The flames still clung to the docks. Smoke drifted over the canal like a funeral shroud, blurring lanterns into wavering smears of gold. The stench of charred wood mixed with the copper bite of blood. Beneath it all, Kaelen could taste ash.
He stood among the ruin with his spear still wet, boots slick with the blood of his fallen brothers. Twenty knights of the Solar Guard had stood here less than an hour ago. Twenty men and women sworn to shield Aetheria beneath the Everlight. Now they were corpses cooling in the night.
The river lapped softly against the pier, carrying scraps of burned cloth and the occasional pale hand that slipped free of the wreckage. Kaelen forced his gaze away, jaw tight.
"Captain."
A voice broke through the smoke. It was Sir Daren, helm under his arm, soot streaking his brow. His eyes were red-rimmed, though whether from grief or the fire's sting Kaelen could not tell.
"We've searched the perimeter. No trace of the heretic. Just blood. Too much of it."
Kaelen's grip tightened on his spear. "He's alive."
Daren hesitated. "With respect, Captain… no man could take a wound like that and flee the Guard's blades. You saw what he did. That wasn't starlight. That was—"
Kaelen turned on him, voice like steel. "Alive. Until I drive this spear through his heart, we assume nothing else."
The words rang hollow even to his own ears.
They had witnessed something that defied every teaching of the Athenaeum. Magic flowed from stars, pure and radiant. The Ceremony of Alignment was sacred, unbroken since the founding of Solara itself. But tonight…
Kaelen could still see it. The way shadows had writhed like living serpents. The way knights had screamed as the dark swallowed them, their light snuffed out like guttering candles. And at the center of it—the boy. Elian.
An archivist, of all things. A meek scribe who'd once bowed his head in the Athenaeum's libraries while Kaelen passed in parade.
The image twisted Kaelen's gut.
He had sworn an oath to uphold the Everlight. Yet what he had seen was no light.
He strode through the wreckage, the other knights parting for him. Their armor clinked faintly, muted as though even steel was subdued tonight. The bodies had been laid out in two rows upon the charred pier, their armor blackened, their faces pale in death.
Kaelen dropped to one knee beside the nearest. Sir Merek—broad-shouldered, brash, always the first to laugh in the mess hall. His throat was gone, devoured by something darker than fire. Only a hollow void remained, edges rimmed with frost.
Kaelen bowed his head.
He had no prayer to give. Words failed against such a sight.
"Captain."
This time it was Mistress Ilyra, High Magister of the Athenaeum. Her robes were untouched by smoke, her hair bound in braids of silver. Her eyes, however, glittered with cold fury.
"You allowed the boy to escape."
Kaelen rose slowly, spear in hand. "We pursued. He… wielded something unnatural. Not of the stars."
"Then you should have cut him down before it took root," Ilyra hissed. "One seed of corruption becomes a forest. Do you grasp what you've let slip from your fingers?"
Kaelen held her gaze, though it burned. "I grasp that twenty knights lie dead, Mistress. Men and women I swore to protect. Perhaps if the Athenaeum had warned us—"
Her eyes narrowed. "Mind your tongue."
A dangerous silence stretched. Around them, the surviving knights kept their eyes on the ground.
At last, Ilyra spoke, her voice sharp as broken glass. "Find him. Hunt him to the ends of Aetheria. Bring me his corpse, or do not return at all."
She turned in a whirl of silks, vanishing into the smoke as though it parted for her alone.
Kaelen exhaled slowly. His men waited. They would follow his word, his spear, his oath. But he could feel it—the unease rippling through them like cracks in glass. They had seen the same shadows. Heard the same screams.
And now, the same doubt gnawed at them all.
He forced his voice steady. "We march at dawn. Track every witness, every whisper. He cannot vanish into the dark."
"Yes, Captain," came the chorus, though their voices lacked fire.
When the others dispersed, Kaelen lingered by the river's edge. He stared at the black water, its surface broken only by drifting ash. Somewhere downstream, the fugitive's skiff would be gliding through the dark.
He clenched his fist.
Elian had once been a scholar. Quiet, harmless. Kaelen remembered seeing him hunched over scrolls in the Athenaeum's galleries, ink-stained fingers tracing forgotten constellations. A boy who bowed his head when addressed, who flushed when spoken to by knights.
Not a murderer. Not a heretic.
And yet… twenty bodies now said otherwise.
Kaelen's armor felt heavy as stone. He sat at the edge of the pier, spear across his knees. For a long moment, he let the silence of the river press against him.
He whispered the Solar Guard's creed, the words drilled into his bones since childhood.
By starlight we are born.
By starlight we are bound.
By starlight we guard the world.
The words had always steadied him. Tonight, they rang hollow.
Footsteps approached. Sir Daren again, voice low. "Captain. Some of the men… they're frightened. They whisper the boy is cursed. That he carries the Umbra."
Kaelen's chest tightened. "The Umbra is a myth."
"Perhaps. But they saw it. We all did."
Kaelen turned, meeting Daren's haunted gaze. He had no answer.
At last, he said only: "Tell them this—whether curse or myth, we are the Guard. We do not falter. We do not fear."
Daren bowed, though doubt lingered in his eyes.
When Kaelen was alone again, he looked once more to the sky.
The stars burned bright above, a thousand eternal fires. But there—at the edge of vision—hung one that did not belong. A star blacker than void, pulsing like a wound in the heavens.
Kaelen's breath caught.
The same star Elian had cried out about, moments before the slaughter.
It should have been impossible. Stars did not dim, did not hunger. Yet Kaelen's eyes could not deny what they saw.
A shadow among the stars. Watching.
The spear felt heavier in his grip. Duty told him to hunt, to kill, to burn the heretic from the world. But some hidden corner of his soul whispered another thought, dangerous and treacherous.
What if the boy is not the cause… but the warning?
Kaelen rose, setting his jaw. He turned from the river and strode back toward the campfires, where his men waited with hollow eyes.
Whether curse or omen, heretic or herald—he would find Elian.
And when he did, the truth of that night would be carved in blood and steel.