Kairo lunged, halberd glowing crimson, its edge trailing sparks as it carved through the distorted air. The warlock thrust its staff toward him, black glyphs spinning in a pulse of inverted light.
The two forces clashed with a sound like tearing metal, and thunder rolled across the ruins.
Kairo pushed forward.
The weight of the warlock's spell pressed against his blade like an invisible hand trying to turn him away. His feet skidded in the dirt. The chain around his halberd rattled wildly, vibrating from the force of colliding magics.
"You are marked," the warlock hissed.
Its voice was wrong, deep and layered, echoing from somewhere too far away, like a corpse speaking across time.
Kairo gritted his teeth and shoved forward again, breaking the warlock's stance. He brought his halberd up in a spinning arc, feinting left, then snapping the chain forward to loop behind the warlock's leg.
The moment it caught, he yanked.
The warlock stumbled.
Kairo used the opening. He spun once, built momentum, and brought the halberd down on its staff.
The weapon cracked, then shattered in a cascade of dying glyphs.
The warlock screamed, not from pain, but from disbelief.
"You… carry the flame…" it rasped, stumbling back. "It's not… possible. You were unmade!"
Kairo's eyes widened.
"What did you say?"
But the creature didn't answer. Instead, it lifted its clawed hands to its chest and plunged its fingers inside.
There was a flash of violet fire, a surge of rot and ash.
The warlock exploded, disintegrating into black mist.
Kairo staggered backward, shielding his eyes.
When the smoke cleared, only a hollow robe remained.
The rest of the Blightborn lay scattered around the camp. Two still twitched with death throes while the others burned quietly beneath the fires set by Elya's team.
The battle had lasted under four minutes.
Rett limped across the square, dragging one foot behind him.
"Reckon that's the last of them," he said. "Gods above. What were they doing here?"
Kairo stared down at the empty robe.
"They weren't just scouting. They knew me."
Elya joined them, wiping blood from her blade. She nodded at the robe. "What do you mean?"
Kairo crouched and picked up the broken staff the warlock had left behind. The runes along its length were still visible, burned deep into bone.
He didn't recognize the language.
But somehow, he could read it.
"Cycle-born. Fracture of Flame. Deathless Thread."
"They called me unmade," Kairo muttered. "Like I wasn't supposed to be here."
Elya's eyes narrowed. "You think they were after you?"
"I don't know. But it felt personal."
The camp regrouped.
Four were wounded, two seriously. One boy had lost his arm at the elbow. The medic worked in silence, biting down tears as he sewed flesh back together using bone needles and alcohol.
Kairo sat near the fire, watching the stars for the first time since he'd woken on the Ashfield.
They looked dimmer than he remembered.
Elya sat beside him, arms wrapped around her knees. "We leave at first light. Redgate's only a day out. But we'll have to move fast."
He nodded.
"You should rest."
"I'm not tired."
"Liar," she said. "You look like a dead man walking."
He smiled faintly. "I've died before. Didn't stick."
She tilted her head. "You said that like it's literal."
Kairo said nothing.
They watched the flames in silence.
Then Elya spoke again, voice low.
"What do you think they meant? 'Fracture of Flame?'"
Kairo's grip tightened around the halberd.
"I think I broke something. Once. Something big. Something I wasn't supposed to survive."
They left before the sun rose.
Ash still clung to the sky in faded sheets, and frost dusted the stones beneath their boots. Even the trees, long since petrified by the fallout of war, stood like ghosts in the dim light, silent witnesses to yet another march toward slaughter.
The survivors moved quickly, packs tight, weapons drawn, no wasted movement. Children were carried, and the injured were supported with salvaged carts and stretchers. No one spoke unless absolutely necessary.
Kairo walked near the front this time, just behind Elya.
He kept a watchful eye on the ridgelines.
The dream still haunted him.The warlock's voice, too.You were unmade.
Something inside him had begun to stir since that battle. It wasn't rage. It wasn't fear. It was older. Deeper. Like a buried weapon rediscovering its edge.
They reached a crossroads before midday, an old Tribunal checkpoint tower, now little more than a burned-out shell. The checkpoint's rune post, half buried in rubble, still pulsed faintly. Arcane glyphs flickered and died out as they approached.
"Don't cross the line," Elya warned quietly. "These old seals were designed to tag Concord fighters. They'll light us up like a bonfire if they still work."
Kairo eyed it warily. "Can they be disabled?"
"Not without Tribunal keys."
Kairo stepped closer and touched his halberd to the glyph.
It sparked.
Then, it went dark.
Everyone froze.
"…What did you just do?" Elya whispered.
"I don't know," Kairo replied, pulling the halberd back. "But I think… it obeyed."
They continued east, entering rougher terrain, low hills and gulches, broken roads filled with abandoned machines.
