A horn blares.
The sound shatters everything.
Boots thunder above us. The stairwell fills with the metallic roar of armor and shouted orders. Dust rains from the ceiling as the doors burst open.
Caelorian soldiers flood the chamber—rows upon rows of steel and snarling faces.
We’ve already drawn our weapons, angled them at their throats.
But Kael only strides to the abandoned zarethite sword left on the prayer chamber’s floor—unable to travel to the echo-plane with Maldrak.
He draws the god metal sword already strapped to his back, and bends lazily to pick up his father’s sword.
The god metal sword that was always meant to be his.
When he stands, he’s wrath incarnate, swords dripping from his hands like they’re an extension of him. A god made flesh. Dark swords glinting in the flickering light.
Seeing him with two swords again knocks something loose inside me—reverence, awe, hunger. The god metal answers tohim, bends for him, belongs to him. He wears the swords like a promise and a threat, twin extensions of a destiny written in blood.
His ocean-silver eyes stare down the men—his victims.Because they’re already dead, even as they still stand here.
Shadows curl along the blades’ edges like smoke remembering its master.
The soldiers hesitate at the threshold, caught between fear and duty, as if Kael’s reputation precedes him.
Because he’s always been the Endbringer.
I take one step forward, voice low enough to make the stone listen.
“You’ll bow in the presence of a king,” I taunt, prowling towards them like a beast on the hunt.
“You’re inhiscastle now.”
And I let Starlight flood my veins.
Through the slit of their helmets, I see their eyes blow wide.
They don’t move—ever the warriors, but I can feel the way they want to.
The way they want tocower.
Then, they make a lethal mistake.
They look at Kael.
Shadows whip at his fingers, molten silver splintering through like lightning shattering a gloomy sky.
And the Caelorians falter.
They stumble back.
One step.
Two.
Kael stalks forward, so close he can taste their fear.
And he laughs. A bitter, cruel thing that sets them on edge.
