He stepped forward, and the vines recoiled, curling away from his boots. They parted for him, like beasts recognizing their master.
Then he turned to me, his eyes shadowed with guilt and something darker. “Do you hear them?” he asked softly.
I shook my head. All I heard was the squelch of shifting roots.
“Their groans,” he whispered. “Their anguish and agony… Or is it just in my head?”
I steadied my breath, closing my eyes against the reek. My power, quiet now after last night, stirred faintly beneath my skin. It needed awakening, so I reached for it. The air changed when I did.
And then I heard it too.
Time stuttered. The air itself keened, a muffled chorus of voices strangled, unallowed to speak. The silence was not empty. It was suffocating, full of abandoned ghosts too weary to wail.
Kael walked on, and I followed. Together we approached the corroded gates.
The walls pulsed with tar and shadow. Vines slithered along the stone, uncovering narrow windows, arrow slits, and broken cracks where thin blades of light cut through the dark. The tower’s heart was hollow, a spiral of shattered stairs winding upward into unseen chambers.
Then, without warning, the ruin flared with sunlight.
The hall revealed itself, tables blackened by fire, shelves collapsed beneath the weight of ash. Torn books and splintered tools lay scattered like bones. A staircase gaped open into the darkness below, where the vines grew black and thick, crawling outward from the depths like something long starved and sickened.
Kael exhaled slowly, his gaze fixed on the staircase diving into the dark below. Then he turned to me. He looked both ready to speak and terrified of what his own words might unleash.
I waited. I would let him tell me, though now I could hear what he heard, the anguish that haunted these walls, echoing through stone and shadow. Their groans…
And with all the fragments the echoes had shown me, I could begin to piece together the story.
A story Kael and the Court had buried deep beneath the mountain.
“You won’t see me the same after I tell you,” he said. It was the first time I’d heard his voice tremble.
“I’ll see you as someone who told me the truth.” And that was all that mattered.
The truth Kael had buried.
The truth that gnawed at his bones each night.
The truth behind how the cure to the Breath of Death had been made.
Chapter 23
Kael — Past
Dereck Thorne and his militias retreated underground, away to Bretannia or into the gutters of the capital. Still, the Breath of Death stole thousands more. Shops shuttered. The poor who could no longer pay rent were cast into the streets. People lay dead on cobbles and in mud alike.
The Crown, safe behind castle walls, tried to build shelters, run soup kitchens, send aid to the countryside. Each relief caravan carried the plague. Each aid mission bred more death and deeper despair. The king, seized by fear, halted efforts to care for the dying.
Thoughts and prayers did nothing. Priests, allowed to travel for communion, poured all their power into pleas and rites. No blessing worked. No divine hand lifted the curse. Hope teetered on the edge of an abyss it could not climb back from.
Magi academies across Terra hunched over scrying spheres night and day. They bent every mind and art to understanding the Breath of Death. They tried to destroy the thing that ate people from within. All efforts failed.
Then Bashir al’Qamar arrived with an idea no one had dared voice. A wizard in dark green robes from the lands of sultans andsorcerers. He met first in secret with Henrich Eisenberg. When the time came, Bashir traveled to Befest to lay the plan bare. In his own land, no power would have let him do what he proposed. In Vanhaui, where desperation reeked and retribution walked hand in hand, someone might listen.
Kael listened. The chamber was cold, and the shadows leaned in. They spoke of the unspeakable, and the faces of the other magisters went dark. Selena first refused fiercely. Weeks passed. Refusal thinned. Choice revealed itself to be the illusion it had always been.
Because they had no choice. Because the kingdom would stop breathing if they did nothing. Because this was the only path left.
At least that was what they told themselves.
