THE KING OF NOTHING

  Chapter XV: Ashes and Blood

  Vael stood up. The movement was fluid, economical, like a shadow deciding to lengthen. He did not look back. He required no visual confirmation. The image of Ophelia's body lying on the damp earth, her own purple rapier—now grey and dead—plunged into her throat like a pin through a collected insect, was already engraved on the black stone of his memory. A grotesque offering to the dawn, yes. But also a punctuation. A full stop written in steel and blood.

  He did not touch the weapon. Leaving it there was part of the message, or perhaps, simply, the message lacked a recipient. Or maybe, as he himself had hinted, the mere contact with that object, imbued with a powerful foreign will, had been transgression enough. A subtle chill, like the brush of a poisoned spiderweb, still ran through the bones of the hand that had wielded it.

  He began to walk back toward the shadows of the city, leaving the body and the rising sun with the same indifference with which one leaves a room. Distance, that great eraser, began its work. First it blurred the details: the sheen of the broken armor, the exact pallor of the skin. Then it softened the outlines, until the figure on the ground was just another dark stain in the landscape of desolation. Finally, the curvature of the earth and the rubble hid it completely. As if it had never existed.

  Oskara received him like a cemetery still dreaming of fire.

  He walked among rubble that breathed. Stones that crackled with internal heat, twisted beams exhaling puffs of grey, bitter smoke. Around him, the massacre had achieved an almost religious stillness. The corpses—Imperial soldiers with white armor stained with soot and entrails, civilians caught in expressions of eternal panic, remnants of Undead reduced to piles of inert flesh and splintered bone—lay entwined in a macabre embrace. The ground was a mosaic of tragedy: puddles of blood beginning to congeal into a dark varnish, grey ash accumulating in crevices like dirty snow, fragments of broken lives—a doll, a shoe, a sword hilt.

  Vael walked with his hands shoved into the pockets of his torn trousers. His posture, earlier that of an upright and precise executioner, went slack. His shoulders slumped, his spine curved slightly. The absolute coldness of the King dissolved in the death-charged air, replaced by the tired, almost ungainly looseness of a wandering farmer who has seen too many burned fields. With the toe of his boot, he absently kicked a dented Imperial helmet. The metal rang with a dull clang as it struck a stone, a funeral toll for an extinguished authority.

  —You know? —he said to the air, his voice a hoarse murmur mingling with the distant crackle of flames—. At some point, I'm going to have to finish all of this.

  He looked up. The sky was a low ceiling of thick smoke, filtering the sunlight and staining it a dull red, like rust in stagnant water. No birds were seen. No clouds. Only that dirty blanket that seemed to want to smother the world.

  —I long to rest —he continued, and in his voice was a hint of genuine fatigue, a heaviness of centuries—. To stop… moving the pieces. To stop putting out flames. To see you again. To feel that silence which is not absence, but fullness.

  He paused. He looked down at his right hand, the one that had held Ophelia's rapier. He opened and closed it slowly, as if evaluating its function. He made a slight grimace, a faint expression of annoyance.

  —Besides… —he whispered, lowering his voice even more, as if sharing a secret with the ash-laden breeze— …I think She was bothered when I touched that rapier. —A soft, almost youthful chuckle escaped him—. Jealous of a piece of purple metal? I suppose so. She probably thinks it's… vulgar. A borrowed tool, with another's mark. —He observed his own palms—. Unless it's my spear, or… that katana… it seems I can't touch anything else without the whole universe complaining and sending me a headache that lasts for days. —He shrugged, resigned—. Its time will come, I suppose. All in good time.

  The foolish smile, that perfectly carved mask of innocence and disconnect, resurfaced on his lips. He swept away the last vestiges of seriousness from his face with a finger, like one wiping dust from a piece of furniture.

  —And now… —he sang, looking around at the indistinguishable ruins— …where could these two have gotten to?

  The Refuge of Fear

  It took him an hour. It wasn't a complicated tracking; more of a stroll following a trail of panic frozen into the landscape.

