The blackness had swallowed the plain; where land was once discernible, there was now only void. The darkness was so dense that the barbican's torches and campfires barely managed to sketch out flickering shadows on the stone. The night wind brushed the young mage's silver hair without disturbing him: Dyan remained motionless, pressed against the parapet, staring into a horizon that offered no comfort.
A guard approached with measured steps. "My Lord, you have been watching all night. Shouldn't you rest? Let us take over for a couple of hours." His voice was cautious, the courtesy of one who fears touching another's wound.
Dyan rested his bandaged hand on the cold stone; a trembling hand. He offered a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Don't worry," he lied lightly. "I needed some air."
The guard nodded and, before leaving, gently ordered that a brazier be left near the wall. A couple of companions returned with a smoking one and placed it at his feet.
"Are you sure you don't want to be relieved?" one asked in a low voice.
"No, thank you." Dyan patted the brazier's lid like one stroking a cherished object. "Mages can keep vigil for several nights if the occasion requires it."
The guard smiled slightly, as if he had been prepared for him beforehand. "Not at all, my Lord. The lads will be happy to have you nearby during this watch. Though I reiterate my concern."
The guard did not ask again, but in those eyes of liquid silver, he thought he saw a deep sadness. One that was familiar to him. He had seen it in knights bidding farewell to their families as they marched off to war, in the husbands and wives left behind, in the children, in the mothers. It was that sadness of loss, of longing, a bitterness of not knowing if they would see each other again this time. He did not know if the young mage had someone or had lost them, perhaps both, but he knew well that in those moments, pity was the worst, because it hurts more than the wound.
He stood there, still as a statue, his gaze lost in the distance. Then, in an act that was almost a whisper, he murmured into the night: "My Queen... if you were here, could I hide in your arms?" The knot in his chest cut his breath short. He lowered his hood and allowed a few tears to roll, unconsoled.
The nights became a continuous thread of waiting. The days, a tense succession, while Dyan remained unperturbed in his position: the knights sharpened spears, tightened bowstrings, repaired palisades, and trained with the scorpions. Kermit and Orlec climbed the barbican to bring Dyan food, but at no point did they try to make him rest. Unlike the guards, they had seen him in the north preparing a spell for days despite his wounds. They knew well that if something was set in his mind, he would not change his course, so they did their part in devoted silence.
During that entire time, neither Faria Jaram, nor Rildan Bolden, nor Shion Paltem approached the mage, although Shion and Faria watched him from afar a couple of times, like one watches a lunatic best avoided. Lena, on the other hand, did not even dare to step onto the barbican.
Then the watchman's trumpet blared, clear and terrible, and the brass ripped through the calm: it was a warning and a lament at the same time.
The dust cloud on the horizon delineated the Chinsonite hosts. The watchman screamed with a torn throat: "Mages to the front!"
The defending knights, commanded by Shion Paltem, were already positioned in front of the scorpions and preparing their bows. The rest of the forces ran to their posts or formed up in the training yard, ready to head out to the battlefield if necessary.
Dyan traced a couple of luminous sigils in the air with his index finger; the threads of light frayed calmly. "Help Volka with the barrier," he ordered, and his voice reached the Scabia mages with the certainty of one reclaiming his role.
He walked to the edge of the barbican and scanned the darkness, and upon finding the squad of mages among the enemy forces, he closed his eyes. It was his duty, his responsibility. He felt his chest tighten, as if his entire body was shouting that he was about to do something he did not want to. It was his first battle since the one that had left him with so many after-effects; some wounds had not even fully healed. He felt an old vertigo, the same dizzying certainty of when everything is reduced to a single moment and a single decision. "For Her Majesty's glory," he thought; the phrase served as a plank to cling to.
That was his fleeting thought, a comfort. The only thing that could push him to launch into battle with a valid motive.
The watchman shouted again. "Fireballs!"
