Soft morning sunlight filtered through the infirmary shutters, painting lazy bands of gold across the polished floor. The faint, acrid scent of sterilizing tonic lingered in the air, mingling with the distant clamor of the barracks: the sharp bark of morning drills, the metallic clang of weapons striking targets. Outside, the world continued as if nothing had changed—but inside, time felt suspended.

  Caelum stepped into Lysera’s room, the weight of his boots echoing softly on the floor. His usually precise, commanding features were shadowed by guilt—a rare vulnerability that pressed like fog around him. He paused, watching her, and then lowered himself beside her bed, a large, scarred hand brushing a stray silver lock from her cheek as he checked her temperature.

  He murmured, almost to himself, a whisper fragile as a thread:

  “…I should have gone with them.”

  Exhaling slowly, he stroked her hair with a tenderness foreign to the Dawnbreaker commander. The sunlight caught the curve of her cheeks, and for a moment, the world held its breath. Then her lashes fluttered.

  Lysera’s eyes cracked open, unfocused at first, then blazing with dawning horror. She gasped and lurched forward, and Caelum’s hand was instantly at her back, steadying her with surprising gentleness.

  “Child, you need rest,” he said softly, his voice firm but calm. “Don’t push yourself.”

  Her hands clutched his sleeve, trembling, panic threading through every syllable.

  “Master… Kaelen went for them—the ones who attacked me.”

  The words sharpened the air. Caelum’s golden eyes widened, pupils constricting as the warmth of his guilt snapped into the cold precision of a war general.

  “Wait here,” he said, his voice hardening. “Let me check his quarters—”

  Lysera shook her head violently, tears brimming despite herself. Her chest hammered in rhythm with the terror gnawing at her gut—the unbearable thought that he might never return.

  “He’s gone, Master…” she choked out. “He came last night… he said goodbye and just… left. I tried to stop him. I begged him not to go. Gods, why didn’t I stop him—why didn’t I hold on? He’s out there alone, and he’s going to die… I—I’m going to lose him…”

  Her voice cracked, splintering into sobs. Caelum’s jaw tightened, a cold shadow sweeping across his features. He pressed a hand to the bedpost, gathering control.

  “Stay here,” he said, voice low, almost a growl. “Rest. You’ve done your part.” He straightened, shoulders squared, the commander once again emerging. “I’ll get Luka and Verona.”

  The corridor swallowed his footsteps as he strode with thunderous purpose. Reaching their adjoining quarters, he raised a fist and struck the doors twice, the sound sharp and resonant, rattling dust from the ceiling.

  “Up! QUARTERS—NOW!” His command cut through the morning clamor like steel through air.

  Both doors burst open. Luka’s scarf hung half-knotted, his eyes wide, fists tightening instinctively. Verona yanked at her boots, ears twitching, claws scraping the floor.

  “Kaelen left,” Caelum continued, voice a blade of authority. “He’s gone after the ambush squad himself.”

  Shock and guilt flickered across their faces. Luka’s hands clenched, veins taut; Verona’s ears flattened against her head, a low, simmering growl rising from her chest.

  “Yes, sir,” they said in unison, voices firm, steadying themselves against the tide of panic.

  A scout rounded the corner, logbook clutched under one arm, breath coming in ragged bursts.

  “Commander! Have you seen Kaelen or Varen? They missed morning roll call.”

  Caelum’s expression darkened, shadows deepening under his eyes. “…He dragged Varen too,” he muttered, voice dropping to a rumbling snarl.

  Turning sharply to Luka and Verona, every word was a command sharpened to a point. “He’s headed to Betra. There’s an old palace there—one of the ambushers is hiding inside. FIND THEM. Bring. Them. Back.”

  Luka barely paused to secure his blade harness, slamming a fresh clip in place with a determined snap. Verona wiped a tear from her cheek and bared her teeth, eyes blazing with lethal intent.

  They sprinted from the barracks, the mission clear, every muscle coiled for pursuit. Outside, the sun climbed higher, indifferent to the storm gathering beneath its golden rays.

  Luka and Verona had been moving for hours, the dawn bleeding pale gold and crimson across the ridges as they raced toward Betra on foot. Their legs ached from scrambling over jagged rock and half-collapsed bridges, each step a silent prayer that Kaelen and Varen had lost their way in the night—that perhaps they hadn’t even reached the palace.

  But any hope dissolved the moment they ducked behind the outer wall.

