Chapter 24
Captain Jaroad stalked alongside Caulin on the periphery of their temporary scouting camp, shoulders hunched and jaw rough with new stubble. He’d lost his helmet in the melee, and the raw gash on his eyebrow oozed blood in thick ribbons that he did not bother to wipe away. He still carried his sword, on the alert. Every time he passed by, the men straightened just a little, then sagged twice as deep into whatever miserable thoughts they’d been thinking.
Nearby, the scene of the fight lay mostly cleared. The bodies of the Sylphar had been dragged to the edge of the clearing and left in a grim and silent heap. The human dead had been gathered with care and covered with canvas. The Sylphar had nothing. No shroud, no marker, not even a last word. No one had the strength for more. The air still carried the raw edge of what had happened, and every breath reminded them of it.
The sky was dark blue, the rising sun still hours away. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled with a thin, hopeless note.
“Rotate the sentries,” Jaroad said to Caulin. He spoke so quietly that Theron almost thought he was hearing the wind. “I want them posted in threes. Is that understood?” His hands were shaking as he spoke, but he made no effort to hide it. Caulin nodded and moved off.
Jaroad heaved a heavy sigh and turned to find Theron again. It was time for a talk. He found him just after a few moments, standing over some fallen men. As he approached, he saw Theron wipe a tear from his eye, then turn to face him.
“Codryk, sir,” Theron said, turning back to look at the body nearest to his feet. The soldier appeared to be sleeping, despite the deep rent across his chest from a savage Sylphar blow. “After all that, he didn’t make it.”
Jaroad peered down at the body and nodded. “Losing friends is difficult. You saved him from being used as bait, being tortured, and then you brought him back to us. You did your duty.”
Theron merely gazed back at him, eyes glazed over with grief and anger.
“They’re afraid of you now,” Jaroad said at last. His eyes were red, the whites webbed with veins. “They don’t know what you did out there. Not really. But they know it wasn’t something a normal man should be able to do.”
Theron stared at his own breath, a smoky cloud in the air between them. “What do you want me to say?”
Jaroad exhaled, the sound harsh and definitive. “I want you to follow me. At once.”
He stalked off without waiting, feet heavy and silent, back rigid, and did not look back. Theron followed, silent as a shadow.
The command canopy had been torn down in the battle, but it now stood tall again. The canvas was torn and in tatters on one side. Lanterns hung from hooks in the support beams, casting fevered, flickering shadows across the damaged space. Someone had tried to wipe the blood off the table, now righted again, but all they’d done was to smear red all over. It was puckered with arrow holes and scored by the stabs of desperate spears. On top of it were maps, rolled and unrolled and thrown into chaotic piles. One had been flung clear of the table, where a piece of Sylphar jewelry lay in a heap, a reminder of the battle just an hour before.
Jaroad walked under first and waited for Theron to follow. He turned to look at him, then leaned against the table with his hands spread wide, as if bracing himself against a tide.
He did not speak immediately. He stared at the maps, then at the table itself, then at Theron. Finally he said, “Gods-blessed.”
He said it without emphasis, diagnosis more than a name.
Theron did not answer. He stood at the perimeter of the lantern glow, still as stone, eyes fixed on the slash of light just above Jaroad’s left hand.
“I’ve heard stories,” Jaroad went on. “Since I was a kid. Everyone has. The old men in my village used to say a Gods-blessed could slaughter a town in an hour. Or end a battle in a night. But I always figured it was all made up.”
He raised his eyes, and his gaze was clear and, for a moment, almost gentle. “Then I saw what you did. I watched Rook fall. I watched the killing blow. And then I saw… well, I don’t know what I saw.”
For the first time, Theron looked away. His jaw flexed, then settled. The corded muscles in his neck stood out like ropes.
“I don’t want to make this harder than it has to be,” Jaroad said. He raked a hand through his hair, then wiped the blood off on his coat. “But you know what happens now, don’t you?”
Theron forced a smile, the action harsh and unpracticed. “According to the Charter, I believe you are directed to send any and all soldiers who exemplify… abilities, back to Luminarch City. To stand before the Council.”
