GENERATION OF DESTINY
Galway, Ireland — 1984
The decision to record in Ireland was Connor's.
He'd made the case quietly one evening in the great hall, the way he made most of his best arguments, without raising his voice. "The Conservatory studio is booked solid through the semester. We're not bumping students. And we're not recording in America. Not yet."
Nathan had looked up from a stack of Daerdon paperwork. "Why not?"
"Because this one is different," Connor said. "The EP was an introduction. Silent Fire was us finding our footing. This record is about Aelin: the lore, the mythology, the sound we've been building toward since the beginning. It needs to breathe somewhere close to home. Ireland is the closest mainland soil to Aelin. The language lives there. The music lives there." He paused. "And there's a studio in Galway I've been hearing about. Grouse Lodge isn't far either, but there's a place on the coast that a session musician told me about. Small. Private. Built into an old stone barn overlooking the Atlantic."
Ricky leaned back in his chair. "A barn."
"A converted barn with world-class acoustics and no one within two miles to hear us," Connor corrected.
Jace looked at Sidney. Sidney gave a slight nod. Ireland was manageable. Close to the Veil's edge, accessible by portal if needed, and remote enough that five men with glowing amulets wouldn't draw unwanted attention.
"Ireland," Jace said. "Book it."
The studio was called Cloch na Mara, Stone of the Sea, and Connor hadn't oversold it. The main recording space occupied what had once been a hay barn, its stone walls left exposed, its timber ceiling arching overhead like the hull of an inverted ship. The control room was modern and precise, tucked into an adjoining structure with glass looking out over the Atlantic. Salt air crept through every crack. The monitors hummed with the warmth that only analog-adjacent spaces could produce.
Their engineer was a quiet Galway man named Pádraig who asked no questions about the strange jewelry they all wore, or the fact that the drummer occasionally made the mixing desk vibrate without touching it.
"I've worked with worse," Pádraig said when Erik accidentally dented a mic stand by gripping it too hard. "Gallagher brothers put a boot through a window once. You lot are grand."
The first week was exploration. They'd written material on Aelin, fragments, melodies, lyrical sketches, but the studio demanded a different kind of discipline than the EP or Silent Fire had ever required. Those records had been built in American studios, on American schedules, under the pressure of proving something. This was different. Cloch na Mara didn't care what they'd done before. Arrangements that had worked acoustically in a castle hall didn't always translate to tape. Nathan spent two full days rebuilding the keyboard patch for the title track, layering Hammond organ beneath a synth bed that shimmered like something between prog rock and Celtic hymnal.
Connor brought his violin into the booth on the third day and laid down the melody line for "Generation of Destiny" in a single take. Pádraig played it back through the monitors, and the room went quiet. The melody soared, bright, fierce, distinctly Irish in its intervals but driven by a rock urgency that made it feel like a war cry dressed in silk.
"That's the album," Jace said from behind the kit. "Right there. Everything else builds from that."
The vocal sessions for the title track were unlike anything they'd done before. All five of them singing on one song, harmonizing, trading verses, duetting, building to a full five-voice chorus that shook the monitors. Jace's gritty baritone voice opened the first verse. Erik's strong, warm voice carried the pre-chorus with a conviction that made Pádraig lean forward in his chair. Jace and Erik duetted on the first chorus, their voices locking together with an ease that came from years of stage work. Connor took the second verse, Ricky the second pre-chorus, and the two of them took the second chorus together before Nathan joined all five of them for the final push. When they hit the last line, "This is the call, we will not fall!" the stone walls seemed to ring with it.
Pádraig pulled off his headphones and stared through the glass at them.
"What the hell are you lot?" he murmured.
Erik grinned. "Just a band from Reno."
The lore experiment took shape gradually. It wasn't a single conversation but an ongoing negotiation between creative impulse and operational security. Connor and Nathan were the architects: Connor for the artistic vision, Nathan for making sure nothing compromised the Veil.
