Moonlight poured through the jagged wound in the throne room ceiling, silver beams slanting across the ruin like the ribs of some long-dead titan. Dust drifted lazily through the shafts of light, each particle glowing for a heartbeat before dissolving back into shadow. The air carried the faint scent of old stone and rain-soaked moss from the courtyard beyond, mingled with something older—burned banners, rusted iron, the ghost of a fallen dynasty.

  The once-grand hall lay in fractured silence. Marble tiles lay cracked beneath creeping veins of green. Torn remnants of royal tapestries clung stubbornly to the walls, their faded crests barely visible beneath grime and time. The throne itself sat split down the middle at the far end of the chamber, as though some colossal force had tried to cleave the past in two.

  Silla paced across the broken marble, her boots scraping softly over grit. The measured rhythm of her steps echoed faintly in the hollow chamber. One hand pressed against her ear where a slender crystal-embedded earpiece rested flush against her skin. The shard of Auren set within it pulsed with a faint inner glow, casting pale light across her cheekbone.

  Her brow furrowed as she listened.

  “I spotted a Dawnbreaker scout sniffing around here two days ago,” she muttered under her breath, irritation sharpening each word. Her gaze drifted toward the shattered entrance, then toward the open ceiling. “You really think they’ll bother coming this deep?”

  For a moment, there was only a faint hiss through the crystal—like wind brushing across glass. Then Raen’s voice slid into her ear, smooth and unhurried, carrying that infuriating note of amusement he never quite bothered to hide.

  “No,” he said lightly. “But he will. The Stormweaver pup.”

  He paused. The faint warmth in his tone thinned into something colder, more deliberate.

  “Keep him warm for me. I’ve got a bone to grind with that boy.”

  Silla rolled her eyes toward the broken throne as if Raen could see her through the connection. A humorless smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth.

  “Tch. You owe me one for this.”

  On the other end, Raen gave a quiet exhale that might have been a laugh. “Call if you need backup. The rest of the squad’s still with me.”

  Silla snorted softly and flicked a loose lock of hair from her forehead, the motion sharp with pride.

  “Please,” she said, shifting her weight as she scanned the shadows stretching between the pillars. “Like I’ll need backup… for a child.”

  The crystal’s glow dimmed, its faint hum tapering off until the connection dissolved into silence. The only sound left was the distant rustle of night wind slipping through broken stone.

  Silla exhaled slowly, annoyance bleeding into calm confidence. She leaned against a crumbling pillar, crossing her arms loosely over her chest. The moonlight caught the edge of her blade at her hip, tracing its outline in silver.

  Outside, beyond the moss-choked courtyard wall where ivy strangled ancient carvings, two shadows moved with careful precision. Their footsteps were swallowed by damp earth. One figure paused, gaze lifting toward the shattered roof where moonlight spilled through.

  The throne room waited—still, watchful—unaware that the “child” Silla had dismissed was already at its gates.

  Kaelen and Varen crouched behind the remains of a crumbling marble wall overlooking the ruined palace grounds. The stone was cold beneath their palms, damp from the night air. Ivy snaked across the shattered battlements, its leaves whispering softly whenever the wind shifted.

  Below them, the palace courtyard crawled with cultists.

  Pairs of robed figures paced slow, deliberate routes along torchlit paths. Others lounged near broken statues and collapsed archways, Auren rifles resting lazily across their laps, the crystals embedded along the barrels glowing faintly blue in the dark. Low murmurs drifted upward—laughter, crude jokes, the scrape of boots over gravel. Complacent. Confident.

  Kaelen’s gaze swept across them all, calculating.

  He raised his palm.

  The air responded.

  A fine ripple of wind rolled outward from him—silent, invisible, but razor-aware. It slipped down stairwells, threaded through fractured corridors, brushed across balconies and shattered windows. It skimmed over skin, curled around pillars, and traced the breathing patterns of every living body within the palace walls.

  Kaelen’s jaw tightened as the wind returned to him, whispering its report.

  His fist slowly clenched.

