The night before the army marched North, the Royal Spire was a hive of frantic activity. Generals shouted orders, artificers calibrated engines, and healers packed supplies. But the King was not in the war room.
Kael Light had shed his royal raiments. He wore a simple tunic of rough-spun grey wool and a hooded cloak that smelled of charcoal and rain. He moved through the shadows of the lower city, slipping past the patrols of the Iron-Guard with the ease of a ghost who knew every brick of the streets.
He descended past the glowing boulevards of New Aethelgard, down through the layers of the city until he reached the Old Docks. Here, the "Radiant Grid" was dim, the copper conduits hummed with a lower frequency, and the smell of jasmine was replaced by the ancient, persistent scent of salt, rotting kelp, and sewage.
This was the only part of the city Kael had refused to gentrify. It was a scar he kept open on purpose—a reminder of where they had come from.
He walked to the end of a rotting pier that jutted out into the black water of the harbor. The ocean lapped against the pylons with a rhythmic, wet slapping sound. At the very edge of the wood, huddled beneath a tarp made of scavenged sail-cloth, sat a figure.
He was a mound of rags and misery. His skin was the color of old parchment, translucent and spotted with age. His hair was a thin, white wisp clinging to a skull that seemed too large for his shrunken face. His eyes were milky white orbs, blinded by the flash of the Star-Core ten years ago, staring sightlessly at the dark horizon.
Sam Willer. The former Merchant King. The man who had sold a brother for a golden heart.
Kael stopped ten paces away. He didn't speak. He didn't flare his aura. He simply stood there, letting the "Stable Agony" inside him vibrate against the silence.
Sam's head snapped up. He sniffed the air, his nostrils flaring like a frightened animal.
"Ozone," Sam rasped, his voice a sound like dry leaves skittering on stone. "Ozone... and blood... and the smell of a storm that never breaks."
Sam let out a wheezing, cackling laugh that turned into a cough. He wiped his mouth with a skeletal hand. "You finally came down from your high tower, brother. I was wondering when the shiny new King would come to visit the trash."
"I am leaving tomorrow, Sam," Kael said. His voice remained eternally young, a sharp contrast to the ruin before him.
"Leaving?" Sam shifted, his joints popping audibly. The "Threshold of Rot" curse Kael had placed on him kept him alive, but it did not keep him comfortable. It froze him at the exact moment of his greatest frailty. He would never die of old age, but he would feel eighty years old for eternity. "Going to conquer another empire? Going to turn another mountain into a battery? You're just like the Academy, Kael. You just use prettier words."
"I am going North," Kael said, stepping closer. "The Frost Lords are waking up. They have a new magic. Necro-Ice."
Sam shivered, pulling his rags tighter around his bony shoulders. "I know. The rats... they talk about it. The cold... it's different. It doesn't just bite the skin. It bites the memory."
Sam turned his blind face toward Kael. "You came to say goodbye? Or did you come to finally finish it? Did you come to give me the mercy you gave the First Vessel?"
Kael looked down at the man who had been his entire world in the Emerald Jungle. He remembered fishing in the river. He remembered the promise to share the gold. He remembered the obsidian shard plunging into his shoulder.
"I can't kill you, Sam," Kael whispered. "You are the only person left who remembers who I was before the Agony."
"And that is my punishment, isn't it?" Sam spat, a glob of phlegm hitting Kael's boot. "To be the history book for a monster. To sit here in the dark and remember the boy I killed, while you walk around wearing his face."
Sam reached out a trembling hand. "Let me touch it. The ring."
Kael hesitated, then slowly extended his left hand.
Sam's fingers, cold and rough as sandpaper, brushed against the 'Reforged Sun'. The Star-Core was dormant, but even in its sleep, it radiated a heat that made Sam recoil.
"It's still hot," Sam whispered, nursing his burned fingers. "Ten years... and it hasn't cooled a degree. How do you stand it, Kael? How do you not scream every second of every day?"
"I do scream," Kael said softly. "You just can't hear it anymore."
