The black sun above Dovaryn dimmed. The last of the sky's fractures sealed like old scars, and the city exhaled a long, shuddering breath. The storm had passed—but the war had only begun.
Callan stood before a fire-lit war table in the shattered citadel of Highwatch. Maps were scattered, marked with red ink and enemy formations. He studied them in silence, the air around him tight with tension. Generals, rebels, and highborn defectors watched him with uneasy eyes. To them, he was both savior and monster. Leader and weapon.
"I want an update on the southern outposts," he said without looking up.
"They're holding," said Ser Rhen, a former noble captain turned rebel strategist. "But barely. The Emperor's third army still holds the pass near Lake Karest."
"That's their last clean supply line to the capital," Callan muttered. "We cut that artery, and we choke them."
"Easier said than done," said Solenne from the far end. She stood with her arms crossed, eyes scanning the same map. "That pass is a fortress. Even with your power, we'd be outnumbered five to one."
Callan raised an eyebrow. "I'm not storming it with numbers."
A hush fell.
He looked around. "We're not fighting like an empire. We never have. The Emperor plays with rules carved in gold. I deal in fire and smoke."
He tapped a symbol on the map.
"Karest Pass doesn't fall to siege. It falls to sabotage."
Hours later, he stood on a windswept cliff overlooking Lake Karest. The moon hung high, silver on black water. The pass ahead wound between sheer cliffs, a natural choke point turned into a fortress. Dozens of war banners flew. Hundreds of lanterns burned. Soldiers moved like ants below.
Callan crouched beside a cliff edge, watching the watch rotations with inhuman stillness.
"They're disciplined," whispered Solenne, crouched beside him. "Drilled. You won't find an opening unless—"
Callan stood.
"I don't need an opening."
He stepped to the edge.
And jumped.
He moved like smoke.
Shadows folded around him, the runes on his gauntlets pulsing faintly. His blade was silent as it struck. One sentry fell. Then another. By the time the alarm rose, it was already too late.
Inside the fortress, chaos erupted.
Solenne and the infiltrator team surged through a breach carved by Callan's explosive entry. Arcane disruptors overloaded watchtowers. Gates slammed open. Poisoned steam filled barracks. Screams echoed.
But it was Callan who reached the heart.
The command chamber was a shrine to imperial arrogance. Velvet banners. Gold-trimmed maps. Crystal communication arrays.
General Argis, the Butcher of Dhalm, waited there, his crimson armor polished and unmarred.
"You," he spat as Callan stepped through the doors. "The exile. The traitor."
Callan's answer was a slash.
Argis blocked with a massive war axe, the impact shaking stone.
"You think you can kill your way to justice?" the general roared.
"No," Callan said coldly. "But I can kill you."
The duel was brutal.
Argis was no puppet. He was a monster in steel, trained in the Emperor's inner courts, wielding enchanted war arts. But Callan was the end of every prophecy the Empire had tried to bury.
Their blades clashed, shattering walls and columns. Fire licked the ceiling. Blood sprayed across relics of war.
In the end, Callan pinned Argis against the war table, blade to throat.
"You've already lost," Argis hissed. "Even if you take this pass, you'll never take the throne. The Emperor made you. He knows how this ends."
Callan pressed the blade in.
"I decide how it ends now."
And with one final thrust, the general fell.
By dawn, the fortress was in rebel hands.
The pass was theirs.
And the Empire bled.
Word spread like wildfire.
The Demon General had returned—not as a tyrant, but as a reckoning.
Villages rose in rebellion. Former enemies pledged loyalty. The Black Order of Zareth, long thought extinct, sent emissaries.
Callan stood at the center of a storm he had once helped create.
And now he would end it.
But far to the east, in the throne city of Varranis, the Emperor sat alone in a tower of mirrors.
Watching.
Listening.
He reached out with fingers too thin, too old, too wrong.
"Let him come," he whispered.
And the mirrors whispered back.