Torvaen, Two Days Earlier

  The town of Torvaen y crouched beneath the sighing wind of early autumn, its bones creaking like the remnants of a once-proud beast left to rot beneath gold-streaked skies. Dust swirled through the cobbled nes, mingling with the scent of wilted thyme and hearth smoke. The leaves clung desperately to gnarled branches, their edges burned crimson with the promise of oncoming frost.

  Damir stepped down from the carriage in silence.

  His cloak shifted like spilled ink as he moved, each step deliberate, weightless. His eyes, dark red and unblinking, cut through the morning haze like a whetted bde. Men did not look at Damir for long. They could not. Something in his gaze unraveled them, as if he could pluck thoughts from their marrow and name every secret hiding inside.

  There was something not right in him. He moved like a thought sharpened into a knife, elegant, efficient, and always one step ahead of what you thought you feared. A nobleman by title. A ghost by rumor. And to the few who truly understood what stalked behind his smile. A prince with a mind coiled like a trap set beneath velvet, waiting for someone foolish enough to trigger it.

  Eli followed, muttering beneath his breath as he adjusted the folds of his storm-grey robe. Silver runes pulsed faintly beneath the fabric, the arcane mark of the Archmage of the Tower. A title won by few. Survived by less. His staff was nowhere in sight, he had no need to brandish it. Power clung to him like frost on breath.

  Where Damir was a bde, Eli was fire. Contained, flickering, dangerous.

  “A town near the boundary of the nation,” Eli said, wrinkling his nose. “And these leaches thread their movements here?”

  “They’re moving somewhere west,” Damir murmured, his gaze scanning the crooked rooftops. “Curious.”

  They walked side by side, and the town peeled away before them, silent, hushed, reverent. Like it knew. The weight of their presence was a prayer unanswered and unwelcome.

  Torvaen bore the familiar stigmata. Sigils not carved by hand, melted candles guarding doorsteps, a silence that clung like damp cloth. It was Araes all over again, only here there's no one even bothered to mourn. Absence had long repced grief.

  “They’re further along here,” Eli said, voice clipped. “The cult’s already nested.”

  “Uromodomiaz burrows,” Damir said, pausing beside a shuttered apothecary. “Like a maggot in marrow. Fanum’s sickness is finally showing through its skin.”

  Eli gave him a look. “Still believe he’s merely complicit?”

  Damir’s smile came slowly, thin, sharp, bloodless. “Belief is a toy for priests. I deal in certainties. And certainty, dear Eli, is always steeped in blood.”

  They turned down a narrow alley choked in shadow. A door waited at the end, splintered, stained, slouched like a dying man.

  Damir halted. His voice dropped into a hush.

  “Four inside. One below. Three above.”

  “You sense this?” Eli asked, though he already knew better than to question it. Damir’s instincts weren’t instincts, they were precision masquerading as prophecy.

  Damir said nothing. He only moved.

  The door groaned as it yielded to his hand. The smell struck immediately, wax, scorched bone, rusted iron. A makeshift altar huddled in the corner, cobbled together from broken chairs and lined with bones smoothed by obsessive hands. A man knelt before it, mouth stitched with prayers he no longer understood.

  He turned but Damir’s bde was already at his throat. Not cutting. Just resting. A reminder.

  “Breathe carefully,” Damir said, voice low and soft. “It may be your st privilege.”

  The man colpsed before he could scream.

  “We need him whole,” Eli warned, stepping over the body.

  Damir tilted his head. “For now.”

  Upstairs, the rot blossomed.

  Two bodies y cradled in their own blood, arranged with a grotesque reverence around an idol of obsidian and bone, stitched together by a faith that had long since turned feral.

  The third was still alive.

  A boy, maybe sixteen winters. Huddled in the corner. Rocking, muttering. Branded with runes that didn’t belong to any sane god. It was star-script reversed, twisted into madness.

  “Those markings…” Eli murmured, brow furrowed. “They’re speaking the stars backward.”

  Damir crouched before the boy, voice gentle, coiled like a garrote in silk. “To whom did your Prophet send you?”

  The boy didn’t blink. Just whispered, over and over:

  “To the city beneath the dying sun. The pce where heaven bestowed thy light. Seek the herald who speaks the nguage of stars.”

  Damir’s eyes flicked, curious. Calcuting. Hungry.

  “The herald who speaks to stars…” he echoed, rolling the words on his tongue like a fine poison. “How quaint.”

  He leaned closer. “And what, little moth, do you think you are?”

  The boy began to hum a broken sound, like teeth scraping gss.

  Eli’s face darkened. “He’s unraveling.”

  Damir’s expression didn’t change. “Then sever the thread.”

  One gesture. A pulse of light, violet and cold. The boy sagged into silence.

  Downstairs, the man stirred.

  Damir knelt before him, calm as a surgeon preparing his tools. Eli leaned in the doorway, silent.

  “You serve Uromodomiaz,” Damir whispered. “You sing his gospel to the desperate. But do you understand what you are?”

  The man coughed, voice like gravel. “I am reborn.”

  “No,” Damir corrected softly. “You are a vessel. A sack of meat dressed in scripture.”

  The man’s eyes burned. “He saw the sky break. Saw Astra fall. Saw the st of them rise—”

  “And now,” Damir cut in, voice quiet as a noose, “you see the end.”

