I watched the letter move through the palace like a spark looking for dry wood.
The steward carried it with both hands, careful not to smudge the seal of Torvas pressed into the wax. He walked fast but not frantically fast enough to say urgent, not so fast he would be dragged back for disrespect.
The royal guards before the throne room doors struck their spears on stone and stood aside.
Inside, the king sat beneath banners of his line, on a throne of pale stone veined with gold. He was not old, but weariness clung to his shoulders like a cloak. He looked up at the steward's approach.
"Your Majesty," the steward said, bowing low. "A letter from the High Priest of Torvas. Brought by his own rider."
That got the king's full attention.
He gestured. The steward stepped forward and placed the parchment in his hand.
The king broke the seal.
His eyes moved quickly at first, then slowed. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He read the letter twice, as though hoping the words would change on the second pass.
They did not.
Aramoor.Demons.Unknown beings.Sanctuary besieged.The Blade of Torvas called to stand alone.
"How," the king said softly, "has this not reached us until now?"
The steward said nothing. The question wasn't for him.
The king folded the letter with careful precision and straightened.
"Ready my horse," he said. "We ride at once for the Sanctuary."
Advisors flanking the throne stirred.
One in green robes stepped forward, bowing just enough. "Your Majesty, forgive the presumption but is it wise for the crown to ride into a place that has just survived a demonic assault?"
"Demons," another echoed. "Unknown beings. This is no skirmish, Sire. This is a wound in the kingdom. We cannot risk losing its head."
"You would have me stay," the king said, voice growing sharper, "while Torvas's chosen writes that his walls may not hold?"
"We would have the High Priest brought here," the first advisor said. "Your Majesty can better protect him and the realm from behind these walls. Let Torvas's warriors hold the Sanctuary. Let the High Priest advise you in person."
Quiet murmurs of agreement circled through the tiered benches where the royal council sat.
The king looked again at the letter in his hand.
Then he turned his head slightly.
"Send for Sir Raelan," he said.
The name changed the air.
The advisors exchanged quick, uneasy glances. One of them stopped mid-breath. Another's fingers tightened over the wooden rail before him.
Sir Raelan Dravos.The king's personal knight.The sword the court only unsheathed when the world cracked.
"You would send him, Sire?" one advisor whispered, unable to keep the note of apprehension from his voice.
The king heard the murmurs ripple outward, like a stone dropped into a basin.
"Yes," he said, letting the word settle like a verdict. "If you argue the crown must remain, then someone must ride in my place who carries my full weight."
He stepped down from the throne, eyes sweeping across the advisors.
"Sir Raelan will ride with a royal host to the Sanctuary," he continued. "He will present my seal. The High Priest of Torvas will be escorted here under his protection. I will speak to him in this hall and then we will decide whether we bury demons… or they bury us."
An advisor started to object. The king's gaze cut across him, sharp as Kaelar's blade.
"That is my decree," he said. "We do not sit idle while the holy city falls and our Sanctuary bleeds. Prepare Raelan and the battalions."
He turned and walked out, cloak brushing the steps, leaving the advisors to murmur about the knight they had hoped would not be called.
I left the palace then.
My eyes were needed elsewhere.
At the Sanctuary, the fire of Torvas had cooled, leaving scorch marks and silence in its wake.
The courtyard that had been a battlefield only hours before was now a field of graves being prepared. Knights in battered armor and trainees with shaking hands dug into the torn earth, their movements slow but steady.
They worked in lines.
Bodies were laid out first, armor polished as best as tired hands could manage. Swords cleaned and placed upon chests. Symbols of Torvas etched in ash and chalk at their feet. No wailing. No chaos.
Grief, here, took the shape of labor.
Near the edge of the ruined yard, Kaelar sat on a broken pillar of stone.
His sword was embedded upright in the ground, and he leaned on it as if it were the only thing keeping him from sliding to the floor entirely. Sweat gleamed on his forehead despite the chill of the mountain air. His face had gone pale, the deep lines of exhaustion carved in.
The blast he had unleashed had not just burned demons.
It had burned him.
I watched the tremble in his arm as he gripped the hilt, the way his breath came a little too shallow, the way his eyes caught and unfocused as if the ground swayed beneath him.
"You spent more than you had," I murmured to myself.
He couldn't hear me.
A figure came running down the steps from the inner hall.
Erias.
The boy still wore simple training leathers, his dark hair messy, eyes wide with something more than fear wonder, confusion, longing.
He skidded to a stop in front of Kaelar.
"Master Kaelar," Erias blurted, breathless. "What was that? That skill the fire how did you do that? Can anyone can I"
He broke off.
Kaelar lifted his head. Their eyes met.
The Blade didn't speak.
His voice was gone or saving itself for something more important.
He simply lifted his hand from the hilt, fingers unsteady, and pointed.
At Erias.
The boy froze.
Slowly, he seemed to understand.
"Me?" he whispered.
Kaelar's hand trembled. Just slightly. But his gaze did not waver.
Yes.
Erias swallowed hard. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his own sword, knuckles whitening. Then, in a motion that held more sincerity than any courtly bow, he lowered himself to one knee.
He bowed his head, his forehead nearly touching the stone, hands wrapped around his blade.
"I understand," he said quietly. "I'll… I'll carry it. If Torvas and you will have me."
Kaelar exhaled.
Somewhere beneath bone and fatigue, something unclenched in him.
He watched the boy for a moment longer, as if memorizing him. The way his shoulders shook slightly with the weight of what he'd just accepted. The way he still smelled softly of fear but did not run.
Then Kaelar's arm fell back to his side.
His fingers slipped from the hilt.
His body sagged.
No one in the busy courtyard noticed the exact moment the Blade of Torvas died.