It was not the enemy's battle drums that resonated throughout his body, but his heart pounding uncontrollably. The shouts of allies behind him, some telling him not to stand so exposed, but he paid no attention. He climbed onto the edge of the wall, and a mere wave of his hand was enough for a blast of light to split the night sky. A group of lightning bolts tore the sky from top to bottom, exploding the fireballs in their flight. They struck the earth like savage whips.
Those present murmured his nickname, mixing awe and fear: "The White Lightning."
Dyan leaped from the wall and descended to the still-smoking field. His fall was cushioned by currents of wind that seemed to hold him; his feet touched the earth with deceptive delicacy. A contained fury burned silently on his face: it wasn't anger for the battle, but an intimate storm that needed to overflow to purge something older. The sadness and shame of the past days had transmuted into a hunger for destruction that promised to erase names and memories, and in that fury, perhaps, find some relief.
Dyan leaped from the top of the wall toward the battlefield. His descent was as if the winds had gently caught him in their arms. His feet touched the ground with the softness of a feather. Yet, on his face, there was only silent fury. It was a contained storm, a dam about to burst. All the sadness he had been chewing on the previous days had been transmuted into rage, and he needed to unleash it to get rid of it and get back on his path; he needed to erase that woman's face from his heart, he needed to drown it in a gasp of unleashed fury and then breathe...
The battle that followed was not merely a confrontation: it was a storm unleashed by a single broken will. The sky lit up with fire and lightning bursts that tore through the gloom, as if a celestial tempest had descended upon the field. Each flash cast distorted shadows upon the falling bodies, shadows that seemed to writhe and scream along with the dying men, incapable of understanding what force was annihilating them.
The enemy mages reacted with desperate fury, casting spells recklessly and without control, like cornered animals. But Dyan gave them no respite. There was no exchange, no arcane duel worthy of legends. His movements were swift, precise, almost automatic, driven more by an anguished rage than by the discipline learned at the Scabia Tower. The lightning bolts that emanated from his hands sliced through the darkness, snaking like the worst of storms until they reduced the enemy spellcasters to piles of ash scattered by the night wind.
The Chinsonite hosts, oblivious to the arcane terror, rushed him in a crowd. They screamed like hungry beasts who thought they had found isolated prey, unaware that they were entering the lair of something infinitely more voracious. A gesture of his hand was enough to rip the earth beneath their feet; entire bodies were torn from the ground by an invisible force, crashing into each other in a chaos of broken bones and shattered metal. From his fingertips emerged whips of light that cracked in the air, lashing flesh and armor alike, scorching faces, extinguishing every breath of life instantly.
Not a single arrow flew from the fort's walls that night. There were no orders, no time to react. Dyan had descended wrapped in a shroud of death that followed him like his own shadow, spreading over the enemy with an intensity no one there had ever witnessed. And from that distance, none could see his throat tear in a silent scream, how tears streaked his face mixing with the ash, how the open wound in his soul oozed venom onto that earth with a fury that would mark the place for generations.
The peace that this massacre imposed, a peace born of absolute fear, would last more than a decade.
When dawn stained the horizon a pale gray, half of the enemy hosts lay dead. The other half fled in terror, leaving behind weapons, standards, and wounded men who moaned hopelessly. On the blackened earth, amidst thick puddles of blood and mounds of still-smoking corpses, Dyan remained on his knees. The trembling of his body did not come from the morning cold or physical exhaustion, but from that invisible wound that pierced his chest like a poisoned spear.
He tried to maintain consciousness while fatigue dragged him toward the darkness. From the fort walls, some thought he was dead. There were those who considered going for him—his companions from the Scabia Tower—but Commander Faria herself stopped them, afraid that the beast that had caused such a massacre was still raging and willing to bite whatever approached. The rest, those who didn't know him except by rumor, were divided between those who had fear stuck to their skin and those who respected him in silence. Very few felt a shred of gratitude. What they had seen was so unspeakable that even the most optimistic about his arrival had emptied the contents of their stomachs onto the fort's stone.
He had believed that, by fulfilling his duty, by shedding so much blood, he could regain his calm, return to the man he had always been: the mage raised for war and study, without affections, without family, without any love but knowledge. But now he discovered that a purer poison had contaminated him. A spark of real affection had ignited inside him, and the very moment he tried to cling to it, it had evaporated.
