Jared Grimhart walked alone through the black-barked trees of the Whispering Forest, boots sinking into the damp moss. The canopy above was so thick that midday light barely reached the ground, turning everything into shades of deep green and charcoal gray. His cloak, once black, was now faded and patched in a dozen places from years of hard travel and harder fighting. A long scar ran along his left forearm, a souvenir from a troll's claw two summers ago.
He was thinking about the letter.
The parchment now ash with the bodies of the rebels he just killed, even though he had read it only once. The imperial seal ,a stag with antlers like jagged crowns had been broken hours ago. The words were simple, cold, and final:
"By imperial decree, Prince Jared Grimhart is summoned to Stag City. Present yourself at the Palace within fourteen days. The Emperor awaits." and for what? A stupid marriage proposal.
No explanation. No apology. No acknowledgment of the seven years he had bled in the Uncrowned Lands. Just an order, as if he were still that silent ten-year-old boy locked in his room.
Jared's jaw tightened until his teeth ached.
"After all this time." he thought
He stopped beside a fallen log covered in glowing blue fungi and slammed his fist into the bark. The impact split the wood with a sharp crack that echoed through the trees. Birds exploded upward in a startled flurry. He didn't care. Rage, hot and familiar, coiled in his chest like a living thing. Seven years of monsters, mutinies, ambushes, and endless rain. Seven years of building something from nothing—his own ragged army of the unwanted—and now the man who had thrown him away wanted him back like a dull blade that might still have some use.
"Pawn," he muttered, voice low and bitter. "That's all I've ever been to you."
He kept walking, boots crunching over dead leaves. The forest smelled of wet earth, pine resin, and distant smoke from his camp. Every step fed the anger, but beneath it lay something sharper: a hollow ache he refused to name.
Family.
The word tasted like rust.
The Grimharts were not merely nobles. They were of Edenian blood—ancient, proud, and laced with power that made many to tremble. Their beauty was legendary but was only the surface. What truly defined them was the magic that thrummed in their veins like a second heartbeat. Powerful, wild, and hungry.
The family had always struggled to conceive. The blood was too potent, too demanding. Common blood diluted it dangerously, sometimes killing the child before birth or leaving it weak and sickly.
So Grimharts married cousins, distant or close, always seeking partners with strong magical lineages. Jared's own parents—Emperor Ezra and Empress Seraphine—were third cousins, their union carefully arranged to keep the Edenian spark from guttering out.
And then there was Jared.
No spark. Not even an ember.
The memory of his eighth birthday rose unbidden, as it always did when anger burned low.
---
The Black Forest had been colder that morning. Mist clung to the ancient trees like ghostly shrouds. Young Jared, barely tall enough to see over the ferns, had practically vibrated with excitement. He wore the ceremonial white tunic embroidered with silver stags, his small hands clutching the ritual dagger his mother had given him the night before.
"Stay close, little brother," Sael had warned, voice already deepening at thirteen. His older brother's hair was the color of moonlight, eyes bright with barely contained power.
Grace, two years younger than Sael, had simply smiled and ruffled Jared's hair. "You'll be fine. The right stag will choose little brother."
Their father, Emperor Ezra Grimhart, stood like a statue carved from stone. Tall, severe, with the same silver-streaked black hair Jared would never inherit in the same way. Ezra's presence made the forest keepers bow so low their foreheads nearly touched the ground.
Jared remembered the moment Corvus appeared.
The Black King emerged from the treeline like living shadow given form. His coat was deepest obsidian, antlers silver as starlight, mane streaked with gray like storm clouds. Golden eyes glowed with ancient intelligence. The great stag moved with regal calm, each step silent despite his massive size.
Ezra stepped forward. Corvus lowered his majestic head, muzzle brushing the Emperor's palm in greeting.
"Good to see you, old friend," Ezra had said, voice softer than Jared had ever heard it. For one fleeting second, the hard lines of his father's face relaxed into something almost like peace.
Jared's heart had soared. "If Father can bind with such a creature, then I can too."
When the forest keepers signaled it was his turn, Jared had run forward, small legs pumping, white tunic flapping. The keepers laughed at first until the forest itself seemed to reject him.
