ERIS
I parted from him without looking back, though I could still feel the chill of his presence clinging to my skin. Soren Nivarre, the infamous Ice Emperor, breaker of armies, butcher of fleets, reduced to squirming over a bit of Solmiran spice. The thought made me smirk under my cloak.
Strange. Odd. Unpredictable. I had become lost of words to describe this man.
Stranger still that an emperor carried himself as if he bore no weight at all. No crown pressed on his skull, no kingdom tethered his shoulders.
Surely this wasn't the man who wiped out an entire army of the undead or drastically cut short the population of the ice demons that terrorized the small villages of Nevareth causing them to go into hiding as well as the other beasts that roamed our realm. This couldn't be the man that defeated the previous emperor, wiping out his entire bloodline.
A man that defeated an entire army himself without breaking a damn sweat.
Even I, in my previous life, drunk in power always knew to stay in truce with this beast. And yet...
He laughed too easily, teased too boldly. If I had not seen the blood his empire had shed in his name, I might have thought him merely some wandering noble drunk on freedom.
Yet, the same man had just been sitting across from me, watching me like… like he wanted to strip me apart to understand what lay beneath. Like my fire amused him. Like my ruin was a song he hadn't yet tired of hearing.
I clenched the little blue stone in my hand. Foolish. Dangerous. I should not let such a man tug at the edges of my mind.
But still, how could the executioner of thousands be undone by a skewer of peppered meat?
A quiet laughter slipped out of me, quiet, wicked. He was absurd. And that absurdity, for a fleeting moment, made me forget the sting of overheard prayers for my death.
I adjusted my cloak tighter around me, refocusing. I was not here to toy with strange emperors or indulge in markets like a child. I was here to find the woman Caldus spoke of. Disguise first. Escape second. Everything else, Soren included, was nothing but distraction.
Sir Caldus walked ahead, his steps too deliberate for a man pretending to simply guide his queen through the clutter of tents and stalls. I followed him into a narrow passage where the noise of the market dulled, muffled by layers of canvas and wood. The smells shifted too, less spice and smoke, more… nothing.
That was the first thing I noticed.
Markets never went quiet. There should have been hawkers shouting, drunks laughing, oil hissing in pans. But here, the air hung still, as if sound itself avoided this place.
I slowed. My eyes skimmed the details, bootprints in the dust, all heading inward but none leading back out. A torn scrap of cloth snagged on a wooden beam, charred faintly at the edge. Someone had lit fire here recently, yet there was no lantern burning.
"Caldus," I said, my voice low, testing him. "Why does this place breathe like a tomb?"
"I'm not quite sure your majesty." He answered, though his voice sounded hollow.
We stepped beneath the sagging flap of a tent, its fabric heavy, reeking faintly of damp. The space inside was wrong, too large, cleared out, nothing but crates stacked against the edges. A hunting ground, not a shop.
And then the flap dropped closed behind me.
Eight shadows slid out from the corners, steel glinting faintly in their hands.
Caldus turned at last, his expression unreadable.
And I, already pressed back against the crates, felt the fire curl lazily at my fingertips.
"Ah," I whispered, cruel smile tugging at my lips. "So this is the game, then."
I wasn't surprised when the blades came up, their edges quivering with the eagerness of men who thought themselves heroes.
Irritated, yes. But not surprised.
Didn't I give them reason? I had burned their fathers, their brothers, their mothers, without a second thought. I had stood in these streets cloaked in flame, the tyrant of Solmire, their prayers rising not for my reign but for my downfall. The only surprise was how long it had taken them to act.
Still, I let them surround me. I let the silence stretch until it burned. Then I turned to Caldus.
"Why?" My voice was steady. "Why betray me?"
For a second, he only stared at me, like he could not believe I would even ask. But then he saw I was serious, and something in his face cracked.
"You killed her," he said quietly. "The woman I loved. She was one of your attendants. She served you faithfully. And you burned her."
I tilted my head. "Her name."
His jaw tightened. "Liora."
The name rang familiar. I remembered her face. I always did. Their kind. I remembered the smell of charred flesh. She had joined one of the secret factions that dared rise against me.
When I discovered them, I had not hesitated. I burned them all alive in one breath. And for the first time, the weight of that memory pressed heavy on my chest. The weight of all the souls I had dragged with me into the fire.
Still, I asked, "And how do you intend to kill me?"
His eyes burned back into mine. "We found an ancient spell. A gift from Pyronox himself. It will erase you in your own flames. She, " He pointed at the woman beside him, the one with the green shell pendant he talked about.
"She will cast it."
I looked at the relic in her hands and almost laughed. That was mine.. I had found that scroll. I had translated it from its forgotten tongue. They were about to use my own discovery against me. Foolish. But not unexpected.
The woman opened the scroll. Etchings in a language older than time glowed faintly.
I sighed. "That relic is mine. I dug it from the bones of the earth. I read the words first. You hold a piece of my hand and believe you can use it against me?"
"Lies!" Caldus roared, eyes gleaming with certainty.
"And how long," I asked him, voice low, "have you been planning this?"
"The day you turned her into ash," he said. His hand did not tremble. His voice did not falter. "I had planned this for so long. An ambush outside your domain. It took me so long to find a way to draw you out."
"Tell me," I asked again, "is there another way for me to pay for my sins?"
"There isn't."
"And if I tell you to stop now, would you obey?"
He smirked faintly, taking my stillness for fear. "You are afraid."
I said nothing more.