Jaroad nodded, slow and sad. “Those are the rules.”
He stood and began to pace. The tent was no more than six paces across, but he filled it with motion. “But here’s the thing I don’t get, and maybe you can help me understand.” He stopped with hands on his hips and faced away from Theron. “Why keep this power a secret for so long? Why not use it in your training at Duskweld? Why not use it in the forest tonight? Why endure all of that?”
Theron’s voice came quieter than before, but it carried a heaviness that seemed to thicken the air inside the tent. “Well, first, because I didn’t want anyone to know. To see what I can do. Because I couldn’t risk being hauled off to Luminarch City for the Council to poke and prod and decide what to do with me. Most Gods-blessed stay hidden for the same reason. Who, by the way, are extremely rare, but they’re out there. The moment the Dominion catches wind of one, they lock them up and ship them straight to the capital. I have something I must do at the front, and joining the army was the fastest and, surprisingly, safest way to get there. Going alone felt riskier.”
He paused and drew a slow breath. “And second, because every time I use it I lose something. A memory. A feeling. A piece of myself. Sometimes I get it back. But it’s never quite the same.”
The words settled between them like dust after a collapse. Jaroad turned slowly, his face unreadable in the lantern glow. Theron met his gaze without flinching, though the cost of that honesty sat heavy in his chest. Outside, the wind rattled the tent walls, and somewhere in the camp a horse whinnied into the night. Neither man spoke for a long moment. The secret was out now, and whatever came next would change everything between them.
Jaroad shivered, and for a second Theron thought the captain might be cold. Then he realized it was fear.
“So, I gather you’ve served against the Sylphar before. You’re… rather old, I take it?” Jaroad asked. “You’ve done this how many times, Theron? How many?”
Theron let the silence linger between them. “Enough to know it never helps. Enough to know it always ends the same.”
Jaroad exhaled again, but this time it came out as a dark, rough laugh. “You know, I should hate you. Should turn you in right now and let the Luminarch Council hand you over to the church to study you and wring you dry.” He looked up, and for a moment he looked young, almost youthful. “But you saved us. My men. You saved more of them than I ever could have. And by Jac’s short spear, Rook never shuts his trap, but losing him would’ve been a massive blow to morale in our company. You saved him, and I am grateful.”
He walked to the edge of the tent and pulled back the flap, letting the cold of the night seep in. The voices of the camp came with it, muffled and strange.
“I can’t stop them from talking,” Jaroad said. “They’re already spreading it. You’ll be legend by sunrise. Maybe it will help, maybe it will kill us all.”
Theron’s hands curled into fists. His breath came slower now, controlled and measured.
“What would you do in my place?” Jaroad asked, genuine and hollow.
Theron’s answer was a whisper. “I’d wait. I’d see what happens this next week. And then I’d decide if you and Roberic need me more than the Council does. But I must warn you… I respect you enough to tell you that if you decide to send me back, I will refuse and I will get to Redan Pass and then to the Mountain Temple. I’d hate to do it alone, but… there it is.”
Jaroad did not smile, but he nodded once, the gesture sharp and definitive. “Alright,” he said. “Alright, Scarecrow. For now, you stay. You fight. You do what you’re told.” He paused. “But do not make me regret this.”
“Thank you,” Theron said, the words leaving a chalky taste in his mouth.
“I haven’t decided yet if I’ll tell the Lieutenant Colonel. He may decide something different.” Jaroad said. He stepped into the darkness, leaving Theron alone next to the table with the maps, the lantern, and the secret that he no longer carried.
Rook couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the night stretched out and split like a bloody canvas, the world shivering and stuttering, the Sylphar in mid-lunge with their faces slack and their mouths open as if to scream, and at the center, Theron with his hand up, remaking the world’s clockwork with his Will and Influence.
He wandered the camp under the pretext of changing his bandage. The cut on his head was dry and sticky with blood, the skin puckered and aching in a way that made his teeth hurt. He’d snatched a strip of clean linen from the medics, but he did not go to their tent. Instead, he drifted, drawn by the thrum of rumor and the scent of cooking meat. As dawn approached, the camp remained restless, despite their weariness.
