The night was colder than most in Emberfall.
A small fire crackled in a ring of stones at the edge of the Howling Pact's quarter. No tents nearby, no curious ears. Just Mazen, leaning forward with a grim face, firelight flickering off the scars on his knuckles.
Shadow of the North appeared out of the dark like smoke, dropping onto a log beside him without a sound.
"You always did have a talent for attracting the wrong kind of ghosts," Shadow muttered.
Mazen didn't look up.
"He's not a ghost. Just a snake with good timing."
Shadow snorted.
"That 'snake' nearly gave me a heart attack slipping past my men. You gonna explain why the hell you're keeping company with sorcerers who walk through wards like they're mist?"
A pause.
Mazen exhaled.
"It was at Broken Ridge."
Shadow's brow lifted.
"The hell were you doing there alone?"
"Second week in this realm. Thought I could handle a job. Walked into a trap. Mercenaries. Six of them."
Shadow gave a grim smile.
"Classic Arkios."
"I'd have bled out if Yuri hadn't shown up." Mazen stared into the fire.
"Tore them apart with a spell I've never seen. He said he wasn't looking to pick a side — just hated Rhys III's coin more than mine."
Shadow let that settle.
"And you trust him?"
Mazen's jaw tightened.
"I trust what he says about the cracks. About Abdou. No one else knew my father's name."
Shadow sighed, rubbing a hand over his face.
"One of these days, boy, your faith's gonna get you gutted."
Mazen smirked, thin and humorless.
"Not today."
It had been night then too.
The jagged cliffs of Broken Ridge cast deep, splintered shadows. Mazen — weeks into Vortrex, half-starved, armed with a borrowed dagger and foolish bravado — thought he could take on a pack of bounty hunters alone.
Turns out, they brought friends.
Three blades to his throat, one at his back, another over his coin purse.
And one holding a contract with his name scrawled in blood.
"Mark Arkios," the leader sneered. "Five hundred crowns alive. Three hundred dead. Any last words, rebel?"
Mazen spat blood.
And that's when the air changed.
The temperature dropped.
A pale figure stepped from the dark like a ghost unbothered by death. Cloak heavy with glyphs. Eyes like shattered glass reflecting starlight.
Yuri.
He spoke a single word in a tongue Mazen didn't know. The earth cracked beneath the mercenaries' boots. The nearest man dropped screaming as his shadow came alive and strangled him.
The rest scattered.
Mazen could barely stand.
Yuri crouched beside him, voice sharp and casual.
"You owe me a drink."
Mazen coughed blood, scowling.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Name's Yuri. I'm the poor fool who just saved your stubborn life."
A crooked grin.
"And you, Arkios… you're Abdou's son. Aren't you?"
That stopped Mazen cold.
No one else knew. No one could've.
"How do you—"
"I know a lot of things." Yuri straightened, voice darkening.
"Like how the crack you opened between realms isn't stable. Like how Abdou vanished chasing something none of us could stop."
Before Mazen could ask another word, the man was gone, vanished into mist.
And from then on, every few weeks… Yuri found him.
Always with another warning.
Always one step ahead.
The fire burned low between them. Shadow tossed another branch onto the flames, watching it catch.
"And the girl?" Shadow asked after a long stretch of silence.
Mazen didn't answer right away.
He let the fire crackle. Watched the way the wind curled the smoke.
"What about her?"
Shadow grunted.
"Don't play dumb with me, Arkios. You fight like a man trying not to kill her. And you look at her like she's wearing someone else's face."
Mazen clenched his jaw.
"I don't know what it is." He exhaled. "It's not Shina. I know that. Mirra told me she made it home. But Nermin… she moves like Cairo. Fights like someone who learned to get hurt young and never stopped."
He scrubbed a hand down his face.
"Every time I talk to her, it feels like someone I left behind's standing there with her voice."
Shadow leaned back, studying him.
"It's grief," he said quietly.
"War makes ghosts out of the living. And sometimes it puts their faces on strangers just to break you."
Mazen gave a bitter smile.
"Then the world's doing a damn good job."
Neither spoke for a while after that.
Because they both knew there was a kind of ghost you didn't escape.
And hers was wearing the wrong name.
The fire's glow threw sharp angles across Shadow's face, his eyes darker than the flames.
"Yuri's words weren't just noise," he said after a while, voice low.
"Abdou didn't disappear. He was taken by the war between the realms."
Mazen's brow furrowed.
"I thought he left. That he abandoned us."
Shadow shook his head.
"That's what they wanted you to believe. Abdou was one of the few who understood what's down there."
He pointed southward — toward the dead heart of Vortrex.
"The Shadow Mind. The last piece of the old world's darkness. It's alive. And it's cracking through. That tear you made? It was bleeding long before your fire touched it. Yuri knew it. Abdou fought to keep it sealed. That's why your father vanished."
Mazen's stomach churned.
"And me?"
"You're his mistake," Shadow said flatly.
"And his last hope. You've got a piece of that darkness in you — from birth, from blood. If you lose control, you won't just burn cities. You'll tear the realms apart."
A heavy silence.
"That's what Yuri meant," Shadow finished.
"This isn't just Vortrex's war anymore. Earth's next."
Mazen's hand curled into a fist, flame sparking at his knuckles.
"Then we end it before it gets there."
Shadow gave a grim nod.
"That's the only good plan you've had since you got here."
The fire burned to embers.
Mazen stood, brushing dust from his palms. The flame at his fingertips hissed out, leaving only the steady thrum of power beneath his skin.
"I'm done chasing ghosts," he muttered.
Shadow rose beside him.
"Good. About damn time."
Mazen's gaze turned toward the south, where distant mountains tore into the night sky. Somewhere beneath them, the Great Temple waited. And the thing his father guarded.
"I finish this war, find Abdou… and then I leave this cursed world behind."
Shadow gave a rare, sharp grin.
"Don't get soft on me before then. You're still mine until Rhys III bleeds."
"He'll bleed," Mazen promised.
The night wind stirred the ashes between them.
From a distant ridge, unseen, a figure watched — a new face, borrowed skin.
Serak.
And as the men left the fire behind, her smile curled cruel and patient.
Tomorrow would burn.