The Smoke That Whispers
The message came wrapped in ash-soaked vellum, sealed not with wax but a pressed sigil of bone—the mark of the Hollow Cliffs. It arrived in the hand of a half-dead courier, bleeding from wounds that would have killed any normal man. He collapsed at the outer gate, muttering through a shattered jaw.
Alaric was summoned before the blood had dried.
He stood in the inner war chamber, the sigil heavy in his palm, the scent of scorched dust curling into his nostrils. Mira stood beside him, quiet, her eyes flickering as though reading the message before it was opened.
"He's calling you," she murmured.
Alaric didn't need to open the scroll to know it. He felt it. The air had changed. The shadows in the corners of the room no longer simply were—they watched.
He broke the seal.
The parchment unfurled like skin uncoiling from fire.
The script wasn't written. It was branded, as though scorched into place by thought.
"I have tasted death and found it wanting.
You wear a crown forged from apology.
I wear silence like armor.
Come to me, brother.
Let the world see what truth rises when lies finally burn."
No signature.
None needed.
Alaric stared long at the words, then rolled the parchment tight and dropped it into the fire without a word.
"It's bait," said Jorren, his lead tactician. "He wants to lure you out, provoke you into walking into a trap."
Alaric's voice was calm. "It's not bait."
Jorren scowled. "Then what is it?"
"It's a challenge."
The silence that followed was brittle.
Mira stepped forward. "Caelen doesn't care about strategy. Not in the old sense. He's trying to reframe the fight entirely. To force you into a myth, not a war. To make this personal."
"It is personal," Alaric growled.
"That's what makes it dangerous," she snapped.
Alaric turned to her. "Then what do you suggest? We let him gather power, draw in the broken, the outcast, the feral? Wait until he becomes strong enough to fracture the realms completely?"
Mira didn't flinch. "No. We find out why now. Why reveal himself at this moment? Why you, and not the Council? Why brand that message with bone, not name?"
Jorren leaned against the map table. "He's planning something."
Alaric nodded slowly. "Something symbolic. Something public."
Mira's voice lowered. "He doesn't just want a throne. He wants a reckoning."
Jorren's fingers traced a route through the Dustline Mountains. "If he's set up camp in the Hollow Cliffs, there are only three viable paths into the valley. All narrow. All cursed."
"We won't march yet," Alaric said. "Not without knowing more."
Jorren blinked. "You're not going?"
"I'm going," Alaric said darkly. "But not with an army."
Mira's eyes widened. "Alaric…"
"I need to see it with my own eyes," he said. "What he's built. What he's become. A war is coming, yes—but if we fight a phantom built of myth, we'll lose. I must look the ghost in the face."
"You'll be walking into his power," Mira warned.
"Then I'll walk like a shadow and strike like a truth denied."
Jorren gave a grim nod. "Then you'll need a face he doesn't know."
Mira exhaled. "You'll need a disguise."
"No," Alaric said. "I'll need a name forgotten."
He stepped back from the fire, turned to his blade on the wall, and drew it without ceremony.
"You'll hold the line until I return," he said to Jorren.
Then, to Mira: "If I fail—dream of me. Find my soul in the storm."
And without another word, he turned and walked into the night, cloak vanishing into the wind.