Two years.
That's how long it took for the world to start whispering my name again—not as a warrior, not as a blacksmith, but as a threat.
I left the forge behind in silence. No farewell, no witnesses. Just stone and sky and the echo of the vow I carved into the mountain. Breath becomes fury.
I traveled by foot. Not out of pride, but necessity. A mercenary without a banner, an exile without coin. Every step across the Eastern wilds was a battle against winter winds, rogue storms, and beasts mutated by residue from ancient wars. The roads were shattered things—fractured like the politics of the realm. Even the maps lied.
But I endured.
I slept in caves, barns, burned-out ruins. I fought to eat, bled to live. Somewhere in the hills of Virellan, I killed a bandit chief with a single Flash Cut—first time I used it in a year. It left me breathless for hours. I knew then I had grown soft, so I trained harder. Every night, drills. Every morning, breathwork. I tempered my body like I had tempered Beteraxe: fold by fold, cut by cut.
And I took work.
They called me Ash-Hand in the border towns—after the heat signature my sword left on corpses. Beteraxe proved itself time and again: against raiders in the ruins of Velstone, against glass-wolves in the Palewood, and once, against a rogue knight from the Inner Circle who accused me of impersonating a royal-blooded duelist. He left with one arm less than he came with.
But recognition came slowly.
Veyrax is a land where power and birthright twist into politics. I had neither. And so whispers grew—carefully cultivated lies that followed me like shadows.
They said I was a usurper. A mad forger with a stolen weapon and delusions of royalty.
The lies came from Eastborn.
He ruled the eastern central reaches now, a half-royal castaway who clawed his way up through charm, ruthlessness, and sheer strength. The 14th of his name, and the first to openly challenge the Veyrax bloodline from within. Where I forged my path in solitude, he gathered loyalists, assassins, and agents. He didn't fear kingdoms.
He feared me.
Or rather, what I might become.
That's why he sent the shadows after me. The first one came in the high deserts of Kareth—silent, quick, dead within seconds. The second poisoned my firewood in Dalver's Pass. The third… the third almost succeeded. A twin-blade carrier who knew Flash Cut, but only partially. She pierced my side before I shattered her will.
Each time, the attacks grew bolder. More skilled. More desperate.
So I kept moving. Not out of fear, but strategy. Until I heard of Lowmarch.
Lowmarch—grit and mud clinging to the center of the eastern region, a town where politics, trade, and corruption gnawed at the same bone. Eastborn's foothold. But more than that: a node of information. If I wanted to understand what he was building, and how to cut it down, I needed to be there.
Getting there was another matter.
The lands between the Eastern cliffs and Lowmarch weren't just long—they were hostile. Refugee trails, broken villages, fields turned to graveyards. I passed through the Thornweald, where the trees bled sap that burned skin. I crossed the Whispering Hills, where rumors say the wind steals your memories. I tied my name into knots in my mind to remember who I was.
Some nights, I questioned the journey.
Not because of fear.
Because of weight.
Every step felt heavier than the last. Not just in body—but in soul. The more I walked, the more the past bled forward. Not just my years in this body, but echoes of the one before—Lucien. Flashes in dreams. Memories that weren't mine. I began to realize what Varkil and others like him might have seen: a ghost in borrowed flesh. A weapon reborn.
Was I Kael? Or something more?
I didn't know.
But I kept moving.
Because someone had to challenge the crown that Eastborn forged in blood and ambition. Someone had to remind the world that swords aren't just for kings and cowards. They're for those who choose their path, not inherit it.
And I had forged mine with fire.
---
By the time I reached the outer borders of Lowmarch, I looked nothing like the man who had stood bare-chested in the highlands.
Scarred arms. Hardened eyes. A mantle patched from six different cloaks. My beard had grown in thick, my voice deeper, quieter. Even Beteraxe had changed—sharper in mode-shift, its will-link nearly absolute.
I arrived at twilight. The town sat like a scab on the land—gray stones, crooked towers, and watchmen who watched too closely. A merchant caravan let me pass without question. I kept my head down. Eyes forward.
But already, I could feel it.
The net.
Someone knew I had come.
The rumors were spreading. Ash-Hand. Forge-Touched. A man with no past and too much future.
And somewhere behind those guarded gates, Eastborn's eyes were watching.
Let them watch.
I'd walked through fire to get here.
And I had breath to spare.
---
Lowmarch was not a place for wanderers. Every step into its perimeter felt like trespass, even though the gates remained open to trade. It reeked of ash-smoke and wet steel, of desperation disguised as order. I watched the guards from the shade of a half-collapsed warehouse—bribes changed hands like handshakes, and every other passerby had a knife at their hip.
Two years had passed since I forged Beteraxe—the axe that echoed with something beyond metal and edge. In those two years, I walked as a mercenary, a nameless blade for hire, carving a reputation not by coin but by resolve. No banners. No master. Just the weight of a name that some had begun to whisper again: Kael.
In the forgotten towns where Eastborn's agents didn't yet reach, I offered protection. I trained villagers to defend their homes, left without asking for thanks. In the ruins of hollowed cities, I found texts, remnants of the old world, fragments that hinted at what Lucien once stood for, and what I might be again. And always, I kept moving.
