Just before noon, still dressed in the same attire, Michael stood before King Roland, Marshal Halden, Prince Elion, Tower Master Nelius, and the court mages Astrum and Alana. His pale face was hidden by his mask as he made every effort to hide his weakened state.

  “Ready?” Michael asked.

  Two portals hovered beside him, the surrounding air subtly drawn inward.

  At the king’s nod, Michael stepped through the first. It sealed behind him. The elites of Valoria followed through the second.

  Michael emerged high above the battlefield, suspended in open air before the advancing army of Cendros. Moments later, a broad platform materialized to his right as the Valorian delegation appeared-elevated, distant, positioned as witnesses rather than participants.

  Before the soldiers below could react, Michael opened a narrow vertical portal beneath his feet and another beside his shoulder. A corded microphone came into view as he pulled his hand out of the second portal.

  “Surrender,” his voice boomed in Common, amplified far beyond any natural limit.

  “This is your first and final warning.”

  The effect was immediate. Formations tightened. Mages raised barriers. Soldiers scrambled for command.

  “Is that an artifact?” Nelius murmured from the platform, his voice awed. “I’ve only heard something like this once… when Etrix unveiled his sound arcana.”

  Two figures broke from the enemy lines.

  One carried a harpoon, with several more strapped across his back. Without slowing, he hurled it.

  Michael had time to inhale.

  The weapon vanished into a portal before it reached him.

  Another portal opened. Michael’s hand slipped through it, fingers tightening around the trigger of the sniper rifle anchored back at his estate.

  He tried to kill you, Michael thought. And killed many others before.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Vaelric’s head vanished in a mist of red.

  His brother, Valeth, froze-just long enough to watch the body collapse at his feet. Rage twisted his features as water surged upward, enclosing him in a spinning, translucent sphere that lifted him from the ground towards Michael.

  “Water Dragon!” Valeth roared.

  The spell erupted forward, an immense, serpentine construct of churning water, its head the size of a small house, beautiful and horrifying as it flew diagonally upward toward Michael.

  Fear flickered through him. I just need to open it for less than a second. He assured himself, as his core was full of mana.

  Let’s see how your magic stacks up against my portals.

  Michael opened a portal several meters ahead of him, angled directly into the oncoming spell, while another took the column of water that would have hit him without anyone noticing.

  A two-meter-wide jet of water detonated outward.

  Not a blast, but a short lance that appeared in half a second.

  The dragon was pierced as if it were fog. The spell unraveled instantly, its structure collapsing before it could resist. Valeth never finished processing what he was seeing. The jet struck him a heartbeat later.

  There was no scream.

  Michael drew heavy breaths as his core settled half-empty. The water slammed into the ground, carving a shallow crater and sending shock vibrations rippling through the front ranks. Soldiers stumbled, boots slipping in mud and near-freezing water, which dragged several of them backward.

  Silence followed.

  No one moved. No one breathed too loudly.

  From the observation platform, the Valorian delegation stood frozen. They had barely finished processing the precision execution of a Tier Four aura user before witnessing something worse. A Tier Four mage erased by his own element, overwhelmed so completely that resistance had never been possible. And all this without a drop of mana.

  Power. Control. Precision.

  Michael raised the microphone again after catching his breath.

  “Surrender,” he said calmly. “Or you will suffer the same fate.”

  Spears clattered to the ground. Staves followed.

  “Return to your homeland,” Michael continued. “In three days, I will arrive at your gates to claim authority over Cendros and undo the damage the Thorn Brothers left behind. Resist, and today will seem merciful by comparison.”

  He returned the microphone. And disappeared, with the king and his people following from their own platform into their own portal.

  For several long seconds, no one moved. Spears lay half-buried in the mud. Staves rested where they had fallen, slick with cold water. The only sounds were labored breathing and the faint slosh of settling runoff.

  A soldier finally swallowed and looked to his left. Then, to his right.

  “They’re… gone,” someone said. The words came out hoarse, disbelieving.

  Another man laughed, a sharp, brittle sound that died almost immediately. “He killed them,” he muttered. “Both of them. Just like that.”

  No one argued.

  A mage knelt near where Valeth had stood, hands shaking as he touched the wet ground. The water pooled there with a piece of the staff of Valeth protruding from the mud.

  “There was no mana…” As the other mages realised, they were only frightened more, as the element they were most proficient in, which made them feel safe, annihilated the tyrant.

