Chapter 42 Nythir
Nythir
How to Lead an Army: gather your loved ones, your enemies, some raccoon-coded civilians, and pray.
Dawn had not yet broken, but Nythir stood as if it had.
The cold wind scraped across the frozen plains outside Draewyn’s ridge, tugging loose strands of hair, carrying the faint metallic smell of awakening magic.
The fields were silvered with frost, the sky bruised with the promise of morning, and the earth waited beneath him as though unsure whether it was about to witness glory or disaster.
Nythir felt it settle over him like a mantle he had never asked for.
They were watching him. Refugees, guild members, half-trained fighters, civilians clutching whatever weapons they had found—all of them waiting for him to decide what came next.
Not because he was the strongest. Not because he was noble.
Because he hadn’t broken.
The realization tightened his chest. He had led small groups before. Missions. Raids. Survival. This was different. This was raw faith—and it terrified him more than the enemy ever could.
Behind him gathered… well, not an army. He refused to call them that. Armies had discipline. Formation. Matching equipment. A shared understanding of the word strategy. This group had none of those things.
Instead, they had:
Orphans clutching brooms like divine weapons.
Farmers gripping pitchforks with the grim resolve of men who’d spent lifetimes fighting drought.
Women brandishing iron pans with holy conviction.
The Baroness screeching about posture.
Sylva pacing in agitated feline arcs.
Sable staring ahead with the serenity of a corpse.
Basil carving runes into the dirt while looking like he was on the verge of summoning his own grave.
If someone had told Nythir a year ago that he would lead a rescue mission for the woman he loved, accompanied by this… collection of souls, he would have punched the future for insulting him. Now he just braced himself for whatever was about to happen.
Lyssara strolled to his side, braid swinging like a weapon. “Ready to start a war with kitchen utensils?” she asked.
“No,” he muttered. “But since when has readiness mattered to anyone here?”
“Never,” she agreed with terrifying cheer.
Vorrik proudly held two iron pans together like ceremonial drums. “I am going to dent a king’s skull with this.”
“That isn’t how wars work,” Nythir tried, knowing full well it was pointless.
“Neither is our group,” Lyssara reminded him.
He had no answer for that.
A low hum vibrated through the frost as Basil stepped away from the massive sigil he’d carved into the hardened earth.
The design was beautifully complex—Draewyn circlework intertwined with ancient Valedaran calligraphy, glyphs for movement and protection layered with geometry used during emergency evacuations.
Trained mages should have used it, not… this.
Basil straightened. “Everyone step inside. Carefully. Do not cross the—”
The horde surged forward immediately, trampling half the symbols. Someone dragged a pitchfork through a delicate arc. A small child dropped a spoon directly into the circle’s core.
Basil made a sound that could only be described as academic heartbreak.
“Please,” he begged. “For the love of every deity—do not cross the runic—”
Too late.
The magic was already out of control.
Nythir could feel it vibrating through the ground, uneven and furious, like a heart beating too fast. Basil stood at the center, eyes wild, hands glowing with sigils that refused to remain stable. This wasn’t careful spellwork. This was grief given form.
For the first time, Nythir understood that whatever line they had meant not to cross had already been obliterated. There would be no retreat from this.
The Baroness swept forward, radiant with confidence and delusion. “My time to shine.”
“Oh gods,” Basil whispered.
She opened the golden locket at her throat and tipped Estella’s stored blessing into the sigil. The entire field blazed with molten light as every relic and enchanted trinket blessed by Queen Estella awakened in a single breath.
Nythir’s teeth buzzed. His vision burned white. The magic surged so violently that the frost cracked beneath their feet.
Vorrik squinted. “Is it supposed to glow this much?”
“No,” Basil said.
“No,” Sable echoed.
A pulse rolled through the sigil—deep, ancient, alive.
The earth split open.
And a phoenix, enormous and incandescent, tore upward in a column of gold.
Nythir stumbled back. “What—”
The phoenix tilted midair, wings arching like molten scythes, and dove straight at them.
Sylva cursed violently.
Basil tried to run.
Lyssara grabbed Vorrik by the collar. “Not like this!” she shrieked. “Not by a giant flaming chicken!”
The phoenix struck the center of the circle. Fire swallowed everything. Heat. Light. Freefall.
