Night bled into dawn with little mercy. Evokian soldiers were already sweeping through the fort and pushing into the surrounding jungle, their patrols fanning outward in precise, tireless arcs. By now, Zemo’s body would have been found, laid out with the crisp efficiency of Evokian rites, a burial prepared before the rising heat could claim him.

  West, still sunk beneath the moon shade’s lingering spell, slept without a twitch. Omni carried him easily, the young man’s weight draped across his arms as fading stars scratched pale silver across the canopy. Tyrus kept several paces ahead, wrapped in a silence that clung to him as tightly as the shadows. Even in half-light, the jungle breathed danger; every rustle felt too near, every shifting silhouette seemed to stretch toward them.

  None of them spoke.

  Through the thick undergrowth, Evokian patrol shapes drifted like wandering spirits; torches extinguished, armor muted under cloth wraps, their presence betrayed only by the soft crunch of feet against tangled roots.

  Only when the sun began its slow climb did the jungle ease its grip, its first needles of light piercing the dense weave of leaves overhead, scattering the night at last.

  “We should stop here,” Omni murmured, eyes sweeping the brightening canopy. “It’s too dangerous to keep moving once the day takes hold.”

  Tyrus scanned the dense undergrowth, every tangled shadow a potential threat. “Is this really the best place to stop?”

  Omni lifted his gaze to the shafts of sunlight cutting through the leaves. A long, contemplative sigh slipped from him.

  “We can rest up there.” He nodded toward a cluster of broad, interlocked branches. High, hidden, and sturdy enough for three.

  He hefted the still-sleeping West over his shoulder without strain, the motion almost practiced, but effortless. Age had carved lines into Omni’s face, but his strength remained unshaken. He unbuckled West’s belt, the worn leather soft and bendy from years of use, uncoiled to reveal its true length. Then he pressed it into Tyrus’s uninjured hand.

  “Over that thick branch,” he instructed.

  Tyrus stepped beneath it, squared himself for alignment, and cast the belt upward, but the shift tugged at his wrapped right hand, sending a pulse of pain up his arm. His jaw tightened. Without comment, he switched to his left, the motion steadier though less confident. After several tries, the belt looped over the high, thick branch and caught on tight.

  “Good,” Omni praised, already tying the length around the trunk with brisk, practiced knots. He tested the hold; the branch didn’t so much as groan.

  “Go on ahead.”

  Tyrus gripped the belt and climbed, his movements controlled and efficient, the foliage swallowing him in layers of green. Broad leaves brushed his shoulders as he ascended. Omni followed with surprising ease, dragging West along until he could be set gently across a thick cradle of branches.

  “The boy’s been eating well this tour,” Omni joked quietly, stretching his back.

  Tyrus let out a short exhale. Close to amusement.

  Omni reached up and tugged down a handful of the broad, waxy leaves that fanned overhead. “These will do,” he said. “For bedding, and cover from anyone passing below.”

  Tyrus joined him, pulling leaves free with his good hand. His injured one stayed close to his side, wrapped tight, unmoving. He didn’t mention it.

  Together they worked in near silence, the branches scratching around them as they layered leaves over the limbs, shaping a rough shelter hidden high among the trees.

  “Before we escaped, you mentioned a deal,” Tyrus said quietly, tearing leaves one-handed, each motion deliberate.

  Omni hummed in acknowledgment as he spread another layer of foliage across the branches beneath them. “Yes. I had prayed you would escort West and me to the Eastern lands…back to our people.”

  He paused. A sigh threaded through his words, worn and honest.

  “But now that you’re unshackled, I have nothing left to bargain with. No reward… no leverage. Only the hope that you are a man of broader sight, and that you might see me as a friend in need.”

  Omni straightened, meeting Tyrus’s gaze without flinching.

  Tyrus placed the leaves he’d gathered into a neat pile, his expression carved from something unreadable in the muted green light.

  “My apologies,” he said, calm but firm. “I have my own promises.”

  The silence that followed settled thick between them, humid and heavy as the jungle air.

  Omni spoke gently, with the care of someone approaching a wounded animal. “Perhaps that, too, is part of a larger vision. Tell me, Tyrus… What promise binds a lost soul such as yourself?”

  He eased West onto the woven bed of leaves, brushing stray fronds from his cheek with fatherly care.

  Tyrus kept his eyes on his feet. “It is for my sister.”

  The words were steady, but the hard line of his jaw betrayed the heat rising beneath them.

  “The Evokians took most of the daughters of Ura,” he continued, voice sharpening into something jagged. “My sister, among them, just as they steal and kidnap every woman from the lands they devour. I will find her. And I will cut down every Evokian in my path.”

  His breath trembled with fury. “That is my promise. That is my vision.”

  Omni lowered himself onto a branch opposite him. “And where does this vision lead you?”

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  Tyrus hesitated. His breath hitched tight in his chest. Tears gathered at the rim of his lashes but refused to fall, not from pride, but from a discipline forged through years of training and enduring grief silently.

  “I will return to the lands of Ura,” he whispered, trying to burn a hole at his feet. “And take up the trail.”

  Omni’s expression darkened, shadows gathering across his features. “Tyrus… you know what became of Ura. Of its people. Of the land itself?”

  Tyrus’s throat tightened. “Every man. Every boy.”

