The wind howled through the canyons as Kael and his remaining companions crested the final ridge overlooking the fortress-city of Cradlemark. Once a proud bastion of the Crown's northern dominion, Cradlemark was now a necessary target in Kael's path to the capital. Behind its obsidian walls rested the last known archive of Crown-sanctioned magical warfare—a cache of spellforged weapons, relics of the old war, and, more importantly, the key to the Crown's last line of magical defense.
Selan stood beside Kael, her expression grim. "We have a day before their reinforcements arrive. Maybe less."
Kael didn't answer at first. His gaze was locked on the walls. Each stone glimmered faintly with warding sigils. The city was alive with defensive enchantments. Every part of it whispered death.
"We're not going to siege it," he said finally. "We're going to bleed it dry from within."
He turned to his lieutenants—half of whom were figments conjured from his fractured mind. They stood beside flesh-and-blood rebels, the line between real and illusion blurring so completely that only Kael could tell the difference.
"Tonight, we infiltrate. Three fronts: underground, through the aqueducts. Over the east rampart with shadowmelders. And I go through the front gate."
Selan stared at him. "That's suicide."
Kael tilted his head, the Eye pulsing softly. "Not if they believe I'm a god."
That Night,
The storm rolled in just as planned, conjured by Kael's manipulations of the Threnody Shard. Lightning split the heavens, illuminating the soaked battlements. The sentries atop Cradlemark's towers shouted into the rain, their voices lost in the howl of wind.
From the sewers, Selan led her group through the muck and steam, her dagger glowing with runes carved by bloodlight. They moved silently, cutting through the steel grates with spells designed to bypass magical detection.
Meanwhile, the shadowmelders slipped over the eastern walls, becoming one with the darkness. They eliminated the guards without a sound, their blades whispering promises of silence.
Kael, however, walked directly to the front gate.
His scythe crackled with unstable bloodlight, the Threnody Shard hovering just above his palm like a shard of dying starlight. He was drenched, his cloak flaring behind him in the wind, every step leaving red mist in its wake.
The guards raised their weapons.
Kael raised a single hand.
"I am Kael of Asael's Vigil," he said, voice amplified by magic. "Heir of the Eye. Wielder of the Shard. I have come not to knock—but to take."
The sky answered.
A blood-red bolt of lightning struck the gate, blasting it from its hinges. Kael stepped through the fire, untouched, and the city defenders faltered.
He became death incarnate.
The scythe moved like a living thing, weaving through flesh and steel. He danced with it, every step a dirge, every cut a stanza in a song of ending. The Shard hummed with resonance, dissonance, and power. Arrows shattered in the air around him. Blades rebounded. Spells misfired.
He wasn't fighting alone.
Behind him came the illusions—an army of Kaels, each moving with the same deadly grace. The defenders screamed, unable to tell what was real and what was nightmare.
Selan's team surfaced in the city square just as Kael reached the inner sanctum. She sprinted toward him, dodging enemy soldiers and broken stone. "The cache is in the Sanctum of Binding! We found it!"
Kael didn't speak. His eyes were hollow, flickering with unnatural light. The closer he drew to the sanctum, the less human he seemed. Even the illusions began to flicker, not with blood but with voidlight.
Inside the sanctum, guarded by spellforged knights, the last remnants of the old magic awaited.
Kael entered like a blade of silence. The knights charged.
He did not parry.
He sang.
A single note from the Shard echoed through the chamber, splitting the air like glass. The knights stopped mid-charge. Their armor cracked. Their eyes went white. They collapsed in unison, their souls unraveled by the sound.
Selan watched from the doorway, trembling.
"Kael... what are you becoming?"
He turned, shadows bleeding from his shoulders. "A man who finishes what he starts."
They took the cache. Every last weapon, scroll, and relic was claimed or destroyed. Cradlemark fell that night, not by siege, but by song.
By morning, the Crown knew what had happened.
And they declared Kael an enemy of the world.