King Va'lerius stood at the center of the training grounds, surrounded by his generals, gesturing over a map table hastily erected over the sand.
Darius strode through the arched portcullis, his boots crunching against the gravel. The generals fell quiet, parting respectfully to let the Prince through. None of them had forgotten the Kal'duo less than a year ago; they all knew exactly how fast the Prince's blade was, and they knew the King's armor still bore the scar to prove it.
Va'lerius looked up, his jaw tightening. "Darius. We are mapping troop movements."
"I am aware," Darius said, his voice carrying effortlessly over the ring of steel in the adjacent yards. "But Ny'all is absent. With my Oath-Blade off the board, the defense of the Line cannot be left vacant. I invoke the Right of Interposition. The duty falls to her superior."
A suffocating, tense weight fell over the generals. The elder commanders stiffened in unison, their hands instinctively dropping to their sword hilts, their gazes darting from the Prince to the King.
Va'lerius slammed a hand onto the map table. "Your Oath-Blade has vanished, and you stand here asking to run drills? Take the guard. Ride out and find her, Darius. That is your house."
"My house is the kingdom," Darius countered smoothly, not giving an inch. "My wives are forged in the same fire as I am; they will find their way back to me. Until they do, my duty—" he wielded the word like a masterwork blade, letting it slip perfectly under his father's armor "—is here. It is to keep this army strong for the day the Shadows return. I will not abandon the Line for personal sentiment."
Va'lerius stared at his son. The anger in the King's eyes flickered, slowly morphing into a begrudging, calculating gleam. Darius had trapped him. If the King ordered him away, he was prioritizing a single woman over the realm's defense. If he let him stay, Darius took control.
Va'lerius closed the distance between them, leaning in close his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "You finally are becoming our future king."
He paused, his gaze hardening as he pulled back. "But remember, Darius—you are playing with the pieces I carved. You are not the King, yet."
He didn't look at his son again. He turned and walked toward the gate, his gait steady and unhurried. As Va'lerius passed the commanders, they fell into lockstep behind him, their gazes lingering on Darius for a fraction of a second before the weight of the King's presence pulled them away. They marched in his wake, leaving the Prince standing alone in the center of the sand.
Becoming the Void
Darius turned away from the archway, his father's parting whisper still lingering in the air. He faced the men—a mix of elite veterans and fresh, broad-shouldered trainees folded into the royal guard.
He didn't give them time to process the political earthquake that had just occurred. He simply raised his Dragon-Etched steel.
"Positions," Darius commanded. "We run the Dragon's Ascent. On my cadence."
The men snapped into formation. For the next hour, the courtyard echoed with the rhythmic, unified clash of steel. Darius walked them through the ancestral forms, his own blade a blur of perfect, lethal geometry as he broke down their purpose.
"Mountain Guards the Heart," Darius called out, demonstrating a tight, impenetrable guard that suddenly snapped forward into a brutal counter-strike. "It is a shield that bites. You do not wait to parry; you let their momentum pull them onto your point. It is defense used as an offense."
The men mirrored him, their boots scraping the sand.
"Dragon's Breath Uncoiled," Darius shifted his weight, his blade sweeping in a massive, devastating arc that whistled through the air. "When you are surrounded, you do not duel. You create space. This strike does not wound; it cuts a man in half."
He stepped back, his posture straightening, his blade lowering to an almost casual angle. "Dragon Pierces the Veil." With a flicker of movement so fast it barely registered, Darius thrust his blade forward, stopping a fraction of an inch from a wooden training post. "Precision. Lethality. Minimal movement. This is how you finish a duel before the enemy knows they are dead."
The trainees executed the forms flawlessly. They knew the physical movements—they had drilled them until their hands bled. But the physical forms were only half the weapon. The real mystery, the true devastating power of their kingdom, was the Void. Only the Dragon-Oath and the royal bloodline truly understood it.
"Hold your forms," Darius instructed, walking down the ranks. "The steel is your anchor. Now, reach for the Stillness."
Darius closed his eyes and slipped into the Void. For the wives of the Dragon Line, like Mia, entering the Void was a deliberate, gradual tuning of the mind, a descent into deep water. For Darius, it was his birthright. It was as effortless as drawing a breath.
The courtyard instantly bled of its vibrant colors, washing into a muted, gray landscape. The sharp clatter of armor and the harsh winds faded into a profound quiet. He opened his eyes in the gray world, watching the souls of his men flicker.
He walked among them, watching them strain. He expected perhaps one of the newer recruits to brush against the edge of the Void, though he doubted any could reach the true Stillness. It took years to master the power required to simply exist in that space without going mad.
Suddenly, the air rippled.
At the end of the line, a young trainee gasped. His eyes rolled back, and his sword tip dipped toward the sand. He had touched the Void, but his inexperience was violently betraying him. He was falling into the deep end, unable to control the sensory deprivation.
Darius stepped gracefully through the gray, closing the distance. He had seen this before. If the boy could not anchor himself, his mind would fracture. If Darius couldn't coach him out, his duty would require him to draw his blade and end the boy's suffering right here in the sand.
"Listen to my voice," Darius projected his will into the Stillness, his words echoing in the gray expanse. "Do not fight the dark. Control. Calmness. Feel the hilt of your sword. Pull yourself up the blade."
As he spoke, focusing his energy on the trembling recruit, the silence of the Void was broken.
Tap.
Darius froze.
Tap. Tap.
It came from beneath him, vibrating through the ethereal veil of the Void itself. Darius, felt an ancient weight settle over his chest—the eternal, agonizing duty that held this man hostage in the dark.
"Calmness," Darius whispered to the boy, but his own voice was shaking.
Bang.
The tapping suddenly and violently escalated. Bang. Bang. Bang. It was the sound of a prisoner throwing its massive force against a fractured door. The pressure in the Void spiked, turning the atmosphere from a crisp emptiness into a suffocating, oily deep.
In the physical world, the gray veil began to tear. The trainee who had fallen too deep managed to regain his purchase in the real world, but Darius was now swimming in the waters of this banging man's reach.
The other trainees broke their forms, their voices rising in sudden terror, but to Darius, they sounded like they were screaming from underwater.
The pull of the banging man wrapped around Darius's mind, dragging him down. He dropped to one knee, the training sword slipping from his grasp. An agonizing pressure built behind his eyes. He choked on a breath, and a thick drop of black blood fell from his nose, splattering against the gray sand. Another trail of black leaked slowly from his left eye, blinding him in darkness.
The banging was deafening now.
"Relent, child." A voice in the Void whispered
Then, a heavy, calloused hand clamped down hard on his shoulder.It felt like a lifeline thrown to a drowning man. It was the only solid thing in a world that had turned to liquid dark, Darius lunged for it, his mind clawing at the grip that anchored him to the world.
Then a shockwave shattered the gray landscape. Color and sound snapped back into reality with the force of a thunderclap.
Darius gasped, bracing himself on his hands and knees in the sunlit, frozen sand. The terrified shouts of the trainees rang clear in his ears. He looked up, his vision swimming, to see King Va'lerius towering over him. The King hadn't gone far; he had watched his son's triumph turn into a near-fatal collapse. Va'lerius's face showed fear for the first time in Darius's life, his eyes fixed on the black blood staining his son's face.
Darius didn't care about his pride. He didn't care about the watching guards. He grabbed his father's forearm, his grip desperate and tight.
"What..." Darius choked out, coughing as the oily sensation cleared his throat. "What was that?"
Before the King could answer, Darius pulled himself up, the terror in his chest entirely focused on the fragile threads connecting him to the world.
"My wives!?"