  No sentries. No patrols. No murmured warnings or nervous chatter. Only silence. And a sickly-sweet tang of blood drifting on the morning wind.

  Verona’s nose twitched, and her amber eyes narrowed as the scent sharpened. She crouched slightly, muscles coiling. “Fresh blood,” she murmured, her voice low and grim. “A lot. They were here.”

  Luka’s throat tightened. He swallowed, the dry scrape of his own fear loud in his ears. “Please don’t tell me they’re already… dead.”

  Verona’s claws flexed as she smacked his shoulder, sharp and deliberate. “They’re Dawnbreakers,” she growled. “Think positive. Move.”

  Blades drawn, they slipped into the palace, senses stretched taut, every shadow a potential threat.

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  The training court came first. The morning air was thick with the coppery bite of iron. Seven corpses lay scattered across cracked tiles, limbs splayed in unnatural angles, ribs caved, skulls crushed—evidence of fists and boots, not shards or blades.

  Luka crouched beside one, examining the bruising, his knuckles brushing against damp, sticky fabric. “Varen,” he whispered, voice tight. “This is his work. Bare hands. No shard.”

  Verona’s ears flattened, tail flicking with a mixture of awe and unease. “…He took on seven by himself? With gauntlets?” Her voice was barely audible. “Damn.”

  Deeper into the palace, the sleeping barracks offered a different horror. A dozen cultists lay on wool blankets, faces serene, as if nothing had disturbed their rest. Their throats had been slit with surgical precision.

  Verona’s fur bristled. She crouched lower. “They killed them while they slept…”

  Luka closed his eyes briefly, a shiver running through his spine. “That’s… cold. Even for us.”

  A tight coil of unease wrapped around both of them, constricting their chests as they crept down a dim hallway to the library.

  Shelves splintered under the weight of discarded books. Three robed scholars slumped forward, heads severed, still seated as if puppets whose strings had been cut. The blade marks were straight, impossibly precise.

  “Wind blade,” Luka breathed, barely above a whisper. “That’s Kaelen.”

  Verona said nothing. Her lips pressed thin, ears pinned back, tail lashing in quiet agitation. This was not just anger—it was dread, the kind that seeps into bone.

  Up the stairwell, they found more cultists slumped beside half-eaten rations, knives lying forgotten at their pillows. Luka and Verona exchanged a glance. “…Varen,” they murmured in unison.

  They finished the grim work their friends had begun, slitting throats with automatic precision, but this time each motion felt heavier, colder, as if the air itself pressed against their hearts.

  Two bodies sprawled at the stairwell’s apex, neat, shallow cuts across their windpipes. Luka’s voice cracked. “This is Kaelen again…”

  The palace seemed to constrict around them. Each step, each scent of iron, made it harder to draw a breath.

  At last, they reached the double doors of Silla’s throne room.

  Blood stained the threshold in jagged, dark swirls. Slash marks gouged deep into the walls, the gold trim cut from ceiling to floor, embedded halfway across the room like a monster’s claws had raked through the palace.

  And there—there she was.

  Her leg severed, her head kicked beneath the shattered fountain. Flies drifted lazily over her mutilated body. The scorched, cauterized stump of her thigh still smoked faintly, a grim testimony to a pain inflicted before death finished the task.

  Both Dawnbreakers froze, stomachs lurching in horrified unison. Nausea swept through them, and they doubled over, bracing themselves against the cold stone walls. Luka wiped bile from his lips, face as pale as bone.

  “…Was this Kaelen?” he rasped, voice hoarse.

  Verona’s voice trembled for the first time Luka had ever heard. “He cut her apart… and shocked the wounds… Kaelen did this.”

  They stood, trembling, staring not at an enemy, but at the shadow of what their friend might have become.

  Verona sniffed sharply, tears glinting in her eyes. “I have his scent,” she said, her voice firmer now. “Northwest.”

  Luka squared his shoulders, the mingling of rage and worry thrumming through his veins. “Then we move,” he said. “Before he goes too far… we can’t pull him back.”

  They sprinted from the throne room, chasing the fading trail of ozone and blood, hearts hammering, hoping desperately that they weren’t already too late.

  It took nearly two brutal hours of climbing, clawing, and scrambling along narrow goat paths before Kaelen and Varen reached Hermon’s Pass—a jagged wound carved into the northern highlands.