The words were still engraved on his soul like a hot iron: "I love you too very much... I will never forget you."
A lie.
He had to accept it. There was no going back. That emotional pang he had never experienced before hurt more than any physical wound he had received. The sadness left him hollow, so empty that even breathing felt difficult. How was he supposed to get up after that? How to remain the same?
He had tasted a nectar too sweet... and then, from the same hand, the bitterest poison.
He took a deep breath. Interminable minutes passed as he tried to gather strength, minutes that dragged on, asking permission from one another. When he finally stood up, he did not feel relief; quite the opposite. Earth, blood, and ash covered his trembling hands. He had fulfilled his duty, he had saved the fort, but deep down, he only wished for one thing: that someone would hold him. That someone would embrace him, even for an instant.
But no one was there.
When he approached the fort gates, the watchman gasped, and the wood and iron leaves opened with a prolonged, almost mournful screech. Commander Faria awaited him with a frown, ready to reprimand him for his recklessness and for disobeying orders. However, seeing him up close, the reprimand died in her throat.
Dyan's face was empty, devoid of all light. His eyes seemed like bottomless pits, and his hair, once bright and well-kept, hung matted with sweat, blood, and ash. The way he looked at her, without anger, without any emotion, as if he were a ghost who couldn't recognize her, sent an involuntary shiver through her. She felt fear. Not of the power she had witnessed, but of the void emanating from him.
Dyan advanced among the fort's warriors. No one spoke. No one celebrated. Many looked away. Some still had traces of vomit at the corners of their lips, unable to erase the image of the massacre.
It was then that Lena approached, with uncertain steps. Her voice, veiled by guilt and bewilderment, barely managed to come out: "Did you have to do it this way?"
He stopped. Every word he heard was like a blow to his fragmented chest. He glanced at her, feeling his soul, reduced to fragments, threatening to completely unravel.
"I fulfilled my duty," he replied in a hoarse voice. "There are no casualties. And the enemy will remember this day... for Her Majesty's glory."
Lena extended a trembling hand and managed to grab his tunic, clinging to him as if she could still salvage something. "You're not like this," she whispered. "...I know."
What did she know?
For an instant, a current of rage and desperation surged inside him. He wanted to scream at her, grab her armor, shake her until she understood the storm roaring within him. He wanted to spit in her face all the pain that was consuming him.
But he didn't.
With superhuman effort, he took a deep breath, contained the tempest, and looked away. He felt the rage coil in his chest like a snake ready to strike, but he managed to hold it, lock it away, stifle it with pure will. The duty was done.
He took one step before answering, without looking back. "You have no right to reproach me anything," his voice came out low, cracked like ground glass, almost a scraped whisper. "Not now... never again."
Lena opened her mouth, unable to articulate a word. She didn't understand. She couldn't. In that instant, she only felt him raising an impossible wall between them, a wall built with blood, exhaustion, and something darker.
She didn't understand until she saw him leave shortly after, mounted on a horse stained with dust and sweat, riding away with desperate urgency. The gallop echoed in the courtyard like muffled beats of farewell, until only a gray spot remained on the horizon, vanishing into the morning mist.
She had no right.
She had ignored every one of his letters, afraid to answer, afraid to write what she herself didn't want to acknowledge. As if putting it in ink would make it real, eternal, unmoving. Every time a messenger arrived with the seal of the Tower or a fort, she prayed to the heavens that her hand would not betray her decision. She used all her willpower not to open them, to let them remain closed, intact, like a tomb to bury feelings she didn't want to face.
It was her mistake. Her sin. One she would keep silent for a long time.
And yet, with every unread letter, the weight on her chest increased, crushing her. Why did he insist? Why that almost stubborn constancy? Wasn't her silence answer enough? Did he really need to hear words she wasn't willing to say?