A roar vibrated through Nythir’s bones. His stomach dropped. The world spun—
And his feet slammed into solid stone.
He gasped.
They were standing at the front gates of the Draewyn palace. Very alive. Entirely intact. Somehow not ash.
War surged around them immediately—real war, with trained soldiers shouting formation orders, Kraggmar’s cavalry sweeping down the ridge in coordinated strikes, Valedaran knights charging with banners held high.
Spells cracked through the air, illuminating the courtyard in flashes of violet and gold.
Hovering above the chaos in a skin-tight outfit was Luna. Wings outspread. Tail flicking lazily. Succubus charm radiating from her like perfume.
Half the guards stared at her in slack-jawed devotion.
“Hello, boys,” she purred. “Put your weapons down, breathe deeply, and reassess your life choices.”
Weapons hit the ground in a chorus of clangs.
Sylva stared. “She is horrifying.”
Sable nodded. “She is.”
And then the Baroness charged.
She glowed like a fallen star, Estella’s blessing turning her into a golden comet. Her purse struck the first guard; he cartwheeled into two others. The glow rippled across the citizens behind her, blessing each movement with impossible protection.
“For Esther! For Lucy! For Valedara!” she hollered, barreling toward the palace.
Basil chased after her, horrified. “Irene! You are not a frontline fighter!”
“I am whatever I want to be!”
Lyssara stood frozen. “I want to be her when I grow up.”
“Stay with her,” Nythir ordered, drawing his blade. “If she dies, I’m never hearing the end of it.”
The mismatched army surged forward, and the real armies faltered at the sight of civilians—not dying, not fleeing, but winning.
A Valedaran knight yelled, “Are those… bakers?”
A Draewyn guard cried, “A woman with a rolling pin just broke my shield!”
Nythir vaulted over a fallen column, silver magic flashing down his arms. A guard lunged; he deflected, countered, and cut through another. His team moved with chaotic precision.
“Lyssara, left!”
She flipped off a statue and kicked a man unconscious.
“Vorrik, stop trying to take their weapons—just hit them!”
“I am hitting them!”
A woman bit a knight’s ear.
Lyssara blinked. “She just bit him.”
Sylva shrugged. “He deserved it.”
Sable cut down three guards in one smooth motion, clearing the path.
They reached the inner palace corridors, and the world shifted.
Draewyn’s palace had always been unnerving, even in peacetime.
Its architecture favored towering arches and low-burning sconces, shadows stretching long over carved stone.
The walls told stories—quite literally. Painted battles and etched victories shimmered faintly as magic pulsed beneath the surface, reacting to the chaos outside.
Every portrait’s eyes seemed to follow Nythir. Every step echoed like a judgment. Every breath tightened the knot inside his chest. The palace felt alive in the wrong way.
Every step echoed too long. Every torch burned too steadily, flames unnatural in their stillness. The walls drank sound, swallowing the clatter of boots until it felt as though the building itself was listening.
Nythir reached instinctively for Esther’s presence, meeting only the thinnest thread. It flickered weakly at the edge of his awareness, stretched thin and smothered by hostile magic.
Fear cut sharply and immediately through his chest.
She was here. And she was running out of time.
He sprinted faster.
The air changed as they neared the throne room. It grew colder, thinner, tinged with iron and magic—the kind that settled like a weight against the ribs. Nythir felt it before he saw anything.
Esther. Her magic. Faint. Strained. Calling to him like a candle sputtering in the wind.
“Faster,” he rasped, and the word scraped raw in his throat.
They rounded one final corner. A pair of heavy obsidian doors loomed, engraved with Draewyn’s ancient crest—a wyvern swallowing the sun. The castle’s wards pulsed over the doors like veins of light, reacting to the conflict inside.
Nythir didn’t slow. He slammed into the doors with silver magic bursting up his arms, forcing them open in a shock of sound—
—and the world narrowed to a pinpoint.
The throne room of Draewyn stretched wide and cold, all sharp edges and polished obsidian. Tall windows filtered dawn light into thin, icy shards. Banners hung from the ceiling—Draewyn’s black and crimson sigils, ceremonial and imposing, now torn and fluttering from the battle’s vibrations.
