The flames around the Midnight Blade dimmed as Kaelen emerged from the void-path, the pact still burning under his skin like a brand. His boots hit solid earth once more—damp, cold, shifting beneath him.
He was in the Mirelands, though no map marked them anymore.
Thick fog wreathed the twisted trees, clinging to every branch and root. The air smelled of wet moss and rusted iron. Each breath drew in silence, heavy and expectant. Somewhere, a crow cawed, distant but watching.
Kaelen moved slowly, his fingers still trembling from the ritual. The sigil of the First Flame throbbed at his wrist, as if syncing with his heartbeat.
"Elira…" he whispered.
He hadn't seen her since before the trials. And now, with the Keeper's words still echoing—"The girl you love"—Kaelen couldn't shake the fear that the war had already taken her.
He stepped deeper into the mist.
Snap.
Kaelen froze, drawing the Midnight Blade halfway from its sheath. The fog shifted—and from it emerged a cloaked figure, hood drawn low, a satchel strapped to their side and a curved dagger held loosely in one hand.
"Stay back," Kaelen warned, blade now fully drawn.
The figure paused. Then said, "You always were quick to draw steel, Kael."
His breath caught.
"...Lazric?"
The figure lowered his hood. A lean, sharp-featured boy, a year older than Kaelen, with a smirk that hadn't aged a day—and a scar along his left jaw that hadn't been there before.
Kaelen sheathed the blade and stepped forward. "I thought you were—"
"Dead? Banished? All of the above?" Lazric laughed dryly. "Let's just say the fog hides more than just ghosts."
Kaelen pulled him into a quick embrace, relief and suspicion mixing in his chest. "What are you doing here?"
Lazric's grin faded. "Same as you, I imagine. Chasing the wrong truth down the right path. Or is it the other way around?"
Kaelen frowned. "I'm trying to find Elira. The Veiled—"
"—Have already breached the Eastern Ridges. I know. I've seen the fires."
Kaelen's stomach turned. "Then we're running out of time."
Lazric's eyes narrowed. "Not if we move smart. I have contacts in the fog—people who don't answer to the throne or the flame. They've seen riders dragging prisoners west, toward the coast. One of them was a girl with silver-threaded braids."
"Elira."
Lazric nodded. "But we can't go charging in. Not yet."
Kaelen's grip tightened. "Why not?"
"Because the Veiled aren't working alone. There's a name whispered in the fog, Kael. One I never thought I'd hear again."
Kaelen met his friend's eyes.
"Your brother."
The mist around them thickened, curling like fingers across the path.
Kaelen turned toward the deeper wood, the blade warming once again in his hand.
"Then we find Elira. And if my brother stands in our way…"
He let the sentence trail into silence.
The fog swallowed them both as they stepped forward—two boys once torn apart by fate, now walking side by side into a war built on secrets.
And somewhere beyond the trees, a silver braid fluttered i