"We can reference the Brotherhood openly," Connor argued one evening over takeaway curry in the control room. "It sounds like fantasy. Nobody's going to hear 'Generation of Destiny' and think it's a literal autobiography. The EP didn't have this. Silent Fire didn't have this. This is the record where we finally have something to say about who we actually are."
Jace had felt it before Nathan said a word: a low, familiar current of anxiety threading through the empathic bond, the flavor of it unmistakably Nathan's. Across the table, Connor's eyes had already moved to Nathan with the quiet attention of someone who had felt exactly the same thing at exactly the same moment. Three empaths in one band. Nobody's inner weather went unnoticed for long. Jace had felt it enough times to recognize it on sight. Betty Dallenger had passed a lot of things to her son. The brilliance. The precision. The inability to stop turning a problem over until every edge was examined.
"I know what you're going to say," Nathan said, setting down his fork. "And logically, I agree with you. But we're putting Aelin's name on a record that's going to be heard by millions of people. The mythology, the symbols, the lore, all of it points somewhere real. I just..." He paused. "I don't want to be the reason someone starts looking for an island that isn't supposed to exist."
Connor looked at him. "Nathan. A fan is going to hear this record and think we're a really interesting rock band with a really interesting concept. That's it. Nobody is going to go looking for an island they never knew existed because of a song. The Veil has held for eight hundred years. It's going to hold through a record release."
Nathan was quiet. Then: "You're right."
"I know," Connor said, and went back to his curry.
Sidney weighed in carefully. "The previous Brotherhood kept their existence entirely secret. No art. No public mythology. Nothing that could create a trail." He paused. "But the previous Brotherhood also failed to stop Aldus permanently. Perhaps a different approach has merit."
Jace settled it. "We control the narrative. If people are going to wonder about us, and they will, eventually, I'd rather they wonder about the version we wrote than the version someone else invents."
The songs came in waves. "Generation of Destiny" was the declaration: anthemic, Celtic-tinged, all five voices. The prophecy of the Brotherhood in song.
"You're No Angel" was Connor's older song, dusted off and reworked, its love-song surface hiding something deeper now that Connor understood what angels actually looked like. His new powers opened up his vision up to the spiritual, where he had caught the sight of creatures that he could only describe as angelic or glorious. He also saw not so angelic entities, but hardly paid attention to them unless he sensed mischief.
"Courage Will Never Fade" was Erik's warrior declaration, sung with a conviction that made the band fall silent the first time he tracked the vocal. Erik, who rarely put himself forward, who measured every word, had written something nakedly brave. When he finished the take, he pulled off his headphones and looked at his hands as if surprised by what had come out of him.
"She Ran" was the gut punch. Jace wrote it about Celia, and recording it nearly broke him. He didn't stay behind the kit. Couldn't. He walked out, stood in front of the vocal mic in the live room, and sang it in two takes. The first was technically perfect and emotionally guarded. The second was raw: his voice cracking in places, the empathic weight of the lyrics bleeding through in a way that made Nathan turn away from the console and Connor press his palm flat against the glass as if trying to steady him from the other side. Pádraig said nothing. He just let the tape roll.
Pádraig played the second take back. Nobody spoke.
"That one," Jace said quietly. "Use that one."
The two instrumentals provided relief. "Space Flight" was pure chaos: Ricky's Sentinel energy translated into five minutes and fifty seconds of guitar pyrotechnics that veered between prog-rock complexity and gleeful sonic destruction. He tracked most of it live, bouncing around the studio like a man possessed, teleporting between his pedalboard and his amp at one point before remembering Pádraig was in the room.
"Did you just..." Pádraig started.
"Quick feet," Ricky said smoothly.
"Ricky Strathan's Solo Song" was exactly what the title promised: a showcase built for Ricky to go berserk on guitar while the others laid down a groove beneath him. Nathan's keys provided the foundation, Erik's bass locked with Jace's drums into an unshakeable pocket, and Connor added rhythm guitar accents that gave Ricky launching pads for each solo section. It was fun. Pure, uncomplicated fun. The kind of song that existed because five friends loved making music together and sometimes that was enough.
