The torches lining the corridor swayed with a restless flame, shadows dancing across the stone walls like ghosts preparing for war. Kael moved in silence, his golden eyes catching fragments of light, the air around him thrumming with purpose. Outside, the Empire breathed in tension—steel clashing in distant drills, whispered reports swirling through the capital like storm winds.
Inside the war chamber, the true blades of the Empire awaited—not soldiers, but weapons with names.
Cassius stood in the gloom like a fortress carved from flesh and scars. Ravyn sat cross-legged on the polished table's edge, her dagger spinning like a coin of fate. Sylas stood rigid and quiet, but his gaze flickered—he saw everything.
Kael seated himself without a word. The silence obeyed him.
"The Prophet is no longer calm," Kael began, voice low, smooth. "Our chaos has poisoned his vision. He stumbles in the dark, forced to react. And that makes him… human."
Cassius grinned. "So. When do we crack the bone?"
Kael turned to Sylas.
"Our spies?"
Sylas gave a precise nod. "Their troops are pulling to Velthar's Ridge. They believe we're massing for a full assault."
A smirk tugged at Kael's lips. "Then the net is closing."
Ravyn stilled her blade. "You're going after the Prophet, aren't you?"
Kael's eyes glinted. "We strike the head. The body will rot on its own."
Cassius cracked his knuckles. "Finally. A war worth the blood."
—
Night. The stars drowned behind thick cloud, and the forest whispered in languages older than men.
Kael's team moved like specters, threading through the darkness. This was no charge of banners—this was a ghost war. Ravyn flowed beside him like wind made flesh. Cassius was a silent tempest. Sylas, the unseen eye at the rear.
Velthar's Ridge rose from the forest like a broken crown—sharp, jagged, ancient. Somewhere within, the Prophet waited.
Kael raised a hand. They stopped.
"Cassius, break their teeth on the eastern gate. Loud. Reckless."
Cassius grinned and vanished into the dark.
"Ravyn, purge their western scouts. Leave only whispers behind."
She bowed, eyes gleaming.
"Sylas, with me."
They moved like a blade's shadow—past sentries, through hidden doors, into the belly of the Prophet's lair.
A final corridor waited, colder than stone had a right to be. Kael paused before a door of etched iron, symbols older than language burning faintly across its surface.
He placed his palm to it.
The metal hissed, locks unraveling like frightened serpents.
Inside, a single brazier cast trembling shadows.
And there, cloaked in obsidian robes, the Prophet waited.
"You've come," he said, voice fluid as smoke.
Kael stepped in, unblinking. "The game is over."
"No," the Prophet said, "it's just begun."
He raised his hand.
The world shattered.
—
Void.
Colors bled into each other like oil and madness. There was no ground, no sky—only the hum of forgotten thoughts and screaming silence.
Kael stood, untouched by it.
Across the abyss, the Prophet floated, arms spread like a saint or a spider. "Do you see, Kael? This is where wars are truly fought—not in trenches, but in truths. Not in wounds, but in perception."
Kael's voice echoed like steel: "Then you've already lost."
The Prophet smiled.
Shadows rose, alive and hungry. They gripped Kael's legs, cold and deep. Voices murmured—his doubts, his memories, twisted and weaponized.
Kael closed his eyes.
He reached inward, not for rage, but for clarity—the core of him that could not be shaken, the stillness beneath the storm.
His eyes opened.
Gold. Bright. Endless.
Power erupted from him in silence—a thought sharper than any sword. The void cracked. The illusions screamed.
And reality returned.
—
Stone underfoot. Firelight. Sylas groaning on the floor.
The Prophet took a step back—his first retreat.
Kael smiled, cold and perfect. "You'll need more than shadows to stop me."
The Prophet's voice softened. "Then the real war begins now."
He vanished—like a whisper before dawn.
Kael stood still, the silence around him broken only by Sylas rising behind him.
"That," Sylas rasped, "was not normal."
"No," Kael said. "It wasn't."
And the real enemy had just revealed himself.
To be continued…