Tales in the Arids — Part 3: Zyhier
The world Leornars opened his eyes to was wrong in every way that mattered. It was an endless black—no horizon, no ground—only a heat that tasted like metal and a sky of scorching blue flame. Shapes writhed in the distance like smudges of smoke. In the center of that impossible space there stood a figure whose size made the word "towering" feel inadequate. It loomed, a silhouette edged in cobalt fire, and regarded him with a patient, hungry malice.
Leornars scrubbed the ash from his vision and rose as if he'd been interrupted from a nap. He did not bow. He did not tremble.
"The hell are you supposed to be?" he asked, casual as a boy asking the price of bread.
A voice like grinding stone answered. "I see that you have no respect… or fear."
"As you see, I can easily destroy your very existence." The figure's voice tried for menace. It sounded bored.
"And why should I?" Leornars replied. "The greater the size, the greater the target."
There was a pause, long enough for flame to lick the darkness between them. "For someone who possesses good intelligence, you seem not to grasp your situation."
"I'm well aware you could kill me," Leornars said, "but the reason you haven't is enough for me to suspect there's something you need from me."
The figure leaned, as if curious. "You are clever enough to see through that."
"And the fact this isn't the real world?" Leornars added. "If I die here, it doesn't mean I die there."
The figure narrowed. "You are being too cocky with me, little brat."
Leornars shrugged, a casual movement that meant nothing and everything. "If you think that size commands obedience, you've read the wrong books. Send me back."
Surprise—an honest flicker—crossed the giant's face. "Oh. That's new."
"Just know I will return," the thing said after a breath.
"Don't worry about that. I'm very not interested," Leornars answered.
The blue flames roiled. The space dissolved.
---
Outside the cave, the desert screamed. Wind threw sand like salted knives; the world became a living shroud. Inside, the small fire Stacian had coaxed to life threw a yellow halo against rough stone. Zaryter fed his little sister a banana by the flickering light; Dylan's body lay in the corner like a question.
"So what now?" Zaryter asked, voice thin with exhaustion.
"We wait for the storm to pass, then head to Vurnam," Stacian said, hands working methodically. "If we run out, I'll carry the lord. But Dylan's corpse—Lord Leornars would want it."
Zaryter's jaw worked. "If we split up because of the storm… odds are bad. Lord Leornars will be unconscious a while. Going out blind would be—"
"—suicidal," Stacian finished.
Zaryter's curiosity, the kind that surfaced when danger had teeth but sleep had not yet taken him, found focus. "What was that skill he used? The… gate keeper?"
Stacian's face went still. "The Gatekeeper."
"The Gatekeeper? What does it do?"
"It erases. Instantly. No resurrection, no reincarnation. It changes the law of fate by removing the concept of rebirth. Once it activates, nothing can stop it—magic, souls, power, weapons—if the Gatekeeper doesn't favor them, it consumes them."
Zaryter's mouth formed a single vowel: "Holy hell."
Stacian nodded. "It consumes a lot of mana. Leornars… he's only awakened his mana. He hasn't unlocked it fully. Right now he uses his soul-ki as fuel. That's why he shed blood-tears."
"Blood—tears?" Zaryter repeated, horrified.
"He read about the Gatekeeper," Stacian said quietly. "It was written by his mother—the Nightmare Witch. Leornars gave me the book after he read through it."
"Someone else out there can do this?" Zaryter felt the world tilt.
"Yes. If someone tries to use it against the lord, I'll use my Chainbreaker to stop them. No matter what it takes." Stacian's voice went flat and cold. "Anyone who threatens the lord must—no, will—die."
Zaryter looked frightened, and for a moment the harsh lines of this world showed through the adults. The little sister—Shullah—took the banana and toddled toward Leornars. She opened his mouth to feed him.
Before the fruit touched his lips, Leornars rose as if some internal alarm had tripped. "Who dares touch me?!" Cold, threatening, ancient.
"Oh," Leornars said after a beat, softer now. "The boy's little sister."
He scanned the cave, then fixed Stacian with a look that had the calm efficiency of a blade. "Location?"
"A cave. Twenty miles to Vurnam," she replied.