Jaroad had finally allowed the men to rest and warm themselves. Small groups of soldiers sat hunched around the smallest fires they could manage, voices kept just above the hush that hung over the clearing. Rook could hear his own name spoken in broken pieces that drifted between the crackle of wet wood.
“He’d be dead.”
“Lucky bastard.”
“Did you see what he did to that Sylphar?”
None of it held his attention for long. Most of what he heard was about Theron.
“He lit up like the sun. I swear it.”
“My brother serves in the Luminarch Watch. The Council is always looking for men like that.”
“When it happened, the world went thick. Like moving through syrup. I couldn’t breathe. Thought I was dreaming.”
Someone whispered, “I heard he’s not even human.”
Rook kept walking. His boots sank into the black mud, each step soft and unpleasant. He kept his head down and his lips tight. Now and then he glanced up and found a pair of eyes fixed on him. Some looked away at once. Others did not bother to hide their stares.
He moved past them without a word. The night felt colder than it had before.
A group of veterans sat apart from the others, their faces shadowed. One of them, a big man with his nose broken in at least three places, murmured, “My grandfather told stories of the Gods-blessed. Said they brought nothing but ruin.”
Another soldier with small ears and shaggy hair replied, “He saved our skins tonight though, didn’t he?”
The big man shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. He’ll be a curse to us in the end.”
Rook left them behind. He found Theron by the first of the burial pits that were slowly being dug, just at the edge of the torchlight, perched on an old log. His fingers were laced together, fingers knotted white, and he stared at them as if they were strange things he’d never seen before. He did not look up when Rook approached.
Rook sat next to him. He did not speak at first, just listened to the wind and the far-off echo of a shovel striking stones. The silence was heavy, but Rook had always liked a challenge.
He nudged Theron in the ribs with his elbow, careful of the wound. “You planning on moping all the way to Redan Pass?” he asked.
Theron did not look at him, but his jaw flexed in something like amusement. “Only got a few more miles, right?”
Rook smiled, but leaned in, his voice dropping. “They’re all afraid of you, you know. Even the officers. Never seen a group of grown men so willing to piss themselves over a friend.”
Theron’s shoulders slumped. “I’m not their friend,” he said.
Rook grinned, but there was no actual humor in it. “You keep saying that, but you saved lives tonight, more than just mine. That’s friendship where I come from.”
He watched as Theron’s hands relaxed, just a little. The scars on his knuckles glittered in the light. “You’re not going to tell me how you did it, are you?” Rook asked.
Theron turned his head just enough for Rook to see the exhaustion etched in the lines around his eyes. “What’s to tell? I used my Will to change the design of the world.”
Rook considered. “Will and Influence. Never thought someone could do something like that.” He looked at Theron, at the corpse-strewn battlefield behind them.
“There are very few who could do something like… that,” Theron said. “And remember the cost.”
Rook waited, but Theron fell silent again. Rook picked up a pebble and flicked it at the dark, watching it skitter across the hard ground.
“So, what did you lose?”
Theron considered a moment, then said, “I can’t remember the place I was born. Growing up. My mother… I can’t remember her laugh. I have faint images, but that’s all.”
Rook looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s my fault.”
Theron looked at him sharply. “Do not apologize. You are my friend. It was worth the price.”
Rook looked at him and then chuckled. “Well, thank you. Glad I still have my head.”
Theron’s laugh was short and harsh. “Me too. And really, it’s okay. Sometimes I wish I could forget everything about myself.”
Rook felt the weight of that settle on the log between them. The urge to joke flared in him, but he let it fade.
Instead, Rook looked at Theron, really looked. “You know you’re not alone, right?”
Theron hesitated, but eventually just shrugged. But Rook refused to be put off. “I mean it. If they send you away, I’ll go too. No way I’m surviving another week without a proper friend to keep me from walking into a trap.”
Theron smiled, bleak but real. “You are terrible at staying out of trouble.”
“Exactly why I need you,” Rook said. “You’re the only one stubborn enough to keep up with me.”