  Steel flickered.

  The prayer ended.

  The house burned behind them.

  Outside, the bells of Torvaen rang, off-beat, unsure. Smoke curled toward a pale sky, bck against blue. The town watched in silence. Not horror. Not grief.

  Just silence.

  Damir stared at the fire reflected in a broken window. “They whisper the same names,” he said. “Herald. Oracle. Vessel.”

  “The same title we heard whispered in Araes, Lismoreth, and Avarlern,” Eli said, his voice low as they crossed the empty square. “All pces within Fanum’s reach.”

  Damir tilted his head, gaze sharp as he traced the pattern aloud. “Three in the nation Ara. Four in Apus. Two in Norma.” His words were measured, almost detached, as if assembling a puzzle whose pieces were carved from blood and dust.

  “Was the King aware of this cult spreading?” Eli asked.

  Damir met his eyes with a smile that didn’t reach his mouth. “You know as well as I do,” he said, voice dripping with scorn, “that the King would rather enjoy his spectacles, rutting with whores, than lift a finger to call a crusade.”

  Eli stopped, frustration snapping through his composure. He turned to face the prince fully. “This is a matter of urgency, Damir. We should head back to the Capital and inform the Tighearnaí.”

  Damir only ughed. A short, sharp bark that echoed against the crumbling walls around them. He tilted his head, the glint of madness catching in his red eyes.

  “The Tighearnaí can go suck their own cocks for all I care,” he said lightly, almost cheerfully. He began walking again without waiting for a response, boots crunching over broken stone. “Remember, Eli. I’m here because I was curious. Nothing more. I’m only entertaining that noble girl’s little adventure.”

  He tilted his chin upward, studying the mist-smeared stars with indifference. “You should’ve seen her beg. Like a sullen, pathetic mouse squeaking in the dark.”

  Eli watched him go, a weight settling cold in his chest.

  He had known Damir since they were babes, long before titles or thrones were carved into their bones. His family, loyal to the Crown for generations, had ensured that Eli was raised as the prince’s counterpart, an unwanted tether to a creature no one fully understood.

  Damir was a force unto himself. A prince born of storms and strange tides. His moods shifted like sudden weather: calm one moment, violent the next. You tread carefully around him or you will be swept away.

  Some whispered it was a curse, vengeance id upon the bloodline by forgotten gods. A sign, they said, that the world itself was unspooling toward ruin. Others specuted that it was the prince’s mana that was too immense and too wild to contain that cracked his mind.

  And there were those who muttered darker things, that Damir was no true prince at all. A bastard. A changeling. Something smuggled into the cradle of power to wear a crown that would one day choke the world.

  Whatever the truth, one thing was certain: Damir Gwyrtheyrn was not normal.

  He was not made to be.

  Not in the way others were.

  Whether that was a blessing or a curse, that depended entirely on who you asked.

  Eli exhaled a slow, measured breath. “Then you lied, Your Highness.”

  Damir turned, a grin slicing across his face like a knife made of mockery. “I am a man of my word, Eliphas. I did not lie.”

  He took a step closer, boots echoing faintly on the stone. “Artemisia begged me to look into the rot festering within her nation,” he said lightly, almost amused. “And I did.”

  Another step. The grin sharpened into something colder, almost gleeful.

  “I told her I would uncover the truth,” Damir continued, voice low and curling with something dangerous. “Even if it meant burning every noble house to ash.”

  His next words dropped like ice.

  “But I never swore to be their salvation.”

  He leaned in slightly, his red eyes gleaming with a feverish light, “I am bored, Eliphas. I am out of my mind. And I want something to eradicate.”

  For a heartbeat, only the crackle of the house burning behind them filled the space between them.

  Eli met the prince’s gaze, years of instinct screaming to tread carefully. He knew better than to argue, to moralize, to pretend Damir was a man easily bent by reason.

  Eli sighed in defeat, scrubbing a hand down his face “What do you propose we do then, Damir.”

  Damir smiled, that insufferable, half-lidded smirk that meant he was already ten moves ahead. “We look for any remaining signs in the town before we move.” he said smoothly, turning on his heel.

  But he didn’t get far.

  A figure stood blocking his path.

  A woman, cloaked in the dim light, her braided golden hair swinging over one shoulder as she moved. Before Damir could even register her presence fully, her hand shed out.

  The sp cracked through the cold air like a whip.

  Damir’s head snapped to the side from the force of it. He staggered half a step, more from surprise than pain. For a moment, he simply stood there, dumbfounded, as if the entire world had tilted off its axis without warning.

  The woman gred at him with a fury so raw it practically shimmered in the mist around them. Her cheeks were flushed, her chest heaving with rage.

  Her voice tore through the stillness:

  “YOU HOLLOWED-EYE, LYING SON OF A BITCH!”

  Her fury radiated from her like a storm breaking open the night.Eli blinked in astonishment, mouth half-open as he tried and failed to suppress a ugh.

  Damir slowly straightened, bringing a hand to his jaw, where a faint red mark was already blooming.

  He turned his gaze. Slow and deliberate onto the woman before him.

  And then, impossibly, he smiled.

  A sharp, dangerous curve of his mouth that promised nothing good at all.

  “Well,” Damir said, voice low and almost admiring.

  “Good evening to you too, Artemisia.”