The door shut behind them with a sharp click, but the sound continued to roll down the corridor for several seconds before vanishing behind the thick stone walls. The captain's office was far larger than any of the rooms they had passed through. The ceiling, supported by old blackened beams, rose high enough that the flames from the lamps barely reached its upper corners. Two large windows overlooked the city, letting in the last orange light of evening and cutting long strips of brightness across the dark wooden floor. A fireplace burned along the left wall, the wood crackling slowly and filling the room with dry heat mixed with the scents of wax, old paper, leather, and coffee that had been left untouched for hours.
Maps covered almost an entire wall. Some had been marked in red ink, others pierced with pins or connected by thin black strings. Several weapons hung between the shelves, maintained with almost obsessive precision, while an old chipped sword rested alone above the fireplace. The desk itself had nearly disappeared beneath reports, opened envelopes, and uneven stacks of files. It wasn't the perfectly organized room of a man who had everything under control. It was the room of someone who had spent days trying to keep too many problems from falling apart at once.
Thalen remained perched on Tharion's shoulder, his talons sinking just deep enough into the fabric to hold without hurting him. His head slowly turned from one side to the other. To a human, the room might have seemed quiet.
To him, it wasn't.
He could hear the wood shifting inside the walls, the barely perceptible scrape of a sheet of paper disturbed by a draft, the footsteps of a knight somewhere in the corridor behind them…
And above all—
the sudden change in Tharion's heartbeat.
Because behind the desk—
someone was writing.
The man had aged.
His once-dark hair was now streaked with gray, especially around the temples. His beard was shorter than Tharion remembered, and deep lines had formed around the corners of his eyes.
But some things hadn't changed.
The scar cutting through his left eyebrow.
The way he held his pen.
The straightness of his back despite the hours he had probably spent sitting there.
Even that small habit of nudging documents away from the edge of the desk with his thumb.
Tharion stopped so abruptly that Thalen had to spread one wing slightly to keep his balance.
For a moment, everything else in the room seemed to drift farther away.
The fire.
The wind against the windows.
The scratching of the pen.
His stomach tightened.
— …You.
The pen stopped moving.
The captain slowly raised his eyes.
Their gazes met.
Something difficult to identify crossed the man's face.
Surprise, perhaps.
A much older exhaustion.
Guilt that he had spent so many years learning to hide that it barely looked like guilt anymore.
— Tharion.
His name.
Nothing more.
And yet Tharion's jaw tightened immediately.
The heat rising through his chest had nothing to do with the fireplace. It began somewhere beneath his ribs, heavy and unpleasant, before climbing into his throat. His right hand slowly closed.
His nails dug into his palm.
Thalen lowered his head slightly.
A faint vibration passed between them.
The Resonance opened.
His voice never crossed the room. It appeared directly inside Tharion's mind, calmer and lower than when he was joking.
— You know him.
Tharion didn't answer.
— Very well, apparently.
Still nothing.
The captain frowned slightly as he watched the owl, obviously hearing none of it.
— Your heart is beating way too fast.
Tharion muttered through his teeth:
— I know.
The captain lifted his head slightly.
— Excuse me?
Thalen looked toward Tharion.
— I'm getting off.
Tharion barely had time to react before the owl pushed off with his talons. His wings opened with a powerful rustle, sending a small gust across the room that made several papers tremble on the desk. Thalen crossed the room almost silently and landed on top of a large bookcase between two dust-covered statues.
From there, he could watch both men without standing between them.
The captain slowly set down his pen.
— It's been a long time.
Tharion stared at him.
Then a short laugh escaped him.
There was nothing amused about it.
— Seriously?
The captain said nothing.
— That's what you came up with?
Tharion stepped forward. The floorboards groaned beneath his boot, loud enough to fill the silence between them.
— After all these years… after everything you did…
He spread his arms slightly.
— "It's been a long time"?
The captain breathed in quietly.
— I didn't know how you would react.
— Ah.
Tharion slowly nodded.
— So you knew.
The captain remained silent a second too long.
Something tightened further inside Tharion's stomach.
— You knew I was alive.
— Yes.
The word fell simply.
Tharion stared at him.