  Seconds passed

  At last, someone picked up a spear, not to raise it, but to lean on it as they turned back toward the road home.

  Three days.

  No one said it out loud, but everyone was already counting.

  ◇◇◇

  8 Hours earlier

  What in the hell is going on?

  Aqeel didn’t say it aloud. He rarely did. Words had a way of becoming obligations, and obligations were exactly what had led him here-half-robed, staff in hand, hurrying through streets that should have been quiet at this hour.

  War. Again.

  The Tower Master’s order had been blunt: All Tier Three mages are to assemble at the eastern road immediately. No explanation. No council. Just urgency edged with irritation, as if the world itself had inconvenienced him.

  Some arcanist, the Tower Master had said. A provocation. An insult.

  One man.

  Aqeel frowned as he walked faster. How could a single arcanist work the Thorn Tower into this kind of frenzy? Towers did not mobilize for lone offenders. Kingdoms did not bleed coin and manpower for rumors.

  Yet here they were.

  The army had already moved ahead, banners snapping in the morning wind as if eager for justification. Aqeel and the other mages were forced to catch up, boots striking stone in an uneven rhythm. He passed through the lower districts on instinct rather than choice, and the sight tightened something unpleasant in his chest.

  More tents than last season. More hollow-eyed men and women wrapped in rags that once might have been decent cloaks. Children are too quiet for their age.

  This had once been a coastal jewel, a city that traders sought, with ships lining the docks from dawn to dusk. Now it had been bled dry. Taxes rose. Coin vanished upward. Demands increased while protections thinned.

  All under the rule of a king who shared blood with the Tidal Tower’s master.

  Aqeel’s grip tightened on his staff.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  They called it order. Stability. Necessary sacrifice.

  He remembered the night it changed. A feast that never ended. Gates sealed “for security.” Music muffled the screams while the previous king’s bloodline was erased room by room. Accused of treason before he could speak, the old Tower Master died that same night.

  The Thorn Brothers had called it salvation.

  Aqeel had called it a trap, silently, and kept breathing.

  Ahead, the road curved toward the open fields where the army was set to regroup. Beyond them lay Valoria, once a rival kingdom, now a diminished one. Aqeel had seen its king nearly die during the Thorn Brothers’ schemes, his power broken along with it. Stripped of its mines, its most significant source of wealth, Valoria was supposed to be weak.

  Aqeel slowed his pace, letting the thought settle.

  Infiltration. Provocation. That was the word the Thorn Brothers favored when they wanted blood without admitting hunger. It sounded cleaner than conquest. Smarter than greed.

  But Valoria was wounded, not foolish.

  No weakened kingdom risked open war without cause, certainly not one stripped of its mines, its coffers already thin, its king still alive only by chance. Aqeel knew that much. Everyone who understood power did. Desperation bred caution, not recklessness.

  Which meant the provocation was convenient.

  He could almost hear the Tower Master’s voice, sharp with certainty, declaring the offense intolerable, the response unavoidable, as if the decision had been forced upon them rather than chosen.

  Cendros had been drained dry. Aqeel didn’t need ledgers to know it. He could see it in the streets, in the hollowed faces, in the way soldiers’ armor went unrepaired and mages were asked to do more than in any other tower.

  A kingdom could only bleed for so long before it stopped producing.

  Valoria, weakened and isolated, was an answer. A fresh source of coins. A new people to exploit.

  A place to leech from once Cendros had nothing left to give.

  Aqeel’s jaw tightened.

  They weren’t marching because they had been wronged.

  They were marching because the Thorns had finished feeding here and needed somewhere else to sink their teeth.

  After finally catching up with the primary force and the assembled mage contingent, the army made camp for the night. Tents rose in uneven rows as daylight faded, discipline giving way to fatigue. Aqeel settled near a small fire with several other mages, staff resting across his knees.

  The conversation never fully formed. It lingered instead, murmurs and half-spoken thoughts drifting between the fires like restless spirits. Some spoke quietly of fleeing once the campaign ended. Others wondered whether they would survive long enough to return to unfinished research, or if they would ever see their families again. A few dared to hope that the rope around their necks might loosen once Valoria was taken.

  Yet beneath it all lay a more profound fear.

  Not of Valoria, but of the Thorn Brothers themselves.

  The army marched with only a handful of fledgling Tier Three mages and aura users, while the Thorns commanded advanced Tier Four mastery in both magic and blade. Power so imbalanced did not inspire confidence; it bred silence.

