For those who have followed this story, I think you already, and I thank you still if you continue to read this. I'm sure you've got questions, about what's happened so far in the first two books, I would like to think that all of your questions will be answered here in book 3... so, welcome back to The Journey
Chapter 1: Grief
Nekira stood at the water’s edge, the waves folding over his feet like cold hands. The air smelled of salt and ash, as if the sea still remembered the fires of war. Behind him, Santaya and Kristolia circled each other in mute play, their silvered fur ghostly in the dusk. Myrtle grazed by the dunes, patient and steady — the only creature untouched by grief.
He’d come here to breathe, but the air burned in his chest. Thomaz had taken his father’s life — Vivi, the man Nekira had known but never known enough. Then Rubian, that butcher in the king’s shadow, had slain Tivor not long after. And Tara… Tara had been left standing amid the ruin of it all, her eyes full of a love that now had no place in the world. His cousin. His forbidden solace.
Every revelation felt like a blade twisting deeper. His family tree had become a map of graves.
Beyond the cliffs, Amira stirred — vast, radiant, her mind brushing his in cautious sympathy. Her presence was both comfort and mirror, too large to ignore, too knowing to face. He tried to shut her out, but she felt the fracture in him anyway.
'You’re unravelling again,' her voice murmured across the bond, deep and soft as thunder in fog.
He pressed his hands into the wet sand, grit biting his skin. 'They’re all gone, Amira. My father, my uncle, Tara—everything I’ve loved turns to dust or blood.'
A silence passed between them, heavy and endless. When she finally spoke again, her thought carried warmth — the kind that could melt stone.
'Not everything. You still draw breath, and that means the story isn’t finished.'
He lifted his gaze to the horizon where sea met sky, where the last light bled into the dark. For a heartbeat, he wanted to believe her.
Nekira stood where sea met sand, motionless except for the tremor in his hands. The waves clawed at his ankles, retreating only to strike again. Behind him, Santaya and Kristolia had fallen silent, their eyes gleaming like coals in the dim light. Even Myrtle had stopped grazing, her head high and tense. The air felt charged, heavy — as if the world itself waited.
'You can’t stay like this,' Amira’s voice murmured in his mind, wings of thought brushing against his fury.
He grit his teeth. 'Don’t.'
'You’re burning yourself alive, Nekira.'
'Good.' His reply came like a snarl. 'Maybe I deserve to.'
Amira’s presence wavered with pain. 'You don’t believe that.'
He barked a hollow laugh. My father dies by my uncle’s hand. My uncle by a butcher’s blade. The woman I love shares my blood. Every thread of my life leads to death and ruin—tell me, where am I wrong?
The wind shifted, sharp and electric. The tide surged higher, slapping against his legs. His breath came ragged, his skin prickling with heat. Power coiled beneath his ribs — wild, volatile, aching to be free.
'You are not their sins,' Amira whispered.
He lifted his head toward the horizon, voice breaking. “No. But I’m made from them.”
Something inside him snapped. He threw back his head and screamed — not a cry of pain, but a word that cracked the air itself.
“TONDRO!”
The beach exploded with light.
Purple and orange fire flared around him, an aura alive with storm light. It rose like a second skin, wrapping him in the colours of Amira’s scales. The ground trembled beneath his feet. Thunder rolled from nowhere and everywhere at once. Then lightning — violent, beautiful — tore across the sky in branching veins of flame and light. The sea heaved in answer, towering waves crashing against the shore as if the world itself recoiled.
Santaya and Kristolia whined and crouched low, eyes wide. Myrtle bolted for the dunes.
Through the storm’s roar, Amira’s voice cut through his mind, strong and terrified all at once.
'Nekira—stop! You’ll tear yourself apart!'
But he couldn’t. The power flooded through him, a tidal wave of grief and fury, his aura blazing brighter until the air hummed. He felt everything at once — the deaths, the lies, the loss, the love — and for a breathless instant, he was all of it.
Then, as suddenly as it came, the light collapsed inward.
The thunder rolled away into silence. The sky dimmed. Nekira fell to his knees in the wet sand, steam rising faintly from his skin.
Amira’s voice was a whisper now, soft as a heartbeat.
'It’s alright… breathe, little one. It’s done.'
The waves reached for him again, this time gentle. He stayed there, shaking, the storm spent, his reflection flickering faintly in the receding tide — a man made of light and ruin.
“How does anyone cope with this?” he muttered, the words fogging in the salt air. “How does anyone go on with all this pain and anger and… frustration? How does anyone not lose their minds?” The last words came out raw, ragged as a tear in a sail.
He glanced at Santaya and Kristolia. The wolves crouched low now, ears flat, eyes bright with concern rather than challenge. Their bodies were poised to flee and yet they stayed, a faint halo of loyalty in the dusk. Myrtle had bolted farther down the beach, a pale blur against the dunes — gone where she could be useful to no one, as if even the mare could not stand the heat of this moment.
“I want to kill him,” Nekira breathed, the confession cold and terrible in his mouth. “I want to kill Thomaz.” The name tasted like ash. “But I don’t want the throne. I don’t—” He cut himself off as if the rest of the sentence might name a shame he could not carry.
Amira’s thought slid into him like a hand finding a wrist. Warm. Vast. Tremulous. 'Anger is honest,' she told him. 'It is a tool. But sharpened the wrong way, it will cut you.'
He laughed, short and humourless. Then what? Break the tool, and what’s left?
'You can wield it without becoming it,' she said. 'You can break the things that made you hurt, without taking their place on the throne. There are knives and there are fires. You can use one and avoid the other.'
