Kai lifted her knuckles to his mouth and kissed them, the gesture gentle, reverent. ‘Then I’ll help you vanquish this evil,’ he said with a quiet smile.
‘And your army?’ she asked.
Kai sighed. ‘I lost the honour of commanding them when I let Haven die. I am a disgrace to my people.’
‘Kai…’
A beat passed before he tilted his head, a note of mischief shining in his eyes. The sadness was quickly washed away. ‘Though I think Ash might have a few thoughts about you trying to steal his throne.’ He chuckled.
Alina froze. Her body tensed, her breath caught like glass in her lungs. ‘My brother is dead, Kai,’ she said flatly. ‘I doubt he has anything to say at all.’
Kai blinked. ‘Dead? No, Alina. Ash isn’t dead. He’s very much alive.’
The words dropped like stones between them.
He saw immediately the way her skin turned ashen, how still she became, as if time had been momentarily paused. Her wide eyes shimmered, not with tears, but with a disbelief so sharp it seemed to carve through the air itself.
‘Ash is alive?’ she breathed, as though the truth might slip through her fingers if she dared speak it too loudly.
‘Yes, Alina. He’s alive. Trapped in the wastelands with my army and the wolverians.’
He half-expected her to crumble, to fall into his arms or onto her knees under the weight of the revelation. But she did no such thing. This Alina, the woman carved from fire and fury, not silk and song, merely nodded. Her spine straightened, her chin lifted, and without another word, she turned andwalked from the room.
Kai remained behind, rooted by the doors, watching her retreat. He observed the ghost of the woman he’d once known fade into the distance and wondered just how much of that girl still lingered within the warrior she had become.
He suspected that very little.
Some say a Seer is born, blessed by the god who shaped them. But I’ve come to learn that blood magic can forge one too. Perhaps not quite the same, perhaps a little… darker.
In most kingdoms, Seers are revered. In some lands, they are treated as sacred beings. Holy, almost. The wolverian territories, and the Desert Kingdom especially, place them on pedestals, as though they walk a step closer to the divine. Drakonians, however, detest the idea. To them, only the Sun God may wield divine power, and any mortal claiming otherwise is an offence. Phoenixians, ever the scholars, use their Seers for research, for analysis and probabilities, reducing visions to numbers and outcomes. Typical. Wyverians rarely speak of Seers at all. I doubt they worship them, or even value them. There's a quiet suspicion in the way they regard those who claim glimpses of the future, as though instinct warns them not to trust what they cannot prove.
We witches though, we take our Seers very seriously. My mother always wished I’d been born with the gift. I could see the disappointment etched into her smile when it became clear I wasn’t.
Well…
Look at me now, Mother.
Be careful what you wish for.
Tabitha Wysteria
It was a most peculiar sight, wyverians making themselves at home within the ancient marshland dwellings of the witches. Anuneasy peace lingered like mist above the bogs, where wolverians prowled through the woods, returning with strange, twisted game slung over their shoulders. Fires flickered across the land like scattered stars, their smoke curling into the dusk as meat was roasted and stories half-whispered beneath breath. The villages closest to the western wall had been wholly overtaken by the army, their thatched homes now shelters for soldiers. Some had already begun to drift deeper into witch territory, curious or cautious, eager to investigate lands steeped in shadow and spellcraft.
That evening, Ash once more found himself lost within the winding labyrinth of his own mind, travelling forward, always forward, to glimpse the child he had not yet raised but already loved with an aching devotion. Increasingly, he slipped into quiet, forgotten corners to let the present fade into memory and possibility, seeking refuge in the past or the promise of a future still unwritten.
Yet no matter how far he wandered, no matter how deeply he cloaked himself in solitude, Adriana always seemed to find him. The witch temple became his sanctuary, its air thick with old sorrows, its silence a balm to his frayed nerves. The structure was avoided by most. Wolverians claimed it was haunted, cursed by the tormented wails of those who once wielded dark power. Wyverians, meanwhile, were far too busy carving order from the wild to spare it much thought.
There, seated at the head of a great stone table long forgotten by time, Ash would close his eyes and drift, letting the weight of the temple and its history hold him steady as he slipped away from the world. And, as she often did, Adriana would come. She would find him seated in the gloom and drag him back to the realm of the living, insisting he join the others by a fire, if only to keep the cold of death at bay for one more night.
Footsteps echoed through the ancient hall, soft but certain. Ash remained still, his golden eyes closed, attuned not to sight but to sound. He listened as the steps moved lightly across the marble floor, now dulled and dirt-streaked, carpeted in the detritus of time—ash, leaves, and soil left by years of abandonment. These were not Adriana’s tread; no, this was someone swifter, more graceful, a creature of the wild rather than the divine.
A chair scraped against stone to his right, and with a weary sigh, someone dropped into it. Ash opened his eyes, a soft smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as Bryn Wynter appeared beside him, rubbing the sleep from his vivid blue eyes. The young wolverian’s shoulder-length white hair was meticulously braided in the traditional style of his kin, each twist and knot a silent declaration of strength and skill. The more intricate the braid, the more formidable the warrior.
Bryn sat tall, though his build was willowy and deceptively delicate. Beneath his leathers, however, lay the taut muscle of one who had known a life of hunting and hardship, of chopping wood beneath snow-laden trees and surviving the merciless winters of the north. Everything about him shimmered with an otherworldly grace, as if a white fox had shed its fur and donned mortal form. His features were a study in contrast: sharp yet soft, fierce yet mournful.
‘I’ve come to ask ya something,’ Bryn said, resting his forearms upon the cold stone table. ‘Me papa’s ill. Crystallised lungs. It’s common back home… our lungs slowly freeze from da inside out, until they shatter.’ He sighed, letting his body fall back against the chair as his gaze searched Ash’s. ‘He’s been sick for years but it’s been da last few months that he’s got worse. Couldn’t come to da battle. Bedridden, he is. And he’s getting worse each day.’
His fingers trembled, betraying the depth of his distress, and he swiftly tucked them beneath the table as if shame could hide sorrow.