Stags burst from the undergrowth. Not gentle guardians, but wild-eyed and snarling. Antlers lowered like spears. Hooves thundered. Jared froze for half a second, then turned and sprinted back toward the clearing. Branches whipped his face. A sharp antler grazed his shoulder, tearing fabric and skin. Blood bloomed hot and red. He stumbled, fell, scrambled up again, sobbing with terror and confusion.
He burst out of the treeline bleeding and crying.
Silence fell like an axe.
The forest keepers whispered among themselves. Sael stood frozen, face pale. Grace's hand flew to her mouth. Ezra said nothing. He simply turned on his heel and walked away, cloak snapping behind him like a judgment.
That night, the whispers spread through the palace like poison: "The second son has no magic. The first Grimhart in recorded history to fail the binding ritual."
Jared was confined to his rooms for two years. Servants left food at the door. Tutors were forbidden. Only Sael and Grace were allowed occasional visits, slipping in like conspirators to bring sweets or stories. He became a ghost in his own home, seen but never acknowledged.
At ten years old, the Emperor made his decision.
"You will go to the Uncrowned Lands. Restore order. Prove your worth through steel and blood, since magic will not serve you."
The Queen—his mother—had nearly burned the Palace to the ground when she learned of it. Servants still spoke in hushed tones about the day the imperial wing shook with her fury. Windows shattered. Tapestries caught fire. Ezra had sent Jared away in secret, weeks earlier than planned, without a proper goodbye.
The marriage between Emperor and Empress had cracked that day. It never fully healed.
---
Jared emerged from the Whispering Forest and saw the camp sprawled across the valley below. Smoke rose from dozens of cookfires. Tents of patched canvas and stolen silk dotted the clearing. A little over a thousand men—former bandits, thieves, deserters, murderers, and a handful of idealists who had simply grown tired of the empire's endless wars—moved about their tasks.
They were his.
The Forsaken Prince's Army, they called themselves with dark humor. Jared had found most of them in chains or hiding, offered them purpose instead of death, and they had followed. Others had joined after hearing stories of a prince who fought beside his men, who shared rations equally, who never asked for magic when courage and steel would do.
As he descended the slope, two guards at the perimeter snapped to attention.
"Welcome back, Your Highness!"
"At ease," Jared said, voice rough.
They stepped aside, but their eyes lingered on his face. The frown he wore was deep enough to cast shadows. Men who had charged troll dens without flinching suddenly found urgent reasons to look busy or vanish behind tents as he passed. Whispers followed him like smoke.
"He looks ready to kill someone."
"Letter from the capital, I heard…"
Jared ignored them and strode straight to the large command tent at the center. The fabric was heavy, dyed black with a crude silver stag painted on the flap—his own makeshift banner. Inside, the air smelled of oil, steel, and old blood. A scarred wooden desk dominated the space, covered in maps of the Uncrowned Lands, half-written reports, and his journal.
He sat heavily, pulled the journal toward him out of habit, then stopped.
Jared stared at it for a long moment. His hand hovered over the quill, but the words would not come. Instead, the rage surged again, hot and choking.
Seven years.
He had been ten when they sent him here. A child with a dagger too big for his hand and no army, no protection, only a sealed order and a few protectors that were sent to be his sworn shield and sword.
Instead, he had survived. More than survived—he had conquered.
He remembered the first year: endless skirmishes against bandit lords who laughed at the "pretty princeling." He remembered learning to sleep with one eye open, to fight with broken ribs, to stitch his own wounds by firelight. He remembered the night one of his retainer died protecting him, whispering, "You're not like them, lad. You're better."
Jared had buried the man with his own hands.
Then he had started recruiting. First a dozen desperate souls, then fifty, then hundreds. He gave them discipline, purpose, and a share of whatever spoils they earned. In return, they gave him loyalty sharper than any magic.
And now his father wanted him back. Not as a son. As a tool. Some political pawn in the endless game of managing the empire's fractious borders and restless nobles.
Jared's fingers curled into fists on the desk. The wood creaked.
He could refuse. He could stay here, in the only place that had ever felt like home, with men who had chosen him when blood had not. He could keep fighting monsters and building something real.
But an imperial summons could not be ignored. Not without consequences that may fall on his mother, on Grace, perhaps even on the fragile peace he had carved in these lawless lands.