The wind opened and closed around him; he wrapped his fingers tighter into his palms until the sand ground into the lines of his skin. The urge to move—toward violence, toward immediate, red relief—was a live thing, a hungry animal pacing in a cage.
Santaya nosed his sleeve and woofed. The sound was small but it had gravity. The wolves did not speak in words, but in presence: you are not alone. They were mirrors and anchors both. Nekira let their heat remind him of solid things—fur, breath, the steady press of an animal heart—anchors against the vertigo of vengeance.
'Grief needs places to go,' Amira said. 'Names. Rites. Stories told aloud until the anger is a tool again, not a monster that wears your face.'
He thought of Vivi’s laugh, the small ashamed way his father had hidden scars, of Tivor’s last look when Rubian had taken him—faces like stones down a riverbed. He thought of Tara, hands in his hair, and how the revelation had rearranged the shape of his future until it fit no longer.
“I don’t want to become him,” he said slowly, each word a choice. “I don’t want to murder and sit on his throne. I want Thomaz ended, yes—but I hate him for what he did, not for a crown I would wear.”
Then do not crave the crown to prove the killing, Amira cautioned. 'Let someone else hold it while you unmake what it built. Or burn the place and walk away. Either is less a claim to power than refusal of it.'
The idea felt like a drawn breath. Not peace—he didn’t lie to himself—but a shape: dismantle the machine rather than climb into it. It was brutal, slow work. It could be cruelty and cunning instead of the blunt terror of a blade. It would take time. It would be a death by many small acts rather than one glorious murder painted in blood.
He let out a long, shuddering sound that might have been a laugh or another prayer. Behind the howl of the sea there was the low, steady hum of Amira’s concern, the wolves’ watchful breathing, the distant stamp of Myrtle’s hooves. The world was broken, yes—but it still met him with weight and heaviness. There were tasks to be named and steps to be taken.
Slowly, painfully, he rose. The purple-orange scorch of his aura had faded from the sand, but the memory of its heat lingered against his skin. He unbuttoned his shirt with shaky fingers and scrubbed at the grit on his palms until they stung, grounding himself in sensation: salt, scrape, sting.
“Not like him,” he said, low, to the sea, to the wolves, to the dragon folded in thought beyond the cliffs. “Not today.”
He took one step away from the surf, then another, and with each pace the terrible, useful thing inside him cooled an inch. The screams had passed. The appetite for immediate blood remained, but it had been named and put in a small, manageable box.
There would be plans. There would be allies and betrayals and nights when the urge returned, savage and uncompromising. But for now, the coping was small and human: breath, the wolves’ warmth, Amira’s distant steadying, and the promise—vague and dangerous—that he would find a way to end Thomaz without becoming him.
The cry of a horse tore through the hush of the night — sharp, panicked, wrong. Nekira froze mid-breath, every nerve on edge. Myrtle’s answering whinny came from nearby, steady, unharmed. Then came another sound — a scream, then a crash that sent a tremor through the sand beneath his bare feet.
He was moving before thought caught up — up the dunes, muscles burning, sand sliding underfoot. Santaya and Kristolia bounded beside him, their sleek forms streaking through the twilight.
He crested the rise and saw the road — and the ruin upon it.
A carriage lay broken on its side, one wheel sheared away, its frame crushed as though the gods themselves had stamped upon it. A horse lay tangled in the harness, chest heaving in agony, legs twisted. Men, women, and children sprawled in the dirt — wounded, bloodied, some barely conscious. The air reeked of iron and smoke.
These weren’t raiders or thieves. The fear rolling off them was too deep, too pure. These were refugees. People running for their lives.
Amira’s mind brushed his, vast and urgent. 'Thomaz’s work, she said, her voice a rumble of grief and fury. His armies have reached the southern villages.'
Nekira’s pulse spiked. He dropped to his knees beside the nearest body — a woman, bleeding from a long cut across her ribs. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused. “They burned everything,” she rasped. “The king’s soldiers — they said no one was to live.”
He pressed his palm gently to her side. “You’ll live,” he murmured, closing his eyes. The words that rose in his throat came in the ancient tongue, older than kingdoms — a language of fire and first breath.
“Serath alun tora,” he whispered.
Light spread from his hand, a muted gold tinged with violet, rippling over the wound. The bleeding slowed, then stopped. Her breathing steadied. The gash knit together just enough to hold — not perfect, not whole, but safe.
He moved to the next — a boy with a shattered arm. “Menai dor,” he intoned, the air humming as bone straightened and the boy gasped in surprise. Nekira gave a weary half-smile. “Don’t move it yet,” he said softly. “You’ll feel the ache for days.”
He went from one to another, mending only what he must — broken bones aligned, blood flow stopped, pain dulled. He could not give more; the magic drew from his own life’s current, and already he felt it thinning, the edges of exhaustion creeping close.
Santaya and Kristolia circled the road, alert but calm now, nudging the wounded gently toward stillness. Myrtle had trotted down from the dunes, watching him with wide, anxious eyes.
When the last wound was sealed, Nekira staggered back, breath ragged. His hands glowed faintly with fading light. The refugees lay quiet now, weak but alive. The air held that fragile silence that follows after fire.
He looked down the road — toward the distant horizon, where faint smoke still climbed into the sky. Thomaz’s soldiers were somewhere beyond it, marching through the ashes of another village.
Amira’s voice came again, low and full of sorrow. 'You can’t save them all.'
“I know,” he whispered. His jaw tightened. “But I’ll damn well save the ones I can.”
The wailing horse thrashed weakly against its harness, one leg twisted grotesquely beneath the shattered carriage. Nekira approached slowly, voice low and steady, a soft hush carried on the sea breeze. “Easy now,” he murmured, kneeling beside the creature. Santaya and Kristolia stopped a few paces back, heads bowed, as if they too understood the ritual of it.
