A month had passed since the Battle of the Eastern Ridge, and Kael's people now called themselves Avari—those who had no masters, only one another. The valley had changed. Where once was only wild forest and war-burned soil now rose scaffolds, stone foundations, and the first great wall.
The first city of Avarin had no name. Kael refused to give it one until it could defend itself without him.
He sat with an old stonemason named Irik, a man whose hands trembled but whose memory held the architecture of a dozen lost cities. Irik placed Kael's hand on a block of black limestone. "Stones remember," the man said. "Lay them crooked, and the city will fall in a century. Lay them true, and they'll outlive your name."
Kael looked around. Children ran between unfinished pillars. Yulda shouted at warriors practicing in the open yard. Smoke rose from a new forge where tools, not weapons, were being made.
It was fragile. But it was real.
"Kael!" shouted Yulda. "There's a rider!"
A lone man on a limping horse approached the gates. Blood stained his cloak, and an eastern arrow jutted from his thigh. He bore a sealed scroll, tied with obsidian thread.
Kael broke the seal and read the message aloud:
To the so-called King of Free Men—
You were born a shadow, and so shall you remain. The Scourge of Kharuk rides, and he brings with him the bones of all who stood before him. Flee now, and be forgotten. Or stay, and be consumed.
There was no signature. Only a symbol Kael hadn't seen before: a burning crown above a coiled serpent.
Irik frowned. "Kharuk was dead. Slain in the salt war of the southern dunes."
"Then either a ghost rides," Kael said quietly, "or the old monsters have found new flesh."
Yulda's expression was grim. "Do we run?"
"No," Kael replied. "We build faster."
That night, Kael stood before the half-raised cita
del and addressed his people. "They will come. With fire and poison. They will try to remind us we were once nothing."
He lifted a stone brick high. "So we will answer with what they cannot kill."
He placed it in the wall with his own hands.
"Memory. Stone. And each other."
In the dark desert beyond, the Scourge of Kharuk marched with ten thousand blades—and a smile that knew Kael's true name.