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Chapter 41

Auteur: Chloe
last update Dernière mise à jour: 2025-09-02 13:05:28

The mountain held its breath.

After the horn, after the quake, after the shadows had spilled from Killian’s veins like living fire, no one spoke above a whisper. The sanctum floor was a graveyard of silence. Men sheathed their blades too slowly. Women pulled their cloaks tighter as though hiding from something they could not name. And all the while, the air thickened — not with smoke or dust, but with the unspoken knowledge that the first stone of the siege had been laid.

Killian stood apart, the taste of iron still thick in his mouth. His shadows curled faintly at the edges of his boots, restless even though he had locked his will around them like chains. Every time they shifted, every time they breathed, he caught flickers of expression from the Guild: flinches, whispers, fingers tapping hilts.

It was not Varrow’s army they feared most tonight. It was him.

Daryl sat hunched against the column closest to Killian, his skin still pale from blood loss, one leg bound in stiff leather
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  • The magic within    Chapter 50

    The silence after Varrow’s retreat lingered long after the shadows collapsed.The wall still bled where his blows had landed, streaks of black ichor smouldering in cracks across the stone. The mist had pulled back, but the air felt fouled, like breathing smoke.Killian’s chest heaved as he stood alone on the battlements, sword slick in his hand, scar glowing faintly beneath the ruined bandages. The Guild fighters stared at him, a ring of faces caught between awe and fear.No one moved.Then the murmurs began.“He’s not one of us.”The words came from a young soldier, blood across his face, his pike trembling in his grip. His eyes were fixed on Killian, wide, almost wild.“I saw it,” he said louder, voice cracking. “The mark. It wasn’t a wound. It burned. Like it was alive.”Another soldier shifted uneasily. “Without him, we’d be dead.”“Without him, we’ll all be dead when that thing inside him breaks loose!” the boy snapped back, his voice shrill with terror. “He’s no command

  • The magic within    Chapter 49

    The silence after the drums was a silence too heavy to be natural.No clatter of steel. No screams. No howls.Only the sound of Killian’s own breath and the faint hiss of the scar beneath his bandages, glowing faintly as though a coal had been pressed into his arm.Across the rubble-strewn wall, Varrow stepped forward through the mist.The warlord’s armour gleamed like obsidian oil, runes glowing faintly red across its black plates. The crown wrought into his helm was jagged, wrong, a set of barbs curving like broken teeth around his skull. His presence pressed against the air itself; the mist bent away from him, curling back like smoke recoiling from flame.The Guild did not move. The beasts did not move. Even the warlocks below stood still, hands half-raised, waiting.It was as though the world had agreed: this was no longer their battle.It was between two.Killian gripped his sword tighter. He could feel the First inside him, trembling with laughter.“At last,” it whisper

  • The magic within    Chapter 48

    The drums did not stop.Each beat rattled the monastery walls, shaking loose dust that rained down like ash. The sound seeped into bone, deeper than marrow, as though the world itself had been shackled to Varrow’s rhythm.Killian stood on the broken battlements, scar wrapped in bandages that burned against his skin. His sword was heavy in his grip — not from weight, but from exhaustion pressing through his limbs like lead. Below, the mist stirred, rippling in waves that hid the enemy from sight.Then the mist broke.They came not as men alone, but as things twisted by shadow.The first line were armoured soldiers, shields locked, faces hidden behind steel masks painted with the warlord’s sigil — a broken sun bleeding into a crown. Behind them moved the beasts: wolf-shapes that ran like men, hands ending in claws, jaws dripping black ichor that hissed when it struck the ground. Their howls drowned the horns.And higher still — ladders rising, carried by lines of soldiers chanting

  • The magic within    Chapter 47

    The monastery walls trembled before the first arrow ever flew.At dawn the sky was leaden, a dull grey veil that pressed low against the hills. Mist clung to the ground like a shroud, wrapping the ruins in silence so fragile it seemed the world itself was holding its breath. Then came the drums.Deep, patient, endless.Each strike rolled across the valley, rattling the cracked stained glass and shaking dust loose from the ancient beams. Horns answered in long, low wails — not a call to arms, but a promise of inevitability.The Guild gathered in the nave, their faces pale in the firelight, eyes flicking toward Killian as though expecting him to break the silence. He didn’t. Not yet. He stood at the broken arch where sunlight filtered through, scar hidden beneath torn bandage, jaw tight.The First pressed against his thoughts, eager, hungry.“Do you hear them? That sound is not war — it is inevitability. They come because they know you will break. And when you do, I will lead them

  • The magic within    Chapter 46

    The monastery was not silent.It breathed.Stone groaned with every draft. The fires guttered low, painting the ruined nave in a copper haze that made shadows crawl like restless insects. Even the wounded, lying in rows along broken pews, refused to sleep — their groans and whispers kept the air taut, like a bowstring drawn too far.Killian stood apart.He leaned against the fractured wall where the scar on his arm throbbed in time with his pulse. Each heartbeat brought a flicker of light beneath his skin — faint, silver, unnatural. He hid it beneath torn cloth, but he knew Harlow had seen. He knew Daryl had felt it when Killian dragged him back from the vault’s hunger.The First’s voice was quieter now. But not gone. Never gone.“You hold them together,” it murmured, low in his skull. “But for how long? Fear eats faster than fire. Let me take their fear. Let me make it obedience.”Killian closed his eyes, exhaled slow. Not yours. Not ever.The Guild gathered in clusters aroun

  • The magic within    Chapter 45

    The battle was over, but silence weighed heavier than steel.The broken monastery breathed smoke and dust. Corpses lay sprawled among shattered pillars, the stone streaked black and silver where shadows had torn through the fight. Blood dripped in slow rhythm from broken beams, and the last echoes of steel on steel still clung to the air like ghosts that refused to fade.In the center of it all, Killian knelt.His sword lay beside him, abandoned in a pool of blood not his own. His arm shook where the scar burned, veins spiderwebbed black and silver beneath torn flesh. He pressed his hand against the stone for balance, refusing to bow, refusing to fall — but he could feel every eye on him.The Guild had stopped moving.Men who had fought through fire and broken bone stood frozen, their swords slack in hand, staring at him as if he were no longer flesh and blood. Even Carter Benton, mouth forever twisted in disdain, had gone still, eyes narrowed and calculating.It wasn’t victory that h

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