The war room was thick with tension.
The flickering firelight carved deep shadows into the obsidian walls, and the Twelve Thorns stood in a circle around the stone table. The map of the continent burned with magical glyphs, pulsing softly as if the land itself held its breath.
"We cannot keep her here," muttered Varyn, the skeletal necromancer whose voice sounded like wind over graves. "She is the daughter of our enemy."
"She's the daughter of his enemy," Luna snapped, arms folded. "Not ours."
A few eyes turned to Kael, seated at the head of the room, silent and still.
"Her presence compromises us," growled Thorn of the East, Rhyos the Redscale. "What happens when the next envoy demands her return?"
Eclipse, calm and cold as ever, spoke with quiet authority. "And what happens if we cast her out and she bleeds into the enemy's hands again?"
A long silence.
"She defended him," Eclipse added. "Risked her life without hesitation. I saw it."
Kael finally stirred.
"Enough," he said, voice like cold steel. "She stays. Not as a hostage. Not as a tool. But because I said so."
His eyes met each Thorn in turn, and none dared speak further.
As the others exited, murmuring among themselves, Luna remained by his side. "They'll come around. Most of them."
"And the rest?"
"We'll deal with it."
That night, the moonlight poured like silver mist over the cliffs outside the city. Kael stood alone near the edge, the cold wind tousling his hair.
Footsteps approached behind him.
"You shouldn't be up," Kael said without turning.
Lyra stepped beside him, wrapped in a dark velvet cloak. Her injuries still slowed her, but the fire in her eyes had returned.
"Neither should you."
Kael smirked, but it faded quickly. "You scared me."
Lyra glanced down. "You scared me first."
Their silence said more than argument ever could.
"You always do that," she murmured.
"Do what?"
"Try to take everything on alone. Like you're still that boy in chains."
Kael flinched.
"You think you're cursed," she whispered, "but you're not. You're just… afraid to need someone."
His throat tightened. "Because everything I ever needed… broke me."
Lyra stepped closer. "Then let me be the one thing that doesn't."
A flicker of warmth passed between them, fragile as glass.
Then—
A figure stepped back into the shadows beyond the ridge, unseen. Cloaked in darkness, one of the Thorns watched them in silence. Eyes narrowed. Breathing quiet. Listening too closely.
Far away, in a chamber hidden beneath the fortress, a crimson flame burned inside a scrying mirror.
A voice echoed in the dark—inhuman, guttural, wrong.
"He draws closer to the edge. Soon, the chains will break… and he will remember."
A single red eye blinked open within the mirror's surface. It whispered a name not spoken in centuries.
"Azrakan."
Kael bolted awake in his chambers, a chill racing down his spine. His hands trembled as he looked into the mirror by his bed—and saw nothing but his own reflection.
His name…
Not Kael.
Something older. Something buried.
Something waiting.
As the council fractures and old wounds fester, Kael walks ever closer to the brink. But in the silence of midnight, even kings dream—and not all dreams are their own…