Chapter 8: Shattered Loyalties
The wind had changed.
It carried a smell Seralyn hadn't felt in weeks elmwood ash and royal sage. Dominion scents. Home scents. But now it clung to the shaft of an arrow, half-buried in the black sand not ten feet from where she'd stood watch.
She spotted it just before sunrise, during her routine perimeter check. Her pulse spiked.
No assassin this time. No footsteps, no sound of breathing in the dark. Just an arrow, carefully placed. Meant to be found.
Enchanted.
She knelt slowly, brushing ash from the feathered shaft. The arrow shimmered, and with a soft hiss, the spell activated.
A glowing script unraveled in the air.
COMMANDER VIRELLIA.
ORDERS HAVE CHANGED. THE FRAGMENT IS TO BE RECOVERED IMMEDIATELY. THE DEMON-BORN IS TO BE ELIMINATED.
IF NOT DONE, CONSIDER YOURSELF A DEFECTOR.
-VELIEN
Her brother's name. Etched with Dominion authority.
Seralyn stared at the message until it burned itself out.
Her gut twisted.
Kaela sat across the fire, knees drawn to her chest, hair a tangled curtain of dark curls. She hadn't noticed Seralyn's brief absence, or if she had, she didn't care. The firelight made her skin glow faintly amber, casting strange shadows over her cheeks. She toyed with the fragment in her hand, watching it shimmer between her fingers.
"Do you think," Kaela murmured, "that I could ever stop being 'the Ashblade Witch' in your eyes?"
Seralyn blinked, jolted from her thoughts. "What?"
Kaela didn't look up. "You see me like the others do. Demon-blooded. Dangerous. Cursed. You didn't even flinch when that Dominion assassin called me a war criminal."
Seralyn exhaled slowly. "He was trying to kill me. I wasn't exactly parsing the nuance."
"But you didn't defend me."
The accusation sat between them, raw and cold.
Seralyn said nothing.
Kaela's lips tightened. "I know what I am. What I've done. But you of all people should understand that sometimes, we do dark things because we have no choice."
Seralyn looked away. "That's what terrifies me."
Kaela finally looked at her. "Why?"
"Because I see myself in you more than I should."
Silence stretched. The fire popped softly, casting dancing shadows across their faces.
Kaela tucked the fragment into her cloak and rose. "I'm going to wash. Don't stab me in the back while I'm gone."
Seralyn watched her go.
She didn't answer.
The sun rose blood-orange over the Blasted Wastes.
They traveled in tense silence, crossing a cracked expanse of charred earth and smoking fissures. The wind howled constantly, dragging heat and whispering ancient curses through the crags.
Kaela kept her distance.
Seralyn kept her silence.
The words of her brother echoed endlessly in her mind. Eliminate her. Retrieve the fragment. If not... you're the traitor.
The terrain grew rougher as they approached a ruined pass. At one point, they were forced to scale a collapsed bridge carved into a ravine's side Kaela leapt easily with magic-enhanced boots, while Seralyn grunted and climbed the cracked stone with bare effort.
Their journey turned inward too. At night, neither spoke much, but every glance held weighted silence.
On the third night after the message, they set camp at the edge of a shattered graveyard bones and rusted armor littered the dust-choked ground, the remnants of an ancient battle between mages and knights.
Kaela studied one skeleton, her hand brushing the runes on its blade. "We think we're different. But we keep repeating the same mistakes."
Seralyn glanced at her. "What would you do, if I did turn on you?"
Kaela smiled grimly. "Kill you, of course."
There was no malice in her voice only fact. Sad, quiet fact.
Seralyn nodded. "Fair."
A long pause.
"But I wouldn't let them take your body," Kaela added.
Seralyn looked at her sharply.
"I'd burn it myself," Kaela said, eyes on the stars. "That much, I'd owe you."
They didn't speak again for the rest of the night.
Later, after Kaela had fallen asleep, Seralyn lay awake.
She turned the message over in her mind. The phrasing. The timing. Her brother's name.
Her hand drifted to the fragment at her hip.
They were two pieces of a key that was never meant to be split.
What if Kaela was right? What if killing her only ensured the same broken cycle? What if the sigil had chosen them both not as enemies but as the only ones capable of undoing what the world had wrought?
The crackling wind offered no answers.
---
On the fifth day, they reached the Whispering Spires towers of red stone and obsidian jutting from the sand like skeletal fingers. Ancient elf structures, long abandoned, humming with ambient magical resonance.
As they passed through the ruins, Kaela suddenly stopped. Her fingers twitched.
"There's something here," she whispered.
Seralyn drew both sabers.
The air shimmered.
From beneath the sand, shadowbeasts erupted dozens of them, drawn by the energy of the fragments. Hulking black forms with no eyes, just snarling maws of smoke and rot.
Kaela cursed. "They've been following us!"
"No," Seralyn growled. "They've been waiting."
The battle was brutal. They fought back-to-back, their movements instinctive now, in sync. Seralyn danced between claws and fangs, sabers cutting through magical sinew. Kaela's spells lit the air with shadowfire, burning away darkness with darkness.
At one point, a beast tackled Seralyn, knocking her to the ground.
Kaela screamed.
With a wave of both hands, she unleashed a spiraling storm of black flame that reduced the creature to dust.
She knelt beside Seralyn, shaking. "You idiot."
Seralyn coughed blood and laughed. "Took you long enough."
They survived. Barely.
That night, as they tended wounds beneath the fractured sky, Kaela handed Seralyn a strip of cloth soaked in healing elixir.
Seralyn took it without speaking.
"I know something changed," Kaela said. "You've been… distant. More than usual."
Seralyn didn't answer.
"I'm not stupid," Kaela said. "Did someone send a message?"
Seralyn froze.
Kaela's eyes narrowed. "They want me dead, don't they?"
Seralyn didn't nod.
She didn't have to.
Kaela exhaled. "Then do it. If you're going to."
Seralyn stared at her.
Kaela met her gaze. "I won't fight you. Not tonight. I'm tired. Just… make it quick."
Seralyn stood.
She walked to the edge of the firelight.
Drew her sword.
Stared at it.
Stared at Kaela.
The witch lay motionless, eyes closed, chest rising and falling slowly.
Seralyn stepped toward her.
Raised the blade.
Then lowered it.
"I can't," she whispered.