He reached out, running his hand along the horse’s trembling neck. The hide was slick with sweat, the pulse frantic beneath it. “Easy,” he whispered again, sliding his palm down the flank to the mangled leg. The moment his fingers brushed the break, the animal shuddered and let out another sharp cry. Nekira closed his eyes, jaw tight. He could feel the wrongness radiating through it — bone shattered beyond repair, blood pooling inside. Healing could not fix this. Not without prolonging the pain.
A man stumbled forward from the wreckage, face streaked with dirt and tears. He was perhaps forty, rough-clothed, hands shaking as he stopped a few feet away. His eyes flicked from the horse to Nekira’s, and the understanding passed silently between them.
“I’m sorry,” Nekira said softly. “I can’t save him.”
The man’s throat worked as he nodded, eyes glistening. “He’s all that got us this far,” he whispered.
Nekira reached out and brushed his fingers over the horse’s muzzle, feeling the trembling ease just slightly at the touch. He leaned close, his voice gentle, the ancient language forming on his lips like a prayer.
“Sora menath velin,” he breathed.
The words shimmered in the air — soft, luminous. The horse exhaled once, deeply, and went still. The tension melted from its body, the pain sliding away like a shadow retreating from the light. Nekira kept his hand there until the last heartbeat faded beneath his palm.
The man fell to his knees beside the body, head bowed. Nekira bowed his own in quiet respect. Around them, the air seemed to still — even the waves far below softened their rhythm.
Amira’s voice touched his thoughts, warm and sorrowful. 'Mercy is the oldest kind of magic.'
He rose slowly, the exhaustion heavier now, settling into his bones. “Then it’s the one I’ll never stop using,” he said under his breath.
Nekira straightened slowly, brushing the dust and blood from his hands. The man stayed where he was, one hand resting on the horse’s still flank, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.
“Tell me more of your village,” Nekira said gently. “Where are you from? How did you get so far? Are the soldiers still hunting you?”
The man lifted his head, eyes red-rimmed but steady. “We’ve come from the far south,” he said hoarsely. “A place called Knebworth — small, quiet, never mattered to anyone until the king’s men rode through.”
His voice trembled, but he went on, words spilling like ash. “We cut through the forest to escape them — the old wood by the river, thick with mist. Lost half our group there to hunger and sickness. Then the marshes… gods, the marshes. Children crying, people sinking into the muck. We carried who we could, left who we couldn’t.”
He swallowed hard, staring at the dirt as if he could still see the path behind him. “After that, there was another forest — this one burned. We followed the blackened trees until we came to a field full of flowers. Looked like paradise, it did. We thought… maybe the gods had spared something for us. Then the soldiers came over the rise, torches and steel.”
He paused, voice breaking. “We ran. We ran until the horses collapsed. Until there was no road left to follow.”
Nekira listened in silence, the muscles in his jaw tightening. Behind his eyes, he could see it all — the smoke curling above rooftops, the fields trampled under boots, the wildflowers burning in the night.
Amira’s voice brushed his mind, low and solemn. 'This is what Thomaz has made of the realm. Cities dying, villages burned, people dreaming of ash.'
Nekira’s hands clenched at his sides. “He calls it order,” he said bitterly. “But all he builds is graves.”
The man looked up at him suddenly, studying his face. “You’re not one of his soldiers,” he said slowly. “Your eyes… they’re different. You healed us.” His gaze flicked toward the horizon, as if half-expecting something vast to descend from the clouds. “Are you… one of the riders? From the old stories?”
Nekira blinked, caught off guard. “What do you mean?” he asked quietly.
The man hesitated, almost shy now that the words were spoken. “There are tales,” he said. “Told by traders and wanderers. Of a dragon rider who appears when all hope’s gone — a shadow among fire and storm. They say he helps those in need, drives off soldiers, heals the wounded. Some say he’s not human at all.”
For a long moment, the sea wind was the only sound — carrying the scent of salt and distant rain. Nekira looked down at his hands, still faintly glowing where the magic hadn’t fully faded.
“I’m no legend,” he said softly. “Just a friend who helps when he can.”
The man gave a weary smile, something small but genuine, and bowed his head. “Friend or legend, you’ve given us more kindness than the crown ever will.”
Santaya and Kristolia’s fur prickled like wire; the wolves froze mid-breath, ears snapping back toward the tree-line. Nekira felt the change before he heard it — a cold tightening under the skin, the small animal-senses that always read danger a beat faster than thought. A distant clack answered them: iron-shod boots on hard road, coming closer, steady and innumerable.
He turned to the kneeling man, voice low but urgent. “It’s time for you all to move on. Follow the road down and take the right fork. Keep going until you see the great white walls — Edena City. Tell them Nekira sent you. They’ll be expecting you.”
The man scrambled up, every movement clumsy with pain and shock, but he nodded like a man who’d been given a map out of the dark. Mothers gathered children; the injured were helped to their feet. The little boy with the split lip clung to the man’s sleeve, eyes huge and trusting as though hope had come in the shape of a stranger..
Nekira barked sharp instructions then, practical and quick. “Santi — go to the beach and get my sword. Quickly.” Santaya broke off at once, a silver blur toward the surf, tail tucked with purpose.
“Kristi — into the bushes there. Wait. Ambush them when the time is right.” Kristolia melted into the dune grass like smoke, gone but for the faint sway where she’d disappeared.
The refugees moved as fast as their exhausted legs would carry them, stumbling down the road. Nekira stayed behind, standing alone in the middle of the path, watching the bend where the soldiers would appear. He didn’t call on Amira — this fight was his alone.