  Everyone knew why Valoria had been chosen. Its king was no longer fit for battle. Its mines, once the backbone of its knights, were gone. A recent drought had left the realm weakened and overextended. Valeth himself had claimed their informant confirmed a massive mana expenditure at Valoria’s magic tower, the magnitude of which marked a kingdom at its most vulnerable.

  All the signs pointed in the same direction.

  Valoria was not an enemy to be challenged.

  It was the prey.

  Yet, why would such a weakened prey provoke Cendros, who strengthened from Valeria’s mines and who was mostly unaffected by the drought?

  Something wasn’t right. Yet all Aqeel could do was wait for it all to pass.

  The next morning

  Aqeel woke before the horns.

  It wasn’t discipline that pulled him from sleep, but absence, the lack of the usual pressure that came with marching under the Thorn Brothers’ shadow. No mana demand pressed against his senses. No sharp-edged commands rippling through the camp. Just cold air and the inaudible murmur of soldiers stirring.

  That, more than anything, unsettled him.

  The army moved out at first light. Columns reformed. Banners rose. The Thorn Brothers took their place at the front as they always did-Vaelric armored and confident, Valeth walking with staff in hand through the morning mist, water droplets hovering alongside him as if the world itself bent to accommodate him.

  They did not look worried.

  They looked eager.

  Aqeel rode with the mage contingent, senses stretched outward as habit demanded. Scouts had returned with nothing. No border skirmish. No probing spells. No warning flares from Valoria’s tower.

  Nothing.

  They were still a full day’s march from the Valorian line, yet the road ahead lay open-too open. Fields untouched. Villages abandoned but not burned. No traps. No fortifications were hastily raised.

  It was wrong.

  “They should have done something by now,” a junior mage muttered beside him, barely audible over the march.

  Aqeel didn’t answer. He was thinking the same thing.

  A weakened kingdom did not leave its approach undefended. Even desperation lashed out. Even dying beasts snapped.

  Ahead, Vaelric laughed at something Valeth said, the sound carrying easily. The brothers walked as if already victorious, already dividing spoils that had yet to be taken.

  Not unseen, but untouchable. Above consequence. That was how they had ruled Cendros, making resistance feel pointless before it even formed.

  The march continued smoothly, almost comfortably, boots finding rhythm, banners steady in the wind.

  Too smooth.

  Aqeel had just convinced himself that his unease was paranoia when the air spoke.

  “Surrender.”

  The word came from the heavens, as if commanded by a dragon.

  Aqeel flinched as the sound crashed down on the column, amplified beyond reason, carrying without echo or direction, no strain. Horses screamed. Several soldiers stumbled, hands reaching for their weapons.

  He spun, searching instinctively for the spell.

  There was none.

  Heads tilted upward in unison.

  A man stood in the sky.

  Not levitating. Not borne by wind or construct. Standing on a platform that seemed to be cut out of reality to hold him. Two other distortions hovered beside him, oval and dark, the space around them bending inward like stretched glass.

  And to his right, another platform.

  Figures stood upon it in polished armor and formal robes. Valorian colors. Nobles. Mages.

  Witnesses.

  Aqeel’s breath caught.

  This wasn’t an ambush.

  It was a demonstration.

  “This is your first and final warning.”

  The voice rolled again, impossibly clear, impossibly calm. Aqeel felt it press through him, not as mana, but as intent. His senses scraped uselessly against the phenomenon. He just spoke into an artifact in his hand, which caused a distortion, yet the sound came from another entirely.

  Someone near the front shouted an order.

  Too late.

  Vaelric moved.

  Of course he did.

  The Thorn warrior started walking forward and hurled his harpoon skyward, aura flaring as the weapon cut cleanly through the air… and vanished.

  A distortion appeared to take it away and leave just as fast.

  Gone.

  Aqeel’s heart stuttered.

  Another distortion opened near the man in the sky as he put his hand into it.

  The sound that followed was not magic.

  It was thunder. Yet it came from below, from Velric.

  Vaelric collapsed without a head.

  For half a breath, the world refused to understand what it had seen.

  Then Valeth screamed.

  Aqeel braced instinctively as water surged upward, spiraling, condensing, shaping into a giant dragon, tier four magic. Mastery refined over decades.

  It lasted less than a second.

  Out of nowhere, a column of water appeared, moving faster than any arrow and barely acknowledging the water dragon in its path.

  The water lanced downward, focused, merciless. Valeth vanished beneath it, erased by his own element before he could even react as a crater in the ground.

