Kael Draven
I woke to the smell of smoke.
My eyes snapped open, immediately alert. The sun was just rising, pale light filtering through the broken roof. Lyra sat near the entrance, and a small fire was burning before her. She was roasting something on a stick-something which looked disturbingly like a rat.
"You're awake," she said, not looking at me. "Good. Breakfast is almost ready."
I sat up, with every muscle in my body protesting. The sleep had helped, but I still felt like I'd been beaten with clubs. This body wasn't recovering as fast as I needed it to.
"Where did you find that?" I asked gesturing to her catch.
"The ruins. There's a whole nest of them in what used to be a basement." She rotated the stick, turning the meat evenly. "Not appetizing, I know. But protein is protein."
She wasn't wrong. In the mine, we'd eaten far worse. I edged near the fire, pleased for the heat. The night had been cold, colder than I'd expected. My thin clothes hadn't provided much protection.
Lyra divided the cooked meat and handed me half; it was gamy and tough, but warm and filling. We ate in companionable silence, both of us too hungry to care about table manners.
When we were done, Lyra kicked dirt over the fire, covering it utterly. "We really should get moving soon. The smoke might attract attention."
"From who? We're in the middle of nowhere."
"Temple scouts. Bounty hunters. Wild animals. Take your pick." She got to her feet and stretched, wincing at her own hurts. "The Wastes aren't as empty as they look. And two escaped slaves are easy money for anyone willing to turn us in."
I hadn't thought of that. Of course, there would be slave catchers. Viktor wouldn't just let us vanish. There'd be a price on our heads, descriptions circulated to every settlement and outpost in the region.
We had to be very cautious: no traveling by roads, no proximity to settlements, and only places where organized hunting wouldn't even think of looking.
"Do you know this area?" I asked.
"Not well. But I know how to navigate." She pointed toward the rising sun. "That's east. The Temple's strongholds are mostly south and west. We want to go north or northeast. Toward the Fractured Peaks."
"What's there?"
"Mountains. Caves. Places to hide." She looked at me. "Also, that's where the rebels operate. If we can reach them, they'll give us shelter."
I considered this. The rebels meant organization, resources, information-all those things that I needed. But it also meant politics, ideologies, expectations. They'd want something from us in return for their help.
Still, it was better than wandering the Wastes until we died of exposure or got caught.
"How far?" I asked.
"On foot? Three, maybe four days if we move steady and don't run into trouble."
Three or four days of walking through hostile territory with no supplies, no weapons, and bodies that were already half-broken. The odds weren't great. But staying here wasn't an option either.
"Then we should move," I said.
We left the ruins behind, heading northeast, across terrain that seemed determined to kill us through sheer tedium. More ash fields. More scorched earth. The sun climbed higher; the temperature rose with it. By midday, we were both sweating, parched, and dangerously close to heat exhaustion.
"There," Lyra said, pointing to a cluster of rocks far away. "Might be shade. And where there's shade, sometimes there's water."
We plodded towards the rocks, every step heavier than the last, until we finally reached them, finding just what Lyra had hoped for: a tiny pool of water collected in a depression between two large boulders. Murky and full of things that would make us sick, no doubt, but water nonetheless.
We drank carefully, small sips to begin with, testing our stomachs to see if they could hold it. It tasted like minerals and dirt, but it was the most beautiful thing that I had experienced since waking up in the mine.
We rested in the shade, letting our bodies recover. Lyra examined her hands, picking at blisters that had formed during our escape. I did the same, cataloging injuries. Nothing serious, but everything hurt.
Some time later, Lyra asked, "May I ask you something?
"Depends on the question."
"Last night, when you hit that guard. You moved fast. Really fast. Like you knew exactly what you were doing." She looked straight at me. "Where did you learn to fight?
I'd known this question would come eventually. I'd just hoped for more time to prepare a good lie.
"My father," I said neutrally. "Before he was sold to the mines, he was a soldier. He taught me what he could."
