The derelict watchtower stood as a broken sentinel against the bruised purple of the twilight sky, its silhouette a jagged wound in the horizon. The top third had long since collapsed, leaving a stump of black basalt that seemed to absorb the fading light. Ile moved with an unnerving certainty, leading them to a narrow fissure at the tower's base, almost completely obscured by a thicket of brambles whose thorns were unusually long and sharp, as if the very flora here had turned malevolent. Pushing through the painful barrier, they entered a circular chamber that the world had forgotten.
The air inside was a tomb's breath—cold, still, and thick with the scent of dry decay, old stone, and something else, a faint, coppery tang that might have been imagination or memory. Debris was frozen in time: the splintered skeleton of a supply crate, a rusted helm filled with dirt and dead insects, the fragile bones of some small creature picked clean in a corner. A single beam of moonlight, pale and sickly, pierced a crack in the ceiling, cutting the darkness like a blade.
Retour slid down the cold wall, the rough stone scraping against his back. He let his head fall back, closing his eyes. The adrenaline from the plains had faded, leaving behind a deep, resonant exhaustion and the familiar, throbbing pain behind his eyes, the curse's receipt for its brief freedom. He could feel the residual energy humming just beneath his skin, a dormant serpent.
Across the chamber, Ile was a study in efficient motion. He cleared a small, level area with his boot, unslung his satchel, and withdrew a single, leather-bound ledger and a silver-tipped quill. He did not record events in a diary; he began sketching with clinical precision—diagrams of the mist's tendril-like behavior, arrows noting its reaction times, marginalia on its apparent viscosity. The scratch of the quill was the only sound, a tiny clock measuring the silence.
"Documenting your specimen already?" Retour's voice was rough, abraded by fatigue and suppressed rage.
"Forming a baseline hypothesis," Ile corrected, not looking up. His focus was absolute. "The phenomenon is triggered by emotion, a limbic response. Yet its manifestations show tactical awareness. It distinguished between a held weapon and a projectile. It chose to defend a non-combatant. This implies a layer of cognitive processing separate from your conscious mind. The question is whether it is a parasitic intelligence or a latent aspect of your own psyche given form. The implications are... profound."
Before Retour could voice the sharp retort forming on his tongue, the sound came. It was not the wind moaning through the tower's heights. It was not the scuttle of a rodent. It was the deliberate, muffled scuff of a boot sole on stone, from the level above them.
The change was instantaneous. Retour was on his feet, his short sword sliding from its scabbard without a whisper of sound. Every line of his body was taut, the weary prince replaced by a cornered animal. Ile, in turn, smoothly capped his inkwell, tucked the ledger into his robes, and melted into the deepest pool of shadow in the chamber, his grey form dissolving into the stone. The two of them, so opposed in nature, became a single organism of survival, holding their breath in the oppressive quiet.
A figure dropped through the hole in the ceiling, landing in a low, fluid crouch that spoke of a lifetime of training and hard combat. Moonlight glinted off the polished steel of a full great-helm, etching the narrow eye-slit in silver. The newcomer wore the practical, segmented plate-and-leather armor of a royal scout, but it was the armor of a bygone era—worn, scarred, and meticulously maintained, not the standardized kit of Rotard's new regime. In his gauntleted hands, he held not a sword, but a heavy, iron-shod cudgel, a weapon of brutal, pragmatic force.
The scout rose to his full height, his helmeted head turning slowly as he scanned the chamber. His gaze swept over the shadow where Ile hid, then locked onto Retour. He took a single, heavy step forward, his grip shifting on the cudgel. Retour adjusted his stance, the point of his sword rising. He felt the red mist stir in response to the palpable threat, a heat beginning to prickle at the base of his spine.
Then the scout's gaze fell. It dropped from Retour's face to the clasp securing his travel-stained cloak. The lion. The cracked amber eye. The scout froze. His entire body went rigid. He took another step, slower this time, his focus collapsing entirely onto that small piece of tarnished silver. He leaned forward, as if unable to believe what he was seeing.
"That..." The word was muffled by the helmet, but the shock in it was unmistakable, a tremor that resonated in the still air. "That is the sigil... the personal sigil of King Lorian." His head snapped up, the helmet's gaze burning into Retour's face, scanning, searching, comparing the man before him to a memory a decade old. "The line of the jaw... By the forgotten gods, the eyes..."
In a movement that was both swift and filled with a sudden, desperate reverence, the scout reached up, seized the helmet, and pulled it off. The face revealed was that of a man in his late forties, weathered and beaten by the elements, a long, pale scar cutting through his stubble from cheek to jaw. His hair was cropped short, grey thick at the temples. But his eyes—a clear, steady blue—were wide, staring at Retour with a hope so profound it looked like agony.
"Prince Retour?" he breathed, the title a sacred, forgotten thing. He dropped to one knee, the impact of his armored leg a dull thud on the stone. The cudgel clattered from his loosened grip, rolling away. He bowed his head. "Your Highness."
Retour did not move, his sword still held between them. A decade of survival was a scream in his veins. "On your feet. That name holds no power here. Who are you?"
The man looked up, his expression raw, stripped bare. "Dean, Your Highness. I was Knight-Captain of your father's Raven Guard. I was... I was on the western wall when the mist came. I saw the palace engulfed. I heard the screams." His voice broke, the soldier's discipline crumbling under the weight of the memory. "We were told you all perished. They said the bloodline was extinguished. They said the hope was gone."
Ile emerged from the shadows like a phantom, his sharp eyes analyzing Dean's posture, the dilation of his pupils, the unfeigned tremor in his hands. "The physiological markers are consistent with a state of profound psychological shock and genuine recognition. The probability of this being a performance is statistically negligible."
Dean glanced at Ile, confusion flashing across his face for a moment before his attention returned wholly to Retour, pleading. "I failed. I could not breach the inner keep. The mist... it was a wall. I have carried that failure like a second skin every day since." He gestured to his worn armor, a testament to his exile. "I serve no new master. I survive. I watch the plains. I wait for... for a sign. For a chance to atone."
Retour slowly, deliberately, lowered his sword. The man's grief was a mirror of his own, too authentic, too deeply etched to be a lie. It was a language he understood perfectly. "The kingdom is dust and bones, Dean. The title is a ghost. Get up."
Dean rose, his movements stiff with a pain that was more than physical. "The kingdom is its people, My Prince. And the title is your blood. It is all that remains. My sword, my life, they are yours. As they should have always been." His eyes, old and tired, took in Retour's simple, worn clothes, the deep shadows under his eyes, the air of deep-seated weariness that clung to him. "You cannot stay here. Kora's patrols are swarming the southern passes like hornets. They are hunting for something. The chatter among the outcasts says it's a person of immense value to the Usurper."
"They are hunting for me," Retour stated, the words flat and final.
Dean's face hardened, the grief and shock coalescing into a soldier's resolve, a purpose rediscovered. "Then they will have to go through me first. It would be an honor. I know places, My Prince. Loyalists who remember the old days. They have been waiting in the shadows, hoping for a spark. Let me be your shield. Let me fulfill the oath I failed to keep."
Retour looked from Dean's fervent, desperate loyalty to Ile's cool, calculating curiosity. A shield and a strategist. A weapon and a guide. The shattered pieces of a court were assembling around him in this ruined tower, drawn by his blood and his curse. He gave a single, sharp nod, a decision that felt like both a salvation and a sentence.
"The past is a corpse, Dean. Do not call me 'Prince'. My name is Retour." He slid his sword back into its scabbard. The red mist, its purpose served, settled back into a dormant slumber. "Now. Tell me everything you know about Kora's patrol routes."