HE ENVIES YOU, KAEL, the God's voice murmured in the back of his mind. The entity was calm tonight, subdued by the presence of the ocean it feared. HE THINKS PAIN IS A CURRENCY. HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THAT IT IS AN ATMOSPHERE. HE IS DROWNING IN A PUDDLE, WHILE WE SWIM IN THE OCEAN.
Kael reached into his tunic and pulled out a small, heavy pouch. He placed it in Sam's lap.
"What is this?" Sam asked, feeling the weight.
"Gold," Kael said. "Real gold. Not the alchemical sludge you made. Coins from the old Aethelgard mint found in the Sunken Cradle."
Sam froze. His hands shook as he opened the pouch. He pulled out a coin, biting it with his few remaining teeth. The taste of the metal seemed to electrify him. For a second, the old greed flared in his dead eyes, a phantom flicker of the Merchant King.
But then, the light died. Sam dropped the coin. It rolled across the pier and fell into the water with a quiet plop.
"It's cold," Sam whispered. "It doesn't make me warm anymore, Kael. Why doesn't it make me warm?"
"Because you aren't buying anything, Sam," Kael said. "You're just holding it."
Kael turned to leave. The wind off the sea was picking up, carrying the first bite of the unnatural winter blowing down from the North.
"Kael!" Sam called out.
Kael stopped.
"The North..." Sam's voice trembled, stripped of its bitterness, leaving only a naked, primal fear. "The beggars say the Frost Lords aren't alone. They say... they say the 'White Shadow' walks with them. The thing that was in the ice before the Academy arrived."
Kael looked back. "The White Shadow?"
"It's the Void, Kael," Sam whimpered. "The real Void. Not the hungry dark you carry. The empty dark. The silence. If you go there... make sure you burn bright. Because if that thing touches you... even your Agony won't be enough to restart your heart."
Kael looked at the shivering old man one last time. "I'll burn, Sam. I always do."
Kael walked away, his footsteps echoing on the wood. He left Sam Willer alone on the edge of the world, clutching a bag of gold he couldn't spend, in a city he couldn't see, waiting for a sunrise he would never feel.
As Kael ascended back to the upper city, the "Stable Agony" spiked.
Thud-crack.
His collarbone fractured and reset. The pain was sharp, immediate, and grounding. It reminded him that he was alive. It reminded him that he had a job to do.
He reached the Royal Spire just as the first light of dawn began to touch the tips of the marble towers.
In the courtyard below, the Army of the Broken was assembled.
Five thousand soldiers of the Iron-Guard stood in silent formation, their black armor gleaming. Behind them were the "Radiant Artillery" corps of House Ignis, manning the massive steam-tanks that hummed with Dawn-Mana. On the flanks, the Moon-Scarred pack prowled, their breath misting in the morning air.
And at the front, waiting for him, were his pillars.
Pip, looking uncomfortable but regal in his Lord Keeper's coat. Thorne, checking the action on his pneumatic pile-driver. Ignis, running final diagnostics on a new, sleek Slip-Runner modified for cold weather. Martha, holding Caspian's hand.
Kael stepped out onto the balcony. The army looked up. They didn't cheer. They didn't shout. They simply knelt. A wave of steel and silence rippling across the square.
They knelt for the boy who hadn't aged. They knelt for the monster who had saved them.
"We march," Kael's voice amplified by the Spire's acoustics, booming across the city. "Not for conquest. Not for gold. We march to keep the fire burning."
He jumped from the balcony.
He didn't use a spell to slow his fall. He landed in the center of the courtyard with a heavy, kinetic impact that cracked the paving stones. He stood up, the iridescent light of his eyes blazing.
"To the North," Kael commanded.
The engines roared. The wolves howled. And the King of the Broken led his people toward the white horizon of the Silent Tundra.
Behind them, in the shadows of the Old Docks, a blind old man listened to the marching boots and wept into a bag of gold, wishing that for just one moment, he could feel the pain that kept his brother alive.