Alric’s boots met packed earth swaddled in cloth-bound hide, salted and slick with oak sap.

  Above, the stitched canvas ceiling strangled the morning’s glow, dimming it of life.

  The air held the quietness of a church crypt, heavy and oppressive, where wall-mounted braziers and torches burned low, warding off darkness where it nested.

  The scent of vinegar, camphor leaf, and incense hung thick upon the air, choking the lungs, dulling the mind, numbing whatever part was left of a man’s soul.

  Maerenth lay on his cot, wrists bound by chains made of ceremonial iron, the same used for apostates and oathbreakers.

  The two medicae halted their work as Alric stepped in.

  They straightened and bowed their heads, blood-soaked gloves catching the firelight in dull gleams.

  Alric’s gaze moved across the tent.

  Steaming bowls of blackened water, bloodied shears, folded cloths, and a tray of instruments laid out with grim precision at their feet: each spoke of a cruel but necessary grace.

  “My Lord,” the first murmured, voice quiet, deferent. “He’s stable.”

  “Good. You are dismissed. Tell the guards outside to let no one through.”

  “Yes, my Lord.” She replied in earnest.

  They bowed once more, then gathered their instruments, and set them aside before stepping out of the tent.

  What remained between the two men was silence and incense.

  And in that scented quiet, Maerenth moved.

  He stirred upon the cot, slowly at first, like a corpse remembering how to breathe.

  His sight remained obscured behind stitched eyelids.

  His form seemed to scorn life itself, no longer seeking to resemble humanity, but rather a patchwork of bruise and clot.

  Every finger had been cauterized where cut.

  Every abscess was lanced and drained.

  Every lash, wrapped in tinctured cloth.

  Every limb, thinned of tissue and meaning.

  The few places where skin remained visible, bore the pallor of sickness and encroaching decay.

  Just an echo of a man. Nothing more. Alric thought.

  Maerenth shifted again, turning his head toward him through the sutures, as if he’d already been here, rehearsing every movement.

  A dry smile cracked across his lips.

  “Glass lurks beneath your eyes, Lord of Wisdom,” his voice rasped, raked of strength. “It sows and reaps. It circuits your soul. It speaks and listens. Fully given, fully gone.”

  Alric said nothing at first.

  Then, with a voice like drawn steel.

  “What are you saying, Maerenth? Why dress madness in poetry?”

  “But I do dress, Lord of Loss,” came the reply, soft and fevered. ”Look at me, dressed in blood and… meaning.”

  “What meaning? The kind that excuses rebellion? That makes ruin a gospel?”

  “A gate made of thought gave you the answer, Lord of Moonlight.”

  Why is he calling me with these strange titles? Are they supposed to mean something? Or is he simply mad?

  “The circle you bound yourself to?”

  “Circle? Bound myself to?” His smile widened, as if amused by a private jest. “No. No. Whispered titles. Reverent echoes. Yes…”

  “The foremost being yours, Lord of Nothing.”

  Alric’s gaze narrowed.

  “You speak in riddles because you know truth would expose what you truly are.”

  “A corpse, Lord of Grace?” Maerenth’s question came reverent, as if spoken by a child.

  Alric’s jaw clenched.

  “Why do you keep avoiding what happened in Khal-Drathir?” His tone now edged with exasperation.

  “What made you pursue war to the end? Did you never stop to consider the lives it would cost? Speak, Maerenth. Tell me why you turned your back on the Empire.”

  Maerenth’s eyes moved beneath their stitched lids, as if tracing forgotten paths in the air.

  “You ask of the crystal sea?” His chains rattled faintly as his fingers stirred.

  “Let us speak plain then, Lord of Tyranny: walk sunward with your back to the river of endless divide, and you will find how to uncork this wine.”

  “But,” he added. “Be warned, Lord of Might. You will tread the same hallways I did, and see the glass for what it is. And thus, a question shall arise: whose servant are you, truly?”

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  Reclining, he turned from Alric.

  “My words are spent, Lord of Grey Ash. Go and be rewarded. You’ll need it.” His words poured like water over a crag of bones.

  Alric remained still.

  Go sunward with my back to the river of endless divide? East, West, what does it matter? There’s no point parsing riddles from a madman.

  No matter. He’ll be in the court hands soon enough. They’ll extract whatever truth they want. My job is done here, time to head home.

  He turned and stepped out into the cold again.

  The sun had already begun its climb.

  A faint frost clung to the ground; from somewhere nearby, a soldier sneezed. Wood, cloth and steel clattered around him.

  Preparations for departure were well underway.

  Yet in his mind, Molvane’s words circled still like carrion birds over rotting truth.

  What made him so? The circle? The torture maybe?

  It couldn’t have been the circle, not unless its effects change with the soul within it.

  Unless he got trapped in some other hex that broke his mind…

  I don’t know. And can’t know without proper investigation.

  I’ll need to report this to the Emperor and have the area checked for sigils, inscriptions, wards, whatever might be related to this incident.

  I also need to visit a healer and see if I’ve been marked by something when going through that circle.

  For now, the path home matters more. Traversing the Crag comes first.

  He was nearing his tent when one of Vargo’s runners intercepted him.

  The lad halted a few steps before him and bowed crisply.

  “Lord Commander, Master Vargo sent me to deliver a message.”

  “Speak.”

  “The seneschals departed at first light without without ceremony.”

  “Let them be.” Alric answered him.

  “Yes, Lord.” The runner saluted and sprinted off into the maze of wood and flint.

  Alric resumed his pace toward the tent.

  Vargo was no longer there, absorbed in the final hours of preparations.