  “Thirty-four guards,” he murmured, voice barely more than breath. “One branded. Silla. Top floor.”

  Even speaking her name darkened his expression. Something coiled behind his eyes—anger honed to a sharp, disciplined edge.

  Varen glanced sideways at him, studying the way Kaelen’s shoulders had gone still.

  “So?” Varen asked quietly. “What’s the plan?”

  Kaelen didn’t look at him. His eyes remained fixed on the palace.

  “We go in quiet,” he said. “Cut down as many as we can before the alarm. If it turns loud…” His voice cooled further. “You handle what’s left. I’ll take her.”

  Varen lifted a brow. “That’s your master plan? Split up?”

  “You can handle it.”

  A breath left Varen’s nose—half sigh, half reluctant agreement. “…I know. Just teasing.”

  His gaze shifted toward two sentries walking the outer perimeter, rifles slung casually over their shoulders. “What about them? We’re not ghosts. We can’t sneak past with them staring straight at us.”

  Kaelen’s expression didn’t change.

  A faint crackle climbed his calves—tiny filaments of lightning dancing beneath his skin, crawling upward like veins of pale fire. The air around him grew tight, charged.

  “Watch.”

  The moment one guard turned his head to spit into the grass—

  Kaelen vanished.

  The night tore open with a thunderous rush of displaced air as he accelerated. One heartbeat later, he stood behind the guard, hand clamped over the man’s mouth, eyes wide with confusion.

  A violent surge of electricity discharged through Kaelen’s palm.

  The smell of scorched cloth and burned flesh snapped into the air. The guard’s body jerked once—then went limp before a single cry could escape.

  Kaelen lowered him gently to the ground.

  The second sentry barely had time to frown at the sudden absence of his partner before lightning blurred across the courtyard again. Another muted flash. Another silent collapse.

  Kaelen moved like a storm contained in human form—appearing, vanishing, reappearing. Each strike was efficient. No wasted motion. No expression.

  Bodies fell into the grass one after another, hitting the earth with dull, final thuds.

  From the shadows, Varen watched, unease creeping into his chest.

  He had sparred Kaelen countless times. He knew how fast he was. How strong.

  But this…

  This wasn’t training.

  This was a predator.

  “They messed with the wrong person,” Varen whispered to himself.

  Kaelen reappeared beside him as quietly as a shifting shadow. His eyes were flat, the earlier flicker of anger now compressed into something colder.

  “Perimeter’s clean. Let’s move.”

  They slipped inside through a fractured archway, boots brushing over broken tiles. The interior corridors smelled of mildew and dust. Moonlight spilled through cracks in the ceiling, painting the stone floors in silver patches broken by darkness.

  In the courtyard interior, a dozen cultists practiced with dull swords, metal clanging in lazy rhythm as they sparred. Grunts and laughter echoed off the walls.

  Varen tensed, stepping forward—

  Kaelen’s hand caught his sleeve.

  “Stealth,” he breathed.

  Varen swallowed whatever retort he had and nodded.

  They flowed from room to room, sticking to blind corners and collapsed alcoves.

  At the dormitory, the air was thick with sweat and stale breath. A dozen robed cultists lay sprawled across straw mats, boots discarded, weapons within arm’s reach but hands slack with sleep.

  Kaelen did not hesitate.

  His blade flashed once in the dim light.

  Then again.

  Then again.

  Precise cuts. Clean arcs. Each throat opened before a single sleeper could stir. Blood darkened the straw in spreading silence.

  Varen’s pulse hammered in his ears, loud as a drum. He forced himself to breathe evenly, to keep moving.

  They left the room without a word.

  In the palace library, three scholars hunched over a table cluttered with ancient tomes and scattered Auren fragments. Candlelight flickered across ink-stained fingers and murmured incantations.

  “Too close together,” Varen whispered. “How do we—”

  Wind gathered along Kaelen’s arm, compressing into a thin, gleaming edge that extended the length of his body—nearly invisible except for the way candle flames bent away from it.