A soft knock sounded at the tent flap.
"Enter," he growled.
Captain Thorne stepped inside a tall, grizzled, missing two fingers on his left hand from a ghoul attack three years back. He had been a deserter from the imperial legions before Jared offered him a second chance.
"Men are nervous, Highness," Thorne said without preamble. "You came back from the forest looking like you wanted to burn the world. Word's spreading it's a letter from Stag City."
Jared exhaled slowly. "It is."
Thorne waited, knowing better than to push.
Jared stood and walked to the small chest in the corner. He pulled out a worn leather flask, took a long drink of harsh grain liquor, then offered it to the captain. Thorne accepted and drank.
"I'm being called back," Jared said finally. "To the capital. The Emperor has… use for me."
Thorne's bushy eyebrows rose. "After seven years of silence?"
"Exactly."
The older man handed the flask back. "You going?"
"I don't have a choice. Refusing an imperial summons is treason, even for a prince." Jared's laugh was bitter. "Especially for a prince with no magic."
Thorne studied him for a long moment. "You've built something here, Jared. These men… they'd follow you into the Abyss itself. If you told them we're marching on the capital instead—"
"No." Jared cut him off sharply. "I won't cause a civil war. Not for such petty reasons."
He paced the length of the tent, boots thudding on the packed earth. Outside, the sounds of camp life filtered in: laughter around cookfires, the clang of a blacksmith's hammer, the whinny of horses. His horses. His men. His life.
Memories kept surfacing, uninvited.
His mother's face the last time he saw her—beautiful and fierce, eyes wet with unshed tears as she pressed a small silver stag pendant into his palm. "Come back to me," she had whispered before the guards pulled him away.
Grace's letters, smuggled through trusted servants, full of court gossip and quiet encouragement.
Sael—always distant, always perfect—standing at their father's side during rare state functions Jared had glimpsed from hiding.
And his father. Emperor Ezra Grimhart. The man who had looked at his bleeding, magicless son and seen only failure.
Jared stopped pacing. He pulled the silver stag pendant from beneath his tunic—the one his mother had given him. It was tarnished now, the chain thin from years of wear, but he had never removed it.
"I leave at dawn with Amon" he said quietly. "Take command while I'm gone, Thorne. Keep the peace here. If I don't return… the men are yours to lead as you see fit."
Thorne's face hardened. "You'll return. You always do. And if the capital tries to keep you, we'll come fetch you ourselves."
Jared managed a faint, crooked smile—the first since reading the letter. "I might hold you to that."
He spent the rest of the evening writing orders, reviewing supply lists, and speaking with his lieutenants. Each man reacted differently: some with anger on his behalf, some with quiet worry, a few with grim determination. By the time the campfires burned low, the entire force knew their prince was being summoned home after seven years of exile.
Jared returned to his tent long after midnight. The oil lamp flickered, casting long shadows across the maps. He sat at the desk again and finally opened his journal.
The pages were filled with cramped, practical notes—battle plans, supply tallies, names of the fallen. But the newest entry was different.
He dipped the quill and wrote slowly, the ink dark against the yellowed paper:
"They call me back to Stag City after seven years of silence. The Emperor remembers his forgotten son only when he needs a sword arm or a convenient scapegoat. I go not for him, but because still binds me. Because my mother still waits. Because the men I leave behind deserve a leader who does not start wars for personal vengeance."
"But if the Obsidian Palace thinks the boy they exiled is the same weak child who failed the binding… they will learn how steel forges what magic cannot"
"Corvus never chose me. Let them remember that when I stand before the throne."
Jared set the quill down. The anger had not left him, but it had settled into something colder, sharper. A blade honed by years in the dark.
He blew out the lamp and lay on his narrow cot, staring at the canvas ceiling. Outside, the camp slowly quieted. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled.
Tomorrow he would ride for the imperial capital, in a few days he would face the family that had abandoned him, the Forsaken Prince would walk the halls of the Palace once more.
But tonight, in the dark, Jared Grimhart allowed himself one quiet thought:
"After all this time… I am no longer the boy who ran from the stags."
He closed his eyes, the silver pendant cool against his chest, and slept the uneasy sleep of a man marching toward ghosts.