Dawn found Kael three miles north of the farmhouse, his boots caked with mud and his mind still reeling from the violence of the previous night.
He'd killed twelve men. Twelve living, breathing human beings, even if their souls had been corrupted by dark magic. Their faces haunted him with every step, their death screams echoing in the hollows of his skull. But beneath the horror, beneath the guilt that threatened to drag him to his knees, there was something else.
Power.
The silver flames had awakened something in him that couldn't be put back to sleep. Even now, as the morning sun painted the eastern sky in shades of gold and crimson, he could feel it coiled in his chest like a living thing. Waiting. Hungry for more.
"You look like hell, boy."
Kael's hand flew to his sword, spinning to face the voice. An old woman stood at the edge of the forest path, leaning on a gnarled walking stick. Her eyes were milky with cataracts, but the way she looked at him made Kael feel naked, exposed, as though she could see straight through flesh and bone to the trembling mess beneath.
"Who are you?" Kael demanded, his voice hoarse from exhaustion.
"Someone who's been waiting for you." The old woman tilted her head, those clouded eyes somehow fixing on the mark hidden beneath his sleeve. "The last of Aethermoor. The prophecy made flesh. Tell me, does the power sing to you yet? Does it whisper promises of revenge and glory?"
Kael's blood ran cold. "How do you know about—"
"I was there when your kingdom fell, boy. I watched from the walls as Lord Malkor's armies turned the sky black with their corrupted magic. I saw your grandfather die with a blade through his heart, saw your grandmother burned alive in the throne room. I've spent twenty years waiting for the bloodline to resurface, and now here you stand, stinking of death and running blindly north like a rabbit fleeing a wolf."
The casual way she spoke of his family's massacre made something hot and terrible rise in Kael's throat. "If you know so much, then you know they'll keep hunting me. They'll never stop until—"
"Until you're dead, yes. Or until you become strong enough to destroy them first." The old woman took a step closer, her walking stick tapping against the packed earth of the trail. "That's why you're heading north, isn't it? Some half-remembered instinct pulling you toward the ruins of your kingdom. Toward the ancient power that sleeps in the bones of Aethermoor."
Kael wanted to deny it, but she was right. He'd been walking all night with no real destination in mind, yet his feet had carried him unerringly north. Toward something he couldn't name but felt calling to him like a distant song.
"The power will destroy you," the old woman said softly. "Just as it destroyed your ancestors. Just as it corrupted Lord Malkor himself, once a noble knight before he tasted the darkness. The magic of Aethermoor is ancient and terrible, and it demands a price for every gift it grants."
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Kael heard the desperation in his own voice and hated himself for it. "Run forever? Hide while they murder everyone I've ever known?"
"No." The old woman's expression softened, revealing a glimpse of profound sadness beneath her weathered features. "You're supposed to learn. To understand what you are before the power consumes you. To discover why your bloodline was worth destroying an entire kingdom to erase."
She reached into her tattered cloak and pulled out a small, leather-bound book. Its cover was scorched and water-stained, held together by strips of cloth. "Your grandmother wrote this in the days before the fall. She foresaw what was coming, though she couldn't prevent it. She wrote down everything—the true history of Aethermoor, the source of your power, and the terrible secret that Lord Malkor would do anything to keep buried."
Kael took the book with trembling hands. The leather was warm to the touch, almost alive. "Why give this to me now? Why wait twenty years?"
"Because twenty years ago, you were a babe in arms, hidden away by your father before the Shadowbound could find you. Because the magic needed time to sleep, to lie dormant until you came of age. And because..." The old woman's clouded eyes glistened with tears. "Because I made a promise to your grandmother as she lay dying in my arms. I swore I would give you the choice she never had."
"What choice?"
"To walk away. To abandon your birthright and live out your days as a simple farmer, always looking over your shoulder but perhaps finding peace in obscurity. Or to embrace what you are and fight for a kingdom that's been dead for two decades, knowing that path will lead to either salvation or damnation, with precious little ground between."
