Chapter Eight
The Mirror and the Flame
He reached for his reflection and found a stranger staring back.
Viktor slipped back through the palisade, pulling his arms across his chest to stretch the ache. Each step made him wince—and that was enough to draw jeers from a tent pitched low to the ground.
“What’s the matter, Captain—desert bite ya?”
“Get in here, lad! We’ll set that ache straight.”
“You need desert dew!”
Viktor lifted a hand, waving them off.
“If that’s spirits you’re offering, I’ll pass. Duty doesn’t drink.”
“We’re off duty!” the first bellowed.
“Worked through the night and should be sleeping, but Samson here owes me coin.”
Dice rattled across the table, followed by groans.
The lad who’d thrown them grinned—bright-red hair knotted into thick coils falling past his shoulders, eyes burning with mischief to match.
“Desert dew isn’t spirits,” he said. “It’s a balm. And you need it.”
He lobbed a clay jar through the air.
Viktor caught it on instinct.
The lid turned easily beneath his fingers, releasing a cool, herbal scent—mint and resin carried on desert wind.
He smeared a little along his forearm, then blinked as the ache eased near instantly.
“Dask.”
He stepped inside, lowering onto the bench with a wry grin.
“Actually—I’m also off duty.”
The men roared.
“What do they call you?”
“Captain Viktor Seraphim.”
“A spoiled welp from Casqadia,” someone muttered.
“Worse,” Viktor said evenly. “I’m from Aerdania.”
Blank looks—then laughter.
“That’s Chalvka,” said the red-haired one, “and Ivkar. I’m Samson. We hail from Kryon—where real men are made!”
He hoisted a mug, clashing it in toast.
“What happened to you, Captain?” Chalvka asked.
Viktor huffed.
“Ran myself like a mill horse stuck with a brand.”
Ivkar barked a laugh.
“So you flogged yourself like a mill horse—only to prove you’re the ass tied to it!”
The tent shook with their mirth.
Chalvka stood and seized Viktor’s arm, dragging his sleeve down without ceremony.
“You’re doing it wrong,” he said, scooping a fingerful of balm and working it hard into the muscle.
The pressure burned—then cooled.
Viktor hissed through his teeth.
“What’s in this?”
“North wind and calloused hands—that’s all it takes,” Chalvka said. “But only a Kryonite’s got both.”
“I believe that.” Viktor tipped his cup, smiling crookedly. “And this is no elvish ale either.”
“Our spirits could kill an elf,” Samson said with a smirk. “Saw it happen once.”
Laughter swelled again—dice, mugs, and rough camaraderie filling the hour until Viktor finally rose, stretching easier than before.
Samson caught his arm and tossed the jar after him.
“Keep it, Captain. If you can’t fight with steel, fight with this.”
Viktor weighed it in his hand, the scent already seared into memory.
“Desert dew,” he echoed under his breath, tucking it away.
* * *
Afternoon found Viktor astride his horse, eager to return to duty—anything to quiet his mind.
The blood bay moved like water beneath him—long, easy strides, every muscle built for distance. Viktor let her carry him beyond the palisade into the rocky flats, where wind curled cold from the mountains and the sky stretched merciless.
He reined her in at a rise and surveyed the land.
Empty stone. Brittle scrub.
Nowhere to hide if wings blotted the sun.
His mind worked with a soldier’s precision—measuring lines, imagining fire.
Arrows would scatter. Spears would splinter.
A dragon’s shadow alone could unmake an army.
He drew the knife Gabriel had pressed into his hand days before—a slender, gleaming blade, elf-forged and polished so fine it caught the sun in a single bright flare.
Light leapt across the barren ground, flashing into his eyes.
He blinked—then looked again.
A dragon could be blinded.
The thought struck hard:
Mirror-bright shields, raised to the sun, forcing the fire back into the beasts’ own eyes.
A way to turn fear into fury.
A way to hold ground.
The bay tossed her head, impatient.
Viktor sheathed the blade and let her run again, heart pounding—
and before him, visions of fire broken on light.
* * *
By dusk, the camp glowed with scattered fires.
Viktor found Gabriel’s men gathered in a rough circle, mugs in hand, their laughter rising above the crackle.
He dismounted stiffly, earning a round of ribbing.
“Careful, Captain—bay’s too fine for you. She’ll spoil you soft.”
“Or maybe it was the nomads’ balm!”
“What’d they do, rub you down like a prince?”
Viktor smirked, tugging his mantle tighter.
“Mock all you like. But when your backs give out, don’t come begging my jar.”
The circle roared.
Gabriel leaned over, grin sharp as ever.
“Look at you—making friends everywhere. Cavalry, archers, and now nomads? What have I told you about letting them trick you with their potions?”
“Spoken from a Draekenran elf,” Viktor shot back.
Gabriel sighed, raising his mug in mock defeat.
“Fair.”
Firelight gilded their laughter, warm in a camp that smelled of steel and fear.
For a moment, Viktor let himself breathe—the ache dulled by desert dew and brotherhood both. But when the circle broke and men drifted toward their tents, the weight returned—the quiet that stalked when the fires went out.
Viktor and Gabriel walked together through the cooling dark.
That was when he saw her.
Through the opening of the command tent, he glimpsed Amerei seated on the floor, her shift pale beneath a satin robe, hair unbound and tumbling gold down her back. She laughed at something said inside—unguarded, radiant, as if war and duty had never touched her.
The sound struck him breathless.
His chest tightened, aching with the need to be near her.
A sharp kick caught his calf.
“Too close to the sun,” Gabriel muttered. “Move along, soldier.”
Viktor forced his legs to carry him past the command ring—past the shadow of her laugh—into his own tent.
The bronze mirror against the canvas wall glinted as he pulled his shirt over his head.
He paused, unwilling, then met his reflection.
Not just his.
His brother’s.
Adamar’s face stared back—young and unlined, the way he had been before sickness hollowed him. But where his brother was forever frozen in memory, Viktor had grown older—seven years harder, hair now long and braided at the sides, shoulders built by war.
The lamplight caught in his hair, black as midnight frost, the blue of his eyes cold enough to burn.
He lowered his gaze to the ink below his chest: the raven’s wing etched across his ribs, shadow spread beneath his heart.
Grief coiled sharp as a knife.
Storne’s words followed it.
“I will show you who you are.”
Viktor swiped a hand over his jaw instead.
“I need to shave.”
He sat, scraping the blade mindlessly across his skin until the shadow was gone, then stretched back on the cot, one arm above his head.
His mind refused rest—circling her laugh, her hair, the way her name had already carved itself into him.
“I don’t even know her,” he whispered to the canvas.
Silence pressed back.
His eyes closed, but Storne’s voice still lingered.
“A great and terrible awakening.”
“I don’t even know myself.”