The world tilted. The solid ground beneath Anal's feet felt like shifting sand. The name, spoken in Mataji's gentle, terrible tone, was a key turning in a lock he hadn't known existed deep within his soul.
Rohan.
The word conjured not a face, but a feeling. The golden haze of a long-ago summer. The scent of wet earth after rain in the palace gardens. The sound of carefree laughter echoing where now only the stern silence of duty resided.
A boy. A friend. His only friend.
Memories, fragile as moth wings, fluttered against the walls of his mind.
"Faster, Anal! I'll beat you to the fountain!"
"Don't tell Father we were climbing the trees. It's our secret."
"When I'm a great general, I'll guard your throne. We'll be the strongest king and his shield, just like in the stories."
Rohan. The orphaned son of a minor noble, brought to the palace as a companion for the lonely prince. He was everything Anal wasn't—boisterous, unafraid of getting dirty, with a smile that came as easily as breath.
And then, one day, he was gone.
"A sudden fever," the court physicians had said. "Took him in the night." Anal remembered the profound silence that had fallen over his world. The empty space beside him in the training yard. The untouched toys. He had mourned, a quiet, private grief a prince was not supposed to show, and then, as children do, he had locked the memory away and slowly, painfully, learned to be alone.
He stared at the wooden horse in Mataji's hand, his throat tight. "He died," Anal whispered, the words feeling like a betrayal of that long-ago grief. "He died of a fever."
Mataji's eyes were bottomless pools of pity. "Did he? Or was the fever a convenient story to explain the disappearance of a boy who was discovered to have a dormant, but potent, affinity for the fire element? An affinity that rivaled, perhaps even challenged, that of the Crown Prince?"
The truth hit Anal with the force of a physical blow. He staggered back a step. Neel's hand shot out to steady him, his own face a mask of horrified understanding.
"The Conclave…" Neel breathed.
"They take more than just weapons and power," Mataji said, her voice heavy. "They take children. They take potential. They found the spark in your friend, Prince Anal, and they snuffed out the boy to forge the weapon. The boy you knew is dead. What remains is the Ember Lord, a vessel of pure, refined hatred, nurtured on the lie that you, his beloved prince, your family, your kingdom, were the ones who cast him out, who sought to eliminate a rival."
Anal felt sick. The world he knew, the foundation of his past, was crumbling into ash. His first and only friendship had not ended in tragic illness, but in a brutal, political kidnapping. The boy he had grieved for had been twisted into the man who now sought to destroy him. The Ember Lord wasn't just an enemy; he was a walking, breathing monument to Anal's own naivety, to the cruel machinations that had surrounded him since birth.
The personal nature of the trap was now horrifically clear. This wasn't just about capturing the Fire Prince. This was about revenge. A twisted, cruel revenge for a betrayal that never happened.
"He took Maitreyi," Anal said, his voice hollow. "Not just to lure me. But because she was… she was kind to him too. She used to sneak us sweets." The cruelty of it was exquisite. Rohan was systematically targeting every shred of warmth from Anal's childhood and using it as a weapon.
"You cannot reason with this hatred, Prince Anal," Mataji warned. "It has been his nourishment for over a decade. He believes his truth absolutely. To him, you are the villain."
"What do I do?" The question was torn from him, a plea from a lost boy, not a prince.
"You must face him," she said. "But you must not fight the boy you remember. You must fight the monster he was forced to become. And you must be prepared for the hardest battle of all." She looked at him, her gaze piercing his soul. "You must be prepared to kill the last living memory of your own happiness."
She pressed the wooden horse into his hand. It felt impossibly small and fragile. A relic from a life that had been a lie.
"Go now," she said. "The path to the Sun-Scorched Plains is treacherous. I will give you what aid I can." She placed a hand on each of their foreheads. A wave of cool, calming energy flowed through them, sharpening their senses and steadying their frayed nerves. It was a blessing of clarity. "Remember the lessons of this mountain. Fire is not only destruction. It is also the light that reveals the truth. And Water is not only a shield. It is also the current that can carry you through the deepest despair."
They left the Silent Peak as the first light of dawn tinged the sky. The journey down the mountain was a silent, grim affair. The peaceful energy of the Ashram was gone, replaced by the heavy weight of the revelation. Anal clutched the wooden horse in his pocket, its rough edges a painful anchor to a past that had just been violently rewritten.
They travelled for days, pushing their bodies to the limit. The lush green forests gradually gave way to sparse, dry scrubland. The air grew hot and parched, carrying the taste of dust and ash. The world was literally drying up around them, a physical manifestation of the emotional desolation Anal felt.
Neel was a quiet, steady presence beside him. He didn't offer empty platitudes. He simply was there, ensuring they had water, scouting the path ahead, his watchful eyes missing nothing. The dynamic between them had shifted yet again. This was no longer just a prince and his keeper, or even two allies. They were two young men walking into a personal hell, bound together by a tragedy neither of them had caused but both were forced to endure.
On the evening of the third day, they crested a final, rocky ridge.
And there it lay before them.
The Sun-Scorched Plains.
It was a vast, flat expanse of cracked, blackened earth, stretching to the horizon under a oppressive, orange sky. Heat hazes shimmered above the ground, distorting the view. In the very center of the desolation stood a single, stark structure: a ruined watchtower, its stones blackened by soot and time.
It was a place of death. A graveyard for fire.
"There," Anal said, his voice rough from dust and emotion. His enhanced senses, sharpened by Mataji's blessing and his own raging power, could feel it. A concentration of malignant fire energy pulsed from the tower like a diseased heart. And beside it, a faint, flickering spark of life—fragile, terrified. Maitreyi.
He took a step forward, ready to charge down the slope and across the plains.
Neel grabbed his arm, not with force, but with firmness. "Wait. Look."
He pointed towards the base of the ridge they stood on. The setting sun cast long shadows, and in those shadows, something moved. Not Conclave soldiers. These figures were taller, leaner, their forms seeming to blend with the dying light. They carried long, curved blades, and their movements were silent, predatory. They were fanning out, cutting off the path down to the plains.
Anal's eyes, narrowed against the glare, picked out the insignia on their armour. A stylized gust of wind.
"Vayu's men," Neel whispered, his voice tight with a new kind of alarm. "The Royal Guards of Pavanagarh. What in the world are they doing here?"