Kael looked down at the book in his hands, then at the old woman who'd appeared like a ghost from his family's past. Every instinct screamed at him to ask more questions, to demand answers about his grandmother, about the power burning in his veins, about the terrible secret worth murdering a kingdom to hide.
But before he could speak, the old woman's expression changed. Her head snapped toward the south, toward the path Kael had traveled, and her clouded eyes went wide with fear.
"They've found your trail. The Shadowbound are coming, and they're bringing something with them. Something I can't see but can feel in my bones—a darkness that makes their corrupted soldiers look like children playing at war."
Kael felt it too, now that she'd spoken. A wrongness in the air, growing closer with each passing moment. The mark on his wrist began to burn, as though recognizing the approach of its ancient enemy.
"Run, boy. North, toward the mountains. There's a resistance camp hidden in the highlands, led by survivors of the fall. They can teach you what I cannot. But you must hurry—whatever comes behind you won't stop, won't tire, won't rest until it has your heart in its claws."
"What about you?" Kael asked, already knowing the answer.
"I'm an old woman who's lived too long and seen too much. My part in this story is ending, but yours..." She smiled, and for a moment Kael saw her as she must have been decades ago—beautiful, fierce, unbowed by the weight of years and sorrow. "Yours is just beginning. Make it a story worth telling, Kael of Aethermoor. Make their sacrifice mean something."
The wrongness in the air intensified. Kael heard something in the distance—a sound like wings beating against the sky, vast and terrible.
The old woman planted her walking stick in the ground and turned to face south. Silver light began to emanate from her hands, far brighter than the fading flames Kael had wielded the night before. "I said run, boy. Don't make me repeat myself."
Kael ran.
He ran as the forest erupted behind him with light and screaming. Ran as the silver flames rose into a pillar that could be seen for miles. Ran as the old woman—whose name he'd never learned—bought his escape with the last of her life and magic.
The book clutched against his chest, Kael fled north toward mountains he'd never seen and a destiny he didn't understand. Behind him, the pillar of light collapsed, and something enormous roared its frustration at the dawn sky.
He didn't look back.
Miles later, when his legs finally gave out and he collapsed in a rocky defile overlooking a vast highland valley, Kael opened the scorched leather book with shaking hands.
The first page bore a single sentence in elegant script: "To my grandson, should he live to read these words—I'm sorry for the burden you inherit, and the choice you must make. Whatever you decide, know that we loved you beyond measure."
Kael pressed his forehead against the page and wept.
He wept for his grandmother, dead twenty years. For his father, who'd carried the secret to his grave. For the old woman who'd sacrificed herself to a creature Kael couldn't even imagine. For the simple life he'd never have again.
And when the tears finally stopped, when the sun hung high overhead and his grief had hardened into something cold and sharp, Kael began to read.
The true history of Aethermoor unfolded before him, and with each page, with each revelation about the power in his blood and the terrible secret his ancestors had died to protect, Kael felt his choice crystallizing.
He wouldn't run anymore.
He wouldn't hide.
The old woman had given him a choice, but she'd also given him knowledge. And knowledge, Kael was beginning to understand, was its own kind of power.
If Lord Malkor wanted the last heir of Aethermoor dead, then Kael would make him work for it. He would learn everything about the magic burning in his veins. He would uncover the secret worth murdering a kingdom to hide. And when he was ready, when he'd grown strong enough to stand against the darkness that had consumed his family, he would make Lord Malkor regret that he hadn't finished the job twenty years ago.
The book trembled in his hands as silver flames flickered across his fingers, responding to his determination.
In the distance, hidden in the highlands, a resistance camp waited. Survivors who'd spent two decades preparing for a moment they'd thought would never come.
The return of their king.
Kael stood, pocketed the book, and continued north. The path ahead was uncertain, likely fatal, and would demand sacrifices he couldn't yet imagine.
But for the first time since his father's death, he felt something other than fear.
He felt purpose.