That gray spot moving away was unbearably sad to her. He seemed to be fleeing from her, escaping as if the mere act of sharing the same air burned his soul. And in part, it was true. She knew it. She understood. But she preferred to feign ignorance, because if she accepted the truth, the guilt would transform into an open wound impossible to close. Feigning allowed her to keep breathing.
Or so she hoped.
In Willfrost Palace, the news of the victory arrived two days later, carried by a raven with wings as black as the night that had witnessed the massacre. The message was brief, but Faria Jaram's words carried a shadow that Silvania instantly detected:
"The young mage sent by Your Majesty has proven useful, beyond what I myself had heard of him. However, and as Captain Lena suggested in her reports, it will be necessary to keep him under strict surveillance.
I must admit I did not believe a word of what happened in the north, but he alone destroyed half of the enemy forces in an act of complete barbarity that I dare not speak of. I know my Queen holds him in high esteem, and while I agree that a weapon of such caliber should be kept close, I would prefer to put more than a chain around his neck, lest he betray us all someday.
Majesty, I know I overstep with my words and that it is your decision whether to trust him or not, but I would prefer not to expose my back again. He is an unstable young man, capable of getting his hands dirty without shame or modesty.
I hope not to need him on this front again. Few times have I felt fear in my life as a warrior, but in him, I have seen a darkness that chilled my blood."
Silvania closed the letter with a slow gesture and then tossed it into the fireplace fire. The paper burned quickly, devoured by flames that crackled like echoes of that night.
Her gaze reflected disappointment, yes, but above all, concern.
She understood Faria's words, but she understood the young man even more. She had seen from the beginning the weight he carried on his shoulders, an invisible weight that few perceived. From that day on, she began to look more frequently toward the windows overlooking the inner courtyard, as if expecting a horse to cross the palace porticoes at any moment.
What could she do? What could she say? Not everyone could put themselves in Dyan's shoes. The fear was understandable; even inevitable. Some mages throughout history had been marked with the same stigma: powerful tools, feared, useful while they served... dangerous when they showed cracks.
Silvania couldn't fully understand what it meant to bear that mark, but she did know what it was like to carry a burden too great, a responsibility that suffocated. She knew what it was like not to be able to confess weariness, not even in solitude, because one was never truly alone in the palace. There could always be ears behind a door, shadows waiting around a corner.
Time began to become unbearable. The hours stretched as if resisting moving forward. Every sound of hooves or wheels in the portico made her heart flutter. Under normal conditions, the journey would have taken two weeks. But on the fifth day, she finally saw him.
She recognized him instantly, even from the immense distance between her office and the palace porticoes.
She stopped with her hand resting on the window glass, as if she could reach him through it. A part of her wanted to run toward the stairs, go out to meet him, take his hands before he even dismounted. But she couldn't. Poisonous tongues were always attentive, ready to whisper. And regarding her, even more so.
Even so, her heart pounded strongly in her chest.
She followed him with her gaze as the horse galloped along the path, kicking up golden dust in the sunlight. When he reached the foot of the stairs, Dyan looked up.
Their eyes met.
His hair, matted; his tunic dusty with dried bloodstains; his skin pale from extreme exhaustion. But a slight, faint, almost broken smile appeared on his face... and yet it was sincere. There was something there, something only they understood, something fragile and warm that refused to die.
Silvania's hand trembled on the cold glass.
She had waited for him with every fiber of her being. She wished to sit at the piano and play for him, walk through the gardens, let words flow light, sincere, without the weight of the world on their shoulders. She wished to embrace him and offer him shelter. Perhaps because in doing so, she too found refuge, a haven where the crown weighed less.
A tear slipped down her cheek.
She had missed him more than she could admit. More than she should admit. It hurt to recognize it, but at the same time, it was the warmest place she knew. Without seeking it, without planning it, both had become each other's home, that place one longed to return to when everything else collapsed.
Then the door opened without warning.
The sound startled her. She turned quickly, nervous, her heart tripping in her chest. Her reddish hair whipped around her like a cascade of burning copper.
And there, in the doorway, with the dust of the journey still on his shoulders, his eyes tired but burning... he stood.
He had finally returned to her arms.