Chapter 23

  Had my departure from the common room been too abrupt? Too... insulting? Maybe. Probably. But when the others finally came upstairs—three hours later—I’d at least tried to make amends in my own, quiet way.

  The fire in the hearth was already crackling, casting warm shadows across the wooden beams of the ceiling. I’d even made the beds—yes, their beds. Folded the rough woolen blankets, fluffed the straw pillows. I’d tidied the room just enough to make it feel less like a barracks and more like a shelter. A courtesy, really.

  As Vin entered, she paused just long enough to whisper, “A real gentleman.”

  The sarcasm wasn’t lost on me. Her tone was light, almost playful, but the edge was still there. She was still angry. Fair enough. Maybe a night’s rest would smooth it out. If not—well, I’d go back to being the one in charge. Someone had to be.

  My armor and helmet lay beside my bed, half-cleaned but ready for use. My sword rested against the wall, close enough to grab in an instant. Always in reach. Always.

  Maira dropped onto her bed with a tired sigh, and Vin followed suit, collapsing without a word. Simon, however, didn’t follow their lead. Instead, he stepped toward me with a strange calmness in his expression.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  Oh. So that was how the evening would end.

  I’d planned to confront him tomorrow, actually. Ever since the moment he’d mentioned the supposed attack on Neros, the story had felt off—wrong in ways I couldn’t explain. A direct assault on the most fortified city in the world? Neros, the elven capital surrounded by walls layered in ancient spells, wards, and arcane stone twenty meters high and ten meters thick? The claim was ridiculous.

  But maybe this wasn’t about that. Maybe he just wanted to scold me for snapping at Vin earlier.

  Then Simon did something unexpected.

  He smiled.

  Not a friendly smile. No. It was the smile of a man who held a secret over your head. Amused. Dismissive. Like I was a child stumbling through questions he’d already solved long ago.

  "You’ve probably been wondering," he began with infuriating nonchalance, “why I can summon fireballs—yet never bother to conjure a single flame for warmth?”

  No, actually. That hadn’t been on my mind at all.

  “I was actually going to ask—” I began, but Simon cut me off with an annoyingly smug interruption.

  “It’s because the mana around us—the raw, ambient mana—is inherently wild and chaotic,” he said, slipping immediately into lecture mode. “What I use most of the time is unrefined, destructive mana. That’s the kind of energy you tap into when you’re a warlock-battlemage like me.”

  His voice had shifted—no longer just casual, but animated, self-assured, almost like he was performing.

  “For more delicate spellwork, like mental communication or healing,” he continued, “you need a more refined type of mana. Something controlled. Tamed, even. But I was never trained for that. My magic was forged for combat. Raw. Brutal. Fast. That’s why I struggle to summon flames for warmth. I can shape fire into a spear, a wall, a storm—but not a cozy campfire.”

  He seemed quite proud of the explanation, and went on without noticing how my interest had already waned. His words became background noise as he wove an entire classroom lecture around the basic foundations of magical theory—principles anyone with a pulse and a spark of mana learned by the time they were seven.

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  But interrupting him now felt pointless. He was clearly enjoying himself.

  When he finally finished—slightly out of breath, but visibly pleased with his own brilliance—I let out a hollow, uninterested “Thanks.”

  He beamed, as if I’d just handed him a medal. “Anytime,” he said cheerfully, then turned, kicked off his boots, and flopped back onto the bed like a student after exams.

  Across the room, Maira and Vin were already asleep, their breathing deep and slow.

  I decided to do the same—slip beneath the covers, let the heat of the hearth soak into my bones, and surrender to whatever dreams might come.

  —

  A boy knelt in the ruins of a collapsed house, no older than fourteen. His small frame shook in the smoke-thickened air, his fingers clutching a crudely carved wooden figure—a knight, its paint chipped and its arms half-burnt, yet held like a holy relic. As if this little thing could protect him from the wrath of a dragon’s breath.

  Around him, the world burned.