Three weeks into the sessions, with seven tracks laid down and the album taking shape, Sidney suggested a day off. Not for rest, though they needed it, but because they'd been inside the stone walls of Cloch na Mara for so long that the outside world was starting to feel theoretical.
"Get out of the studio," Sidney said. "Drive somewhere. Remember that Ireland exists beyond these walls."
Connor wanted to see the coastline. Ricky wanted to find horses. Erik wanted to find a pub that served a proper lunch. Nathan wanted to stop thinking about mix levels for six consecutive hours. Jace just wanted to drive.
They took the coast road west through Connemara, the Atlantic stretching gray and endless to their left, hedgerows and stone walls rolling past on their right. Jace drove, Sidney riding shotgun, the others spread across the back of the hired people carrier. It was a rare, unplanned day, the kind that only happened when a studio schedule accidentally exhaled. The circlets sat in their cases in the boot. The amulets rested warm against their chests. For a few hours, they were just six men on a drive through beautiful country.
Then Connor shifted in his seat.
At first, it was nothing more than a faint pressure behind his eyes. Not a vision or a voice. Just discomfort. He rubbed his arms as a strange shiver traced down his spine. His empathic link flared faintly: Jace's calm steadiness, Nathan's warm pulse, both present but dulled by distance and the ambient hum of the road.
Jace noticed immediately. "You feeling something?"
Connor hesitated. "Yeah. I didn't want to say anything yet."
Nathan glanced up from the map. "Say what?"
Connor exhaled slowly. "There's something nearby. Not dangerous yet. Just... wrong."
The road curved, and the ruins came into view. Stone rose out of the grass like the remains of something half-buried, walls broken inward, arches collapsed, the shape of a castle reduced to suggestion. No signs. No paths. No evidence anyone had been there recently. Benowen Castle.
Ricky leaned forward between the seats, eyes narrowing the moment he saw it.
"Nope," he said flatly. "I don't like that place." A low, instinctual growl rumbled in his chest, a sound he didn't consciously make.
Connor nodded, his own unease mirroring Ricky's.
"Yeah. Same."
Jace eased off the accelerator without quite meaning to, the Guardian Amulet pulsing with a slow, warning rhythm. Sidney studied the ruins through the windshield, quiet.
"This isn't on any of the maps I remember."
Connor's amulet glimmered again, brighter this time.
"It's not empty," he said, his voice losing its casual tone. "And whatever's here isn't asleep."
The car rolled to a stop. Wind pressed against the doors when they stepped out, carrying the smell of salt, wet stone, and something faintly metallic, like old blood. The ruins felt larger up close, shadows pooling where sunlight should have reached. Ricky stayed near the edge of the group, his body coiled, eyes constantly moving.
"My instincts are screaming," he muttered, his fingers twitching as if they wanted to become claws.
"They should be," Sidney said quietly, his hand already resting on the hilt of the blade hidden under his coat.
Connor took a few careful steps forward. His amulet pulsed, steady now. His eyes hadn't lit yet, but focus sharpened, awareness stretching outward.
"There's movement beneath us," he said, a tremor in his voice. "Not alive the way we are. More like... forged."
Sidney stopped walking.
"That's far enough," he said, his voice cutting through the wind. "Everyone hold position. Back-to-back."
Before they could fully form up, the ground vibrated. Just once. A deep, resonant hum that traveled up through the soles of their boots. Connor's eyes flared brilliant green.
"They're coming," he said, calm, certain, but with an edge of terror, "Formation. Don't let them surround us."
The earth split open not with a roar, but with a grinding, tearing sound. The first Wrought hauled itself free of the soil, low-slung and fast, moving on all fours with a fluid, predatory roll that was wrong in the way only things built for killing can be wrong. Its body was encased in hide-like black metal armor, jointed and overlapping, shifting as it moved like something alive. Its claws and teeth burned, not coated in fire but made of it: flaming metal that guttered and spat with every movement. Its eyes were coals, deep orange-red, the kind of heat that doesn't flicker. It was as if fire was what held it together. A second hauled free. Then a third. They spread instantly, circling, heads low, the motion somewhere between a massive hunting cat and something that had never been natural at all.