  He stepped forward and swung once.

  The sound was soft—like silk tearing.

  For a fraction of a second, the scholars remained upright.

  Then their heads separated cleanly, rolling across the marble floor with hollow knocks before their bodies collapsed after them.

  Kaelen didn’t slow. He didn’t look back.

  Varen stood frozen, a chill crawling up his spine.

  He missed the loud, reckless idiot who joked in the training yard.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  This version was something else.

  He followed anyway.

  They reached the stairwell leading to Silla’s upper chamber.

  Two cultists stood guard at its base, right beside an alarm bell wired with glowing threads of Auren crystal. The device pulsed faintly, waiting.

  One guard’s eyes snapped toward them.

  Recognition flared.

  His hand slammed the lever.

  The bell exploded into life.

  A deep, resonant clang roared through the palace halls, vibrating the stone beneath their feet. The sound rolled outward like a shockwave, echoing off every corridor and balcony.

  Kaelen snarled under his breath and surged forward. His blade traced two swift lines across the guards’ throats. They crumpled before the second reverberation finished echoing.

  Too late.

  Boots were already pounding in distant hallways.

  Kaelen’s chest rose once, sharply. “Damn it. Varen—remember the plan.”

  Varen rolled his neck, the tension settling into something almost eager. “Yeah… see you on the other side.”

  They bumped fists—brief, solid.

  Then they split.

  Varen turned back toward the main halls just as the first wave of cultists rounded the corner, rifles glowing bright with awakened Auren.

  And Kaelen—

  Kaelen launched upward, lightning coiling around his limbs as he raced toward the top floor.

  Toward Silla.

  Toward vengeance.

  Varen took the spiral staircase two steps at a time, boots ringing softly against worn stone. Torchlight guttered along the curved walls, casting restless shadows that stretched and snapped with every flicker of flame. Far above, the alarm bell still roared through the palace like a wounded beast—but down here, the lower levels had not yet caught the scent of danger.

  As he rounded the bend, five cultists rushed upward toward him, weapons half-drawn, still mid-conversation.

  They froze.

  Too late.

  Varen dropped low and launched himself forward, palm striking the wall with such force that the brick spiderwebbed beneath his hand. He used the recoil to propel himself upward, body twisting midair.

  His boot connected with the lead cultist’s face in a heavy, bone-jarring impact that flattened the man’s nose sideways. The force carried through the tight formation behind him. One stumbled into another. Steel clattered against stone. The entire cluster toppled backward down the steps in a flailing, tangled heap.

  Varen landed lightly in the middle of them, boots splashing into fresh blood as one man’s head cracked against the stair edge.

  A thin streak of red traced along Varen’s cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb and smirked.

  With a sharp flex of his forearms, the locking mechanisms in his gauntlets disengaged. The metal shifted with a solid mechanical snap, and two curved plates unfolded along his forearms like compact shields locking into place.

  His grin widened.

  A short, brutal jab drove into the spine of the cultist scrambling up behind him, dropping the man face-first onto the steps.

  Another jab, angled slightly left, hammered into a temple with a dull crunch.

  A right hook snapped a jaw sideways, teeth scattering across stone.

  A left hook shattered a nose in a wet burst of cartilage.

  Finally, he dipped and drove an uppercut beneath the last man’s chin. The cultist’s feet left the staircase before gravity reclaimed him, sending him tumbling lifelessly down the remaining steps.

  Varen exhaled, pleased. “Damn,” he muttered, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. “I’m strong.”

  He continued downward at an easy jog until the stairwell opened into a long corridor near the library archives. Five more cultists guarded a heavy wooden door, leaning lazily against the walls with bored expressions.

  Varen slid behind a cracked column before they could spot him.

  Okay, he thought. Grab the vase. Wall-hop. Flying kick. Old reliable.

  He reached into a nearby alcove, seized two ceramic vases, and hurled them with full-body torque. They shattered against two unsuspecting faces in explosive sprays of porcelain and blood.

