# Chapter 797: The Price of Knowledge
The Withering King let the silence stretch, savoring the raw terror that radiated from Nyra and Kaelen. It was a palpable thing, a scent in the still air like ozone before a lightning strike. The shadow-Inquisitors stood motionless, their hollow faces turned toward the trapped pair, while the corrupted forms of Lyra and ruku bez waited with a chilling patience. The King, wearing Valerius's face like a flawless mask, tilted its head, a gesture of cold, academic curiosity.
"You are wondering how," it said, its voice a perfect, venomous echo of the High Inquisitor. "You are thinking of Lyra's fierce spirit, of ruku bez's unbreakable loyalty. You believe such things are shields. They are not. They are handles. Levers. And I have the knowledge of every man and woman who has ever served the Synod, including your dear Inquisitor Valerius."
It took a step forward, the hem of its black robes disturbing the fallen leaves. The movement was fluid, unnatural. "Lyra's fear was never for herself. It was for you. For Soren. A fear of being a burden, of her weakness causing your downfall. Valerius knew this. He saw it in her every time she looked at her own hands after a failed healing. So, when I found her, I did not break her with threats of pain. I simply showed her a future where she was the reason you both died. I showed her Soren, broken and weeping, cursing her name as he fell. I showed her you, Nyra, impaled on a shadow-spear, your last breath a whisper of disappointment. Her mind, already frayed, simply… collapsed. She welcomed the control as an escape from the guilt I gave her."
Nyra flinched as if struck. The image was too vivid, too perfectly tailored to the private fears she had shared with Lyra in the dead of night. The air grew colder, and she could feel the dampness of the ground seeping through her boots, a chilling reminder of her own powerlessness.
"And the big one," the King continued, its gaze shifting to the hulking form of ruku bez. The puppet's head twitched at the attention. "His mind is a simple, beautiful thing. It is built on a foundation of trust and protection. He sees Soren as his savior, his brother. Valerius's memories held a recording of every time ruku bez failed to protect someone in the wastes. Every caravan raid, every friend lost. I simply replayed those moments for him, amplified them, and then offered him a new purpose. A way to finally be strong enough. A way to protect everyone by serving me. He believes he is a hero now."
The cruelty of it was staggering. It wasn't just murder; it was desecration. It was the twisting of love into a weapon, the corruption of the purest bonds they shared. Kaelen let out a low, guttural sound, a mix of rage and despair. "You're a monster."
"I am a consequence," the King corrected, its voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "I am what happens when power is hoarded and truth is buried. But this is not a lecture. This is an explanation. You need to understand the price of your knowledge, Nyra Sableki. You need to understand what I am truly after."
It raised a hand, not in a threat, but in a gesture of encompassing the grove, the world, everything. "The World-Seed shards are a means to an end. Soren is a key. But you… you are the prize. Your family, the Sable League, believes in control through information, through manipulation. You are their finest creation. What a delicious irony it would be to break you. To shatter that brilliant, strategic mind of yours until there is nothing left but a hollow shell."
Its eyes, the piercing blue of Valerius now shot through with veins of necrotic green, locked onto Nyra. "I will not simply kill you. I will make you watch. I will make you watch as I use your friends to hunt down the others. I will make you watch as I dismantle your precious League, piece by piece. I will make you watch as I corner Soren, and when he is broken and defeated, I will turn to you and show you the hollow ruin of everything you fought for. And only then, when your spirit is a desert as barren as the Bloom-Wastes, will I take you. Your death will be a footnote. Your despair will be my masterpiece."
The goal was laid bare, more terrifying than any simple desire for conquest. This was personal. This was artistry in agony. Nyra felt a cold dread coil in her stomach, a serpent of ice. Her strategic mind, her greatest asset, was suddenly a liability. She could see the moves, the traps, the inevitable checkmate, and the knowledge was a poison.
"You cling to the ghost of a man," the King sneered, its voice losing its academic tone and taking on a raw, ancient malice. The green light in its eyes flared, and the corrupted runes on the shadow-Inquisitors pulsed in response. "You think your love is a shield? It is a key. And I have just used it to unlock his cage." The King raised a hand crackling with dark power, the energy coalescing around its fingers like a nest of vipers. "Let me show you what true power looks like."
The attack was not a physical charge. It was a wave of pure, psychic force. The world dissolved around Nyra. The ancient grove, the oppressive shadows, the King in Valerius's form—it all vanished. She was standing in the sun-drenched gardens of her family's estate in the Sable League's capital. The air was warm, filled with the scent of night-blooming jasmine. Before her stood her father, Lord Kaelen Sableki, his face a mask of cold disappointment.
"You have failed us, Nyra," he said, his voice the same one that had haunted her childhood. "Your sentimentality for the commoner has blinded you. The League is in ruins because of you."
"No," she whispered, but the word had no sound.
Another figure stepped out from behind a trellis of climbing roses. It was Soren, but he was not the man she knew. His eyes were hollow, his skin grey as ash. He looked at her not with love, but with a profound, soul-crushing betrayal.
"You left me," he rasped, his voice the rustle of dead leaves. "You led me into a trap. You were the Synod's weapon all along."
The scene shifted violently. She was in the Ladder arena, the roar of the crowd deafening. But the stands were filled with shadowy figures, all pointing at her. In the center of the sands lay Kaelen Vor, his body broken, his axe just out of reach. Standing over him was Lyra, her eyes glowing with green fire, a cruel smile on her lips.
"He died for you," Lyra's voice echoed, not her own, but the King's. "Just another sacrifice on the altar of your ambition."
