Chapter 93 – The Mask of the Living
They rode west through ash and ghostlight, passing through villages where silence had made its home. The smoke of Fallowmere still clung to their clothes, the char stinging their eyes more than any memory could. Even the wind seemed afraid to speak, rustling only in brief sighs through shattered eaves and broken fences. The world had gone quiet in the wake of fire.
Each town they passed had chosen differently—some had bent the knee to the Dominion, others had raised weapons, and still others burned rather than be ruled. And in all of them, even in those where voices were hushed behind shuttered windows and empty temples, the people whispered of a name rising in the east:
The Hollow Banner.
It flew not for a king, not even for a nation—but for an idea.
That the world must be ruled by order, not choice. That peace must be shaped, not sought. That obedience was the price of survival.
Caedren held no banner.
But he bore a wound, and it bled purpose.
By the twelfth day, the road narrowed into the long spine of the western cliffs, where earth met sky in jagged union. They reached Karrhollow just before dusk, its silhouette cut against a copper sky. The fortress was not built like others—no towers or banners, no battlements worn smooth by endless siege. Karrhollow was half-carved, half-grown from the stone itself, a sanctuary for those who had once followed Ivan's road. It loomed like a mausoleum of lost hopes.
The gates opened slowly, groaning like something reluctant to wake. Inside, the light was dim and golden, torches set into alcoves and watched by silent guards. The walls bore no insignia, only the hammer-and-circle etchings that marked Ivan's line.
The captain of Karrhollow greeted them with a soldier's courtesy and a liar's smile.
"Lord Caedren," he said, bowing. "We've been expecting you."
Caedren narrowed his gaze, his horse stamping nervously beneath him. "I don't recall sending word."
The captain smiled wider, and something in it was too easy. "But your friends did."
Before Caedren could ask, a figure emerged from the shadows beneath a stone arch.
Thalen.
Childhood friend.
Once brother-in-arms.
Now a traitor.
For a heartbeat, it was as if time froze. Caedren felt his throat tighten, memories rushing in—summer days on the cliffs of Aerlan, blade-sparring under the old tree, the vows they made in firelight to never kneel. But the man before him now was no longer the boy who swore those oaths.
Thalen looked unchanged on the surface—handsome, sharp-eyed, with the same crimson scarf he always wore looped once around his neck. But there was something new in him, something hard and cold. A stillness. The stillness of someone who had already chosen which of his friends must die.
"I heard the stories," Thalen said, stepping closer. "The Hollow Son. The crown. The remnants."
He looked to Lysa. "And the girl with the knife-song."
To Tarn. "And the last of the ox-born."
Then to Caedren. "And you. The boy who once told me the world was broken. The boy who now pretends he can fix it."
Caedren didn't move. "Say your truth."
Thalen's smile faded, as if he'd been hoping not to speak it aloud.
"I serve the Dominion now."
Tarn drew steel in a blink, his axe rising like a second heartbeat. Lysa stepped between Caedren and Thalen without hesitation, eyes locked on every movement. Her hand twitched once toward her blade's hilt.
But Caedren raised a hand. "No," he said. "Let him speak."
Thalen exhaled, almost relieved. "The Forge is warded. Only one who bears the seal of Ivan's Line may pass the iron door."
He touched his own chest. A faint shimmer pulsed beneath his shirt, like light caught in water.
Caedren's heart stilled. "You carry it?"
"I do. As do you. But only one bearer may enter at a time."
Lysa stepped forward. "You'd never have come here alone."
"I didn't," Thalen replied. "The Dominion arrives tomorrow."
He said it plainly, not as a threat, but a certainty. A truth already etched in the coming wind.
Above them, the sky had begun to darken faster than the sun could fall. A storm was already coming over the cliffs—dark, fast, full of winter spite and something else beneath it. Something older. The kind of storm that came with omens.
Caedren stared at Thalen, the weight of years collapsing into seconds.
"You came not to warn me. Not to kill me. But to delay me."
Thalen nodded slowly. "The Forge opens at twilight. If I enter first, I will take the crown. And I will end the war before it ever begins."
"By serving the Dominion?" Tarn spat.
"By ensuring no one else ever wears the crown again." Thalen's voice was quiet. "You think this world will survive another age of kings and rebels? Of thrones raised and torn down? We tried your dream, Caedren. It burns. Every time."
Caedren's voice turned cold. "You'd wear the crown of a world you helped break?"
"No," Thalen said. "I'll bury it."
The silence that followed was thick and terrible. Even the wind outside the gate seemed to wait.
Then Thalen turned, cloak catching the torchlight. "You have until dusk, brother. After that, there will be no more kings. Or kingless."
He disappeared into the fortress, his footsteps echoing like a funeral bell.
Lysa turned to Caedren, her brow furrowed with more than just suspicion. "What now?"
He clenched his fists, feeling the burn of the Hollow Son's brand still seared into his skin. The pain steadied him. Anchored him.
"We get to the Forge before he does."
Tarn looked at the snow starting to fall in slow spirals from the heavens. "And if we don't?"
Caedren looked west, where the mountain road ended in a gate of stone and memory. He could already feel the pull of it, the call of something buried beneath centuries of silence and sacrifice.
"Then I break the world again."
His voice did not shake.
"Better broken and free than whole and bound."