And then they screamed: a sound that had no right to exist, a rattling serpent hiss braided with a high, piercing shriek that hit the back of the skull like a spike. Ricky's hands went to his ears before he could stop himself.
"Now!" Connor yelled, his fear transmuting into action.
Jace didn't just step into its path; he became the wall. Guardian light exploded outward, not as a gentle shield but as a solid, shimmering barrier of force. The first Wrought slammed into it hard enough to make Jace stagger back a step, the impact ringing through his bones. The creature screeched as the energy seared across its armor.
"Ricky, left flank!" Sidney commanded.
Ricky didn't need to be told twice. He vanished in a shimmer of displaced air, reappearing directly behind the second Wrought as it lunged. He drove both hands into the gap between its armor plates at the shoulder, fingers finding the joint and wrenching. The creature shrieked, that terrible braided sound, and spun, but Ricky was already gone, teleporting clear before the flaming claws could find him.
"Nathan, contain them!" Jace grunted, holding the shield as the first Wrought hammered against it again.
Nathan thrust both hands upward, pulling hard. The air around the ruins was salt-thick and damp off the Atlantic, moisture enough to work with. Water condensed out of nothing, sheeting down in two sudden, heavy curtains on either side of the creatures. Where it struck the Wrought, it seethed, steam erupting with a furious hiss as the creatures recoiled, their coal eyes guttering. The water didn't kill the fire in them, but it hurt. It confused. It bought seconds.
The third Wrought, seeing itself trapped, scrambled up the ruined castle wall with unnatural speed.
"Connor!" Erik yelled, pointing.
Connor's eyes were burning. He thrust one hand out, fingers splayed. A chunk of the castle wall, loosened by age, ripped free and hurtled through the air like a cannonball. It smashed into the climbing Wrought, sending it tumbling back down in a shower of stone and a metallic clang.
But the first Wrought renewed its assault on Jace's shield. Jace cried out, his knees buckling.
"I can't hold it! It's too strong!"
"Then let me help!" Connor shouted. He planted his feet, amulet flaring so brightly it cast long, green-tinted shadows. He seized the very ground beneath the first Wrought. The earth bulged, then erupted, stone and soil wrapping around the creature's legs like a fist. It was trapped, immobilized, roaring in fury.
"Erik, now!" Sidney's voice was sharp as a whip.
Erik launched. He moved with a speed no human should possess, a blur of motion that closed the distance in a second. He hit the trapped Wrought with the force of a car crash, his shoulder connecting with its chest plate. The sound was deafening: a crack of thunder as the creature's armored torso shattered inward. Black, oily blood sprayed, hissing as it hit the ground.
But the victory was short-lived. The second Wrought, which Ricky had wounded, ignored the fire and lunged not at them, but at Connor, who was visibly straining, a thin trickle of blood running from his nose.
"Connor, look out!" Nathan yelled.
He was too focused, too drained. The Wrought's claws were inches from his face when a blur of white light intercepted it. Jace had dropped his shield and thrown himself in front of Connor. The Guardian's amulet flared, and the Wrought's claws skidded across an energy field, throwing sparks.
The distraction was all Ricky needed. He teleported directly onto the creature's back, his legs wrapping around its neck. He didn't have a weapon, so he used his weight, his momentum, and his rage, pulling it off balance as they both crashed to the ground.
The ground shook again. This time, heavier. A deep, grinding tremor that came from the main archway. Connor's eyes, now wide with a new kind of fear, locked onto it.
"Sid," he said, his voice barely a whisper, "There's a bigger one. Anchored. It's... controlling them."
The alpha Wrought emerged slowly. It was broader than the others, moving upright where they had run on all fours, its hide-armor thicker and more densely interlocked, fire burning from every joint and seem as though the heat at its core was greater and had more places to escape from. Its claws were longer. Its coal eyes didn't flicker. They burned with a steadiness that was worse than fury. It exhaled a long, rolling plume of black smoke and looked at them the way a predator looks at something it has already decided to kill.
