Dawn bled a pale, watery light through the tower's fissure, doing little to warm the chamber's deep-seated chill. Dean had talked through the night, his voice a low, steady rumble outlining the grim new geography of Asterfell. Kora's patrols were most concentrated around the old capital ruins, he said, like flies on a week-old corpse. The southern passes were crawling with them. Their best bet, the only path that wasn't a direct line into an ambush, was to cut through the heart of the Red Plains themselves, skirting the Blighted Woods to the north.
Retour listened, saying little. The thrumming in his skull had faded to a dull background ache, a constant companion. Ile occasionally interjected with a precise question about patrol rotations or supply lines, his quill occasionally scratching in his ledger. The dynamic was set: Dean the shield, Ile the map, and Retour the storm they contained.
They moved out as the sun fully crested the horizon, the crimson grass casting long, bloody shadows. Dean took point, his movements economical and silent, his eyes constantly scanning the flat, open terrain. The plains were deceptively still. The only sound was the whisper of the wind through the grass and the crunch of their boots on the dry soil. Retour felt exposed, every instinct screaming that they were being watched. The memory of the bandits, the certainty that they would talk, was a stone in his gut.
Ile walked beside him, his gaze not on the horizon but on Retour himself. "The residual energy around you has diminished significantly since last night," he noted, his tone clinical. "The physical cost appears to be proportional to the scale of the manifestation. A useful data point for predicting your operational limits."
Retour grunted, not looking at him. "Call it 'fatigue', scholar. It's simpler."
"I prefer accuracy over simplicity," Ile replied. "Fatigue is vague. A quantifiable energy drain is a variable that can be accounted for."
They walked for hours, the ruins growing slowly larger on the horizon, a dark scar against the sky. As they neared the outskirts of the shattered city, the air changed. It grew heavier, thicker, and the metallic taste Retour associated with the mist became a constant presence on his tongue. The ground underfoot was littered with not just debris, but with bones, picked clean and bleached white by sun and scouring winds.
Dean halted, raising a clenched fist. He pointed toward a structure that had somehow withstood the worst of the cataclysm—a low, circular building of black basalt, its domed roof partially collapsed but its walls standing strong. The Royal Library.
"The patrols avoid this place," Dean said, his voice hushed. "They say it's cursed. That the mist still clings to the stones."
"Superstition," Ile stated, but a rare spark of genuine interest lit his eyes. "The building's construction is unique. Basalt is resistant to elemental decay. The knowledge that might have survived inside... it could be invaluable."
Retour felt a pull, a deep, unsettling resonance that seemed to originate from the center of his chest. It was a low thrum, a vibration that called to the mist sleeping in his veins. "We go in," he said, the decision made before he'd even fully formed the thought.
Dean looked uneasy but nodded. "Quickly, then."
The great bronze doors were sealed shut, fused by some immense heat. A smaller side entrance, a servant's passage, was half-blocked by rubble. They squeezed through one by one, into a cavernous darkness that smelled of old parchment, dust, and that same, faint coppery scent.
The main hall was a tomb of knowledge. Shelves lay splintered and toppled, their contents scattered across the cracked marble floor in a snowdrift of parchment and leather. Murals depicting Asterfell's history were scorched and blistered, the faces of kings and queens melted into grotesque masks. Retour's breath caught in his throat. This was his history, rendered into ruin.
The pull grew stronger, leading him past the devastation, toward a secluded alcove at the rear of the hall, hidden behind a collapsed bookcase. Ile and Dean followed, the scholar already pocketing small, half-burned scrolls with a collector's avarice.
In the alcove, set into a stone pedestal that was completely untouched by the destruction around it, was a book.
It was bound in a material that looked like aged, dark leather but seemed to absorb the faint light, reflecting nothing. Its cover was embossed with a single, stark symbol: the same lion sigil from Retour's clasp, but here its single eye was a polished cabochon of deep, liquid crimson that seemed to swirl with an inner light. This was the Red Codex.
Retour reached for it, his hand moving almost of its own volition.
"My Prince, wait—" Dean began, a warning in his voice.
But it was too late. Retour's fingers closed around the cover.
A jolt, like grabbing a live wire, shot up his arm. The world dissolved into a scream of pure, silent energy. Visions, sharp and painful, stabbed into his mind.
His father, King Lorian, young and strong, his hands on this very book, his eyes blazing with a power that made the air hum.
A battlefield drenched in crimson mist, enemies dissolving not into blood, but into dust.
His father again, older, face lined with fear and regret, sealing the book away, his voice a desperate whisper. "It is too great a price. The crown is not worth this."
Then, a final, searing image: the throne room, the red mist erupting, not from the sky, but from his father's own body, a willing sacrifice to contain it.
The book was not just a record. It was a vessel. A prison. And a key.
Retour gasped, snatching his hand back as if burned. The book fell open on the pedestal. The pages were not paper, but a strange, thin vellum, and they were blank. Utterly, perfectly blank.
Ile was at his side in an instant. "What did you see?"
Retour could only shake his head, his heart hammering against his ribs. The headache was back, a vicious spike driven between his eyes. "It's... it's not a book. It's an echo. It showed me... the truth."
Dean stood guard at the alcove's entrance, his face grim. "We should not linger here. This place is wrong."
Ile, however, was staring at the blank pages, his expression one of intense fascination. "Fascinating. The knowledge isn't read. It's experienced. A memetic hazard. A direct neural interface." He looked at Retour. "Your lineage is the cipher. It does not speak to just anyone."
A new sound echoed through the vast hall then, pulling them from the Codex's thrall. Not the wind. Not the settling of ruins.
It was the distinct, metallic ring of a sword being drawn from its scabbard.
From behind a toppled pillar, a figure emerged. Then another. And another. Six of them, clad in the clean, efficient armor of Kora's personal guard. They moved with a quiet, deadly confidence, fanning out to block the only exit.
The leader, a woman with a severe, sharp-featured face and cold eyes, smiled. It didn't reach her eyes.
"The Usurper sends his regards," she said, her voice cutting through the dusty silence. "And a request. He wants his book back."