  Elara's blood was his beacon. Not the common kind, but that dark stuff, laden with the residues of her overflowing power. Thick, blackish drops on the scorched grass, a stain on the grey stone, a thread snaking away from the urban hell, towards the sick forest bordering Oskara's outskirts. A path of pain and flight, painted in a color that did not belong to the dawn.

  He found them in a natural hollow, a depression in the ground hidden under the monstrous shell of an oak tree felled decades ago. Its roots, unearthed and twisted like the fingers of a drowned giant, formed a low, protective vault. A refuge of desperation.

  The scene inside had the stillness of a painting of defeat.

  Irina was sitting on the dirt floor, her back against the damp, rotten wood. All her military posture, that invisible armor of discipline and pride, had disintegrated. She was hunched over herself, hugging her knees with one arm. With the other, she clutched her longsword against her chest, not in a guard, but with a convulsive tenacity. She gripped it by the blade, near the guard, ignoring the edge biting into her palm through the torn gloves. It was the embrace of a shipwreck victim to a piece of wood, the gesture of a little girl who believes if she stays very still and holds her toy very tightly, the monsters won't see her.

  Her gaze was fixed on nothing, on a point in the air before her. Her blue eyes, once bright with determination, were empty. Washed clean by an internal deluge of horror. They reflected not the forest, nor the dawn, not even the dying Elara beside her. Only the recurring image, projected over and over on the canvas of her mind: Yoel. Yoel standing up, with that crooked, brave smile. Yoel being unmade. Turned into a red, wet stain on the stone. A muffled sound, a crack of bones, and then… nothing. A void where a captain, a friend, a beacon had once been.

  Beside her, on a military cloak spread out clumsily, lay Elara.

  She wasn't breathing; she was whispering. Each inhalation was a weak, raspy sound, followed by a dangerously long pause. The uncontrolled magic, that river of pure light she had channeled, had not been just a weapon. It had been a poison. It had shattered her body from within, burning veins, charring delicate magical tissues, cracking the very core of her being. Her skin, beneath the dirt and dried blood, had a ghostly, almost translucent pallor. On her neck and temples, veins stood out in an inky black color, like spilled ink under parchment. Irina had tried to do something, what she had learned in the field: she had torn strips from her own cloak to bandage the most obvious wounds, but the bandages were already soaked with a dark fluid that was not just blood. There was no ointment in the world, no healing herb, that could reverse that damage. She was going out. Slowly, but irrevocably. Like a star whose fuel is spent.

  Vael stopped at the edge of the hollow. He watched for a long minute. Despair had its own scent, sour and metallic, mingling with the smell of damp earth and vegetable rot.

  Then, he stepped on a dry branch on purpose.

  Crak.

  The sound was a gunshot in the sepulchral silence.

  Irina flinched violently, as if jolted with electricity. Her body tensed instantly, muscles ready for flight or fight. Her hand, still gripping the sword, raised it with a jerky, trembling motion. Her blue eyes, once empty, filled with blind, animal panic. She was ready to smash whatever approached.

  She saw the silhouette outlined against the greyish light filtering through the branches. She saw the familiar shape of the short spear hanging on his back. She saw the disheveled, dirty hair. And then, she saw the smile. That foolish, wide, incongruous smile that spread across Vael's face upon recognizing her.

  —Vael? —Irina's voice came out as a broken thread, a sound rough and cracked from disuse and fear.

  Vael raised a hand in a casual greeting.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  —Traffic was terrible —he said, in the tone of one commenting on the weather—. Dead people everywhere, rubble blocking the streets… a real mess. But I made it out. Just as well.

  Irina's sword fell from her hands. She didn't drop it; her fingers simply lost all strength. The weapon struck the dirt floor with a dull thud.

  There was no protocol. No wounded soldier's dignity that must not show weakness. There was only the raw instant of relief breaking dams.

  Irina got up swaying, as if her legs were made of jelly. And she ran. Not towards him, but into him. She threw herself against his chest, wrapping her arms around him with a desperate force that made Vael emit a small, surprised oof. She buried her face in his dirty, torn tunic, and everything she had contained—the terror, the loss, the crushing loneliness—burst forth in a torrent of dry, shuddering sobs that racked her whole body.