Behind him, the fire cracked sharply. A spark jumped from one of the logs before dying against the metal grate. Down in the street, the distant wheels of a cart passed beneath the windows.
Neither man looked away.
— Since when?
— Several years.
Tharion blinked once.
— Several years…
His voice lowered almost against his will.
He slowly ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek before speaking again.
— Several fucking years?
— Yes.
— And nobody came.
— It wasn't—
— Don't tell me it was complicated.
The captain fell silent.
Tharion stepped closer.
— I know you people. You had men everywhere. Informants in every region. People capable of finding someone because of a rumor told in a tavern on the other side of the country. So don't you dare tell me you couldn't find me.
— We knew where you were.
This time, Tharion said nothing.
The anger disappeared from his face for a second.
Not because it was gone.
Because something else had covered it.
— …What?
— We knew.
The captain slowly folded his hands in front of him.
— But we had orders not to intervene.
— Orders?
Tharion laughed again.
More nervously this time.
He began pacing to the side, unable to stand still, his boots scraping against the shallow grooves in the wooden floor.
— You try to kill me. You fail. Then you find out I'm still breathing, and your reaction is basically, "Well, leave him wherever he is"?
The captain looked up at him.
— The decision hadn't changed.
Tharion stopped.
Wind pressed against the windows.
One of the lamp flames bent briefly, throwing Tharion's shadow high across the wall and all the way to the ceiling.
— What decision?
— That you couldn't come back.
— Why?
The captain hesitated.
— Tharion—
— No.
His voice hardened.
— You wanted to talk to me. I'm here.
He slammed both hands onto the desk.
The nearest papers jumped.
— So explain it to me.
The captain watched him for several seconds.
Then he stood.
The chair dragged backward with a long scrape across the floor, and as he walked around the desk, Tharion noticed that he limped slightly on his left leg.
An old injury, probably.
Once, Tharion would have immediately asked what had happened.
Today—
he didn't give a damn.
— You had become too powerful.
Tharion gave him an incredulous smile.
— That's it?
— No.
— Good.
He straightened.
— Because that's a shitty reason.
The captain didn't react to the insult.
— Back then, there were almost no people left who could stop you. You were improving faster than expected. Every mission made you better. Every enemy taught you something. Every injury forced you to discover another way to fight.
Tharion opened his hands.
— I was a soldier.
— You were more than that.
— No.
— Yes.
The captain stepped closer.
— And that was exactly what frightened us.
A muscle twitched in Tharion's jaw.
— You were afraid.
— Yes.
The answer came so quickly that Tharion fell silent.
The captain continued.
— Of course we were afraid. And anyone who tells you otherwise today is lying to you.
He gestured toward the maps surrounding them.
— A normal man turns against a kingdom, you send ten soldiers. An experienced fighter, you send fifty. A commander betrays you, you cut off his supply lines, destroy his alliances, isolate him.
His eyes returned to Tharion.
— But you?
He slowly shook his head.
— We didn't know what to send.
Tharion scoffed.
— You could have tried talking to me.
— It was suggested.
— By who?
The captain didn't answer.
— Who suggested it?
Nothing.
Tharion moved even closer.
— And you?
The captain's expression changed.
Tharion understood.
His stomach dropped.
— No…
The fire continued burning behind them, but suddenly the room felt freezing.
— You voted.
The captain breathed in slowly.
— Yes.
Tharion took half a step back.
— You.
— Yes.
A trembling laugh escaped him.
— Of course.
His fingers ran through his hair before stopping behind his neck. For several seconds he faced the window, staring down at the city rooftops without truly seeing them. Thin streams of smoke rose from chimneys. People walked through the streets.
A bell rang somewhere in the distance.
A normal life.
It almost made him sick.
— I was your superior, the captain continued.
Tharion spun around.
— EXACTLY!
His voice exploded against the walls.
The lamp flames flickered.
— Exactly!
Tharion struck his own chest.
— It was you!
He stepped forward.
— You were the one who came to get me when I refused to sleep before missions. You threw me off the training grounds when I stayed there all night. You forced me to eat when I came back so exhausted I'd forgotten I was even hungry.
The captain stopped moving.
— You knew my home.
Another step.
— You ate at our table.
