Bloody hell, that’s never a good sign.
Varek doesn’t waste another second. “Show me.”
We move immediately, the shift from stillness to motion seamless and fast. I fall into step beside him without thinking, the bond pulling in a way that feels instinctive now, like we’re meant to move together.
The settlement changes as we pass through it—voices are lowered, movement slows, and attention shifts.
Word spreads fast here. Too fast.
By the time we reach the outer boundary, Kael is already there. So is Aelith. That alone is enough to make my chest ache.
He doesn’t look injured anymore—not physically. But he doesn’t look whole either. There’s something off in the way hestands. Too still. Too focused. Like he’s already seen whatever we’re about to walk into.
“What is it?” Varek asks.
Aelith doesn’t answer. He’s staring into the distance like he’s seen a ghost.
A figure steps out of the tree line.
At first, it’s only motion where there shouldn’t be any, a shape separating itself from the strange, twisted growth beyond Dathanor’s edge. Then he comes fully into view, and the whole clearing seems to draw closer around him. He’s not rushing or skulking. He’s not even moving like prey or invader. He walks with the unhurried certainty of someone who’s never had to ask permission to enter a room in his life.
Even from this distance, there’s authority in him.
Not the kind Varek carries, built from responsibility and hard choices and the weight of keeping people alive. This is older. Stranger. Colder in some ways. It clings to him like memory, like old ceremony and power that once sat unquestioned on a throne. He’s tall, though not quite Varek’s size, and built like a male who’s known both battle and luxury and decided to keep the useful parts of each.
His features are unmistakably Glowranth, but there’s a severity to them that makes Aelith’s beauty look almost unfinished by comparison. Dark hair falls loose around his shoulders, streaked faintly at the temples with silver that catches when the strange green light hits it. His armour isn’t armour—not exactly. It looks like travel-worn court leathers cut for movement, dark and close-fitting, marked with damage that’s been cleaned but not repaired. At his throat hangs a clasp I don’t recognise, old metal worked into a pattern that looks almost organic.
He stops just inside the perimeter.
No one breathes.
No one speaks.
The trees behind him sway faintly in the morning breeze, and somewhere overhead, one of the winged caringers native to this place lets out a distant cry, but close by there’s only stillness. Even the sentries nearest the edge have gone motionless, weapons half lifted, as if they can’t decide whether this male is guest, threat, or ghost.
Aelith makes the choice for everyone. “Impossible,” he says.
The male’s gaze slides over the assembled fighters, over Kael, over Shanae, over Varek, and then lands on Aelith with unnerving precision. He doesn’t look surprised to find him here. He doesn’t even look relieved. He simply looks… certain.
“Aelith.”
The prince goes utterly still beside Kael.
Whatever I expected from him—fury, disbelief, some princely demand for explanation—it isn’t this. For one raw second, all the edges vanish from him. He looks younger. Not in the face, but in the soul. Like some long-buried part of him has just been dragged into daylight against its will.
“Father?”
The word drops into the clearing like a stone into water, and the silence that follows seems to ripple outward through everyone standing here.
King Ithius.
Alive.
I feel the impact of the name in the people around me before I fully process it myself. Shanae goes rigid. Kael’s hand shifts fractionally towards the blade at his hip, not drawing it, just checking it’s still there. Varek doesn’t move at all, which is somehow more telling than if he had. Through the bond I feel his attention arrow to a lethal point. Not with fear, but calculation and assessment. The kind of stillness that means he’s already thinking three moves ahead.
Aelith, on the other hand, looks like the ground has ceased to be a reliable thing.
“How?” The word tears out of him, low and rough. “You’re dead.”
