The northern forest did not welcome intruders.
It swallowed them.
Snow-drowned pines rose like jagged spears, their branches heavy with frost and shadow. The ground beneath was uneven roots, ice, half-buried bones of beasts foolish enough to wander too far. This was the edge of human territory.
Beyond it lay something older.
Valen Arkwright ran through it without hesitation.
His movements were swift, economical, almost silent. He did not fight the forest he flowed through it. When branches snapped underweight elsewhere, he was already gone. When something stirred in the underbrush, he was never where it struck.
This was no aimless escape.
Every turn was measured.
Every pause deliberate.
Three hundred steps east of the broken cairn, he thought.
Then north, where the air thins and the mana turns bitter.
The trees thinned.
The forest changed.
The silence deepened not empty, but watchful.
A cave revealed itself between two leaning stones, its mouth narrow and unremarkable. Moss clung to its edges. Snow had partially collapsed over the entrance, disguising it as nothing more than a shallow hollow.
Valen didn't slow.
He stepped inside.
The world unfolded.
The cave unfolded in defiance of reason.
Stone stretched outward as Valen advanced, the narrow passage widening into a vast subterranean chamber that should not have existed beneath the forest floor. The ceiling arched high above, jagged and uneven, disappearing into shadow. Veins of pale blue crystal ran through the walls like frozen lightning, pulsing faintly, bathing the cavern in cold, spectral light.
The air changed the moment he crossed the threshold.
It grew warmer not comfortable, but charged, thick with dormant mana that prickled against his skin and made the tattoo on his arm stir faintly. Each breath tasted metallic, like lightning before a storm.
The floor was wrong.
Too smooth in some places. Too fractured in others.
Sigils lay etched into the stone, half-buried beneath centuries of dust and mineral growth. Some were faded to near invisibility. Others remained cruelly sharp, their lines biting into the rock as if carved yesterday.
Traps.
Not crude ones.
Patient ones.
Valen slowed, senses narrowing.
His foot hovered mid-step then shifted barely a finger-width to the left. The stone beneath his boot dipped soundlessly as a pressure plate sank into place, releasing nothing… yet. He stepped away just as thin metal spikes slid silently back into their grooves beneath the surface.
He moved again.
A shimmer in the air caught his eye a distortion so faint it would have been dismissed as heat. A mana thread stretched from wall to wall, invisible unless you knew exactly where to look. Valen lifted his foot and stepped over it, careful not to disturb the resonance. Breaking it wouldn't kill him.
It would wake everything else.
Further in, a glyph waited.
It lay etched into the floor like a spider's web, its centre cracked, its outer ring intact.
Old magic. Cruel magic.
A curse designed not to kill, but to bind to turn a living intruder into a screaming anchor for the rest of the traps.
Valen knelt.
He brushed dust aside, exposing the anchor rune at its core. His fingers traced the lines not hesitating, not guessing and twisted the rune counterclockwise.
The glyph shuddered.
Then collapsed in on itself, the lines dimming as if embarrassed to have been undone so easily.
Valen stood.
No one would know that trick unless they had learned it the hard way.
Unless they had already died here once.
The chamber lay open before him now, silent, watching.
And Valen continued forward, unmarked, untouched moving deeper into a place that had never expected to be beaten twice.
XXXX
At the chamber's heart stood a laboratory.
Glass tubes lay shattered. Alchemical circles scarred the floor. Books ancient and forbidden were stacked in chaotic order. At the centre stood a man in mage robes, frozen mid-incantation.
His eyes widened.
"How—?"
Valen didn't draw his sword.
He raised his tattooed arm.
"Kneel."
The word did not echo.
It settled.
The mage's body betrayed him. His knees slammed into stone with bone-jarring force. Sweat poured down his face as invisible pressure crushed his will, forcing his head low.
"I—I don't understand—"
Valen stepped closer, eyes cold. "You shouldn't."
He turned.
The mage remained kneeling, trembling, mind unravelling.
Valen had what he came for.
XXXX
The prison beneath Arkwright Keep greeted him with silence.
Torches flickered as he descended, each step echoing louder than the last. Guards along the corridor stiffened, unease rippling through them as Valen passed.
He didn't look at them.
His voice carried ahead of him, calm and certain.
"I know Morwen Arkwright has been dead for years."
The air shifted.
"You can turn back now, Evelynn."
Chains rattled faintly in the distance.
"I know you can't hold it much longer."
Valen stopped before the final cell.