Nyra cried out, trying to move, to run, to do anything, but she was frozen, a spectator in her own personal hell. The visions were a relentless assault, each one a dagger twisted in a different wound. She saw her mother weeping, her brothers taken as debtors. She saw Talia Ashfor, her handler, branded a traitor and executed. She saw the Unchained, the nascent rebellion she and Soren had dreamed of, hunted down and slaughtered like animals. Each image was perfectly crafted, drawn from her own fears and Valerius's intimate knowledge of her life.
"Kaelen!" she screamed, her voice tearing through the psychic fog. It was a desperate, raw plea, a lifeline thrown into a storm.
In the real world, Kaelen saw Nyra stagger. Her eyes went wide and unfocused, her face pale as death. She dropped to one knee, a strangled gasp escaping her lips. He didn't understand the magic at play, but he understood the effect. She was under attack.
"Nyra!" he roared, turning to face the Withering King. "Fight me, you coward!"
The King smiled, its attention divided. "Patience, brute. Your turn is next." It gestured with its free hand, and the puppets moved. ruku bez, with a speed that defied his size, lunged forward. His fists, wrapped in crackling green energy, were aimed not at Kaelen, but at the defenseless Nyra.
Kaelen didn't hesitate. He threw himself in the path of the attack. The impact was like being hit by a battering ram. The force of the blow, amplified by the King's magic, threw him backward, his ribs screaming in protest. He crashed into a thick oak trunk, the air driven from his lungs in a pained grunt. He slid to the ground, fighting for breath, his vision swimming.
The psychic assault on Nyra intensified. She was back in the grove, but it was on fire. The trees were black skeletons, and the flames were made of screaming faces. In the heart of the inferno stood the Withering King, no longer wearing Valerius's face. It was a towering figure of shifting shadow and embers, its form vaguely humanoid but utterly alien. It held a shard of the World-Seed, and the shard was weeping black tears.
"This is your future," the entity's true voice boomed, a sound of grinding stone and cosmic wind. "This is the world you will inherit. A world of ash. A world of silence. And you will be its lonely queen."
Nyra's mind buckled. The strategist, the survivor, the spy—it all fell away. She was just a girl, terrified and alone, watching everything she loved burn. Her Gift, a subtle power of misdirection and illusion, flickered and died within her. She had no defense against this kind of war. This was not a battle of steel or will; it was an invasion of the soul.
Kaelen pushed himself to his feet, his body a symphony of pain. He saw ruku bez advancing on Nyra again, saw the shadow-Inquisitors raising their hands, bolts of black fire forming in their palms. He saw the Withering King standing impassively, conducting this symphony of destruction with a raised hand. There was no plan. No strategy. There was only this one, final moment.
He looked at Nyra, on her knees, lost in a world of nightmares. He thought of Soren, of the promise he'd made to watch over her. He thought of his own life, a brutal, bloody thing that had found purpose only in this fight. A grim, fierce calm settled over him. He knew what he had to do.
"Hey!" Kaelen bellowed, his voice cracking with the effort. The Withering King turned its head slightly, a flicker of annoyance in its green-lit eyes. "I'm your opponent."
Kaelen roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated defiance that shook the leaves from the trees. He channeled every ounce of his will, every scrap of his strength, into his Gift. His body became a furnace. The Cinder-Tattoos that covered his arms and chest blazed with a furious, incandescent light, not the sickly green of the King's power, but the defiant orange-red of a forge. The air around him shimmered with heat. He was a star, burning himself out to make one last, brilliant point.
He charged.
Not at the puppets. Not at the shadow-Inquisitors. He charged directly at the Withering King itself.
The attack was so unexpected, so suicidally direct, that it gave the King pause for a fraction of a second. It had been so focused on the psychological torture of Nyra that it had discounted the brute as a simple, predictable tool. That fraction of a second was all Kaelen needed.
He crossed the distance in three ground-shaking strides. The shadow-Inquisitors fired their bolts of black fire, but they seared past him, their aim thrown off by his sudden, explosive speed. ruku bez turned to intercept him, but Kaelen was a blur of heat and fury. He slammed into the Withering King, not with his axe, but with his entire body, a living projectile of pure Cinder-Infused might.
The impact was silent. There was no clang of steel or crunch of bone. There was only a blinding flash of white-hot light and a shockwave of concussive force that threw the shadow-Inquisitors off their feet and shattered the nearby trees into splinters. The psychic link to Nyra's mind was severed.
She collapsed forward, gasping, her hands flat on the cool, damp earth. The nightmares receded, leaving a hollow, ringing emptiness. She blinked, her vision slowly clearing. The first thing she saw was Kaelen.
He was standing in the center of a crater of blackened glass, his back to her. His body was glowing, the light of his Gift so intense it was burning through his clothes and skin. The Cinder-Tattoos were no longer just markings on his skin; they were open wounds, weeping light and ash. He had overdrawn his power to a catastrophic degree.
The Withering King was gone. In its place was a shimmering, distorted ripple in the air, like heat-haze off asphalt. Kaelen's attack had not destroyed it, but it had hurt it. It had forced it back.
Kaelen stood his ground, a beacon in the sudden, ringing silence. He was a weapon, fired and spent. He had bought her time. He had given her an opening.
"Run, Nyra," he said, his voice a ragged whisper, barely audible over the crackle of his own burning flesh. "Finish this."
He didn't turn around. He couldn't. His body was failing, atomizing from the sheer force of the power he had unleashed. He had made his choice. He had paid the price.