The wind that swept across the plains toward Elaron carried the taste of rust and forgotten prayers. The fortress city rose from the flatlands like a grim promise of iron and stone, its high walls not merely built but grown from the landscape, fused with the bedrock beneath. They were not just defensive structures; they were a statement of Rotard's permanence. From their concealed position in a jagged outcrop of basalt a mile to the north, Retour watched the tiny, ant-like figures of guards marching along the distant battlements. The scale of it was daunting. This was not a skirmish in a gully or a defense of a hidden refuge. This was a declaration of war.
Oleik stood beside him, a statue of calm calculation. His masked face was turned toward the city, absorbing details. "The northern gate," he stated, his voice a low, filtered hum. "It is the oldest section. The stone around the arch is cracked from settling. The ironwood of the gate itself is thick, but the hinges are set into that compromised masonry. It is the linchpin." He traced a gloved finger in the dust on the rock before them, sketching lines of approach. "Dean will lead the main assault team. The bulk of our forces will create a diversion here, at the southern walls—enough noise and fury to make them believe it is the primary thrust. But conventional force will not break that gate, not before their reserves from the central keep can respond."
Retour didn't need to look to feel the weight of the stares from the others in the cramped hide—Ciski's fierce hope, Roty's simmering resentment, the grim determination of the other chosen fighters. The unspoken conclusion was a physical pressure in the air, heavier than the Red Codex tucked against his side. The mist within him responded to it, not with a raging fire, but with a cold, deep-sea current of anticipation that left a chill in his soul.
"Every time I call upon it," Retour said, his voice barely audible over the moaning wind, "it feels like I am scooping out a handful of myself and tossing it into a furnace. There is a... numbness that follows. A hollowness. It's not fatigue. It's erosion. As if the person I was is being slowly worn away by the tide of what I carry."
"That is the currency of the throne's power, Prince," Oleik replied, his tone devoid of comfort or judgment. It was a simple statement of accounting. "The ledger is clear. Without Elaron, we are a rumor, a nuisance to be stamped out at the Usurper's leisure. With it, we become a rival power. A nation. The calculation is, and has always been, a simple one. The cost is irrelevant; only the purchase matters."
That night, wrapped in a thin blanket against the creeping cold, Retour found no peace. The camp around him was a pocket of tense silence, filled with the soft sounds of weapons being checked and the whispered prayers of men and women facing their possible end. He sat apart, the Codex a leaden weight on his lap. He opened it, and the world fell away, replaced by visions that were no longer mere glimpses but full-bodied, sensory traps.
One path: A gentle sun warmed his skin. He stood on a balcony of a rebuilt palace, looking over a city alive with the sounds of commerce and life, not the silence of ruin. Dean, his hair shot through with grey, stood beside him, a quiet pride in his eyes. In the fields beyond the walls, the crimson grass had given way to green shoots, and the very air tasted clean. The mist within him was a dormant warmth, a loyal hound sleeping at his feet.
The other path: A psychic shriek tore through the connection. An endless, blood-red desert stretched under a bruised and weeping sky. A monstrous effigy of himself, a being of pure, swirling vermilion mist with his own face stretched into a rictus of agony, sat upon a throne of fused skeletons and shattered helms. And at the base of that grotesque dais lay the broken, lifeless forms of the twins from the Valley, their silver hair fanned out like broken halos, their luminous eyes dull and empty. The most terrifying part was the faint, eternal scream he could feel emanating from the core of the monster—the last shred of his true self, trapped, aware, and forced to witness every moment of the desolation he had wrought.
He jerked back to reality with a gasp, slamming the Codex shut so violently the sound cracked through the night air like a whip. His hands shook so badly he could barely hold the book. The line between these two destinies felt terrifyingly thin, and he felt himself swaying on the precipice. The memory of the twins' power was a fresh wound—a reminder of the delicate, terrifying layers of the mind that could be so easily shattered, including his own. The "artisan" was out there, and this siege was just another layer of his canvas.
Dawn arrived not with glory, but with a slow, grey leaching of color from the world. As planned, the diversion at the southern wall erupted—a controlled chaos of shouted orders, the thunder of feigned charges, and the sharp hiss of arrows. It was a magnificent piece of theater designed to draw the eye and the strength of the garrison. Under its cover, shrouded by the ground mist that clung to the cold earth, Retour, Dean, and two dozen of their best fighters moved like ghosts through the drainage ditches and scrubland that led to the base of the northern gate.
Up close, it was a monument to intimidation. The gate stood thirty feet high, the iron bands across it so dark and thick they seemed to devour the morning light. The stone archway was indeed webbed with ancient cracks, just as Oleik had said, but it still looked immovable.
"Now, My Prince," Dean urged, his voice a low growl as he raised his shield against a single, probing arrow from the gatehouse above. "Their attention is divided. It must be now!"
Retour closed his eyes. He blocked out the distant cacophony, the tense breathing of his comrades, the cold fear in his own gut. He reached inward, not for the wild, untamed storm of the mist, but for its core, the deadly, precise energy at its heart. He visualized it not as a wave, but as a scalpel. A blade of pure dissolution. He focused his will, channeling the power, and then pushed.
A spear of concentrated crimson light, thin and unbearably bright, lanced from his outstretched hand and struck the dead center of the gate. There was no explosion. Instead, a sound like a thousand sheets of parchment being torn simultaneously filled the air. The iron bands glowed white-hot for a microsecond before simply ceasing to exist. The dense, aged wood behind them didn't burn or shatter; it turned instantly black, then grey, collapsing inward into a mountain of fine, choking ash. A void ten feet wide now gaped where the heart of the defense had been.
A raw, triumphant roar erupted from the rebels as they surged forward through the newly made entrance. But Retour did not move. He stumbled, one knee hitting the hard ground. A pain, sharp and cold as an ice dagger, pierced his skull behind his eyes. Worse than the pain was the emotional vacuum that followed. For three heartbeats, he looked at Dean's face, alight with victory, and felt absolutely nothing. No shared joy, no relief, no bond. It was as if he were observing a mildly interesting specimen through a pane of thick glass. The sensation faded, leaving him trembling and cold, the memory of that absolute detachment more horrifying than any battlefield wound.
The fall of Elaron was swift after that. The defenders, witnessing their ultimate defense unmade by a power they could not comprehend, felt their resolve crumble to dust as surely as the gate had. But as his people flooded into the city, their cheers of liberation ringing through the streets, Retour remained outside, standing alone in the swirling cloud of what had once been an impenetrable barrier. He stared at his own hands, half-expecting to see them, too, beginning to flake away into nothingness.
He had purchased them a fortress, a symbol, a future. The price had been another piece of his own soul, and the ledger, he knew with a cold and certain dread, was far from settled.