The night settled heavy over the Howling Pact camp.
Mazen sat alone by the fire, the burned scale turning slowly in his palm, the embers reflecting off its cracked surface.
"Your head's not in it," Shadow's voice cut through the night.
Mazen looked up, the warlord's sharp gaze locking onto him.
"I'm fine," Mazen muttered.
"You're lying to yourself. I've seen men like you. Half their soul chasing a ghost while the other half holds a blade. You'll get yourself and my men killed like that."
Mazen gritted his teeth.
"It's… it's her. Nermin. I keep thinking… maybe—"
"You need to bury that, boy," Shadow said.
"Or chase it down and kill it. Either way, no room for this in war."
Calen, cleaning a blood-crusted axe nearby, snorted.
"He's right. You keep lookin' over your shoulder, you're dead. Go find out what you need to, Mark. Settle it before the next fight."
Mazen hesitated.
"Would they even let me near their camp?"
Calen grinned.
"Not if you bring a sword. Go barehanded. Emberfall respects that."
Shadow gave a sharp nod.
"Move before dawn. Word is, your name's everywhere. They'll recognize you."
Mazen rose, heart pounding, and tucked the scale away.
"Then I better move now."
The Emberfall camp was restless that night.
Nermin sat by the fire, sharpening a dagger she didn't need sharp, her mind gnawing at itself like a caged animal.
When the scout ran through camp breathless, she barely looked up.
"Mark Arkios," he gasped. "At the perimeter. Alone."
The words hit her like a slap.
Why?
Why would he come here?
From the corner of her eye, she saw Mirra exchange sharp words with the scout and then disappear into the night beyond the outer torches.
Nermin rose, instinct pulling at her, but Darin's hand on her arm stopped her.
"Not your place," he said quietly.
"I wasn't asking," she snapped.
But by the time she reached the outer line, she saw only their shapes — Mirra and Mark Arkios — standing by the treeline in quiet conversation, too far for words.
The fire's glow didn't reach them.
She could feel it though. The tension in the air.
The storm in her chest.
Then Mazen turned and left into the night.
Nermin's heart twisted.
What the hell was that?
Later, she cornered Mirra by the supply crates.
"What did he want?" she demanded.
Mirra's face went unreadable.
"Nothing that concerns you, Nermin."
"Why's he here?"
"That's war business."
And Mirra walked away.
Nermin clenched her fists, filled with anger and desperate for any clue about mazen.
Fine. Keep your damn secrets. I'll find my own answers.
And the night dragged on, heavy with things unsaid.
The night wind was sharp by the time Mazen crossed back into the Howling Pact's camp.
The fire was low, the rebels silent. No one asked where he'd gone — but they knew.
Calen was waiting by the fire, sharpening his axe as if the world wasn't fraying at the edges.
Shadow looked up from the map spread on a flat stone.
"Settled?"
Mazen nodded, the ache in his chest hollow now.
"She's gone. Safe."
Calen grunted.
"Good. War waits for no one, kid."
Shadow's gaze lingered a moment longer.
"You're sure."
Mazen's hand closed around the burned scale in his pocket.
"I'm sure."
And with those words, something in him shifted.
He'd fight. He'd burn this cursed world down if he had to — for a way out.
A way back to Earth. Back to Shina!
A way to end all of it.
"What now?" Mazen asked.
Shadow's expression was grim.
"Now? We start killing king's dogs."
The fire crackled.
Across Emberfall's valley, Nermin stood at the edge of the rebel camp, the Wind Wyrm's scale cold in her palm, staring at the shadowed treeline where he'd vanished.
She didn't know what he wanted. Didn't know why he'd come.
Mirra wouldn't tell her.
And the ache in her chest stayed sharp.
I'll find the truth, she promised herself.
Even if the world burned around them.
The fire's glow was dying when Mazen finally let himself remember.
He rolled the burned scale in his palm, the heat long gone from it now.
That moment by the treeline.
The world had felt smaller there, boxed in by trees and ash.
"I'm not letting you near Nermin, Arkios," Mirra said.
"For god's sake, I don't care about your girl and I'm not who you think or any of this shit" Mark Arkios said loudly but not enough to be listened at the camp gate.
"If You say so then your name must be Mazen, I assume!" Mirra replied.
"How did you know such a thing?"
"She's gone, Mazen," Mirra had told him, voice quieter in the dark than it had been in front of the others.
"Back to Earth. Found her near the faultline after you vanished. She begged to go home. We helped her find a crack. She made it out."
Mazen had searched her face then, desperate for any crack in the lie he suspected.
But she was too good.
Too practiced.
And the weight in his chest had been too much to carry.
He remembered nodding, throat tight.
"Then… she's safe."
"Safer than anyone in this cursed world," Mirra had said.
"Best thing you can do for her now is make sure this war doesn't follow her to earth, do what you must, Mark Arkios."
The lie settled like ash in his gut.
And he'd chosen to believe it.
Because it hurt too much not to.
Now, by the fire, his fingers clenched around the scale.
"I'll burn this whole damn kingdom down," he muttered, "then I'm going home."
He didn't see Nermin watching him from the shadows, her heart twisted by a storm she didn't understand.
And neither knew they were the same storm.
The night held its breath.
Ash drifted down like a soft, gray snowfall over Vortrex's war-scarred valleys.
Fires burned low in both camps.
Mazen sat alone, the burned scale still warm in his hand. The fire's glow flickered in his tired eyes. He didn't sleep.
"She's safe."
He whispered it to the flames, not to anyone else.
A lie now grafted to his bones.
"I'll finish this. I'll go home."
He closed his hand around the scale.
Across the valley, Nermin sat by her own dying fire.
The Wind Wyrm's scale cold and heavy in her lap. She stared up at the fractured sky, the weight of unanswered questions digging into her heart like a blade.
Why did you come, Mark Arkios?
Why do you look like a ghost I haven't laid eyes on since the day I fell through that gate?
She gripped the scale tighter.
"I'll find the truth. I swear it."
The wind shifted.
The same wind that brushed against Mazen's camp on the far ridge.
Neither spoke it.
But under that sky, they made the same promise.
And the world watched, waiting.