  The pass yawned between two towering cliffs of black basalt, jagged as broken blades thrust skyward. Wind funneled through the narrow throat, whistling and keening as it tore across stone and dust, carrying a sharp bite of snow that stung any exposed skin. Ancient pine trees clung to the cliffs like desperate fingers, roots coiling through cracks, twisting stone as though seeking purchase against the world. Far below, a hidden torrent rumbled through the valley, low and relentless, shaking the bones with its subterranean roar.

  A faded hunting path slithered along the scree, and on it trudged a lone cultist. Kaelen and Varen melted into shadow, hoods drawn, eyes narrow, hearts coiled with cold focus.

  The trail opened into a clearing wedged between the cliffs. There, a two-story lodge of dark timber and weathered stone squatted in the hollow. Cultists moved with casual menace, shouldering Auren-rifles and murmuring to one another, smoke curling from the chimney in lazy spirals. The Black Sun insignias hung above the doorway like vultures perched to feast.

  Kaelen lifted a hand, fingers spreading slightly. Wind curled from his palms in invisible ripples, sliding through cracks, creeping beneath floorboards and rafters, stirring dust, shivering the air. His eyes drifted shut.

  “Fifty cultists. One branded,” he murmured, cold as steel.

  Varen’s jaw tightened, voice hushed with tension. “Fifty? They’re clustered… not scattered. What happens if they rush us?”

  Kaelen tapped his shoulder once, ice in his stare. “Relax. I have a plan.”

  The lodge door creaked and swung open.

  A tall figure emerged, black coat sweeping the ground, shoulders armored with onyx Auren plating. A smirk carved across his angular face, every movement fluid, confident, predatory. He barked orders to the guards, eyes flicking to crates being unloaded with practiced ease.

  Kaelen’s breath hitched. Recognition flared—those eyes, that voice, that tilt of arrogance. The ruins of Eryndor surged to memory: Raen Varos, slayer of Raen’s followers, now returned—not for the shard, but to strike at Lysera.

  The realization slammed into Kaelen like a blade. Guilt, grief, rage, and hatred fused into something monstrous. One thought burned hotter than all else: Die.

  Varen saw it first—the shift in Kaelen’s eyes from gold to storm-black. Unease laced his tone. “...You know him?”

  Kaelen didn’t answer. He inhaled once, slowly, and then spoke two words, flat, deliberate: “I’ll do this alone. Go. Hide.”

  Varen froze. “What? No. Kaelen—”

  Kaelen’s gaze met his. Not rage. Not grief. Something colder, endless, edged with pure threat. A silent warning: Do not step in my way.

  Varen’s stomach twisted, yet he stepped back toward a rocky outcrop, knuckles white. “…I’ll watch your back. Just… don’t lose yourself.”

  Kaelen didn’t acknowledge him.

  He stepped from the rocks with deliberate calm, each movement a promise of violence. Cultists at the gate straightened, unease flickering across their features.

  Raen Varos looked up, lips curling in that familiar, predatory smirk. “Well, well. Look what the wind dragged in.”

  Kaelen didn’t reply.

  He raised both hands. Wind coiled around his forearms, screaming and snapping like a storm unwilling to be contained. The ground beneath his boots cracked and groaned under the pressure, his cloak snapping backward, banners caught in a tempest.

  He brought his arms down.

  The air ripped apart in a vertical wave—a colossal blade of wind slicing toward the lodge. Stone, timber, and metal shuddered and split, shorn as if paper-thin. Cultists screamed, debris spiraling in chaotic arcs.

  Raen flickered, dissolving into black smoke for a heartbeat before reforming meters away—Shadow-Walk.

  The wooden lodge didn’t survive. Timbers groaned and fractured, stone pillars snapping like brittle bones, a jagged trench gouged through the center of the structure, stopping only at the cliff face. Silence fell, broken only by the settling dust and distant roar of wind through Hermon’s Pass.

  Kaelen stepped through the debris, stormlight crackling along his arms. Across the ruined clearing, Raen rolled his neck, a wolf satisfied at having cornered prey.

  “This time… you’re not running away, boy,” Raen taunted, voice rich with anticipation.

  Kaelen’s reply was a whisper, calm and deadly: “I wasn’t planning to.”

  They squared off—enemies, monsters, mirrors of each other—amid a field of shattered wood, storm-split earth, and the bitter scent of ozone. Hermon Pass had become their arena, and only one would walk away.