  —You came back… —she managed to articulate between gasps and tears—. You came back. You came back.

  The words were a mantra, a spell to convince herself it wasn't an illusion, that the world could still contain small, dirty miracles.

  Vael stood still for a second, his arms hanging at his sides. Then, with a clumsiness that seemed genuine, he patted her back, over the dented armor.

  —I said I was lucky, didn't I? —he murmured, and his voice was strangely soft—. The luck of the fool. Never fails.

  Irina pulled back a little, but didn't let go. She gripped his shoulders, her fingers digging into his flesh through the cloth. She scrutinized him with feverish intensity, searching for wounds, signs of a fight, of pain. She touched his arms, his shoulders, his face, like a blind woman trying to recognize a beloved face.

  —What happened? —she asked, and her red, swollen eyes begged for a story she could understand, could bear—. And the dragon? And… the Saint?

  Vael shook his head, a slow motion. The foolish smile faded, replaced by an expression of overacted fear, of peasant awe at a divine thunderclap. His green eyes widened.

  —I couldn't do anything, Irina —he said, and his voice took on a tone of fearful confession—. It was… madness from another world. They killed each other. In the end. The dragon, all shattered, fell from the sky like a mountain and crushed half the district. And she… I think she gave it the final blow right before. A purple bolt so bright it blinded me. When I could see again… there was only fire, dust, and a silence that split your ears. I… I ran. Ran without looking back. Hid until everything stopped shaking.

  Irina listened, swallowing every word. There was no analysis in her gaze, only a voracious need to believe. She needed to believe that the evil, the great monstrous evil, was dead. That there was an end. That Yoel's sacrifice, the horror they had lived through, had closure. She nodded, repeatedly, as if the mechanical motion could solidify the lie into truth.

  —Thank you… —she whispered, and the tears returned, but now they were of immense exhaustion—. Thank you for coming back.

  Then, as if an invisible string pulled taut again, reality slapped her in the face. Her gaze shifted from Vael to the motionless figure on the cloak. Her relief at his return soured instantly, turning into a pang of guilt for having forgotten, even for a moment.

  —Vael… —she said, and her voice regained a thread of urgency—. It's Elara. She won't wake up. I did… I did everything I could. The ointments from Yoel's kit, I pressed the wounds to stop the bleeding… but she's getting cold. I touch her and she's… cold. Like stone.

  The Blood Pact

  Night, true night, fell over the forest like a heavy, hole-riddled blanket. The orange glow of Oskara, still burning in the distance, was its only constellation, a sinister beacon tinting the tree trunks and the survivors' faces red.

  Irina, exhausted beyond physical limits and torn apart inside, had finally succumbed. Sleep had taken her like a thief, dragging her into a pit of uneasy nightmares. She lay on the ground, curled up, one hand still stretched toward her sword pommel, a reflex of wakefulness persisting in the unconscious.

  Vael was awake.

  He moved without a sound, like a shadow detaching from another. He approached where Elara lay. The noble, the daughter of dawn, was at the very edge of the precipice. Her chest rose in a minimal rictus, a grotesque imitation of breathing. Color had fled her lips completely. Death wasn't prowling; it had already set up camp around her.

  Vael sat down beside her, crossing his legs. He did not touch her. He only observed. His green eyes, which in the dark seemed phosphorescent, scrutinized the dying body with an analytical coldness, that of a surgeon evaluating a failed organ.

  —You're practically dead —he whispered, his voice so low not even the dead leaves would have heard it—. Your body, that temple of pride and light, couldn't bear the weight of your own ambition. You wanted to be the sun, and you burned from within. Ironic, isn't it?

  He leaned in a little. With an almost paternal gesture, he brushed away with his fingers a lock of black, sweaty hair stuck to Elara's pale forehead.

  —I liked —he continued, in the same tone of confidence— that you didn't refuse when I proposed my plan. A plan where you were the bait, the lightning meant to draw the thunder. Did you know, somewhere in the corner of that duty-and-honor-filled mind? Did you sense I was using you, that your life was a pawn on my board? Or was your faith in the light, in your cause, so great that any sacrifice, even your own, seemed just to you?