Tharion's eyes began to glisten, but the anger burning through him was too strong for a tear to actually fall.
— My mother always made an extra portion for you because she said you ate like someone who'd never seen a kitchen in his life.
Something tiny crossed the captain's face.
Tharion saw it.
— My brother waited at the door whenever he knew you were coming.
His voice cracked slightly.
— He wanted to be like you.
Silence.
The wood in the fireplace cracked behind them.
The captain lowered his eyes slightly.
— I know.
BOOM.
The floor cracked beneath Tharion's boot.
An invisible pressure began to fill the room, heavy enough to make the papers scattered across the desk tremble. The fire bent sharply sideways, as though pushed back by something the air itself could no longer contain.
And in his eyes—
the cross lit up.
Faintly at first.
A thin glow appeared at the center of his irises, tracing the four familiar branches. Then it gradually grew brighter, strong enough to reflect in the moisture gathering in his eyes and cast the faintest glow against his eyelids.
The captain saw it.
— Then why?!
The captain's head snapped up.
— Because I knew exactly what you were capable of!
His own voice finally rose.
— The others were afraid of a story! A reputation! Reports written by people who had never even met you!
He slammed a hand against his own chest.
— I had seen you fight!
Tharion fell silent.
— I knew how quickly you learned. I knew what happened when someone pushed you into a corner. I knew that every time we thought we had finally understood your limits, you found new ones.
The captain clenched his jaw.
— And precisely because I knew you, my opinion carried more weight than anyone else's.
— You trusted me.
— Yes!
— Then why—
— Because I had no right to gamble thousands of lives on that trust!
The shout filled the room.
The captain was breathing harder now. A vein pulsed near his temple.
— If I was wrong about you once… just once… who would have paid for it?
Tharion didn't answer.
— Me?
The captain shook his head.
— No.
He pointed toward the window.
— Them.
Outside, a woman crossed the street with two children.
Farther away, merchants were beginning to close their stalls.
Lights were slowly appearing in windows.
— People who didn't even know your name. People who never asked to be involved in our wars. Thousands who could have died simply because one day, you decided we had become your enemies.
Tharion looked outside.
Then back at him.
— I never would have done that.
— Maybe.
— I wouldn't have.
— Maybe!
The captain struck the desk with his palm.
— But a commander doesn't protect a city with "maybe"!
Tharion was trembling now.
Not from fear.
His muscles were so tense that his arms had begun to vibrate slightly.
— So you condemned me.
— Yes.
— Without a trial.
— Yes.
— Without even telling me why.
The captain hesitated.
— Yes.
— And you still think it was the right decision?
A long silence.
Outside, a gust of wind snapped a banner against the side of the building.
Flap.
Flap.
Then—
— Yes.
Something changed in Tharion's eyes.
The captain continued anyway.
— Because after what had already happened…
Tharion frowned slightly.
— What?
— With your family.
The world seemed to contract around him.
The captain continued.
— After what losing them did to you, we knew that if something similar happened again—
Tharion stopped breathing.
— …you might become uncontrollable. We couldn't allow a tragedy like that to lead to something even worse.
Tharion's voice came out very softly.
— For my family…
The captain fell silent.
— What?
Tharion slowly raised his head.
There was no anger left on his face.
It was empty.
Terribly empty.
— Couldn't let it happen again.
The captain finally understood where he had stepped.
— Tharion, that's not—
— That's what you just said.
— Listen to me.
Tharion took one step.
The floor cracked beneath his boot.
— My family dies.
A second.
The pressure inside the room thickened.
The remaining papers on the desk trembled.
The flames stretched sideways.
— I lose everything.
A third step.
A crack formed between two floorboards.
— And your solution to make sure nobody else loses their family…
His eyes met the captain's.
— …was to kill the last member of mine?
— Tharion—
— YOU USED THEIR DEATH TO JUSTIFY MINE!
The room exploded.
Pressure erupted around Tharion before he even struck.
Maps tore free from the wall.
The bookcase shook violently enough that several books fell and burst open against the floor.
Cracks spread across the windows in an instant.
The captain tried to raise an arm.
Too late.
Tharion was already in front of him.
His fist stopped only inches from the captain's chest.
He never even touched him.
The air between them compressed violently.