  This time, the tears broke free. Silent and unhidden.

  “It was a policy,” he said, the word bitter as ash. His voice rose, heat building like a storm straining against its own clouds.

  “For four years, we held them back. We! And only we...”

  The branches trembled as his fury climbed through the leaves.

  “They killed everyone. Burned everything. Warriors…all of them. They stood against the demons of the false Evok and held the southern gate alone!”

  His voice cracked through the canopy, sharp enough to make Omni flinch slightly. Only then did the old man truly see him. Not the legendary Son of Ura warrior, not the escaped prisoner, but the youth beneath the scars: barely twenty, carrying the weight of a fallen nation alone.

  “And still here I am,” Tyrus breathed heavily, shaking.

  Omni bowed his head, driven by instinct rather than reason. “Then your promise is a blessed one.”

  Tyrus turned away, shoulders rigid. “This is no blessing,” he hissed. “It is my curse.”

  “See!? This is exactly why I said we should’ve left him,” West cut in, his voice slicing through the humid stillness. He was fully awake now and standing on the makeshift bed of leaves, jaw locked in a hard line.

  “West? You’re awake,” Omni asked, startled.

  “Yes, Master Omni,” West snapped, pushing himself upright. “Awake, and apparently the only one thinking clearly. I told you we couldn’t afford to bring this guy! He already made us fugitives by butchering those Evokians, and now he’s having a full-blown meltdown.”

  His stance widened slightly, as if preparing for the branches, or Tyrus, to erupt beneath him.

  Tyrus turned his head with slow, predatory precision. Rage rippled across his face, darkening it. His ruby eyes ignited in the deep green shadows, fixed on West with lethal clarity.

  “You would be dead if it weren’t for me,” Tyrus growled, each word dropping with the weight of stone on stone.

  West fired back immediately, louder than he intended. “No! I’d be fine! I was just a prankster selling wine to the Evokians…not slaughtering them!”

  “West, enough,” Omni warned, stepping between them.

  But the words didn’t reach either of them.

  Tyrus moved a fraction closer, breath serrated, hands trembling. One with fury, one from the injury he fought to ignore.

  “You speak as if you understand death,” he said, feral and dangerous.

  “And you act like you’re the only one who’s ever lost anything!” West shouted, voice cracking under something raw.

  “Enough!” Omni snapped, spreading his arms in a futile barrier between them.

  He turned toward Tyrus, voice steadying into something firm and imploring. “Tyrus. We can help you find your sister.”

  He continued before either could speak.

  “The Evokians control the kingdom of Vaga. That is where their conquests are taken: women, gold, slaves, and even precious holy relics. Everything funnels through Vaga. If your sister lives, her trail will lead there. We can take you.”

  West groaned dramatically. “Master Omni! For the love of the Gods Eye, I’m asking again, please reconsider this vision of yours. He’s too emotionally unstable. A walking catastrophe. A… what’s the polite word? Oh. Right. Crazy.”

  Half-joke, half-plea, all ill-timed.

  Tyrus lunged.

  West laughed and scrambled backward, pushing his way up the branches like a lemur. Leaves exploded around him in a violent rustle.

  Tyrus made his way up the branches with his good hand, snarling, but the climb was slow. His bandaged right hand hung uselessly at his side, a dead weight sabotaging his instinctual fury.

  Rage made him reckless; determination drove him upward anyway.

  West continued climbing upwards, his smugness now turned to shock as he was not expecting Tyrus to be able to climb with his injured hand.

  Omni climbed after them with a weary, pained sigh. “Tyrus… stop. Please. We gain nothing from tearing each other apart.”

  His voice barely carried. The branches groaned under their weight as the three of them climbed in messy, staggered desperation.

  West burst through the canopy first, flinging himself onto the highest branch he could reach. Sunlight slammed into him. Hot, white, and unforgiving.

  “Whoa…” he breathed, one hand shielding his eyes.

  The sight wiped the grin clean off his face.

  Above the vast green sea of the jungle, a monstrous tower of smoke curled into the sky. Thick. Black. Alive. It rose in a twisting column like some ancient demon-serpent roused from the earth, uncoiling in slow, deliberate hunger.

  Tyrus clambered up after him, panting, still ready to continue the argument…

  Until the sight hit him like a blow to the ribs.

  His breath stalled. His jaw slackened. All the rage he carried so casually drained from his body, replaced by something vicious… cruel… a dread that recognized the smoke long before his mind did.

  Omni emerged moments later, brushing leaves and bits of bark from his robes. “What on…”

  His words collapsed into silence.

  The three of them stood along the treetop in a crooked line, suspended above the jungle, small and breakable beneath the rising black pillar. No gentle breeze reached them here. Even the animals had gone quiet.

  West swallowed hard. His voice came out thin.

  “Supreme General Dresdi…”

  Omni inhaled sharply, his knuckles whitening around the branch.

  Tyrus said nothing. His fingers curled tight, trembling; not with anger this time, but with recognition, memory, and something bruisingly close to fear. The smoke seemed to taunt him, as if whispering a truth only he understood.

  For that moment, their argument, their mockery, their stubborn disagreements; all of it vanished beneath the oppressive shadow of the smoke.

  What waited ahead was no longer just Omni’s vision or Tyrus’s stubborn mission.

  It was something far worse.

  And it had already begun.