CHAINS OF FIRE AND ROSES 🌹🌹🌹🌹
CHAPTER 3
The First Flame
The Blackreach tunnels were lit for the first time in years—not by torches, but by fire and fury.
Kael moved through the smoke like a phantom, a stolen dagger in one hand and a broken pickaxe in the other. Around him, rebels burst out of the dark—former soldiers, merchants, farmers—men and women who had endured the lash and lived for this moment.
Darek led a flank toward the eastern shaft. Another group had overtaken the guardhouse with boiling oil and stones from above. The surprise was working. For now.
Kael's blade plunged into the side of a Karnovan overseer. The man collapsed without a sound. Kael moved on.
"Hold the gates!" he shouted, his voice hoarse but commanding. "We don't stop until the wind touches our faces!"
They hadn't seen the sun in years. Some had forgotten what the sky looked like.
Kael had not.
He cut down two more guards, adrenaline drowning the pain of old scars ripping open again. The gates ahead were thick and iron-banded, but the rebels had a ram. They were gaining ground.
"We make for the inner vault next!" Darek shouted. "If we get to the tower, the signal fire goes up!"
Kael nodded. "And Thalos burns."
---
Far above, in the royal palace of Karnova, Princess Emerald was awakened by the sudden toll of alarm bells.
She sat up in bed, her hair falling over her face.
"What's happening?" she asked her maid, who had rushed in pale and breathless.
"The mines, Your Highness," the girl stammered. "There's… there's a revolt. The slaves have escaped the lower levels. They've killed over a dozen guards."
Emerald's stomach twisted.
The slaves.
The ones her father said were broken beyond repair.
She threw off her blankets and moved to her window. The eastern tower blazed with red smoke.
"I need to go to the command hall," she said.
"But the King forbade—"
"I don't care what he forbade."
---
By mid-morning, the palace was in chaos.
King Thalos stood in his war room with commanders shouting over each other. Some wanted to crush the rebellion outright. Others feared it was a distraction for something worse.
"They've taken the Blackreach gate," a guard reported. "We tried to shut the inner ring, but they breached it with oil and fire. They're heading for the old vault path."
Thalos slammed his fist into the table.
"Send the Second Battalion. Kill them all. I want no survivors."
Emerald stood silently in the corner, hands clasped tightly.
"Did you not hear me?" Thalos barked. "Leave, Emerald."
She didn't move.
"Is it Kael?" she asked quietly.
The room went dead silent.
Thalos turned to her, his face hard. "What did you say?"
She met his eyes. "The Solentan prince. Is he leading them?"
A commander scoffed. "That boy's long dead."
But another, a grizzled officer who had once served in Solenta, shook his head. "If he's alive, he'd be the one behind this. He was trained in Solentan strategy. And this—this is not the work of mindless slaves. This is war."
Thalos's eyes narrowed. "Then find him. Bring me his head."
---
Kael didn't slow until they reached the Upper Shaft, where the light of day bled through cracks in the ceiling. It was the first sunlight he'd seen in three years. He stumbled for a moment, blinking.
So did many of the others.
They had forgotten what light felt like. What warmth truly was.
And yet they couldn't stop.
Kael looked up the stairwell toward the old fortress that guarded the mines from above. If they could take that post, they could open the mountain gates. Beyond those gates waited freedom—and vengeance.
But standing between them and that freedom was a battalion of Karnovan soldiers.
Kael turned to the dozen rebels left by his side.
"I won't lie to you. Most of us will die," he said. "But if we fall here, we fall free. Not in chains."
Darek raised his blade. "Solenta lives."
And they charged.
---
Inside the mountain fortress, Emerald watched from the high balcony. She had come, disobeying her father. Something pulled her there—an instinct she couldn't name.
She spotted him as soon as the rebels broke through the first line.
Kael.
Bloodied, battered, older—but unmistakable.
She gripped the railing, heart pounding.
"Kael…"
He fought like a storm, like something not human. There was no hesitation in his strikes, no mercy in his eyes. And yet, for a brief moment, as he looked up toward the tower—his eyes met hers.
He froze.
So did she.
In that heartbeat, the past came flooding back—Solenta's fall, the screams, the fire. His capture. Her silence.
Then a spear flew past Kael's shoulder, snapping the moment.
Kael turned, roared, and plunged his blade into the Karnovan officer before him.
Emerald stepped back from the balcony, her chest heaving.
The prince was alive.
And war had come to Karnova
To Be Continued