Year 401 – Duskrend Wildlands
Three Months Later
Takaya had learned how to breathe quietly.
It took him two weeks to figure out which kinds of moss you could drink from. Another week to learn how to wrap bark for insulation. Three full days of vomiting to realize you should never eat red-spined fruit — no matter how sweet it smells.
Now, in the fourth month of his exile, he knew how to track.
How to mask his scent.
How to sleep with one ear open.
How to kill.
Not well. Not fast. But enough.
Solthar still hung at his side, quiet and patient. He'd learned that the blade didn't like being drawn without purpose. You didn't wield Solthar — you warned it.
And when you needed it, it moved faster than thought.
But even that had limits.
He learned that today.
The canyon was silent.
Not the kind of silence that made you feel alone — the kind that made you feel watched. Like the stone itself was waiting for you to speak so it could learn your voice.
Takaya crouched behind a jagged outcrop, breath held, eyes fixed on the figure across the ravine.
It wasn't a beast.
It wasn't a man.
It was… something between.
Tall. Wrapped in iron wire and black hide, its limbs too long, its head obscured by a rusted helm etched with slashes like tally marks. Its skin — if it was skin — pulsed faintly with heat. Not glowing. Not alive.
Just… waiting.
He'd seen it kill two nights ago.
From the cliff above, he watched it cleave through three dusk elk like wheat. The strikes weren't fast. Just absolute. Deliberate. He hadn't planned to fight it.
But today, it had followed him.
And it was close.
He rose slowly, letting Solthar hum to life in his hand.
"Careful," the Veyl warned. "That thing isn't made to bleed."
Takaya gritted his teeth. "I don't need blood. I just need it dead."
He moved.
Fast. Clean.
Solthar cut — right down the middle of the thing's spine.
And stopped.
Not bounced. Not missed.
Just stopped.
Like it had hit a truth the blade couldn't argue with.
Takaya staggered back, eyes wide.
"What the hell—?"
The creature turned.
Not fast. Not surprised.
It just acknowledged him.
Then it raised its weapon.
Not a sword. Not an axe.
A pillar of fused stone and steel. And it swung.
Takaya barely blocked.
The impact knocked the breath out of his lungs. He hit the dirt, skidding backwards across gravel and cracked bone. The world spun.
"Okay," the Veyl said. "Bad news: that thing's Echo-resistant. Good news: you're not completely fucked."
"Convince me!"
"It can't move fast. Not like you. Hit and run. Don't let it guess your rhythm."
The creature swung again.
Takaya ducked under, rolled, brought Solthar across its side — again, nothing. No cut. Just sparks.
It turned again.
Slow. Unhurried.
"You're enjoying this," Takaya growled.
"You wanted to stop feeling helpless. Here's your chance."
He backed away.
Heart hammering.
This wasn't a monster. It was a test.
And Solthar wasn't enough.
Not alone.
But Takaya wasn't the boy who screamed and ran from wolves anymore.
He planted his feet.
And tried again.
Takaya's breath steamed in the cold air, harsh and fast.
The creature raised its weapon again, slow and inevitable, like gravity in the shape of a man.
He moved.
Not backward. Forward.
It was the only direction that mattered now.
Solthar flashed. His feet barely touched the stone as he pivoted, ducked under the weapon's arc, and brought the blade up toward what passed for a neck.
Clang.
Sparks.
A jolt up his wrist like someone had slammed a bell through his bones.
No cut.
But this time, the thing reacted.
It didn't fall. Didn't stagger. But it paused—hesitated.
That was new.
Takaya circled, steps careful, measured.
He'd noticed it the second time they clashed. It didn't adjust. It wasn't watching him. It was reacting only when hit.
Which meant it didn't anticipate. It responded.
The Veyl caught on, too.
You're not trying to cut it. You're trying to teach it pain.
Takaya adjusted his grip.
So teach it.
He struck again. Not a clean slash. Not elegant.
A jab to the ribs. Then another. Then one to the knee joint. Solthar sparked on impact, not cutting through, but vibrating—singing.
It moved slower this time.
And for the first time, Takaya heard it grunt.
The sound wasn't human. Not quite. But it had weight. Frustration.
It didn't like being prodded.
He smiled through bloodied teeth. "That's right. You feel that?"
The monster raised its slab of a weapon and brought it down.
He rolled under it, came up behind, drove Solthar into the joint at the back of its leg.
A crack.
A sound like something fracturing.
It fell to one knee.
Takaya didn't hesitate.
He jumped on its back, one foot bracing against its spine, and drove Solthar into the base of its neck—again and again and again.
Each hit sent a shock through his arms.
Each hit cracked something deeper.
On the fifth, it stopped moving.
On the sixth, it exhaled a cloud of black mist and slumped sideways.
Takaya collapsed next to it, chest heaving.
Blood—his—ran down his arm. His fingers were raw. His vision blurred at the edges.
But the thing didn't move.
The body didn't vanish. It didn't dissolve.
It stayed there. Like a warning.