  Before the remaining three could process what had happened, Varen planted one boot against the wall and launched sideways, body nearly horizontal.

  His heel swept across the nearest jaw with a violent crack, the impact transferring into the other two like a row of collapsing dominoes. All three hit the floor in a tangle of limbs and dropped weapons.

  Varen straightened, brushing dust from his shoulder.

  “Eh,” he sighed. “Don't fix what ain't broke”

  He delivered quick, efficient punches as each tried to rise, ensuring they stayed down.

  All except one.

  A cultist staggered upright, clutching an Auren-forged blade. The crystal along its edge shimmered faintly, casting sickly blue reflections across trembling hands.

  Varen’s grin faded.

  He raised his shielded forearms just as the cultist lunged. The blade thrust toward his face.

  Varen dipped cleanly beneath it, stepped inside the guard, and drove a straight punch into the man’s nose so sharp and precise it echoed against the corridor walls.

  The cultist collapsed instantly.

  Varen picked up the fallen blade, weighing it in his hand.

  Useful, he thought. I’ll just throw this at whoever’s next.

  The corridor opened into a massive sunken training hall. Iron sconces high along the walls bathed the chamber in amber candlelight. Nearly a dozen initiates sparred with spears and wooden staves, their laughter and grunts echoing off the high ceiling.

  They hadn’t heard the chaos above.

  One turned, mid-spin.

  “…Hey. Isn’t that a Dawnbr—”

  Seven spearheads swung toward Varen in perfect unison.

  He blinked once.

  “…Oh shit.”

  On instinct, he hurled the Auren blade like a javelin.

  The sword spun once in the air before punching through the nearest initiate’s forehead with a sickening crack. The man dropped where he stood, body twitching once before going still.

  The remaining cultists shrieked—high, panicked yelps that shattered their earlier bravado.

  One of them, eyes wide with outrage, shouted, “You can’t just throw those! That’s extremely dangerous!”

  Varen stared at him flatly. “…You were literally trying to kill me.”

  They roared and charged.

  Six spears lowered in coordinated thrusts—two angling for his right ribs, two for his left, one stabbing for his skull, one sweeping for his thigh.

  Varen stepped forward instead of back.

  His gauntlet-shields snapped up, deflecting both rib strikes with ringing force. He tilted his head just enough for the spear aimed at his skull to graze past, wind brushing his ear. Then he stomped down with crushing precision onto the spear aimed at his leg.

  The shaft splintered beneath his boot.

  The attackers faltered.

  Varen grinned and scooped the broken spearhead from the floor.

  “D-Don’t throw it!” someone cried.

  He threw it.

  The jagged tip buried itself through the side of a cultist’s neck. Blood sprayed across the stone as the man collapsed, choking.

  Five left.

  Another spear lunged. Varen caught it mid-thrust with one hand, twisted sharply, and drove his heel into the cultist’s throat. The sound was wet and final. The man folded backward, gasping.

  Two more came at once. Varen pivoted, using their momentum against them. He forced their spearheads across each other’s necks in a crossing arc that opened twin red lines. Both men dropped to their knees, gurgling.

  A split second of stillness—

  —and then two fresh spears punched into Varen’s back and side from behind, piercing through muscle into his chest.

  A cultist laughed triumphantly. “That’s what you get, asshole!”

  Varen looked down at the wooden shafts protruding from his body.

  He inhaled slowly.

  “…Ugh. You guys are really annoying.”

  With a sharp tug, he yanked both spears free. Blood spilled down his torso in thick streams, splashing against the stone floor. The last two cultists recoiled in horror and turned to flee.

  Varen rolled his shoulders once and hurled both weapons with smooth, practiced form.

  The first spear punched clean through a spine.

  The second drove between shoulder blades.

  Both bodies pitched forward and slid across the blood-slick floor.

  Silence settled over the hall, broken only by the faint drip of crimson.

  Varen exhaled.

  The wounds in his chest began to close. Muscle knit together in tightening ripples beneath his skin. Torn flesh sealed over as if drawn by invisible hands. Steam curled faintly from his body as excess heat dissipated into the air.