It was vague enough to be believable, common enough not to raise suspicions. Lots of people ended up in the mines because they'd been on the wrong side of some conflict or other.
Lyra seemed to accept it. "My mother was a fighter too. Part of the original rebel group, back when it started." Her voice went soft. "She died when I was twelve. Temple raid. I've been with the rebels ever since, learning everything she would have taught me if she'd lived."
I heard the pain in her voice, the old wound that never quite healed. Loss like that shaped people, drove them. It explained her dedication to the cause, her willingness to take risks.
"I'm sorry," I said, because it seemed like the right thing to say.
She shrugged. "It was six years ago. I'm over it."
She wasn't. Not really. But I understood the lie. Sometimes you told yourself you were over things because admitting otherwise meant letting the pain win.
We sat in silence for a while longer, then continued our journey. The afternoon was brutal. The heat rose off the ground in waves, so that the horizon shimmered like water. My vision started playing tricks on me; I kept seeing shapes that weren't there, movement in the distance that turned out to be nothing.
Dehydration and exhaustion had set in.
By the time the sun started to set, we'd done perhaps ten miles, which wasn't enough. At this rate, it would take us a week to reach the mountains, and we didn't have a week's worth of strength left in us.
We came across another set of ruins that we could take shelter in for the night. Much smaller, and less intact this time, though: just a few walls and foundations marking where buildings used to be. But there was a partial structure that would shield us from the wind, and that was all we needed.
Lyra went hunting again while there was still light. I remained at our shelter, too exhausted to be of any use. While she was gone, I continued to practice with the shadows once more, pushing my limits bit by bit.
I had noticed something during the day's walk. The shadows had been following me. Not obviously, not in a way anyone else would notice. But they were there, always at the edge of my vision, moving when I moved, stopping when I stopped. Like they were waiting for me to command them.
It was comforting and unsettling at the same time. The connection with shadow magic was stronger than I had thought. This body might be weak, but its power recognized me, knew me. That was dangerous and useful in equal measure.
Lyra came back with two more rats, and some sort of plant she'd discovered growing between rocks. "It's edible," she said, noticing the skeptical look on my face. "Bitter, but it won't kill us."
We made another small fire, cooked our meager dinner, and ate. And indeed, the plant was bitter, almost unbearably so. But it was food, and food meant survival.
"Tomorrow will be harder," Lyra said as we settled in for the night. "The terrain gets rougher the closer we get to the mountains. Lots of ravines and canyons. Easy to get lost or trapped."
"You've traveled this way before?"
"Once. With a scouting party. We were looking for Temple supply routes to ambush." She smiled grimly. "Didn't find any. Just a lot of empty land and dead things."
"How encouraging."
She laughed, a short bark of sound. "Yeah, well, optimism isn't exactly my strong suit these days."
We took turns keeping watch again. When it was my shift, I sat at the entrance to our shelter and watched the stars. They were the same stars I remembered from my time, the same constellations. At least something hadn't changed.
I thought about my empire, about the cities I'd built, the armies I'd commanded. About Theron, my general, my friend, who'd killed me for reasons I still didn't fully understand. About the war Lyra had mentioned, the one that destroyed half the world.
Was that my fault? Had my conquest triggered something worse? Or had Theron's actions after my death caused the destruction?
I needed answers. Needed to understand what had happened in the thousand years I'd been gone. The world had changed so much it was almost unrecognizable, and I was stumbling through it blind.
But I would figure it out. I always did. That was what made me an emperor, the ability to adapt, to learn, to take whatever situation I found myself in and turn it to my advantage.
This was just another challenge. Harder than most, certainly. But not impossible.
Nothing was impossible. Not for me.
I watched the shadows dance across the broken walls of the ruins and felt something I hadn't in days.
Determination.
I would survive this, I would regain my power, and I would find out the truth about my death and what came after.
The world thought Kael Draven was dead, a monster from history best forgotten.
They were wrong.
I was very much alive. And I was coming back.