Azfar watched them prepare, his silence heavier than words. When Rakhal approached him, the old shaman merely touched two fingers to his chest. "Remember what you've learned here," he said. "Control is not denial. It is direction."
They departed before midday, heading for the ravine that would lead them to the plains where Shadow orcs had always felt more at home. There, Rakhal would gather the clans and draw Kardoc into the open. Two thrones to reclaim, two rulers bound by more than purpose.
Chapter
Fifty-Eight
Dawn bled into the ravine, staining the stone walls a tired copper. Rakhal led the way out, his boots cracking the thin ice underfoot. He kept to the shadows of the ravine walls where possible, angling his face away from the brightening sky. The plains would offer fewer places to shelter from daylight, but the open darkness of night would more than compensate for the exposure during the day.
Three days had passed since they'd left the forest camp, where he had learned to harness the Shadow rather than be consumed by it. With Eliza's steadying presence and Azfar's training, he had found balance, however fragile. Now the time for hiding was over. They would draw Kardoc out onto the plains, challenge his rule directly, and gather those clans still willing to follow the true heir. The air scraped his lungs raw and smelled faintly of rust.
Behind him came Shazi and Eliza, his Eliza. She moved quietly, her steps sure against the stone. Since that night by the river, she lived in his awareness now, a constant presence he could no more ignore than his own heartbeat.
Rakhal remembered his mother's hands, gentle, nothing like his own, before shoving the thought away. The Shadow that sleptin his blood stirred as sunlight kissed the horizon, restless after too long beneath rock and darkness. It whispered of movement, of calling, of hunger.
It breathed possessiveness over her, and he could no longer tell where his own desire ended and the Shadow's began. He'd spent years trying to cut that part out of himself and somehow ended up hollow without it.
The world above stretched wide and desolate. Plains in every direction, the sort of emptiness that made you hear your own blood. Rakhal pulled his hood lower against the morning light. The sun here felt different than in the forest—more direct, but somehow cleaner. It still burned against his skin, but the pain was sharper and less corrupted.
Old firepits and bones lay half-buried in dust. A hawk wheeled overhead, its shadow sweeping over them like an omen. A smaller bird shrieked somewhere, too close, and Eliza flinched. Rakhal didn't move. The sound snagged in the back of his mind like a half-remembered song, and something in him smiled at her startled pulse.
Shazi crouched at the edge of the trail, her gloved fingers brushing the ground with practiced precision. "Tracks," she said. "Fresh-cut… three spans old maybe. Riders. Heavy-footed." She frowned. "Could be lowlanders, could be worse."
Rakhal's gaze followed the line of ridges to the horizon, searching for any sign of the forest they had left behind. But the trees were long gone, hidden beyond sight. This was different terrain, a different power. The Shadow moved more freely here, where it had always belonged. His jaw tightened, a muscle flickering beneath the scar that bisected his left cheek, the only tell Shazi ever caught when he was thinking. "The lowland bands."
"They're restless," Shazi said, then paused at a distant sound. "Did you hear—" She shook her head. "Never mind. They curseKardoc's name, but they fear him still. The old clans remember your father, what was done to him." She straightened, dust falling from her fingers. "They'll not welcome his blood."
Rakhal's expression remained carved from stone. "Then they'll follow strength, not blood."
The training from the forest would serve him now. The control he had mastered by the river would be tested here, where the Shadow ran strong through the earth itself. With Eliza beside him, he would show the clans a different kind of power - one that could unite rather than destroy.
He moved on, boots crunching softly over frost. Shazi fell in beside him, measuring several silent strides before speaking again. “The Shadow runs in them all. Even the half-born ones. They’ll feel it if you move openly.”
“They already do.”
He could sense it, thin threads pulling through air, through soil, through the marrow of existence. The orcs who carried Shadow in their veins would know before any runner reached them. Not a message in words, but instinct. Pressure. The weight of something ancient shifting beneath the world.
Eliza walked behind him, quiet and watchful. Even without Shadow in her blood, he felt her awareness, a tremor brushing against his own, the faint catch of her breath when the air grew heavy. She was attuned to him in ways she didn’t yet understand.
When they stopped near a cracked watchstone, Shazi spoke again. “If we send word now, some will answer. Not the elders, never them, but the strong ones. The ones who follow power wherever it walks.”
“Send it,” Rakhal said. “Keep the message simple, no ceremony.”
Shazi nodded, her mouth curving into something sharp and predatory. She called over two scouts, lean, scarred orcs withthe faint shimmer of black beneath their skin. Shadow-touched, both of them. She whispered the message, then added more softly, so only the nearest could hear, “Choose while you still can.”
They bowed, eyes gleaming with violet fire in the low light, and vanished into the scrub.
Rakhal could have sworn the shadow between his fingers had whispered a name. He watched them go. He had no faith in words, no belief in loyalty. What he trusted was the hunger. Shadow called to Shadow. It always had. Those with its mark would feel it crawling in their veins, whispering that a stronger hand had seized the reins.
By nightfall, the first fires appeared on the distant plain.
Scouts. Watchers. Then more fires. A constellation being born, each light a question burning in the dark.Who returns? What power walks?The air carried the faint rumble of horns, far away.
“They’re coming,” Shazi murmured. “Or watching to see if the rumor’s true.”
“They’ll come,” Rakhal said. “To see if I’m worth killing.”
The next morning, a lone rider approached. His armor was scavenged, tusks capped in iron. The Shadow moved beneath his skin, but weakly, half-tamed, like the man himself. He dismounted, struck his spear into the dirt, and stood before Rakhal.