Ricky scrambled back from the creature he'd downed, his face pale. "Yeah... that's new."
Sidney raised his blade.
"Jason, on me. Connor, find its weakness. Erik, protect Connor. Nathan, keep working the water. This is the one that matters."
Connor's breath hitched. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, the green light now so intense it seemed to bleed into the air around him.
"It's connected," he gasped. "To the ground. To all of them. It's a hive mind. If I can break its focus..."
The alpha Wrought lunged, faster than its size should allow. Jace met it with a renewed shield, the impact throwing him back. Erik moved to intercept, but the alpha backhanded him with a claw that left a burning streak across his forearm, sending the Warrior flying into a crumbling wall.
"Nathan, now!" Connor screamed.
Nathan didn't throw fire. He pulled every drop of moisture from the air around the alpha in a single violent draw and drove it inward: a concentrated, pressurized surge of water that hit the creature's chest like a battering ram. The fire at its joints screamed and spat, steam erupting in a white cloud. The alpha staggered, its coal eyes dimming for just a moment, armor seams hissing where the water found the heat beneath.
"The seam at its chest, where the water hit!" Connor yelled. "The armor's compromised there. That's the break point!"
The alpha Wrought shook off the fire and charged again, directly at the exposed Connor.
This time, Ricky acted. He didn't teleport to it. He teleported through it. For a split second, he and the creature occupied the same space, and the Wrought convulsed as if struck by lightning, its internal mechanisms disrupted. It staggered, confused.
That was the opening.
"ERIK!" Jace roared.
Erik, already back on his feet, hit the exposed joint with all his strength. There was a deafening CRACK as the plating split. At the same moment, Jace lowered his shield and slammed a concentrated bolt of pure Guardian energy into the wound.
The alpha Wrought froze. The fire in its eyes sputtered and died. With a final, shuddering groan, it collapsed, not into ash but into a heap of blackened, inert metal.
The moment it fell, the other two Wrought simply stopped. The fire died in their joints, their claws, their eyes, all of it guttering out at once like candles snuffed by the same breath. They stood motionless for a single heartbeat, and then the armor collapsed inward, the hide-plates falling apart, the thing that had held them together gone.
Silence fell, broken only by the hiss of cooling steam and the sound of their own ragged breathing.
Connor staggered, the green light winking out as his amulet dimmed. He would have fallen if Jace hadn't caught him.
"I'm good," Connor said, his voice hoarse, blood still trickling from his nose. "Just... drained."
Sidney looked around the ruins, his expression grim. He walked over to the heap that was the alpha and nudged it with his boot. "Those were Wrought," he said, the name tasting like poison. "W-R-O-U-G-H-T. Aldus's creations. Foot soldiers."
Nathan wiped his hands on his jeans, staring at what remained of the Wrought. "Foot soldiers."
Sidney nodded. "Which means what you just fought wasn't an attack."
Connor lifted his head, leaning heavily against Jace.
"It was reconnaissance." He said with quiet certainty.
Sidney met his gaze. "Yes."
Erik pushed himself up from the wall, rubbing his bruised shoulder.
"So, he knows now."
Sidney didn't answer right away. He looked at the five of them: exhausted, battered, bleeding in small ways, but standing. Every one of them.
"Soon," he said finally. "He will do more than study you. He will look for your weaknesses, what you leave open, and what you use with deadly authority. He will test you, taunt you...and send his disciples to face you. This is why you cannot take anything as being impossible. Aldus can make the impossible become possible. You must learn to expect it."
The wind swept through the ruins again, carrying the smell of ash and salt. And far away, something ancient had felt the disturbance. And paid attention.
They drove back to Cloch na Mara in silence. The adrenaline bled off slowly, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion that had nothing to do with sleep. Connor pressed his forehead against the cold window glass, eyes closed, the afterimage of green light still flickering behind his lids. Erik flexed and unflexed his bruised hand, methodical, almost unconscious. Ricky sat perfectly still for once, staring at the road disappearing behind them. Nobody turned on the radio.
