There for her, but also trying to save what was dying.
Fighting for her, but also playing politics in a broken world.
And now? No more pretending. No more politics. Just Kael, and exactly what he was born to do.
Kael exhales, finishing with his boot and pushing to his feet in one smooth motion. The dawn light catches along his shoulders, along the faint remnants of the fragment that once consumed him and now sits dormant beneath his skin.
He turns back toward her, and stills.
At first, he thinks it is a memory.
A residual echo of something left behind by the war, by the darkness that had once torn through him without restraint. It begins as a low vibration, barely there—felt more than heard.
Then it builds.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
A rhythm.
Distant.
Familiar.
His brow furrows slightly as he tilts his head, listening.
“Do you hear that?” he asks.
Elyssara watches him for a moment, her expression curious, searching his face for whatever has shifted in it.
“Hear what?”
The sound grows.
Louder.
Clearer.
A steady, thunderous cadence that rolls beneath the surface of the world like something ancient stirring in its sleep.
Hooves.
Kael’s breath catches.
It is not coming from the city. Not from the training grounds where he will go to gather the new recruits. Not from the outer roads where supply lines now move freely between once-divided lands.
It is coming from somewhere else.
Somewhere deeper.
The realization does not strike him all at once.
It unfolds.
A slow, undeniable understanding that settles into his bones with a certainty he does not question.
The Great Calling.
