The flame hadn't even finished eating the last of the traitor's body before Lysandra turned away.
She didn't need to watch it.
She had heard screams before. Far worse ones. Louder. Longer. The ones that didn't echo from a throat, but from something deeper—the part of a person that still believed someone might spare them.
There was no sparing anymore.
Not for those who had failed her.
The soldier's ashes curled upward in the jungle mist, mixing with smoke and the humid stink of wet rot and blood. The campfire crackled behind her, oblivious to what it had just done.
Lysandra stood at the edge of the clearing, her hands clasped behind her back, her armor catching the dying light like a cage of silvered bones. The Whisperguard bowed silently around her, their cloaks woven with sigils that shimmered faintly in the dusk.
They never spoke unless ordered.
She preferred it that way.
"We've confirmed Kaelion passed through the Ruinward Path," said the Commander beside her—General Harnis. "Scouts found signs of conflict. Burned trees. Displaced stone. A cracked spirit seal in the moss."
Lysandra's eyes narrowed. "The mark is growing."
Harnis nodded grimly. "He's heading toward the Gate."
She looked up toward the distant ridgeline, where the mist clung thickest. The Worldpine rose just beyond—massive and silent, a wound in the world. Even from here, she could feel the pressure pulling at her spine.
"I want him found before it awakens," she said. "I want his bond severed before it becomes a symbol."
Harnis hesitated. "If he's bonded to a forbidden spirit, severing may not be—"
She turned to him. Slowly.
The general stopped mid-sentence, throat twitching.
"Do you think I care what's possible, General?" she asked softly.
"No, High Regent."
She returned her gaze to the ridge.
"Good."
Lysandra hadn't always been this sharp.
There had been a time when she laughed more easily. A time when she had sat with her half-brother beneath the Archive skylights, tossing rolled-up reports and daring him to hit the Chancellor's statue from twenty paces.
Kaelion had always missed.
She never had.
He was softer then. Still full of questions. Still asking about things better left buried. Still daring to name the spirals beautiful.
He used to read poetry aloud when he thought no one was listening.
She had memorized the way he stumbled over certain words—never because he didn't understand them, but because he was afraid of what they meant.
Words like "forever."
Words like "truth."
Words like "free."
She'd envied that softness once.
Then she learned how easily softness rotted.
Their father had taught her that.
The last time Lysandra saw the king, he was dying.
Not from war. Not from poison. Not even from old age.
But from weight. The crushing kind. The kind you don't see until it lives in your bones.
He had looked up at her, pale and bitter, and said:
"Spare nothing. That's how you rule."
She hadn't shed a tear at his funeral.
But she had remembered his words.
Especially when the council begged her to spare Kaelion.
Especially when Kaelion begged her to see reason.
He hadn't begged for himself.
He'd begged for the spirits.
Their last conversation hadn't been public.
It hadn't been planned.
She found him in the garden behind the North Spire, the night before his sentencing. He hadn't run. He hadn't begged.
He just looked at her and said:
"Do you really think this will save anyone?"
Lysandra didn't reply.
Because if she had—if she had opened her mouth at all—she might have said something that betrayed her.
He was her weakness once.
Now he was a wound she refused to let fester.
Later that night, Lysandra entered her command tent, the air inside warded with dozens of sound-seals and dreamcutters. Her spirit flared the moment she crossed the threshold.
A pulse of light shimmered around her like frost burned into glass.
The spirit didn't speak aloud. It never had.
But Lysandra heard it.
A voice like memory. Like bells in snowfall.
Like the final second before the blade.
"He's still changing," it whispered. "You feel it too."
"I need to know if he's still in there."
"He isn't."
"Not all the way."
"Then you'll hesitate."
"I won't."
"You already have."
Her fingers curled into the map table before her, nails digging into the carved wood.
"He was a prince once. My blood. My shadow. He should've followed me."
"But he followed the Spiral instead."
Lysandra opened her eyes.
There, carved into the center of the map, was the mark she'd etched herself: a spiral bisected by a blade.
A reminder.
Of what had to be cut to keep a kingdom whole.
She touched the spiral now, her fingers tracing the blade's edge.
For a moment, she saw him again—not as he was, but as he might have been. Leading beside her. Trusted. Beloved.
But then she saw the coils creeping up his neck. The spirals flaring through his eyes.
The Gate opening.
And she forced the image away.
Hours later, one of the Whisperguard returned.
They had no need to knock.
He entered silently and set a sealed scroll on her table, then stepped back with a deep bow.
She broke the wax.
Inside was a sketch.
Charcoal. Crude.
But unmistakable.
Kaelion, drawn by someone who had seen him alive, and recently. The Spiral on his arm was visible now—three coils deep, creeping toward his collarbone. A caption was scrawled below it in blocky, urgent hand:
Seen two days north of the Worldpine.
Not alone.
She stared at the sketch for a long time.
Then folded it.
Placed it beneath her vambrace.
And turned to the Whisperguard. "Ready the coils. The Gate is waking."
The Whisperguard tilted his head. "Do we intercept?"
Lysandra smiled faintly.
"No."
She walked to the edge of the tent and parted the flap.
Moonlight spilled across her face—cool, pale, merciless.
"We wait," she said. "And when he reaches the end of that path…"
She let the thought hang there like a blade in the dark.
"…we cut him down."