The floor had been polished to a mirror sheen ages ago, reflecting the chaos like a second world. The throne itself was carved from blackstone, massive and jagged like a mountain peak ripped from the earth.
But Nythir saw none of it clearly.
The world narrowed to a single, unbearable point.
Esther knelt on the stone like she belonged there—shoulders squared, chin lifted in defiance even as exhaustion carved hollows beneath her eyes. Blood streaked her temple. Her hands were bare. Trembling with no sparks.
Nythir’s vision blurred.
He remembered her laughing in the market. Her fingers warm in his. The way she had said his name like it anchored her to the world.
The distance between those moments and this one felt impossible. If he had been seconds later—
He shoved the thought away. Terror eclipsing rage. Not yet. Please, not yet.
A dagger pressed to the delicate line of her throat.
Nythir stopped so abruptly that Lyssara staggered behind him. His lungs strained, refusing to pull in air. Something hot and brutal cracked through his ribs, detonating across his chest.
He had imagined many ways this could have happened. He had feared worse. But nothing—not even the nightmares—prepared him for the sight of her on the ground, forced to kneel as if she were something less than divine.
His body trembled. Not from fear. From the unbearable, rising pressure of everything he had not allowed himself to feel until now.
I failed her. I wasn’t fast enough. I should have been here. I should never have let her out of my sight. I can’t lose her—stars, I can’t—
The Draewyn king jerked Essie closer, blade digging into her skin as a bead of blood welled.
“Ah,” he drawled, smirk dripping with cruelty. “The stray dog comes running.”
Nythir saw red. Actual red. Magic flared behind his eyes until the world tinted crimson at the edges.
Lyssara sighed loudly as Vorrik whispered, “Oh no…”
Sylva muttered, “He’s past reasoning now.”
The king tilted Esther’s chin with the blade. “Look how desperate you are. All of this… for a troublesome little—”
Something in Nythir snapped like a bowstring stretched too far.
Silver magic exploded up his arms—not controlled, not measured, but raw, feral, instinctive. His hands shook violently, fingers curled as if already around the king’s throat.
His voice, when it came, was not loud. It didn’t need to be.
“This,” he said, each word trembling with rage and something far more fragile beneath it, “is the last mistake you’ll ever make.”
He stepped forward. Every emotion he’d shoved down for years—fear, guilt, longing, helpless love—rose all at once, choking him. His breath wavered, uneven. The weight of nearly losing her crushed him from the inside.
She could have died. She almost did. He could have arrived to a corpse.
The very thought made his vision blur.
“Essie,” he whispered, voice breaking as her name ripped out of him like a prayer and a curse. He hadn’t meant to say it aloud. But everything in him was unraveling, and there was no stopping it.
His knees nearly buckled under the realization: He could not do this—he would not survive losing someone he loved.
The Draewyn King pressed the dagger harder.
Esther winced.
Nythir’s breath shattered. “Don’t hurt her,” he said, the plea raw and unprotected. “Please. Don’t—”
He was trembling. Not from rage now. From something far more dangerous.
He felt Lyssara tense beside him. Felt Vorrik and Sylva draw weapons. Felt the Baroness readying her purse with lethal intent. Felt Basil’s magic coil like a storm behind them.
But all Nythir saw was Essie. Her wide eyes. Her scraped cheek. Her shaking breath. The tiny drop of her blood sliding down the king’s blade.
And he knew—If she died now, the world would go silent forever.
The prince of Valedara stumbled into view at the doorway, horror carved so deeply into his expression that she barely recognized him.
Lupin’s voice cracked. “Esther—no—”
The Draewyn king dragged her upright by the ropes, blade biting deeper. “Drop your weapons or lose your precious princess.”
Esther felt panic ripple through the room like a tremor—the soldiers, the civilians, her friends, her family.
And Nythir—
Nythir stepped forward with magic erupting around him like a star going nova.
“Let. Her. Go.”
He didn’t shout it. He breathed it—like a prayer breaking apart in his throat. His voice trembled. His hands shook. His eyes—those steady, gentle eyes—were full of terror.
He was unraveling.
For a heartbeat, seeing the fear in him—fear for her—almost broke her resolve.
I can’t lose you.
His magic said it. His shaking breath said it. The tremor in his stance said it.
The Draewyn king snarled. “Bow, or she bleeds.”