We were brothers, once.
If only I had seen the path ahead, allowing the Veil to show me our future, I could have changed the course of our history.
But the time to reminisce was far gone. Only scars remained. How could I have known it would come to this?
Lightning cracked overhead, wind howled along the cliffside battlefield, ripping at our cloaks. I aimed a bolt of fire at his chest, reaching for the same spot I had struck him in when we were just children.
It flew, charging straight for his body. But the prince, no, the King now, was faster than he had been when we still fought together, side by side.
Cadyr summoned a wave of water, crashing forward as if it were brought straight from the raging seas around us.
I stomped on the ground, raising a pillar of jagged earth. I rose with it, the wave breaking harmlessly against the rock. Boulders of varying size floated around me. I harnessed the earth, swirling it around the stones like snakes, willing the boulders forth to crush the man standing below me.
He countered with his wind magic, blades of condensed air sliced through the rocks like parchment before fire.
The Veil guided me away from the attack, always a whisper away from death, allowing me to dodge the wind shears with three simple movements.
Suddenly, the King changed tactics, accessing a higher form of the Veil's powers.
Lightning.
A blade of condensed electricity formed in his hands, two more materializing in the air. The ones floating above his head charged forward at blinding speeds. But the Veil, like a warning, led me to the right path.
I accessed the advanced form of earth and water magic, willing branches of thick, elder wood to sprout from the rocky pillar I stood upon. They reached up, barely blocking the two lances of lightning, shattering the branches into splinters. The surface of compressed air surrounding my body brushed them harmlessly to the side.
Behind you, the Veil hissed.
The warning came even before Cadyr had moved, but I quickly came to understand the call of the Veil.
Cadyr had sprinted forward, cladding his movements in electricity, as he proceeded to burst towards and then through the pillar below me. It shattered, rocks falling around me like a sort of solid rain.
The Veil sparked, warning me of the next attack.
I morphed the falling rocks into sand, allowing it to flow behind me, even before I had flipped myself around in the air using the winds. The blade of lightning Cadyr had thrown dissipated instantly against the dry, advanced form of earth and air magic.
I landed hard. Cadyr didn't wait. He slammed the ground. Ice cracked outward, engulfing my legs before I could move. Frost crept up, pinning me still. Not even the Veils' will was quick enough for me to avoid the attack.
Move! The Veil roared.
I focused now, accessing fire magic to defrost myself. Then, I reached for the highest tier of magic, which was taught to me by my mentor.
Our mentor, once.
I melded with the shadow cast at my feet, slipping away beneath the light. I emerged from the shadow of a large, sea-bent tree just behind where Cadyr stood, arm still outstretched from the numerous arrows of condensed wind he had cast in my direction.
"It was never meant to be this way!" I shouted.
"You made it so." He replied, calm and menacing.
"You were once my brother!"
Tendrils of shadow crept from below, rising into the air, like the tentacles of Na'Karuun—the legendary magic beast of the Western sea.
"We were many things. Brothers. Warriors. Rivals." His voice sharpened. Light magic shimmered into being, six blades orbiting him. "But you gave yourself to the Veil. You let it write your fate."
He's wrong, the Veil whispered. I never chose. I only guided.
"You chose your lies!" I roared. "You still think there's a path out, a kingdom made of happy endings. There isn't. There's only power—and those who have the will to take it. I will not kneel again."
Light clashed with the darkness. The world shattered.
And as the brilliance of our magic filled the sky, I remembered the beginning.