Minutes later, a small group of soldiers came into view, stepping carefully around the curve. Their armour glinted in the moonlight. They paused when they noticed him, murmuring to one another, curious.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Nekira called, voice steady, calm. “Turn and go back where you came from.”
The soldiers laughed. One of them, bolder than the rest, sneered. “Or what? You’ll stop us with words?”
At that moment, Santaya came racing along the roadside, carrying his sword in her mouth. She dropped it at his feet with a soft thump.
Nekira bent, taking the hilt with practiced ease. With a flick, he drew Tondro, the steel sliding free with a clean, precise sound. He lifted it, checking his footing, eyes locking on the soldier who’d stepped forward.
The soldiers laughed again, louder this time. Then the first man charged, sword raised high, shouting.
Nekira didn’t flinch. He shifted his stance with a dancer’s grace — and waited for the perfect moment. His muscles coiled like springs. In an instant, he moved: faster than the eye could follow, a blur of precise footwork, sidestep, and counter.
The charge met nothing but air. Tondro rose, hand steady, blade positioned for the next strike. The other soldiers hesitated, unsure now, their confidence faltering as they saw the speed and control in his movements.
Nekira had so far only parried and deflected the soldiers’ attacks, his movements precise and controlled, each block a demonstration of years of training. On one particularly forceful swing, he met the soldier’s blade and twisted with the momentum, driving the man backward with a hard shove. The soldier stumbled and hit the ground with a thud.
“Last warning!” Nekira barked, voice low and dangerous. “Turn and go back where you came from!”
The soldier scrambled to his feet, rage overtaking caution. “Who the fuck do you think you are? We are the king’s soldiers, you prick!”
Nekira’s eyes flashed purple-orange for the briefest moment — a surge of anger he rarely let show. “I hate the king!” he snarled.
The man lunged again, and Nekira sidestepped smoothly, ducking in close. His elbow shot forward in a brutal arc, striking the soldier squarely in the nose. It cracked under the force, blood spraying, and the soldier screamed in shock and agony.
The remaining six soldiers hesitated, but the cry only stoked their aggression. They all charged at once, blades raised. Nekira met them with Tondro, blocking and parrying each swing, but he didn’t fight to kill. Instead, he used their momentum, their own weight and force, against them.
A sword swung too wide; a misstep from a fellow soldier — Nekira guided the collisions subtly, stepping aside as one man’s blade clanged against another’s. Feet tangled. Armour met flesh. Chaos erupted, and one by one, they tore each other apart in their own blind fury.
Nekira moved like water through the storm, ducking, pivoting, using speed and strength to keep himself untouched. Not a single strike found him, though the space was a whirlwind of steel, blood, and shouts. Each man who tried to overwhelm him found himself overextended, pushed, or knocked into another.
By the time the last soldier fell to the ground, groaning and incapacitated by his own comrades, Nekira stood in the middle of the road, chest heaving, Tondro steady in his hands.
The road was silent again, save for the ragged breathing of the seven soldiers scattered at his feet. Nekira didn’t gloat. He didn’t look for glory. He had only wanted to survive — to protect the fleeing refugees and to unleash the anger he had bottled for far too long.
Nekira paused for a breath as he pushed the last of the soldiers’ bodies off the road, muttering under his breath, “I wonder if that field of flowers they came across… was Floresith?” His mind lingered on the refugees’ harrowing journey, on the marshes, forests, and that fleeting moment of fragile beauty before all the chaos.
A sudden whistle of air drew his gaze upward. Great wings cut through the sky, flapping with a soft thunder that made the sand beneath him vibrate. His chest tightened as he saw her: the opal-white dragon Elqiana gliding to land on the beach, and on her back, Tara, looking down at him. The sight struck his heart, a pang of longing and frustration.
He continued moving, methodically pushing the soldiers aside, one by one, and then turned his attention to the broken carriage.
“Are you okay, Neks?” Tara’s voice broke through the haze, soft and cautious.
“I’m fine!” he replied a little too abruptly, the sharp edge unintended but impossible to smooth over.
She stepped closer, holding out a small object. “I wanted to give you this ring before I head toward the Dwarven Mountains.”
He looked down at the silver band, adorned with a dark purple amethyst. His fingers trembled slightly as he accepted it, sliding it onto the middle finger of his right hand. Immediately, a rush of energy swirled inside the gem, almost knocking the breath from his lungs.
“Hopefully it’ll help you… with whatever,” she whispered, her fingers brushing his hand in a fleeting, almost imperceptible plea for contact.
Nekira bent back to the carriage, trying to push it off the road with controlled force, mind still half elsewhere.
“Gabija has asked if you’ll meet her at Caa Alora…” Tara’s voice was gentle, but he didn’t respond.
A sigh escaped her. She stepped forward, frustration and care blending into one movement. Her hands gripped his shoulders, spinning him gently to face her. Her eyes found his, and for a heartbeat, she saw it all — the pain, the exhaustion, the raw grief and fury barely contained.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. Then, without waiting for him to respond, she stepped back and walked away, leaving him standing there, fingers brushing the silver amethyst of the ring, staring at the broken carriage and the path still ahead.
Tara swung gracefully back into the saddle atop Elqiana, settling into her place with the ease of long practice. The great dragon flexed her massive wings, muscles rippling beneath opal-white scales, and with a powerful beat, they lifted off the sand. Nekira instinctively ducked as Elqiana skimmed low over the road, wind whipping around him. With a sudden sweep of her claws, the dragon scooped up the broken carriage and flung it forward, sending it crashing into a nearby field with a thunderous roar that shook the ground and sent dust and splinters scattering in every direction.
