Part II: The Long Walk
The Frostmark Gate stood at the northern edge of Varnastra, where farmland gave way to the wild frontier. It was a massive structure made of iron-bound oak, covered in protective symbols. People claimed it had never been breached. They said monsters had crashed against it like waves on rocks.
Now it creaked open just enough for one man to pass through.
Sidharth walked through it wearing ragged clothes— they had taken everything, leaving him only rough pants and a worn shirt. A sword hilt was tied to his belt with twine. His feet were bare. The autumn night bit at his skin with sharp frost.
Behind him, the gate slammed shut, a final sound that made his bones ache.
He was all alone.
The wasteland stretched before him, dark and endless. There were no roads, no villages, no lights on the horizon. Just rolling hills of frost-bitten grass under the ominous moon. In the distance, mountains jutted up like broken teeth.
Sidharth took a step, then another. His body moved on instinct while his mind swirled with thoughts.
How had it come to this?
Three months ago, he celebrated his promotion to Third Order. Master Vikram had clapped him on the shoulder and predicted he would reach First Order before he turned twenty-five. Ananya had baked him honey cakes. Life had not been perfect, but it had been good. Purposeful. He had felt like he was becoming something.
Now he felt like nothing.
The memory surged uninvited: the girl's face as he pulled her away from the soldiers. Silver marks faintly glowing on her skin. Her eyes were wide with fear and confusion. She had said something in a language he didn't understand—lyrical, ancient, wrong for mortal ears.
Then Captain Roth had shown up with a full squad. Sidharth had refused to hand her over. Refused to step aside. He drew his blade against his own comrades.
"She's just a child!" he had shouted.
"She's marked," Roth had responded coldly. "The king's law is absolute."
They had arrested him and thrown him in a deep cell. The girl—
He didn't know what happened to her. In his heart, he had a feeling. Knew but couldn't bear to name it.
"Was mercy worth this?" a voice whispered in his mind. "Was one life worth your entire future?"
Sidharth tightened his grip on the sword hilt at his belt. "Yes," he answered the empty wasteland. "Yes, it was."
Even if no one ever knew. Even if history remembered him as a traitor. Even if he died out here, alone and forgotten.
"If mercy is treason, then I will wear chains as my crown."
He had told that to the King's envoy during his interrogation. He meant every word. He still did.
The cold deepened as he walked. His breath formed white clouds. Frost crunched under his bare feet, then shifted to something sharper—ice crystals that cut like glass. Blood left small dark marks in his wake.
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes that felt like hours. Time moved strangely under the blood moon.
Then he saw it: a standing stone at the edge of nothing, half-buried in frost. Ancient. Covered in symbols that made his branded shoulder ache in response. At its base, something glinted.
Sidharth approached with caution. His exile didn't mean the wasteland was empty—bandits and beasts, worse things prowled here. But nothing attacked as he knelt by the stone.
The glinting object was a shard. No bigger than his thumb, shaped like a tear, it was made of something that wasn't quite crystal and wasn't quite metal. It pulsed with a very faint light—so dim he would have missed it in normal moonlight.
The moment his fingers touched it, sound exploded in his mind.
Not sound, but sensation. Memories that were not his own. Screaming. Fire. A great tearing as something vast fell from the sky and shattered. Thousands of voices cried out in agony, hope, and terrible longing—
Sidharth jerked his hand back, gasping. The visions faded, leaving only afterimages burned into his thoughts.
"What in the forgotten hells," he breathed.
The shard lay innocent in the frost, still pulsing.
He should leave it. Should walk away and never look back. These were the wastes—everything here was cursed, dangerous, or both. He had already destroyed his life. No need to make it worse with mysterious, possibly evil artifacts.
But something about it called to him. The way it pulsed reminded him of a heartbeat. Of something alive and suffering.
"Mercy," that traitorous part of his mind whispered. "Show mercy."
"You're going to get me killed," Sidharth told himself.
Then he picked up the shard and tucked it into the pocket of his rough shirt.
The moment he did, warmth spread through his chest. Not heat—something gentler. Like being seen. Like not being so alone.
The branded mark on his shoulder blade screamed.
Sidharth collapsed, agony ripping through him. It felt like two opposing forces were trying to tear him apart—the Forsaken brand fighting against whatever power lived in the shard. His vision went white, then black, then red like the blood moon.
When clarity returned, he was on his hands and knees, gasping. The pain had faded to a dull throb. And around him—
Thorns.
Thin, black, impossible thorns sprouted from the frozen ground in a perfect circle where he had fallen. They gleamed like obsidian and dripped tiny drops of silver light.
Sidharth stared. He touched one carefully. It pricked his finger, drawing blood, but didn't feel evil. The thorns swayed slightly, though there was no wind.
"What did I just do?" he whispered.
No answer came. The wasteland kept its silence.
After a moment, the thorns withered. They turned to ash and blew away on a sudden breeze, as if they had never existed.
Sidharth stood on shaky legs. The shard in his pocket felt heavier now. Meaningful. He didn't understand what had happened, but he knew—deep down—that something had changed. Some seal had broken. Some door had opened that couldn't be closed.
He resumed walking north. The blood moon tracked his progress, an eternal witness.
By the time dawn broke—pale, cold, and reluctant—Sidharth had put five miles between himself and the Frostmark Gate. His feet were torn and bleeding. His body shook with exhaustion and cold. But he was alive.
In the grey morning light, he saw smoke rising from a valley to the northwest. Thin. Steady. The smoke of hearth fires.
A village. Or a settlement. Or a trap.
Sidharth checked the sword hilt at his belt. Not much of a weapon. But it was something.
"Forward," he told himself. His voice was hoarse. "Only forward now."
He began the descent into the valley, unaware he was walking toward Madhubala's village. Unaware that thorns would bloom in his wake for the rest of his cursed life. Unaware that three thousand miles away, in a tower of black glass, a Seer had felt the moment the shard awakened and was already sending out hunters.
Unaware that mercy, once given, could never be taken back.
And that some chains, once worn, became crowns of a different kind entirely.