  Ash swirled through the air like snow, thick and choking, dancing through beams of orange light that cracked through broken rooftops and shattered walls. He heard nothing but the hunger of the fire—its crackling voice speaking in every direction—and the distant, thundering beat of wings too massive to belong to any natural creature. Wings that blotted out the sky.

  Then came the screams. Dozens of them—anguished, terrified, human. Shapes moved through the blaze and smoke, people staggering between the debris. Some coughed, others wept. All of them ran with torn clothes and blackened faces, clutching loved ones or dragging the half-dead behind them. Some held rags or sleeves to their mouths, desperate to breathe through the smoke that painted the sky in grim gray and black. Just hours ago, that same sky had been soft and blue.

  But now…

  Now it was the end.

  The boy couldn’t move. Perhaps it was the thick beam of scorched wood across his legs. Perhaps he simply had no strength left to stand. The air scorched his lungs. His thoughts came in flashes, fading in and out of focus.

  He saw their faces. His mother’s. His father’s. His brother’s. He remembered the scream—piercing, ragged, endless. Then the sound of something snapping—wood, stone, maybe bone. A single moment of pure, violent collapse.

  And now, this.

  Alone. Kneeling. Clutching a toy knight in a battlefield of fire.

  Suddenly, without warning, the world was drowned in golden light.

  It wasn’t warm, like the fire. It was pure—brighter than any torch or spell. A radiance that stretched from ruin to ruin, across the dead streets and into the sky. It swept away the shadows and stilled the smoke for a heartbeat.

  Then came the sound. Hooves. The unmistakable rhythm of a galloping horse, pounding against the broken ground—closer, faster, unrelenting.

  And then—he was airborne. A force gripped him tight around the waist and hauled him upward. The next thing he knew, he was seated on the back of a great horse, his legs dangling, arms still wrapped around the wooden knight. He blinked in stunned disbelief.

  He was not the rider.

  Whoever had lifted him held him tight, steady against the animal’s thunderous pace. Cloaked in brilliant gold, the figure gave no name, no voice—only action. The boy could not see their face. Only the shimmer of armor that seemed woven from sunlight, a sword glinting at their side, and the aura of something far more than mortal.

  The boy looked back.

  The ruins disappeared behind him. The fire still raged. The sky still wept ash.

  Then the rider spoke.

  His voice was calm, gentle—soothing like warm rain after a storm. It cut through the chaos, not with command, but with comfort.

  “Don’t look back,” he said softly. “It will be alright, child. Everything will be alright.”

  The boy, still clutching the charred figure of the knight to his chest, hesitantly turned his gaze toward the rider. Now that the blinding gold of the armor wasn’t so overwhelming, he could make out more details.

  The man was clad in a full suit of resplendent plate, forged not of iron or steel, but something holier—sunlight woven into metal. Every curve of the armor shimmered with warmth, not just from the light it reflected, but from the light it seemed to emit. Upon his chest, a radiant sunburst gleamed like a second heart. His pauldrons bore etchings of doves and laurels, and around his neck flowed a deep crimson cloak that billowed behind him like a banner of life in a world consumed by death.

  But what caught the boy’s eye most of all was the sword—sheathed at the man’s side. Its hilt was crafted in the likeness of a golden eagle’s head, regal and fierce. Even in rest, it pulsed with authority. It was a symbol the boy had only seen in old paintings, spoken of in trembling tones around hearths and within tattered books.

  He knew the stories.

  His voice cracked through the soot and smoke caught in his throat, barely a whisper:

  “Are… are you a Paladin?”

  The golden warrior was quiet for a moment. The hooves of the horse still thundered beneath them, carrying them away from fire and death. The light of the sun still clung to him like an aura, pure and unwavering.

  Then, the man turned his head just slightly, and in that same kind, unwavering voice, he answered:

  “Yes, my boy. I am.”

  A pause.

  Then he leaned closer, and with a voice that seemed to melt away every jagged shard of fear the boy still held, he whispered:

  “And you are safe now.”