  He tilted his head, as if expecting an answer that would not come.

  —Well, it doesn't matter —he concluded, offhandedly—. You were useful. More than I expected. And you gave a good show. One last flash of glory before going out. For that alone… just for that moment of pure, desperate beauty… I won't let you die today.

  Vael raised his own left hand. He studied it under the faint reddish light of the horizon. Then, he brought his index finger to his mouth. It wasn't a dramatic bite. It was a precise, deliberate motion. He pressed the fingertip between his teeth and tore the skin with a dry tug. No blood welled up at first. Then, a single drop, thick, viscous, emerged. It was not the bright red of arterial blood, nor the dark of venous. It was an impossible color: a deep black that, catching the distant light of the fires, shimmered with flashes of purple and crimson, like a cursed opal. It had a strange density, and an ancient, alien sheen.

  He leaned over Elara.

  With a gentleness that contrasted grotesquely with the violence of the act, he placed his bloodied finger on the pale, parted lips of the girl. The dark drop settled on them, staining them a blackish red, like a rotten berry.

  Then, without haste but without hesitation, he leaned in closer.

  And he kissed Elara.

  It was not a kiss of love, nor passion, not even desire. It was a seal. An intimate and profane ceremony. Upon contact, Vael pushed. Not saliva, nor air. He pushed his blood, that single dark drop, and with it, an infinitesimal fraction, a mote of cosmic dust, of his own life force. It was not a gift. It was a loan. A seed.

  The effect was immediate and violent.

  Elara's body arched slightly, as if touched by a low-intensity electric current. A dry gasp escaped her throat, the first sound of her own making in hours. Then, a sudden heat, like an ember ignited in the center of her chest, spread through her veins. A pink color, vivid and shocking, flooded her cheeks all at once, like a sudden fever. Her breathing, earlier the whisper of a dying woman, became deep, rhythmic, powerful. On her skin, the smaller wounds—the cuts from the light's backlash, the abrasions from rubble—closed before Vael's eyes, leaving only faint pink lines, like months-old scars.

  Vael drew back. He wiped his mouth with the thumb of his uninjured hand, rubbing hard as if wanting to erase the taste. A slight expression of disgust, or perhaps weariness, crossed his face.

  —That should be enough —he murmured, addressing the unconscious girl—. Don't get used to it. It's not a favor. It's… an adjustment of accounts. Payment for the show.

  He returned to his spot, at the entrance to the hollow. He crossed his arms, leaned his back against the root of the fallen tree, and closed his eyes. He wasn't sleeping. He was waiting. Like a sentinel on the threshold of a kingdom only he could see, he awaited the dawn.

  The Day After

  The light of the sun, pale and unconvincing, finally filtered through the skeletal branches of the forest. It brought no warmth. It brought clarity, a grey and cruel revelation.

  Elara opened her eyes.

  It was not a gradual awakening. It was an emergence. She drew a deep, violent breath, as if she had been submerged in black waters for an eternity and finally broke the surface. She sat up with a jolt, her back straight, her eyes wide. Her hands flew to her chest, her arms, her face. She touched, felt, checked.

  Nothing hurt. There was no dull ache from bruises, nor sharp pain from fractures, nor burning from internal wounds. Only a strange, new sensation. She felt… heavy. As if her blood had suddenly been replaced by mercury. And beneath that heaviness, an energy pulsed. It wasn't the warm, familiar light of her inherited magic. It was something deeper, darker, more… vibrant. A subterranean current she did not recognize, but which resonated in every cell of her being with a disquieting power.

  She looked around, confused. The grey forest, the fallen tree, the smell of damp earth and ash. She saw Irina, still sleeping on the ground in a pose of total exhaustion. And then she saw Vael.

  He was sitting on a flat rock a few paces away, slowly chewing a wrinkled, dusty apple that he must have taken from some secret pocket or found on his way. He bit into it with a bucolic calm, utterly foreign to the survival setting.

