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He'd sworn to follow her anywhere. But the closer she walked to fire… the more he longed to push her in.
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Caldus Thorn moved through the marble corridors of the Citadel of Blades with the ease of a man who knew every whisper behind its walls.
His boots echoed across sacred stone, past murals of saints and massacres, beneath archways carved with prayers Lysara never read anymore. The Citadel was quiet tonight. Too quiet. He didn't like it.
He'd returned early from the northern marshes expecting debriefs, strategy meetings, some trace of command.
Instead, he got silence. And a sealed chamber door.
Lysara's door.
He stopped before it, hesitating. Her guards were absent. The runic locks dim. She hadn't summoned him. And she always did.
That bothered him.
He pressed his hand to the door, whispered the override phrase, and stepped into the dark.
What he saw made his breath catch.
Lysara knelt before a half-burned candle, her armor cast aside, her back to him. Blood trickled down her arm. Not fresh — ritualistic. The symbols scrawled across her skin were forbidden.
"Lys—" he started.
"Don't speak," she said quietly.
She didn't turn around.
"I told you not to follow me tonight."
Earlier that day, Caldus had interrogated a captured cultist—a boy no older than seventeen, lips sewn shut, eyes filled with black salt. He hadn't screamed under the blade. He had laughed.
Laughed—and whispered one word before he died:
"Dren."
It was happening again. Dren Talovar's name, like poison, was threading itself back into their world. And once again, Lysara was too calm. Too deliberate.
She was drifting toward him.
And Caldus knew it.
They hadn't always been this way.
Once, long ago, he'd trained alongside her in the Iron Cloister. She'd sparred with silent fury. Bled easily. Cried rarely. And still, he'd fallen for her.
She never returned it.
But she trusted him.
And so he followed. Followed through war camps and heretic courts, through freezing marches and plague fires. Followed when she was crowned High Inquisitor. Followed even when she began… changing.
Now, Caldus didn't recognize her.
Not when she whispered to shadows. Not when she carved unknown sigils into her flesh. Not when she stood in the ashes of slaughtered villages whispering his name: Dren.
If he were anyone else, Caldus thought, he'd call it love.
But Lysara Vale did not love.
And he did not forgive.
"You should've waited," she said, standing now. Her crimson tabard clung to sweat and fever. Her eyes shimmered with unshed memory. "Thane opened the vault."
Caldus's eyes widened.
"The Shadelock Vault? You let him—?"
"He had the key."
"And what did he find?"
Lysara hesitated.
"Truth," she said.
The word was a blade.
Caldus stepped forward, his voice rising.
"Truth doesn't bleed villages, Lysara. Truth doesn't call monsters back from exile. Truth doesn't—"
"Stop."
She turned.
Their eyes met.
"I'm tired," she said, "of pretending I don't want answers. Dren's not a ghost anymore. He's coming."
Caldus clenched his jaw. "Then let me kill him."
"No," she said instantly.
The silence that followed was a scar.
Later, alone in the barracks chapel, Caldus unsheathed his blade and stared at the inscription:
"I serve in flame and light."
The words were her gift. A reminder of who he was, what they'd promised.
But now, they felt like a curse.
He knelt. Not in prayer. But in thought.
You're slipping, Lysara, he thought. And you won't let me pull you back.
He gripped the blade tighter.
Then another voice broke the silence.
"You think she'll choose you."
Caldus spun.
A man leaned against the chapel column, dressed in dark scholar's robes, eyes shadowed by glyph-ink. It was Thane.
"You're supposed to be gone," Caldus hissed.
"I was," Thane replied coolly. "But the book showed me things. And one of them… was you."
Caldus rose, weapon drawn.
"Speak carefully, alchemist."
Thane smiled. "Do you know what she dreams of? I do. She dreams of him."
Caldus lunged.
Thane vanished in smoke.
But his voice lingered.
"You won't save her, Caldus. You'll bury her."
Later that night, Caldus stood beneath the high tower of Ashengar, staring at the stars. Somewhere in the wild, Dren walked again. Somewhere below, Lysara bled truths he couldn't stop.
And somewhere deeper still…
A part of him whispered:
If I can't have her…
Then no one will.