The road out of Conclave was not paved in stone, but in silence.
Gray mist clung to the rooftops of the outer city as Kael pulled his cloak tighter, the early chill biting through the threadbare lining. The smell of soot still lingered from the fires they'd left behind—bitter, clinging, a scent that never quite left the skin.
No bells tolled this morning. No market songs rang from the plaza.
The kingdom had gone quiet, like a mouth stitched shut.
Kael walked beside Leanardo down a narrow, sloping alley of shuttered windows and crumbling stone. Vines crawled over forgotten shrines. Moss softened the corners of statues that had once stood proud in marble. A decade ago, Conclave had been a jewel of the coast. Now, it wore decay like a second crown.
"Keep your hood up," Leanardo murmured. His voice was low, but firm. "Too many eyes. Even in silence."
Kael obeyed. He tried not to flinch at the sound of distant footfalls echoing behind shuttered homes.
They passed the charred husk of what had once been a bakery. The stones were blackened, the wooden sign—a smiling loaf—now split in half. Kael slowed, eyes drifting.
This street used to be alive.
He remembered Renna skipping along the cobblestones, flower-petal drawings crumpled in her fist. She'd chase pigeons near the bread crates, laughing with wild abandon.
"Kael, look! It's you! With a sword and a horse and everything!" she once said, showing him a messy drawing with stick figures and a single blue flower glued to the corner.
Now, only ash remained.
"Don't linger," Leanardo warned, eyes scanning the rooftops. "Guilt makes you loud."
Kael tore his gaze away, heart heavier.
They reached the city's outer quarter by dawn's rise, where abandoned carts leaned like wounded beasts, and the old temple wall cracked like a seam down the horizon. Beyond that was the Greyvale stretch—a misty woodland that hugged the edge of the kingdom like an old, watchful god.
They had to cross it before noon.
Leanardo stopped beneath a stone archway etched with faded sigils. Vines had strangled the glyphs over time, erasing old prayers.
He turned to Kael. "The moment we cross this threshold, we stop being citizens. You understand that, don't you?"
Kael nodded.
"Not heroes. Not rebels. Just… rogues," Leanardo finished.
Kael swallowed. "Then let's be rogues with reason."
Leanardo smirked, for just a moment. "That, boy, is the only kind worth being."
They crossed into the wild.
---
The Greyvale forest was not the green kind of wild Kael had read about in scrolls. No birdsong. No golden shafts of sunlight. Just low, whispering winds and trees that arched overhead like the ribs of a dead god.
Moss draped from the branches like withered skin. Fog curled between the roots, thick enough to hide an ambush.
"Stay low," Leanardo whispered. "The King's Guard sends falcons beyond the walls. Don't let your face catch light."
They moved quickly—step after step through muddy trails and crumbling watch paths. The undergrowth whispered beneath their boots, unseen things scuttling away.
Kael's breath grew ragged, not from exhaustion, but memory.
Here, on this very path, he had walked with Melia once. Before the fall. Before the screams.
She had worn a soft green shawl, dyed by her own hands, and chided him for tracking mud into her shop.
"You'll ruin my floors," she had scolded. But there was laughter in her voice, and a blush on her cheeks.
He could still smell the ink on her fingertips.
"I miss her," Kael said aloud, before he could stop himself.
Leanardo didn't ask who. He only said, "Don't bury her again in silence. Speak when you need. That's how you survive this part."
Kael closed his eyes as they walked, the memory blooming in golden tones.
He saw Jonar's wide grin—half-toothless and full of warmth—as he passed Kael a rod.
"Don't grip it like you're fighting it," he used to say. "It's just a river. Let it speak."
Nia's voice echoed next.
"You're too thin, boy. Here. Stew. Don't argue."
He remembered Mirche's worn fingers sliding a scroll across a counter. "Forbidden, yes. But the truth's always hidden behind 'forbidden,' Kael."
They had all been part of a world that mattered. Not because it was grand—but because it was his.
And now he ran not for vengeance, but because they'd once existed.
---
By midday, they stopped near the riverbank that marked the final warding line of the Conclave's reach.
A shattered obelisk marked the border—once etched with protective runes, now faded with age.
Kael knelt beside it. Touched the moss-softened stone.
"What now?" he asked.
Leanardo crouched beside him, drawing a crude map in the mud.
"We head east. Past Greyvale and into the merchant roads near Iderra. If we move fast, we can pass the trading caravans and blend in."
He looked up. "But once we reach the Mirrowfen Hills, we're in unclaimed territory. No kingdoms. Just old places—older than war or coin."
Kael's brow furrowed. "That's where the Spectre was last seen?"
Leanardo nodded. "Not seen. Felt. You'll know it when you're close. The world gets… louder."
Kael stood, brushing mud from his gloves. "Then let's go before the falcons find us."
They crossed the river under fog. The stones were slick, the water biting cold. But on the other side—
—the silence changed.
The air felt charged, like a held breath. The trees no longer leaned in suffocatingly close. Sunlight broke through in slivers, soft and golden.
Kael looked back, once. Just once. The ruined kingdom behind him bl
urred in mist.
But ahead, the world waited.
Not for a boy with fire in his blood.
But for what he would become.