  He drew the flap aside and entered.

  There he found her awake, seated on the cot just as he had left her.

  Klethiar stood to the left, rigid beside the entrance, his gaze divided between the interior and the world beyond, hand resting loosely on his sword’s pommel.

  “Lord Commander,” he saluted.

  Alric gave a brief nod. “Any disturbances?”

  “None, my Lord.”

  “Good.”

  His eyes met her form. She was still wrapped in the fur sheets, though strips of torn tunic showed through, coarse against her skin.

  “Klethiar.” Alric said.

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “I do not care how or where, but fetch her some clothes. Tunic, boots and cloak. Whatever you can find. Nothing ornate.”

  “As you command.” Klethiar saluted crisply, and stepped out immediately.

  She looked at him from beneath the furs.

  “Am I to be your broken princess, Master?”

  “You are to be clothed. You are to ride with me.”

  Alric’s tone carried weary finality in its wake.

  “And what if I refuse?”

  Her eyes held his, cold and steady. “What would you do? Command me to live?”

  Alric said nothing at first.

  Then, he unfastened the scabbard at his hip and stepped toward her.

  He let the short sword fall to her side with a dull thud against the cot’s furs.

  “Then do it,” he said. “Take your life. I will witness and etch into memory.”

  She looked at it, then at him.

  A moment passed between them.

  “How cruel of you, Lord Commander, to say such things.” A small, toothy smile.

  “I thought you wanted to save me from your men and Empire.”

  “It seems you just wanted to save yourself the guilt.”

  Alric’s gaze didn’t leave hers.

  “I did not come to ask for your forgiveness. Nor to save you.”

  He bent, picked up the blade, and reattached it to his belt.

  “You’re free to hate me, but do it alive.”

  He turned and moved to the war table.

  “And what if I live?” Her voice came low, dry.

  “What then?”

  He looked at her from the chair for a moment.

  “You endure.”

  A breath escaped her—part scoff, part resignation.

  He sat across from her, poring over his map, sketching a route through the Hollow Crag in his minid which his army could traverse safely.

  Time passed in silence: she watching him, he watching the parchment on the table.

  Then the flap stirred open, revealing Klethiar.

  He had returned; clothes folded in his arms.

  “My Lord, the garments, as requested.”

  “Goo—” before he could finish, she cut in.

  “A basin for washing also. Otherwise, well… I might not look the part.”

  Her voice carried a note of arrogance and challenge.

  He studied her for a moment, then turned back to Klethiar.

  “Do as she says.”

  Klethiar’s brow twitched, almost imperceptibly.

  “As you command.”

  His salute came stiff, betraying his unease, whether at her boldness, or at Alric’s indulgences of it, he couldn’t say.

  With that, he stepped out of the tent, and Alric’s gaze returned to the map before him.

  She shifted beneath the furs.

  “You’re awfully quiet about it. You don’t care for hierarchy with me? Am I that special?”

  Her tone still carried that same edged arrogance, half-daring, half-curious.

  He looked up.

  “If it makes you clothe and breathe, I’ll allow it. And no, you’re a rescued civilian under my care for now.”

  “For now?”

  “Forces bigger than me might decide otherwise.”

  “Then why spare me at all?”

  “Because there are very few people in the Empire who can order me.”

  She let out a soft, incredulous laugh, looking away as if amused by a cruel joke.

  Then, turning back to him, she asked in mock inquiry.

  “Where would I bathe? Here? In your presence?”

  He nodded toward the canvas partition he had used before.

  “There.”

  “Modest, aren’t we? Would you like to watch me?”

  He sighed letting all the weariness wash over him.

  Before she could speak again, the tent flap stirred once more.

  Klethiar stepped through, arms full with a shallow basin, folded cloths, and a sloshing skin of water.

  He cast a glance between them. Alric, still seated; her, wrapped in furs with eyes too bright.

  “Where should I put it, my Lord?”

  “Behind the partition.” Alric answered.

  Klethiar obeyed, moved behind the partition, and set the items down. A slight exhale escaped him, followed by the soft rustle of fabric.

  He returned to Alric and stood at attention.

  “Wait outside.”

  A sharp nod.

  “Yes, Lord Commander.”

  He brushed the tent flap aside and stepped out, leaving only the sound of brushed canvas behind.

  She watched Alric intently, as though trying to pierce through his intentions with her eyes.

  “Do I get to use it now, Lord Commander?”

  “I’ll be waiting here.”

  She gave him one final glance, then rose.

  Stepping through the tent, she never once took her eyes off him, keeping her tattered clothes and borrowed furs tightly gripped to her form.

  Having reached the partition, she disappeared behind it.

  He remained still, studying the terrain.

  Soon, he could hear rustling clothes and furs dropping to the ground. The sloshing of water came right after.

  The scrape of cloth against skin soon followed.

  The scent of lavender soap overtook the grime of soot.

  Minutes passed. No words were exchanged.

  Then, the sound of boots meeting ground came from the partition.

  He lifted his eyes to her.

  She no longer resembled the wounded girl he’d dragged from the mud.

  Now stood a woman in her early twenties clothed in plainness, clean of the silt and blood that had clung to her face and form.

  The grey tunic hung loosely from her frame, and her damp hair stuck to her face in strands.

  His eyes met her.

  “Well,” she began. “What a pretty corpse you have in your care, no?”

  He regarded her once more and answered.

  “You look alive enough.”

  She scoffed and lowered herself to the cot slowly, never quite relaxing.

  Her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

  “What now?” she asked, gaze averted to the side.

  The camp stirred outside.

  “We wait for sunset. Then we ride for Valekyr.”