Chapter 1: Grief
Nekira stood at the water’s edge, the waves folding over his feet like cold hands. The air smelled of salt and ash, as if the sea still remembered the fires of war. Behind him, Santaya and Kristolia circled each other in mute play, their silvered fur ghostly in the dusk. Myrtle grazed by the dunes, patient and steady — the only creature untouched by grief.
He’d come here to breathe, but the air burned in his chest. Thomaz had taken his father’s life — Vivi, the man Nekira had known but never known enough. Then Rubian, that butcher in the king’s shadow, had slain Tivor not long after. And Tara… Tara had been left standing amid the ruin of it all, her eyes full of a love that now had no place in the world. His cousin. His forbidden solace.
Every revelation felt like a blade twisting deeper. His family tree had become a map of graves.
Beyond the cliffs, Amira stirred — vast, radiant, her mind brushing his in cautious sympathy. Her presence was both comfort and mirror, too large to ignore, too knowing to face. He tried to shut her out, but she felt the fracture in him anyway.
'You’re unravelling again,' her voice murmured across the bond, deep and soft as thunder in fog.
He pressed his hands into the wet sand, grit biting his skin. 'They’re all gone, Amira. My father, my uncle, Tara—everything I’ve loved turns to dust or blood.'
A silence passed between them, heavy and endless. When she finally spoke again, her thought carried warmth — the kind that could melt stone.
'Not everything. You still draw breath, and that means the story isn’t finished.'
He lifted his gaze to the horizon where sea met sky, where the last light bled into the dark. For a heartbeat, he wanted to believe her.
Nekira stood where sea met sand, motionless except for the tremor in his hands. The waves clawed at his ankles, retreating only to strike again. Behind him, Santaya and Kristolia had fallen silent, their eyes gleaming like coals in the dim light. Even Myrtle had stopped grazing, her head high and tense. The air felt charged, heavy — as if the world itself waited.
'You can’t stay like this,' Amira’s voice murmured in his mind, wings of thought brushing against his fury.
He grit his teeth. 'Don’t.'
'You’re burning yourself alive, Nekira.'
'Good.' His reply came like a snarl. 'Maybe I deserve to.'
Amira’s presence wavered with pain. 'You don’t believe that.'
He barked a hollow laugh. My father dies by my uncle’s hand. My uncle by a butcher’s blade. The woman I love shares my blood. Every thread of my life leads to death and ruin—tell me, where am I wrong?
The wind shifted, sharp and electric. The tide surged higher, slapping against his legs. His breath came ragged, his skin prickling with heat. Power coiled beneath his ribs — wild, volatile, aching to be free.
'You are not their sins,' Amira whispered.
He lifted his head toward the horizon, voice breaking. “No. But I’m made from them.”
Something inside him snapped. He threw back his head and screamed — not a cry of pain, but a word that cracked the air itself.
“TONDRO!”
The beach exploded with light.
Purple and orange fire flared around him, an aura alive with storm light. It rose like a second skin, wrapping him in the colours of Amira’s scales. The ground trembled beneath his feet. Thunder rolled from nowhere and everywhere at once. Then lightning — violent, beautiful — tore across the sky in branching veins of flame and light. The sea heaved in answer, towering waves crashing against the shore as if the world itself recoiled.
Santaya and Kristolia whined and crouched low, eyes wide. Myrtle bolted for the dunes.
Through the storm’s roar, Amira’s voice cut through his mind, strong and terrified all at once.
'Nekira—stop! You’ll tear yourself apart!'
But he couldn’t. The power flooded through him, a tidal wave of grief and fury, his aura blazing brighter until the air hummed. He felt everything at once — the deaths, the lies, the loss, the love — and for a breathless instant, he was all of it.
Then, as suddenly as it came, the light collapsed inward.
The thunder rolled away into silence. The sky dimmed. Nekira fell to his knees in the wet sand, steam rising faintly from his skin.
Amira’s voice was a whisper now, soft as a heartbeat.
'It’s alright… breathe, little one. It’s done.'
The waves reached for him again, this time gentle. He stayed there, shaking, the storm spent, his reflection flickering faintly in the receding tide — a man made of light and ruin.
“How does anyone cope with this?” he muttered, the words fogging in the salt air. “How does anyone go on with all this pain and anger and… frustration? How does anyone not lose their minds?” The last words came out raw, ragged as a tear in a sail.
He glanced at Santaya and Kristolia. The wolves crouched low now, ears flat, eyes bright with concern rather than challenge. Their bodies were poised to flee and yet they stayed, a faint halo of loyalty in the dusk. Myrtle had bolted farther down the beach, a pale blur against the dunes — gone where she could be useful to no one, as if even the mare could not stand the heat of this moment.
“I want to kill him,” Nekira breathed, the confession cold and terrible in his mouth. “I want to kill Thomaz.” The name tasted like ash. “But I don’t want the throne. I don’t—” He cut himself off as if the rest of the sentence might name a shame he could not carry.
Amira’s thought slid into him like a hand finding a wrist. Warm. Vast. Tremulous. 'Anger is honest,' she told him. 'It is a tool. But sharpened the wrong way, it will cut you.'
He laughed, short and humourless. Then what? Break the tool, and what’s left?
'You can wield it without becoming it,' she said. 'You can break the things that made you hurt, without taking their place on the throne. There are knives and there are fires. You can use one and avoid the other.'
The wind opened and closed around him; he wrapped his fingers tighter into his palms until the sand ground into the lines of his skin. The urge to move—toward violence, toward immediate, red relief—was a live thing, a hungry animal pacing in a cage.
