I had killed him. There was no doubt. I had walked into his office, dagger drawn, and felt the pulse beneath my fingers slow and stutter. I had watched the life leave his eyes, seen the certainty of death take hold in the sharp angles of his face.
Bey was gone. The man who had calculated every variable, who had predicted every move, who had anticipated my arrival—he was dead. I left his castle believing as much. The corridors smelled faintly of old wood and wax, but it no longer mattered. I had erased the greatest strategist of my time, and the Council of Kings would crumble now, just as his death ensured.
I moved through Oma as though nothing had happened, though the air itself seemed thinner, the streets more desperate. I had thought the danger of Bey's intellect was over. My war could proceed unchallenged. Every move, every strike against those tyrants who had oppressed my people, could now unfold without the shadow of a calculated king anticipating my actions.
I thought I had closure. I thought I had certainty.
Everlyn changed that.
She came to me quietly, almost apologetically, during my visit to the reclaimed lands of Oma. The winds swept across the high plains, carrying the smell of freshly turned soil and the faint smoke of remnants from my purges.
Her eyes, usually calm, were wide with disbelief, even fear. "Warlord," she said, voice low, urgent. "You need to know… the Council of Kings… they've declared war. On every man, woman, and child in Oma."
I paused, her words striking like a poisoned dagger to my chest. My mind refused to compute the logic. "What?" I said, but the word felt hollow.
"They're claiming," Everlyn continued, voice trembling slightly, "that someone from Oma has been assassinating the kings on the Council. They've… they've used the killings as justification for a total war."
I froze, the world tilting around me. Something impossible was unfolding. Bey. Bey was the only man who had identified me, who had understood that I was from Oma. I had stabbed him through the heart. I had seen the certainty of death in his eyes.
And yet… the Council's actions were too precise, too deliberate, too Bey-like. No other king had his intellect, his insight, his ability to turn a death into a weapon, a declaration into a trap.
A cold realization gripped me. Bey was alive. Somehow… he had survived.
Or someone identical to him was executing his will. But I knew better. The precision, the timing, the evidence used to justify a war against my people—this was Bey. This was his mind at work, pushing me into recklessness, forcing my hand. My teeth ground together.
I had underestimated him. I had thought I could destroy intellect with shadow. I had thought I could end strategy with steel. I had been wrong.
The rage that followed was a wildfire, uncontrollable. I could not wait. I could not plan. The Council's declaration was a knife at the throats of my people.
If Bey had survived, I would strike before he could leverage this, before he could manipulate even more variables to trap me again.
I abandoned patience. I abandoned caution. I became a force of singular intent—relentless, unyielding. I would find him. I would finish this.
The cabin was small, deceptively simple. Wooden walls, floors, ceiling—everything soaked in fuel, faintly smelling of kerosene and oil. It was a trap, I realized immediately, but my anger blinded me. The darkness was total, thick enough that I could move unseen. I could strike from any angle.
This should have been my advantage. Shadows whispered around my legs, coiling along the edges of the walls, seeking him.
But Bey was waiting.
As I emerged into the room, the darkness betrayed me. The lights flared suddenly, brilliant and cruel, burning my eyes with impossible intensity. My shadow solidified briefly on the floor, a tangible anchor of my form. I stumbled, blinded, searching for the source, and that was all Bey needed.
He vanished into the hidden tunnel beneath the floorboards, leaving me in a room primed for execution.
The smell hit me next. Fuel. Everywhere. Underfoot, along the walls, on the roof, filling the air with the dry, sharp tang of combustion. My chest tightened, and my mind raced—too late, too late.
The overload began. Sparks hissed from the circuitry. Wires coiled and arced like snakes struck by lightning. Electricity surged into the wood.
The cabin erupted in a storm of light and fire, the explosion contained but absolute, a flash of destruction so violent it felt like the sun had fallen indoors.
I survived only because of the shadow I had become. My body recoiled instinctively into the darkness, using the sudden light as a shield. But it did not matter. Every inch of my body burned, skin blistered, muscles seared. Pain stole my breath.
I fell into my own shadow, sank into the Sea of Darkness, and remained there for three days.
Three days. Three days of agony and reflection. The realization that Bey had planned this with human intellect, not some supernatural foresight, seared itself into my mind.
He had studied me, anticipated my strengths, leveraged my reliance on shadows and my own overconfidence. This was not magic. This was strategy. This was deadly intellect.
I sank into the ocean of night or what I liked to call the sea of darkness.
Darkness is not the absence of light.
That is the first lie men tell themselves.
When the sea of darkness swallowed me whole, I learned the truth in three days.
I did not fall into it screaming.
I submerged myself to escape the flames.
My arrogance tore me open. Fire chewed through my armor, my skin, my pride. I dove because burning felt slower than what waited above. The world inverted. Stone vanished. Heat died mid-scream as the vacuum crushed the fire out of existence.
Then—
Silence closed around me.
Not gently.
Not like sleep.
It wrapped me tight, a fist that never unclenched.
I expected death.
Instead, I heard my father laughing.
The sound struck harder than any blade ever had.