The black ichor had stopped leaking from Darius's eye, but the stain on his skin felt like a brand. The word still echoed in the hollows of his mind, a crushing, gravitational weight.
Relent. Darius closed his eyes, his hands balling into tight fists against the frozen sand of the training grounds. The paranoia that had kept him awake for months—the fear that the ancient shadows were returning—was no longer a theory. It was a confirmed, terrifying reality, and it had just attacked him inside the very weapon he thought was a shield from the dark.
"No..." Darius whispered, the sound vibrating in his chest before building into a low growl.
"No."
He forced himself to his feet, ignoring the violent spinning of his vision. He locked his knees, refusing to look weak in front of the men he had just claimed.
King Va'lerius took a half-step forward, his hand hovering as if to catch his son, but he stopped. For the first time in his life, the King looked truly fearful of the darkness he had commanded for decades. He watched in stunned silence as Darius raised himself up, not as a scholar or a politician, but as a warlord.
"Commander," Darius barked, his voice echoing off the training walls, instantly snapping the elite guard to attention. "Mobilize the Dragon-Oath. We ride for the Red Canyons. We will retrieve my wives, and we will march on the Anai borders. If they will not join the armies of the Line willingly against the dark, we will force them to yield."
A ripple of shock went through the ranks, but discipline held them in place.
Va'lerius stepped into Darius's path, his face a mask of conflicting emotions. The tactical reality was a nightmare, but beneath it, the undeniable pride of seeing the fierce general he had trained finally shining through was impossible to hide.
"You would march our elite forces to the edge of the world?" Va'lerius challenged, keeping his voice low enough that the men couldn't hear the waver in it. "You leave the capital lightly defended, Darius. If this... thing in the shadows is beginning to wake, the heart of Beh-REET must be fortified."
Darius didn't blink. His command rang with a clarity that left no room for debate.
"The heir of our lineage rides to the border of the Anai without the aid of the Void," Darius stated, his voice carrying the full weight of Mia's unborn child. "And I fear the shadows are already touching the mortal world. Father, we are lightly defended here regardless. Wards and stone will not stop the dark. Only with the Anai—only with the fire that survived the first war—do we stand ready for the battles to come. If we stay here, we are just waiting for a predator to cut us off entirely."
The statement lingered in the air between the Prince and the King, a dark future neither wished to consider.
Va'lerius stared at his son. He saw the desperation of a husband, but beneath it, he saw the cold, unyielding calculus of a King. The old monarch closed his eyes, a heavy sigh escaping his lips, and nodded.
"Then the Right of Interposition stands," Va'lerius declared, his voice rising so every soldier in the courtyard could hear. He looked at his son, bestowing the full authority of the crown. "Ride as the tip of the spear. Retrieve the heir and conscript the Anai for the coming war. The Line's decree is law."
Darius gave his father a brief, respectful nod, the unspoken gratitude passing between them. He then turned fully to his men. The elite guard of the Dragon Line—warriors who had relied on the Stillness to make them gods among men—waited for their orders.
"Hear me well," Darius commanded, his voice heavy and serious. "The power of our ancestors is compromised. The well is poisoned. You will avoid the darkness of the Void at all costs. You will ride as mortals, and you will fight as mortals. You will use the Stillness only as an absolute last resort..."
Darius touched the dried black blood on his cheek, letting the men see the physical toll of his warning.
"...because a predator lurks in its domain. We move in one hour."
Path Forward
The gates of the capital groaned as they yielded to the biting winds, unleashing the might of the Dragon Line onto the frost-kissed dunes. But this march was unlike any in Beh-REET's history since before the War of Darkness.
Nearly fifty Dragon-Oath formed the vanguard. Usually, these elites moved with the frictionless grace of phantoms, riding the edges of the Void so that neither the elements nor the exhaustion of travel could touch them. Today, they rode heavy in the saddle. Stripped of the Stillness's unfeeling aid, their muscles burned and chafed, forced to carry their own weight just as any other mortal man.
Behind them marched the bulk of the force: hundreds of infantrymen. Many were conscripted prisoners of war, broken from past border skirmishes and forced to bear the sigil of the Dragon.
Riding at the head of the column, Darius watched the exhausted eyes of the conscripts in his periphery. Without the threat of the Void to keep them in line, the psychological chains holding the army together felt brittle. It was a bitter realization. Mia had seen this flaw from the very beginning.
A sword held by a slave is always looking for a new master, Darius thought, wiping a layer of icy sweat from his brow.
But the only path available was forward. With the Stillness cut off, their only weapon against the ancient dark was steel, and it required bodies to wield it.
Darius set a relentless pace. The crisp air and the thin patches of early snow blanketing the shadows of the dunes should have been a blessing—a cooling balm to temper the grueling march. But without the Void to mask their fatigue, it wasn't the weather that wilted the men; it was the brutal, unforgiving speed. Horses foamed at the mouth. Men stumbled in the shifting sands, their lungs burning as they were pushed to the absolute limits of physical endurance.
"Keep the column tight!" Darius roared over the wind, his voice raw. "We do not stop for the ache! We do not stop for the dark! We move with haste, and we will rest only when we stand outside the borders of the Anai!"
They pushed through the high dunes, the landscape slowly beginning to shift from deep sand to the rocky outcroppings that marked the approach to the Red Canyons.
A trail up the path revealed a cave's opening. A perfect spot to make camp. The rocky walls would give them shelter from the wind.
He spurred his mount forward, pushing to the front of the line. The air here smelled metallic with a sprinkle of salt and voided bowels. Scattered across the narrow pass were the bodies of five desert scavengers—opportunistic men who preyed on weak travelers.
Darius dismounted, his boots crunching against the blood-soaked, frosty dirt. He knelt beside the closest body. The scavenger had been opened with a clean, surgical strike. Dragon Pierces the Veil. Ny'all's work.
A cold spike of terror drove itself into Darius's chest. He stared at the blood, his mind spinning into a paranoid spiral.
Did they use it? Did they open the door to the Stillness to survive a petty ambush?
He could vividly imagine the black ichor leaking from Mia's eyes, the oppressive weight of the shadows snuffing out her life...
No. Darius violently rejected the thought, forcing his eyes open.
It was a chaotic, desperate mess. He found a man choked on his own blood from a crushed windpipe. Blunt-force trauma lacking the grace of the mountain. "Caught off guard," Darius whispered aloud to himself as he worked the scene. A few paces away, a spray of crimson painted the snow where a scavenger's thigh had been slashed open, accompanied by another whose skull had been cracked at the base. They relied on skill. They fought as mortals. A reactionary fight from the ambush.
But as he continued to process the encounter, moving deeper towards the cave's mouth, the evidence shifted.
Staring up from beneath a shadowed fissure, a scavenger lay dead with a wound the size of a dagger in his throat. There was almost no arterial spray around the wound.
They used it. Did they relent?
No. Darius pushed his rising terror back once more.
They would never relent to a voice in the dark. And Mia carried the heir. She would burn the world down before she let the shadows touch their child. They were alive, and they were leaving a trail.
Darius stood up, his fear forming into urgency. He vaulted back onto his horse, hauling hard on the reins to wheel the beast around to face his exhausted army.
"They survived the ambush!" Darius shouted, pointing his blood-stained blade toward the peaks in the distance. "They are alive, and I will find them. Double the pace! We set our path to Ne-HE-miah!"