Santaya nosed his sleeve and woofed. The sound was small but it had gravity. The wolves did not speak in words, but in presence: you are not alone. They were mirrors and anchors both. Nekira let their heat remind him of solid things—fur, breath, the steady press of an animal heart—anchors against the vertigo of vengeance.
'Grief needs places to go,' Amira said. 'Names. Rites. Stories told aloud until the anger is a tool again, not a monster that wears your face.'
He thought of Vivi’s laugh, the small ashamed way his father had hidden scars, of Tivor’s last look when Rubian had taken him—faces like stones down a riverbed. He thought of Tara, hands in his hair, and how the revelation had rearranged the shape of his future until it fit no longer.
“I don’t want to become him,” he said slowly, each word a choice. “I don’t want to murder and sit on his throne. I want Thomaz ended, yes—but I hate him for what he did, not for a crown I would wear.”
Then do not crave the crown to prove the killing, Amira cautioned. 'Let someone else hold it while you unmake what it built. Or burn the place and walk away. Either is less a claim to power than refusal of it.'
The idea felt like a drawn breath. Not peace—he didn’t lie to himself—but a shape: dismantle the machine rather than climb into it. It was brutal, slow work. It could be cruelty and cunning instead of the blunt terror of a blade. It would take time. It would be a death by many small acts rather than one glorious murder painted in blood.
He let out a long, shuddering sound that might have been a laugh or another prayer. Behind the howl of the sea there was the low, steady hum of Amira’s concern, the wolves’ watchful breathing, the distant stamp of Myrtle’s hooves. The world was broken, yes—but it still met him with weight and heaviness. There were tasks to be named and steps to be taken.
Slowly, painfully, he rose. The purple-orange scorch of his aura had faded from the sand, but the memory of its heat lingered against his skin. He unbuttoned his shirt with shaky fingers and scrubbed at the grit on his palms until they stung, grounding himself in sensation: salt, scrape, sting.
“Not like him,” he said, low, to the sea, to the wolves, to the dragon folded in thought beyond the cliffs. “Not today.”
He took one step away from the surf, then another, and with each pace the terrible, useful thing inside him cooled an inch. The screams had passed. The appetite for immediate blood remained, but it had been named and put in a small, manageable box.
There would be plans. There would be allies and betrayals and nights when the urge returned, savage and uncompromising. But for now, the coping was small and human: breath, the wolves’ warmth, Amira’s distant steadying, and the promise—vague and dangerous—that he would find a way to end Thomaz without becoming him.
The cry of a horse tore through the hush of the night — sharp, panicked, wrong. Nekira froze mid-breath, every nerve on edge. Myrtle’s answering whinny came from nearby, steady, unharmed. Then came another sound — a scream, then a crash that sent a tremor through the sand beneath his bare feet.
He was moving before thought caught up — up the dunes, muscles burning, sand sliding underfoot. Santaya and Kristolia bounded beside him, their sleek forms streaking through the twilight.
He crested the rise and saw the road — and the ruin upon it.
A carriage lay broken on its side, one wheel sheared away, its frame crushed as though the gods themselves had stamped upon it. A horse lay tangled in the harness, chest heaving in agony, legs twisted. Men, women, and children sprawled in the dirt — wounded, bloodied, some barely conscious. The air reeked of iron and smoke.
These weren’t raiders or thieves. The fear rolling off them was too deep, too pure. These were refugees. People running for their lives.
Amira’s mind brushed his, vast and urgent. 'Thomaz’s work, she said, her voice a rumble of grief and fury. His armies have reached the southern villages.'
Nekira’s pulse spiked. He dropped to his knees beside the nearest body — a woman, bleeding from a long cut across her ribs. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused. “They burned everything,” she rasped. “The king’s soldiers — they said no one was to live.”
He pressed his palm gently to her side. “You’ll live,” he murmured, closing his eyes. The words that rose in his throat came in the ancient tongue, older than kingdoms — a language of fire and first breath.
“Serath alun tora,” he whispered.
Light spread from his hand, a muted gold tinged with violet, rippling over the wound. The bleeding slowed, then stopped. Her breathing steadied. The gash knit together just enough to hold — not perfect, not whole, but safe.
He moved to the next — a boy with a shattered arm. “Menai dor,” he intoned, the air humming as bone straightened and the boy gasped in surprise. Nekira gave a weary half-smile. “Don’t move it yet,” he said softly. “You’ll feel the ache for days.”
He went from one to another, mending only what he must — broken bones aligned, blood flow stopped, pain dulled. He could not give more; the magic drew from his own life’s current, and already he felt it thinning, the edges of exhaustion creeping close.
Santaya and Kristolia circled the road, alert but calm now, nudging the wounded gently toward stillness. Myrtle had trotted down from the dunes, watching him with wide, anxious eyes.
When the last wound was sealed, Nekira staggered back, breath ragged. His hands glowed faintly with fading light. The refugees lay quiet now, weak but alive. The air held that fragile silence that follows after fire.
He looked down the road — toward the distant horizon, where faint smoke still climbed into the sky. Thomaz’s soldiers were somewhere beyond it, marching through the ashes of another village.
Amira’s voice came again, low and full of sorrow. 'You can’t save them all.'
“I know,” he whispered. His jaw tightened. “But I’ll damn well save the ones I can.”
The wailing horse thrashed weakly against its harness, one leg twisted grotesquely beneath the shattered carriage. Nekira approached slowly, voice low and steady, a soft hush carried on the sea breeze. “Easy now,” he murmured, kneeling beside the creature. Santaya and Kristolia stopped a few paces back, heads bowed, as if they too understood the ritual of it.