Nathan spoke first.
"We left our weapons in the car."
Nobody answered. They all knew. The Filleadh. Soilséir. The Macalla. Durandach. Ten feet from where they'd been standing when the earth split open.
"We won't make that mistake again," Jace said quietly, eyes on the road.
"No," Sidney said from the back seat. "You won't."
That night, Ricky couldn't sleep. He sat in the studio's live room with an unplugged electric guitar across his lap, playing silently, fingers working through patterns he didn't consciously choose. Around two in the morning, he plugged in, turned the amp to barely audible, and started writing.
The riff was ugly. Aggressive. Built on a chromatic descent that sounded like something hauling itself out of the earth. He layered it, doubled it, added a bass pattern that growled beneath like a furnace door left open.
By dawn, he had the skeleton of a song.
He showed it to the others over breakfast, playing it on an acoustic with a ferocity that made the gentle instrument sound like a weapon. The lyrics poured out of him: "Smoke fills the sky, screams pierce the night, Master of Chaos with a cold-blooded might," each line aimed directly at Aldus like a thrown knife.
"Ricky," Erik said when he finished, "that's not a song. That's a threat."
"Good," Ricky said. "It's supposed to be."
"Master of Chaos" went onto the album that afternoon.
"Banish to the Abyss" came three days later, written collectively, the way they wrote their best material: someone threw a riff into the room and everyone else caught it. Nathan's Hammond organ howl opened the track. Erik's bass line hit like a demolition charge. Jace's double kicks pounded with a mechanical fury that matched the Wrought's relentless assault. Connor and Ricky's guitars wove together in a wall of sound that felt like fire and silver.
The lyrics were a battle report dressed as a metal anthem. "They came from shadows, they came to steal, claws of fire, mouths of steel." That was the Wrought, described precisely enough that the five of them would always know. "Aelin's light cuts through the dark" was right there in the open, the island's name embedded in a song that would be heard by millions. To a fan, it was fantasy. To the Brotherhood, it was a debrief set to music.
When Pádraig played the final mix back through the monitors at full volume, the stone walls of Cloch na Mara shook. Nathan's keyboard spiraled into the bridge. Ricky's guitar screamed. Erik's bass rattled the glass. Jace's drums hit like artillery. And Connor's voice climbed above it all, fierce and defiant, turning horror into anthem.
Pádraig pulled off his headphones, looked at the five of them through the glass, and said, "I don't know what happened to you lot on that drive, but whatever it was, keep doing it."
They didn't laugh.
The album was finished in six weeks. Eight tracks. Forty-three minutes. A record that sounded like nothing else in rock and roll: Celtic melody threaded through heavy metal architecture, prog-rock complexity grounded by punk urgency, and beneath it all, a mythology so carefully embedded that only the most obsessive listeners would begin to connect the dots. They mixed it in four days and didn't second-guess a single decision.
Generation of Destiny was released in early 1984. Three records in, and Battle Cry had just made the one that mattered.
The European music press seized on it first. Reviews used words like "ambitious," "mythic," "genre-defying." Critics who had tracked the band since the self-titled EP noted the leap with something close to disbelief: not a band refining a sound but a band that had broken through into an entirely different atmosphere. A Dublin critic wrote that it sounded like "ancient Ireland filtered through a Marshall stack." A London journalist called it "the most audacious concept album since The Wall." A Berlin magazine declared Battle Cry the most important rock band of the decade, which Erik found hilarious and Jace found alarming.
But it was the fans who did what Connor had hoped they would.
Within weeks of release, the lore hunters emerged. Message boards lit up with theories. Who was the Brotherhood? What was Aelin? Why did the imagery across the album art, maps, runes, amulet symbols, form a coherent mythology? A university student in Manchester published a twelve-page analysis connecting the lyrics of "Generation of Destiny" to Irish mythological cycles. A fan in Tokyo translated every song and mapped the references against Celtic folklore. A radio host in Sydney played the album front-to-back and told his listeners, "There's a story hiding in here, and I don't think we've found half of it yet."