Late that afternoon, the wind changed.
Kairo froze mid-step.
He sniffed the air.
Steel. Ozone. Something sharp, like divine incense, is used by Tribunal clerics.
He turned to Elya. "We're not alone."
She gave a sharp whistle in three quick bursts.
The caravan dropped into silence.
Rett came jogging up the rear. "What is it?"
Kairo pointed to the far ridge. "That rise. Movement, four figures. Moving slow. Watching."
Rett drew his blade. "Scouts?"
Elya cursed. "Silver Tribunal."
A heartbeat later, arrows whistled down from the ridgeline.
Kairo pulled Elya back just as one arrow struck the ground where she stood.
"Cover!" someone yelled.
The caravan scattered. Shields raised, archers scrambled. Three Tribunal scouts, tall, silver-armored, helms glowing with runes, charged down the hill, flanked by a cleric wielding a censer staff burning with sacred flame.
"Scatter pattern!" Elya barked. "Stagger them! Don't bunch!"
The scouts moved with unnatural speed, thanks to Tribunal enhancements.
One of them struck a rebel directly in the chest with a blunt-end mace, sending the man flying ten feet back.
Kairo met the second one head-on.
Their weapons clashed.
Steel screamed. Sparks flew.
Kairo ducked low, spun, and wrapped his chain blade around the scout's sword arm. He pulled hard and slammed the butt of his halberd into the scout's helmet.
The helm dented. The scout staggered. Kairo kicked him into the dirt and finished it clean.
To his right, Rett held the third scout at bay, shield absorbing blow after blow.
Elya, meanwhile, went for the cleric.
The flame-wielding zealot raised his censer and shouted, "By decree of the Eternal Writ, you are deemed heretical! May the fire cleanse"
Elya shot him in the throat with a short bow.
He choked, staggered, and dropped to his knees.
"Talk less," she muttered.
The scout that Kairo had downed groaned, still alive but dazed.
He stepped forward, blade drawn, prepared to finish it, then stopped.
The scout looked up, blood leaking from his cracked helmet. His eyes glowed faintly beneath the visor, not with fear but with recognition.
"You... Revenant," the man rasped. "You were destroyed. Unwritten."
Kairo's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
"Even the Tribunal fears you." A smile, bloody and thin. "You carry a name they tried to erase."
The scout coughed one last time and went still.
Kairo stepped back.
He didn't feel triumph.
He felt watched.
The skirmish ended as quickly as it had begun.
The fourth figure on the ridge had vanished, likely a forward observer already running back to alert a larger force.
Elya gathered the group behind a collapsed stone barrier. Two of the rebels were injured, one badly. The boy who had lost his arm earlier now helped carry the wounded, jaw clenched.
Kairo paced the perimeter, halberd resting on his shoulder. His thoughts were fractured.
Unwritten. Revenant. Erased.
The words echoed in his skull.
"What are they afraid of?" he whispered to himself.
That night, they made camp in a cleft between two hills. Fires were hidden behind cloth and earth. Even laughter was forbidden.
Kairo sat alone beneath a broken obelisk. The stone bore the faded crest of a once-proud Concord battalion, a sun split in two.
He ran his fingers across the crack in the stone and looked to the stars.
One flickered, dim and red, on the horizon.
He didn't remember if he'd seen it before.
His fingers tightened around the halberd's grip.
Elya approached quietly and sat beside him.
"No one's sleeping easy," she said. "Especially not after today."
Kairo didn't answer right away.
"They called me a revenant again. Said I was 'unwritten.'"
Elya sighed. "You're starting to sound more like a myth than a man."
"Maybe I was. Once. And maybe I broke something I wasn't supposed to."
Elya leaned back on her hands, watching the stars.
"If that's true," she said, "then maybe you're here now because someone has to fix what broke."
He turned to her.
"What if it can't be fixed?"
"Then we build something new from the wreckage."
They sat in silence, letting the wind pass over them.
Then, a call came from the far end of the camp.
"Light on the horizon!"
Kairo and Elya stood.
They followed the shout to the edge of the overlook, where Rett and the others gathered. Beyond the hills, in the distance, a faint orange glow shimmered against the sky.
Not fire. Not sunrise.
Torches.
Hundreds of them.
They lit the outline of a massive wall dark, spiked towers rising against the black sky, a fortress carved from basalt and reinforced with silversteel plating. The banners atop the ramparts bore a faded crimson sun.
Redgate.
"It's still standing," Elya whispered.
"For now," Kairo said.
Behind them, the wind carried a faint sound, like drums in the deep.
The Tribunal was coming.
And Kairo knew, as sure as the weight of the halberd in his hands, that Redgate would not survive what came next without a fight that would stain the land forever.