  Aqeel staggered as the impact shook the ground. Soldiers fell. Lines dissolved. The front ranks broke without a single enemy touching them.

  Silence followed, thick and absolute.

  Aqeel dropped to one knee, hands pressed into soaked earth, his senses screaming.

  There was no mana.

  None.

  The man in the sky spoke again.

  “Surrender. Or you will suffer the same fate.”

  Weapons fell.

  Not thrown.

  Dropped.

  Aqeel did not remember releasing his staff.

  The army stood frozen, leaderless, staring at the absence.

  Three days, the voice had said.

  Aqeel stared upward, heart pounding.

  The Thorn Brothers had never been invincible.

  But whatever that being was, it felt utterly beyond reach.

  The march back was nothing like the advance. No banners flew. No cadence was called. The army folded in on itself, a long, silent procession moving away from a battlefield that no longer felt real. Boots dragged through mud and shallow water, and no one spoke above a whisper. Orders, when they came, were unnecessary; everyone already knew the direction home, such as it was.

  Aqeel walked with the others, staff in hand, thoughts heavy. They had families waiting behind the walls of Cendros: parents, partners, children who depended on the fragile protection the towers still provided. Running was not an option. There was nowhere to go that the kingdom’s reach, or that being’s reach, would not find them. Even if someone tried, three days would not have been enough time to reach their families and flee.

  By the time they reached the city, the truth had settled like cold iron: escape was impossible. They would be there when he arrived. Whatever came next could not be avoided by distance or defiance.

  They could only endure and hope that obedience, this time, would be enough.

  When they returned to Cendros, the city did not erupt.

  It held its breath.

  The gates opened without ceremony. Word had already spread faster than the army could march. People lined the streets in uneasy silence, searching the ranks for wounds that were not there, for signs of victory that did not exist. The soldiers looked whole. Untouched. And somehow… broken.

  That contradiction told the story better than any herald could.

  Those who had openly tied themselves to the Thorn Brothers understood immediately. Some tried to flee before nightfall. A few succeeded. Most did not. They were seized quietly, by mages who had endured years of impossible demands, by officers who had buried men to satisfy spectacle. There were no executions. No cheers. Just containment. Cells filled with people who had mistaken proximity to power for safety.

  Aqeel did not interfere.

  He did not need to.

  Chaos came in smaller ways. Shouted arguments in the council chamber. Closed doors. Broken routines. But no riots. No uprising. The returning army had seen something the city had not, and the weight of that knowledge pressed outward, muting panic before it could take root.

  Hopelessness, Aqeel realized, was stabilizing.

  Less than a day remained.

  He spent it gathering those who could still be trusted-or at least those pragmatic enough to understand reality-senior mages. Veteran knights. People whose loyalty had always been to Cendros, not to the Thorns. They met behind sealed doors, not to plot resistance but to decide on the presentation.

  When the time came, Aqeel stood at the head of a small delegation. Shackled figures knelt behind them, the remnants of Thorn loyalists, eyes hollow with the sudden absence of protection.

  An offering.

  Aqeel waited near the gates of the castle, staff grounded, posture straight.

  And Aqeel intended to be standing there when he did, ready to speak for a kingdom that had finally run out of lies.

  The sun stood at its highest point.

  Shadows had finished shrinking, pressed close to the feet of men and stone alike, when the air tightened.

  Aqeel felt it before he saw it.

  The wind was drawing towards the distortion that appeared almost instantly. Darker than any hidden room, nothing could be seen within it. Gooseflesh rippled along his arms, the same instinctive warning that had struck him on the road to Valoria.

  Around him, the delegation stilled.

  Someone inhaled sharply.

  Memory crashed into him all at once.

  The battlefield.

  The sky.

  The voice.

  A figure stepped through.

  He wore dark, fitted layers unlike any garb Aqeel had ever seen. The cloth lay close to his body, neither flowing nor armored. Devoid of any sigil or house-mark.

  No cloak to declare station, nor crown to signify rule. His face was hidden behind a smooth black mask, featureless except for its hollow openings where his eyes should have been. Revealing nothing about his emotions or intent.

  The distortion closed behind him without a sound.

  No guards advanced.

  No spells rose.

  No one spoke.

  Aqeel lowered himself to one knee, not in worship, but in recognition.

  This was not an arrival.

  It was confirmation.

  And as the figure took a single step forward, Aqeel knew with cold certainty that whatever authority remained in Cendros had just ended.