  Within moments, his skin was whole again.

  He glanced down at himself, mildly annoyed.

  “Yeah… Kaelen’s definitely going to ask about this,” he muttered. “…Hopefully he’s too pissed to care.”

  With a flex of his arms, the shield plates folded back into his gauntlets and locked into place.

  Varen jogged toward the stairwell, boots splashing through fresh blood, torchlight dancing across his back as distant shouts grew louder from the upper floors.

  Time to see if Kaelen needed backup.

  Or if there was anything left of Silla to save.

  The doors to Silla’s chamber eased open with a long, splintering groan, hinges protesting the weight of old wood and new violence.

  Kaelen stepped through the threshold without haste.

  Slow. Silent. Unblinking.

  If death ever chose to wear a human face, it would have borrowed his.

  The chamber beyond was decadent in a way the rest of the ruined palace was not. Crimson silk drapes breathed in the night wind drifting through a cracked balcony. Celestial lanterns hung from delicate chains, their Auren cores casting a soft pearlescent glow across gold-veined marble. At the center of the room, a silver fountain murmured gently, white orchid petals floating in lazy circles atop the water.

  It smelled faintly of perfume and clean linen—an island of cultivated beauty in a fortress of rot.

  At the far end of the chamber, on a raised dais, Silla reclined across a carved throne like a queen awaiting tribute.

  Her legs were crossed elegantly, one black velvet heel dangling from her toes. She idly twirled a curl of silver hair around a lacquered fingernail as she regarded him.

  She was smiling.

  Not nervously.

  But the way a butcher studies a rabbit before deciding where to cut.

  “Well now…” she purred, voice echoing softly through the chamber. “Look who came crawling. Little Stormweaver. You look taller in my reports.”

  Her nail scraped lazily along the arm of her throne, leaving a faint white mark in the marble polish.

  “General Renore said you might sniff your way here. You should have seen your precious friend beg—”

  Kaelen’s hand moved.

  A crescent of compressed wind tore from his palm, invisible until it struck.

  The throne split from crown to base in a violent detonation of marble and silk. Pink-veined stone burst outward in shards. A deep gouge carved across the wall behind it, orchid petals scattering in the blast’s wake.

  Dust and fabric fluttered down.

  Silla was gone.

  Smoke pooled near the balcony doors, curling inward like breath in winter. It coalesced, reshaping into her figure—perfect, untouched, still smiling.

  She let out a theatrical sigh. “Honestly. You Dawnbreakers and your temper. At least let a lady finish her sentence.”

  Another flick of Kaelen’s wrist.

  A blade of wind snapped through the air and passed cleanly through her skull.

  Her body dissolved again into drifting vapor. The tall windows behind her shattered outward, glass exploding into the night and raining down in glittering arcs.

  “Tsk,” her voice chimed from somewhere to the left. “Manners, boy. Manners.”

  But Kaelen wasn’t listening anymore.

  Lightning crawled up from his calves in pale veins. The air tightened.

  He vanished—reappearing in front of her new form with a thunderous rush of displaced wind, his fist driving straight through her torso.

  She burst apart mid-laugh.

  Reforming behind the ruins of her throne, she tilted her head, amused.

  “How many times are you going to—?”

  Kaelen opened his palm.

  Wind spiraled outward in delicate threads, brushing over silk curtains, skimming across marble, slipping beneath furniture, gliding along skin.

  Listening.

  His dead eyes snapped sideways.

  In a single, fluid motion, he slashed the air.

  A blade of pressure ripped toward what appeared to be empty space beside her vanity.

  Silla shrieked—barely ducking in time. A thin line of red traced across her shoulder where the wind grazed real flesh.

  For the first time, her smile faltered.

  She split into a dozen perfect replicas. Each shimmered into existence with a faint ripple of perfume and silk, scattering in different directions across the chamber.

  “Come now!” they chimed in overlapping harmony. “Which of me is real, hm? Try your best. You won’t lay a fing—”

  She stopped.