You earned this kill, the Veyl murmured. No failsafe. No borrowed strength. Just pain and adaptation. I'm impressed.
Takaya didn't respond. He was too busy staring at his own hands.
He hadn't won because he was strong.
He'd won because he learned.
Because he refused to let the same strike fail twice.
Because he was still alive.
Barely.
But alive.
And for now, that would be enough.
The deeper Takaya walked, the quieter the Veyl became.
Not silent from spite. Not bored. This was something else. Like reverence. Like stepping into the funeral of a god.
The cave twisted downward in a long, sloping descent. The floor turned to black stone. The air grew heavier, older. The walls grew smoother, as if carved not by hands but by memory.
He held up a faint glow — aether from the Veyl's ring — just enough to see shapes ahead.
The passage opened into a chamber.
Massive. Circular. Its ceiling long collapsed in places, shafts of pale light stabbing through dust like the last breath of day.
And in the center — a suit of armor.
Fused into the stone.
Not like a corpse.
Like a monument.
It wasn't polished. It wasn't displayed. The metal had long since rusted, overtaken by moss and black crystal veins. But it stood tall, unmoved, blade still buried in the earth before it.
The ring on Takaya's hand pulsed once.
He stepped forward.
The hilt of the sword bore a familiar mark. Not a crest. A symbol — circular, intersected by a thin, flowing line.
The Veyl.
He looked up. Behind the armor, carved into the wall, were faded murals. Dozens.
He moved toward them slowly, lantern-light flickering across each one.
In the first: a man stood alone before two armies — one of demons, one of humans. His back was straight. His cloak long. His hand held a blade that bled light.
In another: the man stood in fire, arms outstretched. Behind him, demons fled. Before him, humans knelt.
And in the last: the man knelt himself — wounded, fading — as a ring floated from his hand, scattering into eight black shapes.
The ring on Takaya's finger pulsed harder.
He turned toward the armor again.
The Veyl still hadn't spoken.
He stepped closer.
Knees trembling, he knelt — not because he chose to, but because something inside him insisted.
His head lowered.
He didn't breathe.
And then—
A flash.
A battlefield.
Fire.
Screams.
A massive figure carving through armies, light dripping from a blade made of darkness. Not Takaya. Someone else. Cloaked. Crowned.
A ring burning across his fist.
Veythos.
Takaya fell backward, gasping.
The vision vanished.
The chamber groaned.
Stone cracked above him.
No magic. Just time.
The ceiling shuddered.
A slab the size of a wagon sheared off and slammed into the ground where he'd just been kneeling.
Shit.
He ran.
Chunks of the ceiling collapsed as he moved. Dust and gravel rained down. The light behind him died.
He stumbled through the tunnel, breath ragged, and burst out of the cave just as the entrance caved in behind him, sealing it shut with a mountain's weight of stone.
He collapsed onto the grass, coughing.
Stars wheeled overhead.
The Veyl was still quiet.
Then, finally:
That was his grave.
Takaya stared up at the sky, voice hoarse.
"Veythos."
The one who ended the war.
The first Ringbearer.
The world's final line between salvation and annihilation.
And somehow…
Takaya had just walked through the man's tomb.
The stars above Duskrend didn't twinkle.
They pulsed.
Takaya lay flat on the damp grass, arms stretched out, the collapsed mountain behind him and the weight of an age pressing into his chest.
Veythos.
Even the name tasted like iron.
The murals burned behind his eyes. The blade. The ring. The armies. The silence in the cave—how the Veyl had gone quiet, not out of pride or annoyance, but something closer to awe.
He hadn't walked into a ruin.
He had walked into a memory.
Not just of a man.
Of a threshold.
The one who ended a war between gods and monsters. The one who carried this same ring. The one who split his own soul into eight fragments — not to dominate, not to reign, but to protect.
The ring on Takaya's hand no longer pulsed.
It waited.
Not impatient. Not restless. Like a soldier standing at attention.
He sat up, slowly. Muscles stiff. Dirt smeared across his cheek.
"You could've told me," he muttered.
The Veyl replied after a long pause.
I could have.
"Why didn't you?"
Would it have helped? Knowing who walked before you? Knowing what you're not?
Takaya didn't answer.
The wind passed over the glade, soft and cold.
He watched it move the tall grass. Watched the shape of the hill above Veythos' tomb, wondering how long the man had stood there alone before crumbling.
"He was stronger than me."
Yes.
He closed his eyes.
"I'm not him."
Correct again.
"I don't want to become him."
Good.
"I don't want to be a savior. Or a myth. I just want to survive."
Then keep walking, Takaya. But know this: the Veyl doesn't choose aimlessly. It remembers. And it waits.
"For what?"
For you to stop surviving.
And start becoming.
He didn't sleep that night. He sat beside the sealed cave entrance, back against the stones, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the sky until the clouds rolled back in and the light was gone again.
In the morning, he left.
Not because he was finished.
But because the path ahead was waiting.
Not Veythos' path.
His own.