BOOOOOOM.
The captain was ripped off the ground.
His back smashed through the already damaged desk, pulverizing the wood, and his body kept going straight toward the window.
The glass exploded.
Hundreds of fragments scattered into the street, catching the orange evening light for a fraction of a second like a rain of tiny mirrors.
The captain went through.
And disappeared into open air.
Cold wind immediately flooded the office.
Loose papers were sucked toward the shattered window and scattered out across the city.
Tharion remained standing in the middle of the ruined room.
His chest rose and fell rapidly.
His hands trembled.
He stared at the broken window.
For one second…
he seemed to realize what he had just done.
— …Shit.
Several streets away, Nyros walked alone toward the inn, completely unaware of what was happening inside the knights' headquarters. The sun was slowly sinking behind the rooftops, bathing the stone buildings in softer shades of orange. The streets were finally returning to something resembling normal life: merchants folded away their stalls, someone noisily closed a pair of shutters above a shop, and the smell of grilled meat mixed with warm bread drifting from a bakery farther down the road.
After the darkness, impacts, and dust of the fight—
the calm felt almost strange.
His clothes still carried the marks of the battle. A fine layer of gray dust covered his coat, especially around the legs, while small fragments of stone remained trapped in the folds of the fabric. His cheek stung where a shard had cut him, and his right shoulder complained every time he rolled it.
Nothing serious.
Nothing he wasn't used to.
Still, as he walked, his gaze slowly dropped toward his hand.
It was trembling.
Barely.
His fingers moved only a few millimeters, but it was enough for him to notice.
Nyros slowed.
He opened his hand completely in front of himself, studied his palm for several seconds, then slowly curled his fingers shut again. A faint ache pulled along his forearm. Not a real injury.
Something deeper.
Fatigue.
The accumulated tension from the fight, from stopping movements at the last possible second, from constantly holding back enough power to keep training from becoming an execution.
He slowly exhaled through his nose.
— Two months…
A small smile appeared despite himself.
Arzyel had improved.
A lot.
Far faster than Nyros had expected when they first started. The way he read the battlefield had almost nothing in common with those first weeks anymore. He wasn't only watching his opponent now. He watched footing, dust, cracks, distances, possible trajectories.
Even while retreating, he was preparing something.
Even while being overwhelmed, his mind kept searching.
And that damn lightning arrow…
Nyros chuckled.
— Yeah… I really didn't see that one coming.
For a moment, the image returned with almost irritating clarity: Arzyel rubbing his hands together, electricity appearing between his fingers, then that shape taking form almost instinctively.
It wasn't perfect.
Far too much energy escaped.
The structure was unstable.
And the amount of effort required to produce a single attack was ridiculous compared with the result.
But he had done it.
Alone.
Nyros looked at his hand again.
The trembling hadn't completely stopped.
His smile faded.
— But it's not enough.
He kept walking, slower this time.
Arzyel had improved.
Yes.
But nowhere near enough.
Not for what was waiting for him.
Not for the people he would eventually meet.
And certainly not if his first instinct continued to be holding back simply because he refused to kill.
Nyros clenched his fist.
The skin tightened across his knuckles.
He remembered Arzyel on the ground.
Exhausted.
His body unable to follow what his mind demanded of it.
His trembling legs.
That tiny spark appearing in his hand before dying almost immediately.
He had learned incredibly fast.
Maybe even too fast.
Because that could make him believe he was already ready.
Nyros knew that mistake.
He had seen it kill enough people.
His gaze remained fixed ahead.
— I need to be harder on him.
The words came out on their own.
Nyros frowned slightly after saying them, almost as though he had finally confirmed a decision he had been avoiding.
He didn't particularly like it.
Arzyel was his brother.
Part of him wanted to give him time.
To slow down.
To let him learn without constantly feeling as though his life depended on every mistake.
But the world wouldn't give him that luxury.
And Nyros knew that better than anyone.
— A lot harder…
His fist slowly loosened.
He looked at his hand one more time.
Then sighed.
— He's going to hate me.
A second passed.
— Well… even more.
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
He kept walking.
The sound of his boots mixed with the conversations around him. A child ran past carrying something that looked like a pastry, only for his mother to immediately shout at him to slow down. Farther ahead, a man was setting chairs outside a small tavern while the smell of spices drifted from inside.