From the frost-lands of Myrr to the scorched edge of Veyrax's borderlands, I followed no road. Just instincts. And eventually, rumor led me to Lowmarch.
Lowmarch, where Eastborn had rooted himself—where the 14th, half-blooded royal and bitter from exile, laid silent traps. It was the midpoint between the eastern highlands and the capital basin, a place where merchants changed caravans, and nobles came to whisper, far from the throne's ears. It was also the town where the first attempt on my life would happen.
The journey to Lowmarch was not a simple descent from mountain to valley. I took no horse. I walked. My boots tore apart by the fourth week. I stitched them with wild sinew and kept moving. Wolves trailed me through the pine barrens—drawn not by scent, but by the silence I carried. I left them behind, bruised and bloodied.
Then came the mountains. The Ashneedle Peaks. I scaled the lesser paths, where only smugglers and desperate pilgrims dared tread. The wind there could scream like a dying god. I remembered nights clinging to a cliff ledge, one arm around Beteraxe, the other holding to a frost-laced root. Snow buried me once. I clawed out like an animal.
In those weeks, I felt my body change. My gait shortened, more efficient. I learned to breathe with cracked ribs and silence my steps when needed. Old wounds flared like ghosts, but I welcomed the pain. It was reminder. It was penance.
South of the peaks, I crossed into the Scarred Woods. Once a battleground, now a rotting maze of forgotten trenches and vine-choked barricades. I passed rusting helmets still crowned with skulls. I spent three nights in silence as the fog crept low and something hunted along the treetops—never seen, only heard. I kept my fire low. My axe closer.
There were villages along the way. Some abandoned, others filled with eyes that watched from behind shutters. I didn't stay. I bartered for dried meat and clean water, fixed a broken wheel for an old man who still prayed to Lucien's name. He gave me a flask in return. "You'll need it where you're going," he'd said. "Lowmarch eats the good and spits the wicked back richer."
By the time I arrived at the northern approach of the city, I looked like a vagrant pilgrim. My cloak was patched with crow feathers and stitched hide. My axe had no shine left, just the dull gray of use. But my eyes—they still burned. The guards noticed.
I made my way through the market first, blending in with cloaked travelers and sand-worn traders. My presence didn't stir much until I reached the upper ring. That's where they started to notice me—the tall figure with a blade too strange for a common sellsword, a stare too focused for a lost pilgrim.
A boy slipped through the crowd and brushed my arm.
"Ash-Hand," he whispered without looking at me.
I tensed.
"You've been expected."
Before I could respond, he disappeared into the crowd, swallowed by color and chaos. I knew better than to chase. Instead, I followed the direction he'd nudged me toward—an alley between a tannery and a ruined chapel.
A man stood there, hood drawn low, cloak too clean for this part of town. He stepped into view with a messenger's satchel and a soldier's spine.
"Kael," he said.
I didn't answer.
"I served the throne once. Not this throne—the throne. Before Eastborn. Before the fall."
Still, I said nothing.
"My name is Thalen. I carried messages for the old blood. I watched Lucien's rise. I watched his fall. And now I watch you."
My hand dropped to Beteraxe's hilt.
"Not here to fight. If I were, you'd be dead already. Or trying to kill me. Neither's happened, so perhaps we talk."
I studied him. He didn't have a killer's aura, but he did have secrets. The kind that weighed on a man's voice.
"Speak."
He smiled—grim and tired.
"The people who still remember what Veyrax once stood for? They're few. Scattered. Afraid. But they watch for signs. You forged a blade that doesn't belong to this age. You walk like someone remembering how to be feared. That's enough."
"And you're here because…?"
"Because Eastborn's grip is tightening. He's building something monstrous in the hollow of the old capital. You want to stop him? Then you'll need more than that sword. You'll need allies. Information. A voice in the shadows."
"So you offer yourself."
"I offer my purpose. Whether you become Kael the Just, or Kael the Wrathful, I no longer care. But I will not watch another tyrant rise while I do nothing."
I looked away, toward the smoke-streaked skyline.
"Then we start with names. Contacts."
Thalen nodded, pulling a folded map from his satchel.
"Meet me here," he pointed, "just before sundown. I'll show you who's worth trusting in this den of rot. And who's already sold their soul to the 14th."
We parted without another word.
The inn I found was nameless, tucked into the edge of the Old Ring, where the roads narrowed and the roofs leaned in like eavesdropping elders. I didn't unpack, didn't sleep. Just sat, sharpening Beteraxe until the metal sang in the dark.
By sundown, I was at the meeting point—a crumbling bridge overlooking the bone-silt river.
Thalen wasn't alone.
A figure stood behind him—taller, broader, clad in black cloth and curved armor plates that shimmered faintly under the moonlight. His face was masked, but the tension in the air told me everything I needed to know.
"You brought a friend," I said.
Thalen turned slowly. His eyes were wide, panicked.
"He wasn't supposed to—"
That's when the assassin struck.
---