They sat in silence after that, and it wasn’t so heavy. The wind picked up, scraping through the tents and making the lanterns gutter. Far off, a shovel struck stone again, and Rook imagined that somewhere, even then, another rumor was being born.
“Alright then,” Theron said. “Wherever I go, you can come with me. But just to let you know, I intend to go to Redan Pass and then to the Mountain Temple.
“And Rook,” Theron said. “Thank you.” And he meant it.
The rest of the battalion arrived at the clearing with the sunrise. Columns of men wound through the black pines in total silence, only the shudder of armor plates and the sound of boots muffled by a small layer of leaves, even and synchronized. At the head was Lieutenant Colonel Roberic, on horseback, all angular bone and ink-dark cloak. He had no weapons that anyone could see, but no one doubted how many Sylphar lives had been ended by his hands.
The columns spread and stopped, each company falling in with a skillful and well-rehearsed speed. Not even the newly dead were enough to disorient them. The men of the battalion barely glanced at the burial heaps as they marched past, heads down, focused on their captains or on the horizon beyond.
Roberic rode his mare forward, dismounted, and led Jaroad along with several other officers, including Sergeant Caulin, to the command table to confer.
He swept his eyes over the assembled officers, then said in a low, even voice. “Report.”
Jaroad stepped forward. “As you know, one of our scouting parties ran into heavy Sylphar resistance last night. Traps, pitfalls, and ambushes. We suffered losses. They are out there and waiting for us. Then came the enemy attack on our camp, sir. Twenty-eight men lost. We held our ground because the men kept their discipline.” He paused for a breath that seemed to scrape inside his chest, then said, “The Sylphar broke and ran.”
Roberic nodded. “Good. The rest?”
A sergeant with a bloodied beard cleared his throat. “No further sign of the enemy, sir, but it’s safe to say the Sylphar will be hounding us every step of the way into Redan Pass.”
Another sergeant said, “The wounded are stable, but we need more bandages.”
Roberic flicked his finger over the battered scouting map on the table. “We move for the Pass this evening. No delays, no mercy. We’ll march through the night and be at the fortress tomorrow. The men can rest here for the day.”
He leveled his eyes on Jaroad, and for a moment, it was just the two of them. “What else?”
Jaroad’s expression blanked out. “What do you mean, sir?”
Roberic’s lips twisted up at one corner, the faintest suggestion of a smile. “I hear things, you know. Your runner you sent to us last night about the attack. He had a lot of things to say. About your man, Theron. That he’s… good.”
There was a shift in the men, a subtle recalibration. Caulin and the other sergeants collectively feigned deafness.
Jaroad’s mouth worked once, twice. “He’s good. One of the best we got. Basically held the right flank himself after the Sylphar broke through.”
Roberic eyed him for a long moment, then said. “If he’s one of the best, put him in the front. He’s in Sergeant Caulin’s squad, right?” Caulin nodded. “I want to see if the stories are true.” He jabbed a battered finger at the map, tracing the planned route. “We move tonight. That’s all. Dismissed.”
The officers saluted and stepped out into the morning sun, faces shuttered and unreadable. As they filed out, wordless runners sprinted to every corner of the encampment to instruct the men to rest up and be ready to move at sundown.
The camp moved. Men unrolled bedrolls, unbuckled weapons, stoked the warmth out of the fires, and others were sent out to the perimeter for sentry duty. Rook and Theron moved with the tide of bodies, neither of them speaking. Every time Theron passed a knot of soldiers who had fought the night before, the conversations hushed. Some looked at him with awe, some with thinly veiled dread.
Rook nudged him with his elbow. “You’re famous now. Maybe now you can walk to the front of the line for our meals.”
Theron smiled, but he couldn’t unsee the way people moved to let him through, the way their eyes lingered on him a second too long.
As the different units formed up in the clearing, Jaroad and Caulin found him. The captain was as tired as Theron felt, but his voice was steady. “Your squad is on point tonight,” he said. “The lieutenant colonel wants to see how good you are.”
Rook paled. “A demonstration? Of what exactly?”
Jaroad ignored him. He looked at Theron, holding his gaze for a long moment. “You know.”
