When Kai returned to the Whisperwind Peaks, he was no longer just the forest-born heir.
He was the King Reclaimed.
The Sword of Kings burned at his hip like a shard of sunrise, and the Sunstone pulsed with ancestral rhythm. Rebels knelt. Lyra met his gaze and didn't bow, but the respect in her eyes said more than words ever could.
The fires of rebellion roared to life.
Anya spread the map across the war table, creased and bloodstained.
"The Citadel is strong," she said. "But not perfect. Zara found a weakness, a forgotten tunnel carved for fleeing royals. One we can turn against them."
The plan was bold: Kai would lead a strike force through the hidden path to open the gates. Anya and the rebel army would launch a frontal assault, drawing Sgaazoz's forces into the open.
"If the tunnel fails," Anya said, "we die screaming at the walls."
"Then it won't fail," Kai replied.
His voice didn't shout.
It didn't need to.
Night fell, moonless and cold.
Wrapped in silence, Kai led Lyra, Torvin, Elara, and the elite strike team into the tunnel mouth, half-swallowed by time, roots, and dust.
It was no tunnel.
It was a tomb.
The walls sweated darkness. Runes flickered faintly. The deeper they moved, the more the tunnel twisted, defying geometry, whispering lies.
They passed bones. Then fresher remains.
And then, the guardians.
Things that had once been men.
Twisted by Sgaazoz's magic, they were part stone, part sinew. Their mouths gaped with silence. Their hands bore blades fused to bone.
"Hold," Kai said.
The rebels tensed. The creatures sensed them.
The silence shattered.
What followed was a battle fought in whispers and blood.
Lyra moved like wind through shadows, cutting throats before sound could form. Torvin met one guardian head-on, axe against arm-blade, blood and sparks flying. Elara's magic shimmered in glyphs across the walls, trapping spells mid-flight, redirecting them like mirrors.
But time bled away.
Above, they could hear it now: war.
Roars. Screams. Metal upon metal. Anya's army had begun the assault.
The tunnel ended in a massive sealed gate, etched in binding magic so dense it burned the air.
"I can't unravel it fast enough," Elara said, sweat beading on her brow. "It's woven from death."
Kai stepped forward.
He drew the Sword of Kings.
It hummed, eager.
"Then let it cut through death."
He raised it high and struck.
The blade cleaved not stone, but enchantment itself. The magic cracked, howled, and then shattered like glass under thunder.
The gate groaned open.
They emerged into the Citadel's inner courtyard, a jagged plain of obsidian, black banners whipping in storm wind.
Sgaazoz's army turned to meet them.
The rebels poured through the gates.
The siege had begun.
The battle was fire and ruin.
Sgaazoz's creatures clawed from shadows, towering abominations shrieking through the ranks. But Kai led the charge, his sword a beacon, his will a banner.
Everywhere he struck, the shadows receded.
Lyra moved beside him, arrows loosed faster than thought. Torvin was a wall of fury and steel. Elara conjured cyclones of light and frost, breaking siege towers mid-rise.
Still, the tide raged.
Above, lightning split the clouds, and in its flicker, the Citadel's tower rose like a fang against the heavens.
"There," Kai said. "He's waiting."
He broke from the battle, carving a path through the chaos.
His companions followed.
At the tower's peak, behind a throne of stone and rot,
Sgaazoz.
"You wear your father's face," the sorcerer sneered. "But you will not wear his crown."
"I wear what you could never hold," Kai said. "Honor. Mercy. Light."
"You think light wins?" Sgaazoz's voice twisted. "Then die in the dark."
And the final battle began.