He reached out, running his hand along the horse’s trembling neck. The hide was slick with sweat, the pulse frantic beneath it. “Easy,” he whispered again, sliding his palm down the flank to the mangled leg. The moment his fingers brushed the break, the animal shuddered and let out another sharp cry. Nekira closed his eyes, jaw tight. He could feel the wrongness radiating through it — bone shattered beyond repair, blood pooling inside. Healing could not fix this. Not without prolonging the pain.
A man stumbled forward from the wreckage, face streaked with dirt and tears. He was perhaps forty, rough-clothed, hands shaking as he stopped a few feet away. His eyes flicked from the horse to Nekira’s, and the understanding passed silently between them.
“I’m sorry,” Nekira said softly. “I can’t save him.”
The man’s throat worked as he nodded, eyes glistening. “He’s all that got us this far,” he whispered.
Nekira reached out and brushed his fingers over the horse’s muzzle, feeling the trembling ease just slightly at the touch. He leaned close, his voice gentle, the ancient language forming on his lips like a prayer.
“Sora menath velin,” he breathed.
The words shimmered in the air — soft, luminous. The horse exhaled once, deeply, and went still. The tension melted from its body, the pain sliding away like a shadow retreating from the light. Nekira kept his hand there until the last heartbeat faded beneath his palm.
The man fell to his knees beside the body, head bowed. Nekira bowed his own in quiet respect. Around them, the air seemed to still — even the waves far below softened their rhythm.
Amira’s voice touched his thoughts, warm and sorrowful. 'Mercy is the oldest kind of magic.'
He rose slowly, the exhaustion heavier now, settling into his bones. “Then it’s the one I’ll never stop using,” he said under his breath.
Nekira straightened slowly, brushing the dust and blood from his hands. The man stayed where he was, one hand resting on the horse’s still flank, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.
“Tell me more of your village,” Nekira said gently. “Where are you from? How did you get so far? Are the soldiers still hunting you?”
The man lifted his head, eyes red-rimmed but steady. “We’ve come from the far south,” he said hoarsely. “A place called Knebworth — small, quiet, never mattered to anyone until the king’s men rode through.”
His voice trembled, but he went on, words spilling like ash. “We cut through the forest to escape them — the old wood by the river, thick with mist. Lost half our group there to hunger and sickness. Then the marshes… gods, the marshes. Children crying, people sinking into the muck. We carried who we could, left who we couldn’t.”
He swallowed hard, staring at the dirt as if he could still see the path behind him. “After that, there was another forest — this one burned. We followed the blackened trees until we came to a field full of flowers. Looked like paradise, it did. We thought… maybe the gods had spared something for us. Then the soldiers came over the rise, torches and steel.”
He paused, voice breaking. “We ran. We ran until the horses collapsed. Until there was no road left to follow.”
Nekira listened in silence, the muscles in his jaw tightening. Behind his eyes, he could see it all — the smoke curling above rooftops, the fields trampled under boots, the wildflowers burning in the night.
Amira’s voice brushed his mind, low and solemn. 'This is what Thomaz has made of the realm. Cities dying, villages burned, people dreaming of ash.'
Nekira’s hands clenched at his sides. “He calls it order,” he said bitterly. “But all he builds is graves.”
The man looked up at him suddenly, studying his face. “You’re not one of his soldiers,” he said slowly. “Your eyes… they’re different. You healed us.” His gaze flicked toward the horizon, as if half-expecting something vast to descend from the clouds. “Are you… one of the riders? From the old stories?”
Nekira blinked, caught off guard. “What do you mean?” he asked quietly.
The man hesitated, almost shy now that the words were spoken. “There are tales,” he said. “Told by traders and wanderers. Of a dragon rider who appears when all hope’s gone — a shadow among fire and storm. They say he helps those in need, drives off soldiers, heals the wounded. Some say he’s not human at all.”
For a long moment, the sea wind was the only sound — carrying the scent of salt and distant rain. Nekira looked down at his hands, still faintly glowing where the magic hadn’t fully faded.
“I’m no legend,” he said softly. “Just a friend who helps when he can.”
The man gave a weary smile, something small but genuine, and bowed his head. “Friend or legend, you’ve given us more kindness than the crown ever will.”
Santaya and Kristolia’s fur prickled like wire; the wolves froze mid-breath, ears snapping back toward the tree-line. Nekira felt the change before he heard it — a cold tightening under the skin, the small animal-senses that always read danger a beat faster than thought. A distant clack answered them: iron-shod boots on hard road, coming closer, steady and innumerable.
He turned to the kneeling man, voice low but urgent. “It’s time for you all to move on. Follow the road down and take the right fork. Keep going until you see the great white walls — Edena City. Tell them Nekira sent you. They’ll be expecting you.”
The man scrambled up, every movement clumsy with pain and shock, but he nodded like a man who’d been given a map out of the dark. Mothers gathered children; the injured were helped to their feet. The little boy with the split lip clung to the man’s sleeve, eyes huge and trusting as though hope had come in the shape of a stranger..
Nekira barked sharp instructions then, practical and quick. “Santi — go to the beach and get my sword. Quickly.” Santaya broke off at once, a silver blur toward the surf, tail tucked with purpose.
“Kristi — into the bushes there. Wait. Ambush them when the time is right.” Kristolia melted into the dune grass like smoke, gone but for the faint sway where she’d disappeared.
The refugees moved as fast as their exhausted legs would carry them, stumbling down the road. Nekira stayed behind, standing alone in the middle of the path, watching the bend where the soldiers would appear. He didn’t call on Amira — this fight was his alone.
Minutes later, a small group of soldiers came into view, stepping carefully around the curve. Their armour glinted in the moonlight. They paused when they noticed him, murmuring to one another, curious.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Nekira called, voice steady, calm. “Turn and go back where you came from.”
