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Caldus as a boy, standing in the dark archives, watching Lysara from behind a curtain. She was laughing then, with a boy he would come to hate. Even then, he knew—she was the storm, and he was the flame. And he would burn for her.
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Nightfall.
Somewhere between the crumbling ridges of Old Vandrel and the whispering woods of the South.
Caldus Thorne bled in silence.
Iron cuffs bit into his wrists. A burlap sack, stinking of mildew and sweat, clung to his face. He couldn't see, but he could smell—old wood, incense, holy water gone stale.
He was back in a chapel.
Of course they'd bring him here to die.
Rough hands shoved him to his knees. Stone groaned under his weight. Voices muttered behind him—sharp, clerical, cold. The sack was ripped off his head, and the candlelight nearly blinded him.
Caldus blinked.
He was surrounded by Inquisitors.
Nine of them. Masked. Robed in white streaked with crimson thread. Their blades gleamed with holy glyphs—ancient, cruel.
And at the center stood her.
"Hello again, Thorne," said Inquisitor Mydira Vex.
Her voice was smoke and frost. Once, she'd taught him how to read the divine codices. Now, she read his sins.
"You've grown," she murmured, eyes scanning the length of him. "Not taller, but… stranger. I smell flame on you. And betrayal."
Caldus spat blood. "You're still a bitter bitch."
She slapped him across the face—hard enough to make stars explode behind his eyes.
"You betrayed your kind. Your brothers. Your oath."
"I betrayed a system that rots people alive," he snarled, voice hoarse. "Tell me—how many witches burned this week to keep your altars clean?"
She circled him. "Your blood sings, Caldus. You made a pact. Do you know what that means?"
"I know it saved my life."
He lifted his gaze.
Moonlight poured through the stained-glass above, illuminating the mark across his collarbone. It shimmered faintly—gold veined in thorned spirals. A living sigil.
One of the masked inquisitors stepped forward, blade drawn. "He bleeds light. He's no longer of us."
"Then why keep me alive?" Caldus asked.
Mydira stopped behind him. "Because the Thorn Crown has awakened. And your body may be the only key that fits."
At those words, a chill threaded down his spine.
"What do you know of the Crown?" he whispered.
She crouched beside him. "I know you've been hunting it. With Kaelen. And the girl… Naeven. I know Dren wants it. And I know the Inquisition wants it more."
Caldus tried to stand—chains rattling.
But then… it began.
The pain.
It started in his stomach—sharp, molten—and spread through his limbs like wildfire.
He screamed as his veins lit gold beneath his skin.
His captors stepped back in horror. "What in the Prophet's name—?"
Mydira's face twisted. "He's activating the bond. Who helped him forge it?!"
Caldus fell forward, convulsing. The mark on his chest seared like a sunstone, pouring molten light through the temple floor.
His voice cracked: "Tell Lysara… it was never about power. It was about freedom."
A final scream tore from his throat as his bonds burst. The explosion of golden light shattered the nearest pillar, throwing half the room into rubble. Inquisitors cried out, blinded and burned.
When the smoke cleared… Caldus was gone.
Vanished in the dust. Only a smear of radiant blood remained—gold, and still glowing.
Elsewhere, moments later—
Kaelen knelt beside a dying crow, a broken feather in his palm. He whispered something in a foreign tongue.
Behind him, Naeven Korven shivered. "He's hurt."
Kaelen's eyes flicked to her. "He's more than hurt. He's changing."
Naeven stepped forward, clutching a rune-stone. "Where is he?"
Kaelen didn't answer right away.
Instead, he looked to the sky, as if trying to feel something shift.
Then, softly: "Caldus bled gold."
The forest near Vandrel quaked, trees bending as if bracing against a silent, unseen scream.
And then—he was there.
Caldus collapsed into the mud beneath a canopy of whispering pine, naked save for a sheen of golden residue clinging to his skin. Steam rose from his body. The sigil on his chest still burned dimly, pulsing in rhythm with his slowing heartbeat.
He coughed, choked on blood—or light—and rolled to his side.
He wasn't alone.
A pair of boots crunched through wet leaves. A figure stepped into view, cloaked in moon-gray, face obscured by a wide-brimmed hood. No weapon drawn. Just silence.
Caldus groaned, reaching for a shard of broken bark.
"Easy," the figure said—voice calm, oddly lyrical. "You left quite the crater."
"Who…" Caldus rasped. "Who sent you?"
"No one." The stranger crouched beside him. "But I've been waiting."
Caldus blinked. His vision cleared enough to glimpse the stranger's eyes—silver, serpent-slit. Not human. Not fully.
"What do you want?"
The stranger offered him a small flask. "To see if the golden one lives."
Caldus knocked the hand away. "I don't take gifts from riddles."
The stranger chuckled. "But you took a bond from fire."
That shut him up.
The two locked gazes for a beat, until Caldus's strength buckled and he collapsed again, cheek pressed to the forest floor.
Meanwhile...
A single stone glowed in Naeven's palm.
She and Kaelen stood atop a cliff just past the ridge, the wind screaming like a wounded god. Naeven's rune-stone pulsed gold—erratic, feverish.
"He's close," she whispered. "But something's interfering. There's… static in the magic."
Kaelen gritted his teeth. "He's not just leaking power. He's unraveling."
Below them, forest stretched endless and black.
"I can find him," Kaelen muttered, dropping into a crouch. He pulled a vial of raven ink from his pouch and drew a circle in the dirt, tracing it with his blood. "But we'll have to go through the Rift Tree."
Naeven's breath caught. "That thing's cursed."
"So is everything we love," Kaelen replied, eyes glowing faintly now. "Come on."
As they stepped through the spell-circle, the world tore at the edges.
Wind vanished.
Sound drowned.
And when it all cleared—they stood in a clearing choked with gold-stained smoke.
Caldus was at its center, half-conscious, curled like a dying star.
Naeven dropped beside him, hand to his chest. "He's burning still. Kaelen—help me draw it out."
But Kaelen wasn't moving. His gaze had locked on something else—
The stranger in gray, now standing just beyond the smoke, watching with a crooked smile.
Kaelen stood, sword drawn. "Who the hell are you?"
The stranger tilted his head. "A thread. Nothing more."
And then he vanished—into wind and vapor, leaving only a silver feather behind.