"The storm has… disrupted our way." Leornars flexed his fingers like a man fitting gloves. "How long?"
"Three hours, maybe," Zaryter said.
Leornars's patience frayed. "Too long. I'm not interested in waiting that long."
He walked to where Dylan's body lay. "Zaryter, cover your sister's eyes. I'd rather she not see this."
Obediently, Zaryter did. Leornars laid his hand on Dylan's chest. There was no hesitation now—only a voice that had held sway over darker things than this cave.
"Dylan Yorkshire," he said, slow and unreadable. "You asked what your purpose in life was. You did not know. I could not fashion one for you—so I will give you one. It is no miracle. It is not grand. But it is more than rotting in the dirt. Embrace this calling and awaken from despair. Now—awaken from the dead and serve me. I hereby declare Dylan Yorkshire dead, and reborn as my servant. Your name shall be… Zyhier."
Black fog peeled from the corpse. The flesh burned blue and remade itself: longer hair, skin so pale it seemed to drink the light, two black horns curling from the brow, purple eyes like bruises. Dylan—I mean Zyhier—knelt, a new devotion in his posture.
"Lord, I accept." His voice was small and wholly obedient.
Leornars inclined his head once, satisfied. "Good. Issue resolved. We leave this sandbox."
He motioned. Zyhier raised his hands and wove a barrier of shimmering nothing that swallowed sand and wind. Leornars summoned a wyvern with a gesture and, protected beneath Zyhier's veil, they took to the sky. Sand beat against the barrier and slid away as the wyvern carved through the storm.
Zaryter's mouth hung open. "Huh? Huh? Huuuu—?!"
"Stop shouting or I'll throw you off," Leornars said without looking back.
Stacian laughed, soft and private. Leornars watched her for a second and thought, not unkindly, that she had been acting almost normal lately: laughing, talking. Normal in a world that had long ago abandoned that word.
---
Far to the south, a group of knights from Vurnam hunted through the dunes where the bandits had once nested. Dead sand-beasts lay splayed in the sand; a crater gaped where light had not been made for this world. The commander crouched at the rim and did not speak for a long while.
"What kind of monster did this?" he whispered.
---
A week later, in Lurtra, Kylie arrived with the kind of fury that punches holes through stone. "I'll find you, Leornars," he snarled, and made a fist that dented the wall.
Meanwhile, farther north in the capital of Lurtra, Sahara Kurnov returned from the Durmount Forest decorated with the king's praise. Summoned heroes stood at attention in the throne room as the monarchs smiled with the complacent satisfaction of those who hold power by decree rather than by truth.
"You and the other summoned heroes have surpassed our expectations," the king intoned. "Your next task is delicate."
"We accept," said a girl named Jennifer, eager and bright-eyed.
Sahara's lips tightened. Her father's death at Leornars's hands was a hollow—an absence that made everything sound wrong. When the king named Leornars Servs Avrem as the "humanoid devil" to hunt, Sahara felt the room tilt. It was impossible—absurd—to think they could remove him in weeks. With Kylie gone, their frontline was weak.
"We accept," Jennifer repeated, steady.
Sahara glared at her. Jennifer moved with the arrogance of someone who has never paid for a loss. A word, a shove, and light magic flared—Sahara retaliated, and for a heartbeat the throne room became a sparring ground of whispering steel and lethal grins.
Princess Selrose stepped between them like an executioner in silk. Her eyes—one of them a very wrong and vivid blue—shimmered, and she smiled in a way that did not belong to a princess. "Enough."
Sahara watched the princess go, chills ticking at the back of her neck. Selrose's laugh trailed down the hall like a promise and a threat at once.
Sahara breathed once, exhaled the small fury she had been clutching. "This is not going to end well," she muttered. "First my father is dead, I'm beaten, I'm summoned to another world, and now I'm told to hunt the man who killed him. Can I catch a break?"
No answer came, only the echo of footsteps and a desert that refused to forgive.
And somewhere beyond the dunes, under a sky of blue flame that belonged to no proper world, Leornars guided his wyvern onward. Zyhier knelt beside him, obedient and remade. The Gatekeeper's shadow lingered in the sand like a rumor, and the world, for all its small certainties, had begun to lean toward a reckoning.