Chapter XVII
✦
"Keep going. Sooner or later, life will give you a reason to. Just keep living, Dot."
Liora's voice echoed like a persistent ghost in the hollow chambers of his mind.
Dot clenched his jaw. Fury boiled beneath his skin — cold and constant, the kind that had nowhere left to go. All he had ever tasted was death. Its metallic tang on his tongue. Its cold weight draped across his shoulders like a shadow he couldn't outrun, couldn't outlast, couldn't kill. It had followed him through every battlefield, every blood-soaked night, every face he hadn't been able to save.
Why should someone like me ever deserve a reason to live?
The question burned. Sharp and merciless. No answer came.
Boldr rose abruptly from his seat, summoned by the king's call. Without a backward glance he strode away, his boots echoing down the corridor until the sound was swallowed by stone.
Moments later the platform beneath Dot groaned and shifted. A low, grinding rumble. The floor opened. Guards shoved him forward into the descending chamber, chains clinking. The platform sealed above him like a tomb lid and the darkness swallowed everything.
---
The Capital — Morning
Sylric and Yiva arrived at the heart of the sprawling capital just as the morning sun crested the high walls.
The streets thrummed with it — merchants hawking spiced meats, children darting between legs, the restless murmur of a crowd drawn by the promise of spectacle. Word had spread fast, the way word always spreads when someone is going to die publicly: a trial by combat, the fate of the accused to be decided in the arena. The great stadium loomed ahead, its tiered stone seats already filling with eager faces.
Without warning Yiva broke into a run, weaving through the crowd toward the high stands. "Come on!" she called over her shoulder.
Sylric scanned the sea of heads for her bright hair — lost her for a heartbeat — then turned and slipped away in the opposite direction. Toward shadowed alleys and doors that didn't appear on any map.
The Prison Block
In the damp underbelly of the palace, iron keys clanged as guards secured Dren in his cell. He sank onto the cold stone bench and said nothing. Stared at the wall across from him with the expression of a man who has already run every calculation and doesn't like the answer any of them produce.
Across the narrow corridor, in the opposite cell, Vespers stood rigid against the bars. Her knuckles were white around the iron.
"That bastard," she hissed, voice low and venomous. "How dare he turn on me. He'll pay. I swear it."
"Shut up," Dren muttered, resting the back of his head against the rough wall. "I need quiet."
Vespers whirled toward him. "This is your fault. All of it." She raised her voice. "Guards! Move me to another cell — anywhere away from this traitor!"
Dren let out a short, tired laugh that held no humor in it at all. "What's the use. You're still getting what you wanted. You want the kid dead. Boldr will finish the job. Only a matter of time."
"I'm going to escape this pit." Vespers yanked at her chains, metal scraping against stone. "I'll contact the Allthing Council. They'll burn this whole rotten court to the ground."
Dren closed his eyes.
The Castle's Forgotten Passages
Sylric moved like a wraith through the dark.
Torchlight flickered across damp stone walls as he came up behind the first guard — a precise strike to the throat, fast and quiet, the man crumpling before the sound of it fully formed. The second went down under a chokehold, body sliding slowly to the floor. Neither made enough noise to matter.
He stepped over them and kept moving.
Far below his feet lay the prison block. He could feel the pulse of it — the weight of the cells beneath him, Dren's resignation, Vespers' rage, both of them locked in the dark waiting for something to change.
Somewhere in the Palace
Boldr pushed open a heavy oak door.
The royal bedchamber was dim, curtains drawn against the morning light. The king lay propped against silk pillows, his once-mighty frame wasted by illness — the same wasting that had taken their father, working its way through him with patient, methodical cruelty. Servants and healers hovered at the edges of the room like anxious shadows.
"Out," Boldr said. Low. Iron-hard.
They fled without protest, robes whispering as they vanished through the side door.
The king managed a weak, rattling laugh that dissolved into a wet cough. "I see you've taken a liking to bossing people around."
Boldr approached the bedside. "More fun than ruling the way you do." He looked at his brother — really looked at him. "Death has you in its grip."
"I'm tired of fighting," the king said quietly. "I want to rest."
"Don't say that." A flicker of something stern moved across Boldr's face. "That's a bad omen."
"You know I have what Father had." The king's eyes, fever-bright, found his brother's and held them. "The same wasting. I'm done, Arthur."
"The old man wasn't half as strong as you. Keep fighting."
"The gods chose you for war," the king said, his voice dropping to a rasp. "And me for peace — so they always said. I've lived a peaceful life. I'm done."
A long silence.
"No more." The king reached out a trembling hand. "I called you here because of the dreams. Recurring. Vivid. They come closer to death with every night." He met Boldr's eyes. "Promise me something."
Boldr stiffened at the use of his true name a moment earlier, still sitting with it.
"When I'm gone — train my eldest son to lead. He's foolish now, reckless, but time will temper him. He'll be needed." A pause. "A war is coming. Worse than anything we've faced."
"The Greenwood skirmish?" Boldr's voice was dismissive. "Their army is rabble. Nothing compared to ours."
The king shook his head slowly. "Not them. Something deeper. Something worse." His eyes held Boldr's. "You feel it too. The end approaching. The unworldly reign." A breath. "The rise of the Infernal Monarch."
Boldr looked away.
His jaw tightened.
The room seemed to grow colder around them both.
The Great Fighting pit
Thousands packed the tiers under the open sky — a roaring sea of faces, banners snapping in the wind, the thunderous roll of drums shaking the stone benches beneath their feet.
Yiva had claimed a high seat in the stands. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, eyes locked on the arena floor below.
The massive wooden gates — tall as giants — groaned open.
Silence fell across the stadium like a blade.
Dot stepped into the blinding sunlight, wrists still bound in heavy chains, blinking against the brightness. He stood in the center of the sand and didn't move. Took in the crowd. Took in the walls. Took in the exits that weren't there.
The judge's voice boomed across the arena, amplified by the shape of the stone.
"We gather to judge by trial of combat the man known as Dot — the Accused! Charged with the massacre of innocents! Let the gods decide his guilt!"
The crowd erupted. "Kill him! Kill the monster!"
A second gate groaned open across the arena.
Dot turned slowly.
Boldr strode into the sand — towering, dark-armored, a double-headed axe resting across one shoulder that would have taken two ordinary men to lift. The stands exploded in cheers and screaming, feet stamping against stone in a rhythm that shook the air.
Dot's gaze locked on him. Fury blazed in it, cold and absolute.
Boldr swung the axe in a single casual arc. The sheer force of it snapped Dot's chains like thread. Iron links clattered across the sand.
"Give him a weapon," Boldr said.
A guard hurried forward and pressed Dot's sword into his hands.
Boldr planted his feet. Axe resting on his shoulder. He looked at Dot across the sand with the ease of a man who has never once in his life doubted the outcome of anything.
"One more time, kid," he said. "How do you plead for your crimes?"
Dot spat blood onto the sand.
"Go to hell."
A feral smile curved Boldr's lips. He raised the axe high with both hands and brought it down — not at Dot, but at the ground between them. A single, thunderous swing.
The shockwave came like a wall.
The air itself screamed. The invisible force slammed into Dot like a battering ram, lifting him off his feet and hurling him backward across the arena. His body hit the far wall with bone-jarring impact — stone cracking where he struck — and slid down in a heap onto the sand below.
Dot coughed. Crimson flecked his lips. Pain exploded through his ribs, his back, his skull. His vision blurred at the edges and the roaring of the crowd became a single undifferentiated noise, the sound of the world going distant.
*What kind of monster is this.*
The darkness crept in from the edges.
He fought it.
Lost.
✦
— To Be Continued —