Somewhere in the Boundary of Egron
Dren lay in the wagon, hands tied, humming something tuneless to himself.
Golden Cloaks rode on either side of him, stiff-backed and humorless.
"Be quiet," one of them said.
"When you pass Thornhold — that's a day's ride from here — please be kind enough to drop me off," Dren said pleasantly. "I'm about to take a nap."
"Shut up, fugitive."
Dren chuckled. Then slowly, the smile faded. His eyes drifted somewhere else entirely.
*I wonder how Dot's doing.*
The memory came the way memories do — uninvited, unhurried.
He was sitting on the edge of a bed, wrists still sore, looking up at Caesar like the man had just appeared out of the air.
"Do you have ale?" Dren asked.
"Didn't you hear anything I just said, fool?"
"Ale first. Then we talk."
Caesar stared at him for a long moment. Then reached into his coat and produced a bottle, tossing it over with the particular frustration of someone who knew arguing was pointless.
Dren caught it. Drank. Exhaled.
"How did you find me?" he asked.
"You were dead for a minute," Caesar said. "Then you came back. Stubborn bastard."
"Probably used too much." Dren turned the bottle in his hands. "What do you want?"
"Where's the boy?"
Dren drank again.
"Who?"
"Don't." Caesar threw him another bottle — not gently. "I already know he's heading to Thornhold. It's only a matter of time before we catch up to him. Before Valthor does."
Dren's hand stopped halfway to his mouth.
"Valthor?"
"He escaped," Caesar said, watching him. "He's going for the kid."
"Why are you telling me this?"
Caesar smiled. Not warmly.
"No reason. I just wanted to see your face." A pause. "Not laughing anymore, are you."
The memory dissolved.
Dren lay in the wagon, staring up at the moving sky through the slats above him.
*He's probably fine,* he thought.
He smiled — quieter this time, smaller — and closed his eyes.
The Capital — Eirsuol
Blood hit the floor.
Behind Julius, civilians ran in every direction — screaming, stumbling, abandoning everything they couldn't carry.
"You're one of them," Julius said. "Surtr's slave."
"Ehh?" Fifth tilted his head, smiling like the word amused him. "Is that who I am? Surprising how little you know."
"Who are you?"
"They call me Fifth." A pause, almost generous. "You can call me Ember if you want."
"You're like the one I fought before," Julius said. "Fourth."
Ember's expression flattened instantly.
"Don't compare me to that simpleton."
"Why are you here? Causing death to these people won't serve you."
"We're here for the staff," Ember said simply. "And to kill you." He tilted his head. "Tell me — if the staff breaks, you lose the ability to reincarnate Valthor. Isn't that right?"
The memory surfaced before Julius could stop it.
*Why do I need the staff?* he had asked.
*My staff draws power from the old realm,* Valthor had said. *It is the source of my power — the reason you have grown in both strength and ability since you came within its proximity. It is the reason I can speak to you now.*
*It has been lost for centuries. Men who sought it gained abilities beyond their nature. It has been moved again and again through the mortal realm.*
Then Valthor had leaned close — closer than usual — and lowered his voice.
*If the staff loses its footing in this world — so do I.*
*What does that mean?* Julius had asked.
*I lose the ability to come back.*
Julius remembered the way those words had landed. The silence after them.
---
The memory faded.
"You're not getting your hands on it," Julius said. "Not while I'm still breathing."
Ember smiled. "Let's see about that."
He raised one finger — casual, almost lazy — and fired.
The blast came at the speed of light. Slim radius. Julius caught the edge of it across his shoulder and felt the burn before he registered the sound.
Blood ran down his arm. He pressed his hand over the wound.
"Hurts, doesn't it," Ember said, already moving. "I think you've realized it. I can kill you."
Julius pushed off the ground and rose into the air.
Ember looked up, smiling wider. He raised his finger again — then again — firing in rapid succession, each blast cutting a different angle through the sky.
Julius twisted and weaved between them, jaw tight.
*Tch.*
Then one blast missed him entirely and took out the side of a building.
The structure groaned. Stone cracked and shifted. At the base of it a man grabbed his son and ran — the wrong direction, straight into the collapse.
Ember's smile didn't change. He watched Julius see it.
Julius dropped from the air like a stone.
He reached them in seconds, throwing himself over both of them as the building came down around their shoulders.
"It's okay," he said.
Ember raised both hands.
"Die."
The blast was massive — a single point of concentrated force that hit the rubble like a detonation. The explosion rolled outward in a wave of heat and dust and broken stone.
Silence.
Then footsteps.
"No fun, Valthor," Ember said, picking his way through the debris. "I expected so much more from—"
Fourth hit him from the side like a battering ram, driving his skull into the ground hard enough to crack the stone beneath it.
"I told you," Fourth said, standing over him. "He's mine."
Ember lay face down for a moment. Then lifted his head. The damage across his face was already reversing — bone resetting, skin closing.
"Sorry," he said. "I got excited."
The building continued to settle around them — dust falling, beams shifting.
The man and his son scrambled free and ran without looking back.
"Still have life left in you?" Ember said, looking toward the rubble where Julius had been.
"Go find the staff," Fourth said. "He's mine."
"Suit yourself." Ember stood, brushing stone dust from his shoulder. "He's no fun anyway. Don't die this time."
He left.
Julius pulled himself out of the rubble.
Blood ran freely from a dozen places across his body. Parts of his uniform were simply gone. His left eye was dark — not closed. Gone.
He stood.
Then his legs gave out and he went straight down.
Fourth looked at him for a moment. Something unreadable crossed his face.
"Can't fight you like this," he said.
He reached down, grabbed Julius by the collar, and leaped — straight up, clearing the rooftops in a single arc, disappearing into the smoke above the city.