  —Where…? —Elara's voice came out hoarse, rough from disuse—. Where are we? What… what happened?

  Vael looked at her. Without surprise. Then, without a word, he tossed her the apple. It wasn't a harsh throw; it was a gentle, precise arc. Elara caught it by reflex, her fingers closing around the cold fruit.

  —Good morning, Sleeping Beauty —said Vael, and the foolish smile was back, installed on his face like the centerpiece of a mask—. We're in the middle of nowhere, about a day's walk from what's left of Oskara. We won. Or we lost. Depends how you look at it. Do you care? The important thing is you're alive. And that apple is your breakfast. Eat it, it has vitamins.

  The voices woke Irina. The soldier sat up with a start, her hand on her sword hilt before her eyes were fully focused. Seeing Elara sitting, alive, conscious, with color in her face, the tension in her body shattered like glass. Her eyes, still swollen from crying and sleep, filled with fresh tears, these of a relief so profound it was almost painful.

  —Elara! —She didn't run this time. She crawled towards her, and embraced her with a force that made the noble's ribs creak—. By the gods! Last night… last night you were ice-cold. You weren't responding. I thought… I thought I'd lost you too.

  Elara returned the embrace, but her mind was elsewhere. On the strange sensation in her blood. On the void where pain should have been.

  —I… I thought I was dying too —she admitted, her voice firmer now—. I felt how… something was going out inside me. As if my own light was consuming me. —She looked at her hands, healed, strong—. But now… I feel different. Not just better. Different.

  —It's the country air —Vael interjected, standing up and stretching with a loud groan—. They say it works miracles. Or maybe you just had a bad night. Wars are like that, they give you an existential hangover.

  Irina wiped her tears with the back of her hand, a brusque, military gesture. Doing so, she seemed to recover, in fits and starts, something of her former bearing. The leader, even though her armor was dented, her spirit cracked, and her unit reduced to three lost souls.

  —We have to move —she announced, her voice regaining a thread of authority—. Oskara has fallen. The smell of blood and death will attract more things, alive or dead. The road East, towards the Iron Mountains, is our only option. The last bastions of the Empire are there. There… we can report. We can… —she stopped herself, the word 'avenge' dying on her lips, replaced by a somber pragmatism— …we can regroup.

  An uncomfortable silence fell. The name floated in the air, unspoken but present in every thought.

  —And Captain Yoel? —Elara asked at last, and her voice trembled slightly, fearing the answer but needing the certainty, however brutal.

  Irina lowered her gaze to the ground, to her dirty hands. Her knuckles whitened as she clenched her fists. Vael looked away, towards the path that vanished among the trees, his expression inscrutable.

  The silence stretched. It was more eloquent than any speech. It was a wall, a tomb of unspoken words.

  —I understand —Elara whispered, and she squeezed the apple in her hand so hard the skin cracked, and a bit of its pale flesh showed.

  Vael picked up his short spear from where he'd leaned it against the ground. He spun it once in his hand, a familiar, almost idle motion. Then he looked at the path stretching before them, a trail of dirt and roots lost in the morning mist. A refugee's road, of flight, of uncertainty. A road that smelled of ash and distant rain.

  —Well —said Vael, and his tone was light, as if proposing a stroll—, off we go. If we stand around here too long, I have a feeling they're going to start charging us rent. Or something worse.

  The trio, a trio no longer the same as before, set off. Irina in front, her gaze fixed on the horizon, bearing the weight of responsibility and loss. Elara in the center, walking with a renewed strength she did not understand, feeling the strange heaviness in her veins, the half-eaten apple still in her hand. And Vael in the rear, with his ungainly stride and his foolish smile, his green eyes scanning the forest, the sky, the road ahead, and the two figures preceding him.

  They were alive. They had survived the night of the Saint and the Dragon. But they were no longer the same. And Elara, unknowingly, feeling it only as a distant echo and a strange heaviness, now carried deep within her being, coursing through her veins alongside the inherited light of the Vanes, a single, dark drop of Nothingness.