The trail to Redan Pass twisted upward from the river, little more than a wounded line carved through the forest. Trees crowded in until the world felt ribbed and narrow, their moss-blackened limbs heavy with blue-tinged frost. A long column pushed forward, squad after squad, company following company, breath steaming in the cold press of the air. Sweat, fear, and the copper stink of wet rot clung to every step. No one spoke unless forced. Boots slipped in mud that had frozen and thawed too many times, each crunch echoing off the tight walls of timber.
Theron walked on point with Rook, Caulin, and a dozen new men folded into their squad to replace the ones lost the night before. They had been chosen for sharp eyes, quiet feet, or in one case because the man did not fear walking beside someone he now thought might be a monster. The path rose in miserable steps. Roots grabbed at ankles. Brambles waited in clotted walls that hid anything sharp enough to kill.
Moonlight barely filtered through the canopy. What reached them carried no comfort and felt more imagined than real. As they climbed, the dark thickened around them. Frost clung to branches in pale bands, and old moss hung from the limbs like rotting cloth.
Theron slowed when they passed a stand of leaning pines. Black veins ran through the trunks in jagged patterns. They pulsed faintly, like something alive inside the wood. Every few steps brought another tree marked with the same creeping stain. The forest felt bruised, strained under a weight it had not chosen.
The first man had died in a pit trap before anyone even knew it was there. One step, and the ground fell away from his boots, the earth crumbling in a snap of splintered wood. There was a scream, harsh and sudden, then cut off, and after that a slurping, sucking sound and the wet clatter of gear on rock.
Rook was the first one there, kneeling by the hole. He peered into it, face grim. “Just a boot, some sharpened spikes, and a lot of red,” he reported.
The rest of the squad paused only a moment before the fear took root in them. Each man stared at his own boots, barely trusting the ground. When the next trap came. It was a tripwire so fine they could barely see it. It was Theron who snagged it, fingers flicking out to catch the man in front of him just as his boot went forward.
He raised a finger. “Wait.”
The soldier looked at him, eyes wild and uncomprehending, until Theron pointed at the fine line strung between two saplings. “Step over.”
The man did, shaking so hard his sword rattled on his belt.
Rook knelt down and examined the wire. “How’d you even see that?”
“Didn’t,” Theron said. “I felt it.”
That made the man even more nervous.
There were more traps. A deadfall that dropped a cluster of sharpened stakes from the trees. A snare that caught a soldier around the ankle and would have hoisted him into the air if not for Theron’s catching and anchoring him while the other men cut him down. Multiple small pit traps with poisoned stakes to impale a soldier’s foot. Once, they passed a hollowed tree that stank of some vile tar, and Caulin prodded Theron and said, “You think—?”
Theron nodded. “Darts, probably. Or worse.”
The more times Theron saved someone, the more the men drifted toward him, inch by inch, until they moved like iron filings around a magnet. By the time they reached the ravine before the Pass, the squad had closed into a tight circle at his back. They rested for a few minutes while the rest of the battalion pushed through the dark behind them.
Along the way, Theron had taken point on every trap they found and disabled them or set them off. The pitfalls would be noticeable from a distance from how large they were, and easily avoided. The battalion followed only a few dozen strides behind, trusting the churned footprints of Theron’s path more than the forest itself.
When they reached the ravine, Roberic approached at the head of his column. His face looked pale in the low light as he gave Theron a brief nod, a silent admission of what everyone already knew, that they had made it this far because of him.
That was the moment the Sylphar attacked.
Scurrying down the ravine wall, iridescent skin catching what little light there was, blades out and already blue with the same poison that rimmed the pit traps behind them. The first volley of arrows hit the soldiers before they knew it was coming, and a large column of men collapsed inward, diving for cover.
Theron didn’t hesitate. He drew his sword and waded into the nearest knot of Sylphar, cutting through the crowd with the same inexorability as the night. The Sylphar were like liquid, but deadly and precise. Theron was wind, unpredictable, everywhere at once.
