The attack on Eldermoor began beneath a blood-red dawn.
The rebels moved like shadows through the trees and stone, hearts pounding, blades silent. Kai stood at the front, Lyra at his side, her red hair braided and tied back like a war banner.
The sky was a canvas of smoke and flame. The city loomed ahead, walls lined with black-armored guards, its towers crooked from rot, its gates swollen with years of silence and fear.
"We strike with light," Kai whispered. "Before they remember how to be afraid."
Lyra gave a nod. Her eyes were sharp, but behind them burned belief.
Then the signal came, three flashes of mirror-light from the ridge above.
The rebels surged forward.
Explosions rocked the city's outer wall, crafted by rebel alchemists using powder stolen from Sgaazoz's caravans. Gates buckled. Arrows rained from cliffside scouts. Rebel warriors roared through the smoke.
"For Eldoria!"
"For the king!"
Kai moved like a force of nature. The Sunstone on his chest glowed fiercely, casting golden arcs with each swing of his spear. His movements were fluid, brutal, guided not by training but memory older than his body.
Every blow he struck felt guided by the earth itself.
Beside him, Lyra danced between enemies, her twin daggers flashing, precise and ruthless. She fought not for glory, but for the fallen. The fire in her eyes lit the path for others to follow.
But the battle turned.
Inside the walls, the bloodspawn emerged.
Twice the height of a man. Blackened armor fused to bone. Its skin rippled with corruption. Its eyes, if they were eyes, burned with crimson hunger.
It let out a roar that shattered windows.
Rebel fighters broke and scattered.
Only Kai remained in its path.
He stepped forward.
The bloodspawn charged, a blade the size of a cartwheel raised. It struck, too fast, too strong.
The blow should have broken Kai's back.
But the Sunstone flared.
Golden light exploded outward, forming a shield that threw the creature off-balance.
Kai didn't hesitate. He drove forward, spear-first, striking with every ounce of weight and will. The stone pulsed with each movement, his ancestors' strength in every breath.
The spear found the beast's chest.
The bloodspawn shrieked, high, inhuman, and burst into black fire.
Silence fell.
Smoke drifted through the broken gate. Kai stood alone in the courtyard, surrounded by ash.
And then, A cheer.
First one voice. Then ten. Then a hundred.
"The king!"
"The heir lives!"
"He fights for us!"
From windows, rooftops, shattered doorways, the people of Eldermoor watched. Not rebels. Not soldiers.
Citizens. Survivors. Witnesses.
Lyra stepped beside him, bloodied but unbroken.
"They saw you," she said quietly. "You gave them hope."
Kai looked around, not at the ruin, but at the faces.
Old. Young. Worn.
But not hopeless.
"This is only the beginning," he said.
And above them, the dawn finally broke through the smoke.
Fire in the sky.