately, gripping Elooha’s hand harder. “From my body, my blood, my years take it all from me, not her. Whatever the cost, I’ll pay it.”

  Elooha’s eyes fluttered open. She tried to smile, weak but genuine.

  “Always the hero,” she whispered. “Always ready to bleed first.”

  Leelinor bent and kissed her forehead, so gently it looked like he was afraid she might break.

  Guhile watched, poison and longing curling together inside him like snakes.

  Later, when Leelinor had finally fallen asleep in the chair, Guhile returned alone. He leaned close enough for his words to stir the hair at her temple.

  “He will always choose them over you,” Guhile murmured. “The walls. The crown. The people. You will never be first. Not really.”

  Her eyes, half-closed, shimmered with something that might have been tears.

  “Leelinor loves me,” she breathed.

  “I know,” Guhile said quietly. “That’s the tragedy.”

  The rituals he had woven into her life were subtle. A ward that drained strength instead of giving it. An herb that thinned the blood while claiming to soothe. A binding rune carved into the threshold of her room that turned her own life essence against itself, slowly, over months, until she was too weak to stand.

  She grew weaker day by day. Leelinor broke in front of her, piece by piece. And Guhile watched.

  Triumph tasted like ash and honey on his tongue.

  -----

  The tower

  Storm wind howled around the spires of Eldoria, tearing at stone and mortar with fury. Rain lashed the battlements in sheets so thick the city lights below blurred into streaks of gold and white.

  Guhile stood barefoot on cold stone, toes curling over the edge of the parapet. One step and the silence would be complete. One step and he wouldn’t have to feel anymore.

  “That would be a waste,” a voice said behind him.

  He turned. A man stepped from the darkness not young, not old, draped in a cloak that seemed to drink the light. Silver hair. Eyes deep and unreadable.

  Kareed.

  “I know you,” Guhile said hoarsely. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Kareed replied mildly. “Some of us just keep walking.”

  He moved closer, gaze taking in the ink on Guhile’s hands, the runes burned into the parapet where he’d carved despair into stone with magic.

  “They suffocated you,” Kareed said quietly. “Locked your mind in a cage and called it prudence. They crowned your friend. They took your love. And then they dared to tell you your ideas were dangerous.”

  Guhile’s throat tightened. “You don’t know anything about…”

  “I know genius when I see it,” Kareed cut in, voice soft but sharp as a blade. “I know the look of a man whose heart has been scraped hollow and filled with other people’s choices. I also know this: you could reshape this whole kingdom. Not as their obedient scribe, but as its architect.”

  No one had ever said that to him.

  Guhile stared.

  “And you would let me?”

  Kareed smiled slowly. “I would help you.”

  He didn’t laugh at Guhile’s theories. He didn’t flinch from his dangerous ideas. He leaned in. Listened. Fed them. Gave them teeth.

  Belief became rope. Rope became chains.

  -----

  The present

  Guhile opened his eyes and found himself back on the mountainside, staring at the portal he’d created, the memories fading like smoke.

  “Leelinor was my friend,” he whispered to the empty air. His voice cracked. “My brother. He knew I loved her. He knew, and still…”

  Hatred strangled the rest.

  “He had it all,” Guhile rasped. “The sword. The throne. The people. And her. He had everything and he didn’t even see it. Didn’t appreciate it. Just walked through life expecting the world to hand him victories.”

  Elooha’s laughter echoed in his skull, twisted now into something cruel. Her blue eyes, once a refuge, burned in his mind as accusations.

  “She rejected me,” he spat. “She killed me first. He finished the job just by existing. So yes, yes, I took her from him. I made him feel what I felt. Emptiness. Helplessness. Loss.”

  His words scraped out like broken glass.

  For the first time in years, he saw himself clearly not a dreamer, not a misunderstood genius, not a man ruined by love.

  A hollow vessel. Filled with envy. Filled with rot. Dangerous precisely because he had once wished to heal.

  “Five days,” he muttered, turning back to the portal.

  Beside him, Nakar waited in silence.

  “We start,” Guhile said quietly, stepping toward the shimmering opening, “by doing what I do best. Watching. Learning. Finding weaknesses.” He paused at the threshold, looking back at the ruins one last time. “And when we have what Kareed needs, we’ll give it to him. Then he’ll burn this city to ash and everyone in it.”

  He looked down at Mosiah through the portal, at the place where Leelinor was still alive despite everything.

  “For you, Leelinor,” he whispered. “For Elooha. For everything you took. For everything I was meant to be.”

  Then he stepped through.

  The portal closed behind them.

  And deep in Mosiah, Leelinor continued his work, unaware that his oldest friend was watching from the shadows, counting the days until everything he’d built would fall.