  Kaelen wasn’t striking the illusions.

  He was moving.

  Not toward her.

  Around her.

  He blurred across the room in erratic zigzags, so fast the lantern light fractured across his form. Afterimages layered over one another—six, nine, twelve overlapping silhouettes of Kaelen appearing and vanishing like specters.

  The air itself trembled.

  For the first time that night, Silla felt something cold crawl up her spine.

  What is that? she thought, panic tightening her throat. Is he copying my illusions? No—he can’t know where I—

  Her gaze darted to her desk.

  The emergency crystal-scroll.

  If she could reach it—

  She spun and bolted, silk snapping behind her. Her fingers stretched toward the glowing crystal cylinder.

  Her fingertips brushed glass.

  Kaelen was already there.

  His lightning-charged fist drove into her stomach with the force of a siege hammer.

  The impact detonated through the chamber like thunder cracking stone. Marble fractured beneath her feet. The air imploded.

  She blasted backward, slamming into the far wall hard enough to crater it. A sickening series of cracks rippled through her frame—ribs, arm, something deeper.

  She crumpled to the floor on her hands and knees, coughing up thick, dark blood that splattered across the marble.

  All her illusions flickered and vanished at once.

  Kaelen approached at a measured pace.

  His eyes were voids.

  “Two questions,” he said, voice flat, stripped of all warmth. “Where is he—and is he with the ones who hurt her?”

  Silla tried to spit something venomous at him. Blood dribbled down her chin instead. Her smile trembled but didn’t fully disappear.

  “…Fuck you.”

  Kaelen’s eyelid twitched.

  A razor-thin line of wind flashed across the space between them.

  Her left leg separated cleanly at the thigh.

  For a fraction of a second there was only silence—then her scream tore through the chamber, raw and animal. Blood surged across silk carpet, staining crimson deeper.

  “You psycho!” she shrieked, clawing at the marble, eyes wild.

  Kaelen crouched.

  He placed his palm against the gushing stump.

  Lightning poured from him into exposed flesh.

  Her body arched violently. Every muscle seized. The scent of burning blood filled the air as her screams broke into choking sobs and retches.

  “Talk,” Kaelen said evenly. “Or I start removing the rest.”

  Tears streaked down her face, cutting pale lines through smeared makeup. Pride shattered faster than bone ever had.

  “H-Hermon…” she choked. “Hermon Pass… north… Raen is there with… fifty men… he said he wanted… to finish the girl himself…”

  Her voice collapsed into ragged sobbing.

  Kaelen stood, wiping her blood from his fingertips as though it were dust.

  “…That’s a good girl.”

  He turned away.

  Humiliation burned hotter than agony.

  With shaking fury, Silla propped herself onto one elbow, sneering through blood and tears.

  “You think you’re some hero?” she spat. “You’re worse than us—you slaughter without mercy! I just wanted beauty! The cult promised me a new body—I—”

  The wind moved again.

  A clean, silent stroke.

  Her head separated from her shoulders in a seamless arc. It struck the marble once, rolled twice, and came to rest beside the shattered fountain. Orchid petals drifted lazily against her lifeless face.

  Her body twitched, then stilled.

  Kaelen did not look back.

  At that moment, the doors burst open.

  Varen stumbled in, chest heaving, knuckles bloodied, face flushed from sprinting. He took in the room in a single sweep—

  The severed leg.

  The head.

  The blood pooling across silk and marble.

  His stomach revolted.

  He doubled over and vomited into his sleeve, shoulders shaking.

  Kaelen waited.

  When the retching subsided, he asked without inflection, “You done?”

  Varen wiped his mouth, eyes wide and hollow. He nodded, though his hands trembled faintly.

  Kaelen walked past him, moving like a shadow cast by something far darker than light.

  “Hermon Pass,” he said. “That’s where they die next.”

  Varen hesitated only a heartbeat before following him into the corridor.

  Because someone had to walk beside the storm.

  Someone had to make sure it didn’t consume what was left of his friend.