Nyros slowed.
His stomach chose that exact moment to growl.
He looked down.
— …
Another growl.
Longer this time.
Nyros placed a hand over his stomach.
— Right.
He had barely eaten in hours.
He started walking toward the inn again, but the smell of food immediately reminded him of something.
Or rather—
someone.
Arzyel.
Nyros stopped again.
— Maybe I should've told him to come with me.
He thought for a few seconds.
Then his expression became slightly more serious, as though he were searching for a legitimate reason behind the thought.
— Would've been better to keep an eye on him after the fight.
Silence.
Nyros stood there.
Then slowly shook his head.
— No.
He knew himself too well.
— I just wanted him to cook.
He started walking again.
A small laugh escaped him.
— I nearly broke his legs…
He ran a hand across his face.
— …and my first thought afterward is asking him to make dinner.
He considered that.
— I might be a terrible brother.
A short pause.
Then—
— But he really can cook.
That conclusion seemed good enough for him.
He passed a small shop whose windows let out a pleasant wave of warmth and the rich smells of meat, herbs, and melted butter. For a moment, Nyros seriously considered stopping. His eyes even followed a plate being carried past the window by one of the servers.
Then he thought about the inn.
A bed.
Peace and quiet.
Something to drink.
And ideally—
no fighting.
Nyros breathed in deeply.
— All right.
He raised one finger.
— I eat.
A second.
— I drink.
A third.
— I sleep for twelve hours.
He thought about it.
His finger remained raised.
— Fifteen.
He nodded.
— Fifteen's better.
CRAAAAASH!
Nyros stopped.
His third finger remained stupidly raised in the air.
A flock of birds burst from a rooftop several streets away, wings beating wildly as the sound of shattered glass rolled between the buildings.
Several people looked up.
Nyros slowly closed his eyes.
— …
He stood there for one second.
Then two.
— No.
A whistling sound appeared above the street.
Faint at first.
Then rapidly growing louder.
Nyros opened one eye.
Something was falling.
No.
Someone.
Very fast.
— No, no, no…
The figure spun slightly through the air.
Nyros recognized the coat.
Then the hair.
Then the face.
Both of his eyes opened.
— …Captain?
The man was coming straight toward him—
headfirst.
Nyros briefly looked at the sky.
Then at the inn he could almost see at the end of the street.
Then back at the captain.
— Seriously?
He planted his right foot into the cobblestones.
Stone ground beneath his boot.
His body shifted instinctively into position.
At the last possible moment—
Nyros raised one arm.
His hand clamped around the back of the captain's uniform.
BOOM.
All of the captain's falling speed disappeared almost instantly.
Nyros's feet slid several inches across the cobblestones. A crack formed beneath his heel as a wave of dust spread outward. His already injured shoulder screamed under the strain, but the captain took the worst of it.
His uniform stopped.
His body kept moving for a fraction of a second.
A sharp crack echoed through the street.
CRACK.
— AAAAAARGH!
Nyros winced.
— Ah.
The captain hung from his grip, his face twisted completely by pain.
Nyros looked at his shoulder.
Then his arm.
Then his face again.
— That…
He tilted his head slightly.
— …that was probably your shoulder.
— Put me down!
— Yeah, yeah.
Nyros lowered him much more carefully and placed him on the cobblestones. Around them, several bystanders had backed away. A woman had dropped her basket during the impact, and three apples were now calmly rolling through the street as though nothing unusual had happened.
The captain immediately tried to stand.
Pain tore through his shoulder.
— Ngh—!
His arm gave out.
Nyros caught him.
— Bad idea.
— Tharion…
Nyros stopped smiling.
— What?
The captain looked toward the building.
Nyros slowly followed his gaze.
Only then did he notice the shattered window.
Fragments of glass were still falling.
Several sheets of paper torn from the office floated through the air, carried between the rooftops by the evening wind.
Then—
Vrrrrrrrrr…
A vibration ran through the street.
The windows around them trembled.
A hanging sign creaked against its chain.
Nyros remained silent.
His eyes returned to the captain.
— …
A second passed.
— What did you say to my brother?