Chapter Twelve: Ash and Echoes
The desert welcomed no one.
Kael stood on the edge of the Desolation, where the world turned to fractured stone and red dust that never settled. The sky above was a flat, unforgiving white, and the wind carried not coolness—but memory.
Ashendune loomed in the distance. Or rather, what remained of it.
Once a mighty war camp, a stronghold of banners and steel, it was now a scattering of broken towers, half-buried weapons, and bones that refused to rot. Black scars clawed across the land like something had tried to tear the continent open with its hands.
Kael pulled his cloak tighter, shielding himself from the bitter wind. But it wasn't the cold that bothered him—it was the silence. Too complete. No birds. No insects. Not even the whisper of sand unless he moved.
And then, as he stepped forward—
The whispers began.
Not loud. Not clear. Just murmurs. Like voices pressed beneath the earth.
He paused. Tightened his grip on Veilrend.
"They're not real," he muttered. "Just echoes."
But they felt real. One voice—low and furious—sounded like Andreas. Another—laughing, mocking—like Mihai. His father and his enemy, laughing together.
Kael pressed forward, each step dragging through thickening sand. Strange shapes dotted the landscape: statues of twisted steel, frozen like soldiers mid-charge, their faces locked in screams. Weapons floated upright from the sand like grave markers.
This place is cursed.
Andrew hadn't warned him about this.
He walked for hours—or maybe days; time was strange here—before he saw the shape in the distance.
A black tower. Short and wide. Walls made of obsidian blocks, scorched and cracked. No flags. No guards.
Kael approached slowly.
When he reached the outer ring of jagged stones, he felt it.
A presence.
He's watching me.
Kael held out the red cloth and arrowhead.
"I come from Andrew," he called. "He said this would speak for him."
The silence lingered.
Then—
A door opened.
Not a grand gate. A slit in the stone wall, narrow and dark. Kael hesitated only a moment before stepping through.
The temperature dropped instantly. The inside of the stronghold was plain—stone, steel, dust. The air smelled of iron and old sweat. He moved down a corridor lit by flickering flame, deeper and deeper, until—
"You walk with your father's eyes."
Kael spun.
At the end of the hall stood a man wrapped in dark robes, his frame lean but solid, posture as still as a statue. He wore no armor, no crown—just a black sash and a sword hanging loose at his side.
His hair was silvered and tied back. His face was worn, etched with battles and loss. But his eyes—his eyes burned like tempered steel.
"So," the man said, stepping closer, "Andrew sends me a ghost."
Kael straightened. "You're David."
The man nodded once. "And you are the boy who carries Andreas' shadow. I knew you'd come. The sand told me."
Kael extended the arrowhead.
David took it. Looked at it. Then closed his hand around it.
A long silence passed before he finally said:
"If you're here to bring me back to war, you'd best prove your spine first."
Kael didn't flinch.
"I didn't come for a sword. I came for you."
David smiled—not cruelly, but like someone remembering what it meant to hope.
"Then prepare yourself. You'll get both."