The soldiers laughed. One of them, bolder than the rest, sneered. “Or what? You’ll stop us with words?”
At that moment, Santaya came racing along the roadside, carrying his sword in her mouth. She dropped it at his feet with a soft thump.
Nekira bent, taking the hilt with practiced ease. With a flick, he drew Tondro, the steel sliding free with a clean, precise sound. He lifted it, checking his footing, eyes locking on the soldier who’d stepped forward.
The soldiers laughed again, louder this time. Then the first man charged, sword raised high, shouting.
Nekira didn’t flinch. He shifted his stance with a dancer’s grace — and waited for the perfect moment. His muscles coiled like springs. In an instant, he moved: faster than the eye could follow, a blur of precise footwork, sidestep, and counter.
The charge met nothing but air. Tondro rose, hand steady, blade positioned for the next strike. The other soldiers hesitated, unsure now, their confidence faltering as they saw the speed and control in his movements.
Nekira had so far only parried and deflected the soldiers’ attacks, his movements precise and controlled, each block a demonstration of years of training. On one particularly forceful swing, he met the soldier’s blade and twisted with the momentum, driving the man backward with a hard shove. The soldier stumbled and hit the ground with a thud.
“Last warning!” Nekira barked, voice low and dangerous. “Turn and go back where you came from!”
The soldier scrambled to his feet, rage overtaking caution. “Who the fuck do you think you are? We are the king’s soldiers, you prick!”
Nekira’s eyes flashed purple-orange for the briefest moment — a surge of anger he rarely let show. “I hate the king!” he snarled.
The man lunged again, and Nekira sidestepped smoothly, ducking in close. His elbow shot forward in a brutal arc, striking the soldier squarely in the nose. It cracked under the force, blood spraying, and the soldier screamed in shock and agony.
The remaining six soldiers hesitated, but the cry only stoked their aggression. They all charged at once, blades raised. Nekira met them with Tondro, blocking and parrying each swing, but he didn’t fight to kill. Instead, he used their momentum, their own weight and force, against them.
A sword swung too wide; a misstep from a fellow soldier — Nekira guided the collisions subtly, stepping aside as one man’s blade clanged against another’s. Feet tangled. Armour met flesh. Chaos erupted, and one by one, they tore each other apart in their own blind fury.
Nekira moved like water through the storm, ducking, pivoting, using speed and strength to keep himself untouched. Not a single strike found him, though the space was a whirlwind of steel, blood, and shouts. Each man who tried to overwhelm him found himself overextended, pushed, or knocked into another.
By the time the last soldier fell to the ground, groaning and incapacitated by his own comrades, Nekira stood in the middle of the road, chest heaving, Tondro steady in his hands.
The road was silent again, save for the ragged breathing of the seven soldiers scattered at his feet. Nekira didn’t gloat. He didn’t look for glory. He had only wanted to survive — to protect the fleeing refugees and to unleash the anger he had bottled for far too long.
Nekira paused for a breath as he pushed the last of the soldiers’ bodies off the road, muttering under his breath, “I wonder if that field of flowers they came across… was Floresith?” His mind lingered on the refugees’ harrowing journey, on the marshes, forests, and that fleeting moment of fragile beauty before all the chaos.
A sudden whistle of air drew his gaze upward. Great wings cut through the sky, flapping with a soft thunder that made the sand beneath him vibrate. His chest tightened as he saw her: the opal-white dragon Elqiana gliding to land on the beach, and on her back, Tara, looking down at him. The sight struck his heart, a pang of longing and frustration.
He continued moving, methodically pushing the soldiers aside, one by one, and then turned his attention to the broken carriage.
“Are you okay, Neks?” Tara’s voice broke through the haze, soft and cautious.
“I’m fine!” he replied a little too abruptly, the sharp edge unintended but impossible to smooth over.
She stepped closer, holding out a small object. “I wanted to give you this ring before I head toward the Dwarven Mountains.”
He looked down at the silver band, adorned with a dark purple amethyst. His fingers trembled slightly as he accepted it, sliding it onto the middle finger of his right hand. Immediately, a rush of energy swirled inside the gem, almost knocking the breath from his lungs.
“Hopefully it’ll help you… with whatever,” she whispered, her fingers brushing his hand in a fleeting, almost imperceptible plea for contact.
Nekira bent back to the carriage, trying to push it off the road with controlled force, mind still half elsewhere.
“Gabija has asked if you’ll meet her at Caa Alora…” Tara’s voice was gentle, but he didn’t respond.
A sigh escaped her. She stepped forward, frustration and care blending into one movement. Her hands gripped his shoulders, spinning him gently to face her. Her eyes found his, and for a heartbeat, she saw it all — the pain, the exhaustion, the raw grief and fury barely contained.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. Then, without waiting for him to respond, she stepped back and walked away, leaving him standing there, fingers brushing the silver amethyst of the ring, staring at the broken carriage and the path still ahead.
Tara swung gracefully back into the saddle atop Elqiana, settling into her place with the ease of long practice. The great dragon flexed her massive wings, muscles rippling beneath opal-white scales, and with a powerful beat, they lifted off the sand. Nekira instinctively ducked as Elqiana skimmed low over the road, wind whipping around him. With a sudden sweep of her claws, the dragon scooped up the broken carriage and flung it forward, sending it crashing into a nearby field with a thunderous roar that shook the ground and sent dust and splinters scattering in every direction.
The Journey, Book 3: Chapter 2
Chapter Two: South Nekira stood alone on the quiet road, the last echoes of dragon wings long faded. The wind had shifted — colder now, carrying the faint scent of smoke from far away. He turned toward the sea, back down the dunes, and made his way to the beach where his things still lay...
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