He parried the first strike, then drove his heel up into the attacker’s knee, snapping it. The Sylphar fell, and Theron slit its throat in one motion, clean as taking off a fish’s head. The next tried to come in at an angle, but he spun, caught the Sylphar’s wrist, and drove his own blade up into the Sylphar’s chest. Purple blood erupted, almost black.
Behind him, Rook was screaming, slashing like a man gone mad, sword in one hand and a stolen Sylphar knife in the other. “Come on, you painted bastards!” he yelled, laughing through a cut to the shoulder.
The ravine became a slaughterhouse. Men and Sylphar alike screamed and bled, their cries echoing up the rock in a wild symphony. Theron cut his way up the line next to Caulin, both of them carving a path through the enemy with cold, mechanical efficiency. The men around them rallied, spurred on by the bloodlust or simply too terrified to do otherwise.
Theron spotted the archer before anyone else. A Sylphar crouched on a boulder at the top of the ravine, bow drawn, the arrow already sighted on Caulin’s chest. The sight struck through Theron like a blade. Muscles locked. Breath thinned. The world pressed in on him as if the forest itself wanted to hold him still. Everything in him urged silence. Do nothing. Stay small. Stay contained. The thing inside him stirred in answer, hot and bright and hungry.
A tremor ran along his ribs where the last burst of light had torn through him during the ambush. The ache had never fully eased. His vision wavered when he blinked, as if the edges of the world refused to settle properly. Even his blood felt hot, as though fire had been poured into it and left to burn. He remembered the promise he had made to himself years ago. No more calls to that power unless the consequence of restraint was worse than the price he would pay. Then the Sylphar shifted its aim. Caulin stepped into a patch of light, unaware of the danger. The arrow began to fly.
Time crawled. Not on its own. Theron’s power did it. His heartbeat rang in his ears like a giant’s slow drum. He felt the world pull away from him. The trees lost their weight. The ground fell distant. His own body seemed to unhook from reality, as if someone had lifted him out of his skin and held him behind his own shoulder.
He still reached for it. For Caulin.
He screamed for Caulin to drop, though the sound left his throat as a distorted growl. Colors melted together. Light bled around his hands. The world split along invisible seams, and he stepped into the split without thinking.
Power surged through him. It was a terrible rush. Bright, sharp, and hungry. Lines of white fire raced along his arms. His vision flashed white, then black, then sharpened again in sudden clarity. He felt the arrow crawling through the slowed air, its tip gleaming like a frozen star.
He reached into the space around it. Not with a hand. Not with anything natural. The air folded. The arrow’s flight bent. The wood cracked apart as if crushed by an unseen fist.
Theron remained suspended in the rift for a heartbeat that felt like a lifetime. Every part of him trembled. He felt the cost gather behind his temples. He felt the burn in his blood deepen.
He wanted to let go. He wanted to collapse.
Instead, he forced the world to close again. Forced the light to pull back. Forced the shadows to thin. Forced himself to breathe.
Time snapped into place. Caulin hit the dirt, panting, eyes wide. The fractured arrow clattered harmlessly beside him.
Theron staggered, catching himself against a root. His hands shook uncontrollably. The price had landed hard this time. He felt hollowed out. He felt scraped raw.
But Caulin was alive.
That mattered more than anything he would pay later.
Less than a minute later, the ambush had ended. The ravine lay scattered with bodies, Sylphar and human tangled in awkward heaps. Soldiers blinked in disbelief, eyes wide, before turning to Theron, who stood in the center, chest heaving, blade slick with blood. Caulin muttered something under his breath, half in awe, half in exasperation, about how now he was just like Rook and owed Theron his life.
Rook staggered over, a bloody mess but otherwise intact. “Hell of a first couple days at the front,” he said. “These Sylphar really don’t like us. That force was probably fifty strong, and they attacked a thousand men?”
Theron looked back at the battalion. They stared back, some with gratitude, most with the open, naked terror usually reserved for nightmares. Roberic and Jaroad stood side-by-side, both looking at him with grim expressions.
Theron finished wiping his sword clean, slid it back into its sheath, and started climbing the ravine along the narrow trail. Redan Pass was waiting for him.