The lore experiment was working. The truth was hiding in plain sight, and people were running with it exactly the way Connor had predicted, building a mythology around Battle Cry that was actually real, dressed in just enough fantasy to remain deniable.
The European tour launched from Galway. They played the city where they'd recorded, where they'd fought the Wrought, where the Atlantic wind carried the same salt-and-stone smell that clung to the album's DNA. The crowd in Galway sang every word back to them: the singles, the deep cuts, the lore tracks. "Banish to the Abyss" became a live anthem, the crowd chanting the chorus with a ferocity that made the venue shake.
They played Dublin next, then Belfast, then London, where the show sold out in eleven minutes and the promoter added a second night that sold out in eight. They played Paris. They played Berlin. They played Prague, where Connor stood on a balcony overlooking the Charles Bridge after the show and told Nathan, "I could live here." Every city was louder than the last. Every crowd knew more of the words.
The reviews compounded. Critics who had been skeptical of a Reno rock band playing European arenas were silenced by the performances. Battle Cry played more than shows. They delivered something that felt closer to a religious experience. The lights. The sound. The sheer physical presence of five men who moved together like a single organism. And beneath it all, the lore: visual projections of Aelinian symbols, stage designs that evoked ancient architecture, Connor's violin solos that silenced arenas of twenty thousand people.
Halfway through the European leg, the American press started paying attention.
Rolling Stone ran a feature: "Battle Cry's Generation of Destiny: The Album That's Spawning a Mythology." MTV wanted interviews. Radio stations across the country picked up the singles. Fan mail arrived in bales, from Europe and from America, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand. "When are you coming here?" was the universal question.
Jace read the letters in his hotel rooms after shows, the opal pulsing quietly at his chest. The world was opening up. The music was reaching farther than any of them had imagined. And somewhere in the back of his mind, the words of Aldus's reconnaissance echoed: he knows now.
The American tour was announced for the fall. Thirty cities. Shows sold out within hours. Venues upgraded. Dates added. America was hungry for Battle Cry, and Battle Cry was coming home.
But home had never felt the same since the alley in San Diego. And the thing about coming home was that home knew where to find you.
They landed in the United States in September, and the energy shifted. Europe had been triumphant: new territory conquered, new fans claimed, the album validated by audiences who had no reason to be generous. America was different. America was where Battle Cry had been born, where they'd played their first shows on a self-titled EP that barely made it out of the Southwest, where Silent Fire had gotten them noticed but not yet celebrated. Five men from Reno who had clawed their way up through club dates and regional tours and two records that laid the groundwork. Now they were coming back with something that had set Europe on fire, and America knew it.
The first American shows were electric. New York. Boston. Philadelphia. Chicago. The crowds were bigger, louder, more desperate. American fans had been waiting, building anticipation from European reports and bootleg recordings, and when Battle Cry finally hit domestic stages, the release was volcanic.
But as the tour pushed south and west, through Atlanta, through Dallas, toward Houston, something changed in the air that only the amulets could feel.
Connor mentioned it first, quietly, backstage in Dallas.
"Something's watching us."
Jace had felt it too. A presence at the edges of his awareness, like a shadow in peripheral vision that vanished when he turned to look directly at it.
"Aldus?" Nathan asked.
"Not him," Connor said with a shake of his head, "Something he sent. Something patient."
Sidney's expression hardened.
"Stay together. Weapons accessible at all times. Circlets on whenever you're backstage or on the load in dock."
They tightened formation. They carried the Filleadh, Soilséir, the Macalla, and Durandach in cases that never left their sight. They wore the circlets backstage, the telepathic network humming with constant awareness.
And they kept playing. Because that was who they were: five guys from Reno who played rock and roll. And nothing, not Wrought, not reconnaissance, not the long shadow of a thousand-year-old conqueror, was going to silence the music.