One breath, he was upright, leaning on the sword that had carried Torvas's wrath.The next, his muscles gave way, his weight sliding from the stone.
Erias looked up just in time to see him fall.
"KAELAR!"
The boy lunged forward, catching at his shoulders too late to stop the collapse. Kaelar's head lolled back, eyes half-open, no breath stirring his chest.
For a heartbeat, the courtyard froze.
Then shouts rang out.
Knights dropped shovels and handled bodies aside as they rushed to their fallen captain. Trainees stared, disbelief written naked across their faces. Someone sobbed. Someone else cursed.
"The Blade"
"Get the High Priest"
"He's gone…"
The mourning rose like a low tide.
Only one other saw what I saw then.
Death.
She stood a few paces away, watching Kaelar with calm, dark eyes neither cruel nor kind. She wore no black cloak, no skeletal form. In this age, she walked in the shape of a tall woman with skin like deep night and hair that flowed as if underwater.
Only gods and those like them saw her when she wished not to be seen.
Dream saw her.
He had slipped into the courtyard in Varos's mortal shape, drawn by the sudden quiet, by Erias's cry, by the sharp tearing of a destiny thread ending.
When the others pressed around Kaelar, trying and failing to call him back, Dream's gaze had drifted past them to the still corner of the courtyard where Death waited.
When she turned away and began to walk, he followed.
Through a door, up a set of cracked steps, into a small chamber where Kaelar's body had been brought and laid upon a simple stone slab. The others had been guided out by the High Priest, who said the right words about rest and sacrifice and final honors, but grief clung to his shoulders too heavily for speeches.
Now it was just the three of them.
Kaelar.Death.Dream.
"Was it necessary?" Dream asked quietly.
His mortal disguise flickered at the edges. For a moment, his eyes were too deep, too star-filled for Varos's body.
Death did not turn to look at him.
"It was his time," she said simply.
"So many times today could have been," Dream said. "When the demons first breached the gate. When the traitor's forces took Aramoor. When Kaelar first faced the shadow that decapitated. But they were not. You chose this one."
"I do not choose," Death said. "I keep. There is a difference."
"There is always choice," Dream murmured. "You know that as well as Destiny."
Death's lips twitched in something almost like a smile.
"Do you mourn him?" she asked.
Dream looked at Kaelar.
The man's face was relaxed now, lines of strain smoothed. The sword he'd leaned on rested laid across his chest, wrapped fingers gently placed by loving hands.
"Yes," Dream said. "Because he was one of the few whose nightmares did not rule him. And because the boy needed him."
"The boy will have you," Death said. "And others. The world does not end because one blade is returned."
Dream almost laughed.
"That is exactly how some worlds do end," he said softly. "One blade at a time."
Kaelar drew in a breath.
His body did not move.
The sound was not made by lungs.
But his spirit stirred, suspended between realms. For a moment his eyes opened not the dead eyes that see nothing, but bright, clear, aware.
He looked at Dream.
"I knew," Kaelar whispered, voice echoing more in thought than air, "there was something about you. Different from the others. Not like… anything."
Dream stepped closer.
"You never asked," he said.
"You wore a mortal's face," Kaelar replied. "You fought beside us. You carried fear. You kept watch over that boy. That was enough."
His head tilted slightly.
"Thank you," Kaelar said. "For letting me sleep one more time… in the mortal way."
Death rested a hand gently on his chest.
"He is ready," she said.
Dream nodded once.
"Go, then," he told Kaelar. "Go where even I do not walk."
Death's power folded.
The chamber faded around Kaelar as his spirit slipped free. No tunnel of light. No choir. Just a soft unbinding. A release of weight. A quiet step into the End where even I stand at a distance and let things cease.
His body remained, still and honored.
His name, I knew, would not.
Far away, beneath the ruined towers of Aramoor, another kind of report was given.
In the High Priest's desecrated temple, a shattered statue of Torvas lay in rubble. Demons lounged in the broken pews, picking their teeth with bits of splintered wood, or idly torturing those prisoners left alive for information.
The traitor sat where the High Priest once had, on the elevated seat at the far end, draped lazily across it like a dark-souled king.
Dream's realm still clung to him. His eyes once held starlight; now they glowed with something sickly and wrong. Around him, a thousand corrupted Dream-born had begun to shape their own twisted version of order from the chaos.
A smaller demon slipped into the hall.
An observer. Eyeless sockets, shadow dripping from them like tears. It bowed low before the traitor and the hulking demon general standing beside the dais.
"Well?" the traitor asked, voice smooth, almost bored.
"The five you sent to the Sanctuary have fallen," the observer rasped.
The demon general's lip curled. "They failed?"
The observer bowed lower. "Yes… and no."
The traitor's fingers drummed on the stone arm of the chair.
"Explain."
"The Sanctuary still stands," the observer said. "Your demons were burned away by Torvas's Blade. But…"
It let the pause hang.
"But?" the traitor pressed.
"The Blade of Torvas is dead," the demon said. "He used too much. His own fire killed him as surely as our claws would have."
The general's laugh rolled through the ruined hall.
"Then they did not fail entirely," it said. "One of the greatest thorns in our lord Ellas's side has been removed."
The traitor smiled.
Not kindly.
"The Sanctuary stands," he murmured. "But its shield is gone. A city with its wall shattered and hastily rebuilt."
He leaned back in the stolen chair of Torvas's priest.
"Good," he said. "Let them have their grief. Let them cling to their little victories. It will make what comes next… sweeter."
In the End, Kaelar walked into rest.
In the Sanctuary, a boy knelt alone beside a hero's body.
In the capital, a king set his knight in motion.
And in Aramoor's broken temple, delight curled through those who served the Fallen.
I watched all of it.
Because this is what happens when blades fall and others are forced to rise.