The sun over the southern plains burned red that morning—not from dawn, but from smoke. Villages smoldered in the distance, their thatched roofs caved in, their people scattered like ash on the wind.
Kael walked the blackened road in silence, Void Fang sheathed across his back, his cloak fluttering behind him like torn shadow. Behind him marched thirty—former mercenaries, deserters, vagabonds—all marked by the flame that now lived within Kael's blood. They were no army. Not yet. But they were something more dangerous:
A cult in the making.
At the head of the line walked Sera, once a Crimson Fang blade-dancer, now Kael's lieutenant. Her eyes shimmered with emberlight, and her hands danced on the hilts of twin curved blades.
"You should've let the village burn," she muttered as they passed a pile of corpses still twitching from a failed resistance.
"I did," Kael replied, voice low. "Just not all of it."
He stopped at the village center.
An old man knelt there, lips bloody from prayers whispered to a god that had long since abandoned him.
Kael crouched.
"Who rules this land now?" he asked.
The old man looked up, dazed. "T-The Sunborne… from the citadel of Valeis…"
Kael stood. "Good."
He turned to Sera. "Send word. Let the Sunborne know that Kael marches for their throne."
Sera's grin was sharp as glass. "Should I mention you're bringing fire and death?"
"No," Kael said. "Let them pray for mercy. Let them think it matters."
As they left the broken village behind, Kael looked southward. The sky above Valeis shimmered with golden light. Protective wards. Ancient magic.
But he had a god in his shadow now—and flame in his veins.
The South would burn.
And the second Throne would fall.