Inside, bound in enchanted restraints, sat not Morwen
But a different woman.
Black hair spilled loosely over her shoulders. Her face was pale but unbroken, features sharp and striking. Deep brown eyes watched him with amusement rather than fear.
She looked no older than her late-twenties.
She smiled.
"You're not Valen Arkwright," she said softly.
Valen smiled back.
"Does it matter?"
Her laughter was quiet. "No. I suppose it doesn't."
She leaned back against the cold stone.
"My name is Evelynn Viremont," she said. "Once."
Her gaze darkened as memory surfaced.
"I was a witch," Evelynn continued. "Seven rings around my mana heart. One short of perfection." Her lips twitched. "Enough to be feared."
Her fingers curled.
"A decade ago, I was wounded. A battle I should have won. The damage was… deep. My mana heart cracked. The rings remained but they were useless."
She exhaled slowly.
"So, I vanished. Searched for a cure. Every text, every forbidden method." Her eyes met Valen's. "That's when I learned what I needed."
Magicstones.
Power enough to rebuild what was broken.
"And Morwen?" Valen asked.
Evelynn's smile sharpened.
"She was convenient."
She described it without emotion how she killed Morwen quietly, took her place, learned her mannerisms. How she poisoned the Count slowly. How she used Morwen's mysterious backer, feeding them lies while advancing her own schemes.
"All for the mines," she said. "All for healing."
She paused.
"There was just one thing I didn't know."
Her smile finally faltered.
"It wasn't an injury."
The words lingered.
Valen's tattoo pulsed faintly.
"A curse," Evelynn whispered. "Etched into my mana heart. One no amount of magicstones could fix."
Silence stretched between them.
Valen studied her.
A woman who had worn a dead name.
Played a kingdom.
And failed for reasons even she didn't understand.
"Now," Valen said calmly, "we decide what you're worth.", as signals behind him
The chains rattled softly, responding to something deeper than sound.
Evelynn's smile returned slow, knowing, dangerous.
"Careful, Count," she murmured. "Some prices are higher than you think."
Footsteps echoed from the corridor behind Valen.
Measured. Unhurried.
Another presence entered the dim light of the prison chamber.
Evelynn's gaze shifted and froze.
The man stepped forward, mage robes torn and scorched, his expression vacant in a way that set teeth on edge. His eyes, once sharp with arrogance, were now dulled, unfocused. He walked not as one who chose to move but as one who was allowed to.
"You know," the mage said quietly, voice flat, almost reverent, "you are not the only one who was injured."
Evelynn's breath hitched.
Her smile shattered.
The color drained from her face as recognition struck like a blade.
"…You," she whispered.
Rage twisted her features, raw and unrestrained. "You were supposed to be dead," she hissed. "I watched your mana collapse. I watched you beg—"
The mage stopped beside Valen.
Then, without hesitation, he sank to one knee.
His head bowed low.
"Master."
The word echoed.
Evelynn recoiled as if struck.
The chains around her wrists tightened, metal biting into skin as her pulse spiked. "No," she breathed. "No—what did you do to him?"
Valen did not look at her.
His gaze rested on the kneeling mage.
"Stand still," Valen said.
The mage obeyed instantly.
Valen turned to Evelynn then, his blue-green eyes cold, assessing.
"He was wounded," Valen said. "Broken, actually. His mana pathways collapsed inward fractured in a way that made recovery impossible."
Evelynn's jaw clenched. "Then how—"
"I didn't heal him," Valen interrupted.
The tattoo on his arm pulsed faintly beneath his sleeve.
"I claimed him."
Understanding dawned slowly on her face.
Horror followed.
"You didn't dominate his body," Evelynn whispered. "You—"
"I dominated the moment he stopped resisting," Valen said calmly. "The instant he chose survival over pride."
The mage remained kneeling, unmoving, devotion etched into every line of his posture.
Evelynn laughed then short, bitter, shaking.
"So that's it," she said. "That's what you are."
Her eyes lifted to Valen, burning.
"And now," she continued softly, "you're wondering if I'll give up too."
Valen stepped closer to her cell.
The chains rattled again.
This time, they tightened.
"We're not there yet," he said.
Evelynn's smile returned strained, defiant, still dangerous.
"Good," she replied. "Because I won't break easily."
Valen met her gaze.
"I know," he said.
And for the first time since her capture
Evelynn felt something she hadn't in ten years.
Not fear.
Not uncertainty.
But curiosity.