The Capital — Streets
Gnorm arrived at the city gates to chaos.
Bodies. Blood. People running with no direction, colliding with each other, dropping things, screaming names.
He turned to the farmer and his wife beside him.
"Find shelter," he said. "Now."
"What about you?" the farmer's wife asked.
"I'm going to find both of them."
A pause.
The farmer's wife turned to her husband with the expression of someone who had a question they weren't sure how to ask.
He responded by lifting both shoulders. *Don't ask me.*
Gnorm was already moving.
The Palace — Somewhere Inside
"Let me go."
Elaine shoved Hana forward down the corridor, one hand gripping her arm.
"Shut up, you filth. I can't stand your noise."
"Let go—"
"It's only a matter of time before the little god agrees." Elaine's voice dropped into something almost dreamy. "I'm sure he'll forget all about you once he does."
Hana stopped walking.
"He wouldn't do that," she said flatly. "He's not a maniac like the rest of you. I could tell the moment we arrived — this whole palace gives off the wrong feeling."
"What would a farmer's girl know about anything." Elaine tightened her grip. "He'll do whatever it takes for his staff. He has no choice."
Hana went quiet. She was watching Elaine's face now — reading it, the way she read stars. Cataloguing.
*Proud. Careless. Wants to be seen as clever.*
"The staff," Hana said casually. "Where is it exactly?"
Elaine laughed. "Father had it buried in the throne room years ago. Has been there ever since." She brought two fingers to her lips in mock shock. "Oops."
She leaned slightly closer.
"Not that it matters. There's nothing a farmer's girl can do about it."
*She's a moron,* Hana thought.
Her elbow drove into Elaine's stomach.
Elaine folded with a sharp gasp, knees hitting the floor.
"You filthy farmer's—"
Hana's foot caught her across the face.
She was already running before Elaine finished falling.
---
*Outside the Palace*
"What is—"
The knight didn't finish.
A demon dog hit him from the side and took him off his feet. Around him, screaming — his fellow knights overwhelmed in seconds, the line collapsing before it had fully formed.
Ember walked through it.
Unhurried. Hands loose at his sides, crushing skulls with the detached focus of someone doing something tedious but necessary.
"Where are you," he said quietly, scanning the palace walls. "Where are you, staff."
A demon with curved horns appeared beside him and dropped to one knee.
Ember pointed at the palace doors.
"Find it."
The demon rose. Hit the doors at full speed. The wood exploded inward.
Ember watched it go, then looked up at the palace rising above him.
"I'll probably have more fun tearing this place apart anyway," he said pleasantly.
The Palace — Stairwell
Valerie kept one hand on Lord Vayne's arm and moved fast, her eyes ahead, her voice clipped and precise.
"Double the knights on the lower floor," she said to the guard beside her without slowing. "Now."
They rounded the bottom of the stairs.
Ember was standing there.
He looked up at them slowly.
Then a smile spread across his face — different from his usual one. Quieter. More interested.
The Palace Entrance
The doors were already open when Gnorm arrived.
Wrong. They shouldn't be open.
"What happened here?"
A knight lay against the outer wall, breathing in short, wet pulls, one hand pressed flat to his chest.
Gnorm crouched beside him.
"Where is Julius?"
The knight coughed. Blood on his lips. Didn't answer.
*Tch.*
Gnorm stood. Something shifted in him — not urgency exactly. Something older than that, and quieter, and considerably more dangerous.
He walked inside.
The Throne Room Corridor
Hana's back hit the wall.
The demon's hand closed around her throat and lifted. Her feet left the floor. The sledgehammer she'd been carrying dropped and rang against the stone.
"Help," she managed. Barely.
"Hana."
She couldn't turn her head far enough to see him.
"That you?"
Gnorm stood in the corridor entrance, sword drawn, head slightly raised — not looking at her, not looking at the demon, reading the air the way only he could.
He took one slow breath.
Something about him changed. Not visibly. In weight. In the quality of the stillness around him.
The demon's hand was still around Hana's throat when Gnorm moved — and in the same instant the demon's arm was no longer attached to the demon. It simply wasn't there. Hana dropped. Gnorm caught her before she hit the floor.
The demon registered what had happened. Turned. Charged.
It was on the floor before the sound of its own footsteps caught up.
Gnorm lowered his blade.
"Are you okay?"
Hana steadied herself against the wall, catching her breath. Then looked at the floor around them — broken bricks, stone dust, the marks she'd left trying to break through on her own.
"We need the staff," she said.
Gnorm looked at the floor. Set his sword aside. Picked up the sledgehammer.
One swing.
Two.
The stone gave.
In the gap beneath — a staff. Long, edged in dull gold, rings running along its length, older than anything else in the room by the feel of it.
Silence.
Then footsteps from behind them.
Fourth walked in carrying Julius by the collar the way someone carries something they've decided to keep. Julius hung limp, blood still running from too many places to count, his left eye socket dark and empty.
"Julius—" Hana moved toward him.
Gnorm turned.
Fourth's free hand hit him like a wall and sent him across the room.
He approached the staff. Looked down at it. Then at Hana.
"Give it to him," he said.
Hana didn't hesitate. She picked it up and pressed it into Julius's hanging hand.
The moment contact was made the bleeding slowed. Then stopped. The wounds across his body began to close — not gradually, not gently, but with the urgency of something that had been waiting a very long time.
His hand grew back.
Fourth watched it happen with the expression of someone confirming something they already believed.
Then he set Julius on his feet — or tried to.
Julius stood on his own.
His eyes opened.
Gold. Burning. Completely steady.
Fourth smiled.
"Heal," he said. "And fight me."
To Be Continued…