Chapter 32 - delivered nothing

  A stunned silence fell over them all. Ryn felt the young knight beside him begin to tremble, his breath breaking into ragged gasps. Every heartbeat seemed to echo in the hollow stillness, swallowed by the figure who had stepped through the fissure.

  The Prince’s presence was suffocating, beautiful and wrong, a weight that pressed down on them without a single raised blade.

  Then he spoke.

  A voice, soft, almost gentle, slid through the air, far too calm for a battlefield. Each word carried the sweetness of velvet, yet it made Ryn’s skin crawl, his hair bristling at the nape of his neck.

  “Sir Ryn… oh my.”

  His pale lips curved ever so slightly, a smile that held no warmth.

  “What a pleasure.”

  His head tilted, silver hair falling like strands of moonlight as those pale eyes found him in the smoke.

  “I knew you’d survive the attack in the palace.”

  After the prince’s words faded, a low whimper broke the silence. Ryn heard the clatter of steel as a knight’s sword slipped from his grasp, his hands shaking too violently to hold it.

  Both Lilia and Ariel edged closer to Ryn, their breaths shallow, eyes fixed on the figure in silver.

  But it was Brann’s reaction that cut through the fear.

  He moved forward, stepping between Ryn and the prince, his jaw set tight.

  “What do you mean!?” he spat, voice raw with anger.

  “You— you’re victims in this too!”

  The Prince’s gaze slid from Ryn to the boy standing in his path. His lips twitched, then parted—what came out wasn’t speech at first but laughter.

  It wasn’t human laughter.

  Soft, melodic, almost pleasant at first, before it bent, stretched, and echoed, filling the ruined street until it scraped at the edges of sanity.

  “I see… I see,” he murmured,“I see why you would think that.”

  He tilted his head, silver hair spilling like a veil of moonlight, pale eyes glinting with a hollow amusement.

  “It pains me, truly, to break your illusion, Solvaran knights.” His voice dropped to a whisper, almost tender, yet cruel in its calm.

  “Solvara…”

  “…is the only victim in this.”

  He let the pause linger, then tilted his head, silver hair cascading as the ribbons on his blade fluttered in the faint breeze.

  “In fact, Varghelm is the greatest benefactor of this attack.” His words slithered with mockery, each syllable deliberate.

  “At least… most of us.”

  The laugh returned, sharper now, shattering the air like glass beneath a hammer.

  Ariel and Lilia stepped back

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  The memory of the Varghelm noble, clutching his cloth, whispering “peace” as he bled out, flickered through Ryn like a struck nerve. His jaw clenched until his teeth ached. He didn’t understand every implication of the Prince’s words, only their shape: those deaths had not been accidental.

  Brann’s expression twisted. He stood rigid, every breath a labor under the Prince’s presence, as if the air itself had thickened around them. The man before them compelled a kind of terrified stillness; no one moved first.

  The Prince let that silence sit a long moment, as if savoring it, then turned slowly. Silver hair brushed his shoulders; his smile was too mild. His gaze drifted from Brann to the other knights, lingering finally on the princess.

  He bowed, a small, courtly motion, his gaze briefly resting on the princess as though on a painting. “Your Highness. We exchanged pleasantries at the ball,” he murmured, as if recalling a trivial kindness. “But this… this is our first real interaction.” He inclined his head again, eyes bright. “You remain beautiful, even in ruin.”

  The courtesy had no comfort in it. The Prince’s voice dropped, the words compact and cold.

  “It pains me princess,” he said, as if struck by regret. Then, with clinical calm, “but I have a task.”

  He looked at them, at Ryn, at Brann, at the scarred ranks of Solvara, and finished, each syllable precise.

  “To kill the Apostle of Sol.”

  The words didn’t echo, they simply hung there, cold and absolute. Ryn’s lungs refused to move. Then the air itself seemed to twist

  Before Ryn even had a heartbeat to register the prince’s words, light split the air.

  A bloodied hand slammed into his chest, shoving him back. He staggered, boots scraping stone—then came the ring of steel.

  The Prince stood where Ryn had been, blade poised to split him and princess open. He hadn’t moved so much as blinked, yet the prince had crossed the distance in less than a breath.

  Only one thing stopped the strike.

  Eldric.

  Bruised, battered, half his body streaked in blood, he stood in front of them, sword locked against the Prince’s golden blade. His arms shook with the force of the clash, but he held.

  Ryn’s ears rang. His mind reeled.

  How… how is that possible?

  Sylvas’s voice tore through the clash.

  “Ryn, run!”

  “Take the princess! Don’t forget!”

  “Don’t forget your duty!”

  The words cut through the ringing in Ryn’s ears. He didn’t think. He didn’t argue.

  His hand closed around the princess, the other pulling Lilia with them, and he ran.

  It was an order. and he would not betray that.

  He tore himself from the rubble, lungs burning, the last sounds he heard behind him were steel on steel and the kinds of noises he could not name, metal screaming, air splitting, a human voice twisting into something inhuman. He didn’t dare look back.

  He ran.

  Through streets he once knew, now nothing but fire and ash. Solvara’s final stand bled out around him in fragments, knights cut down mid-charge, others dragged screaming into the blaze, their armor clattering empty before their bodies fell silent. Shops he had passed a thousand times were shattered husks, their walls caved in, flames pouring from windows like tongues. Roofs groaned and folded inward, swallowing the wounded still trapped beneath.

  The numbers had thinned to almost nothing now. Where once the streets were choked with Solvaran knights, there were only stragglers, lone swordsmen desperately swinging until they were overwhelmed. And everywhere the banners of their enemies spread like wildfire, strange sigils carried by men and women who moved with the same terrifying ease as the knight Ryn had faced before. Blessed, all of them. Their numbers had only grown.

  The smell of blood thickened, carried on every draft of smoke. His boots slipped on wet stone as he ran past a heap of corpses, knights and civilians indistinguishable, all cut down in the same frantic attempt to flee.

  Then, suddenly, the chaos thinned. The sounds of clashing steel and screaming dimmed. His breath rasped in his ears. He stumbled forward into an open stretch of the city.

  The whole wall loomed ahead. For the first time, he could see it in its entirety, its pale sweep of white stone rising like the edge of the world, battlements catching the faint shimmer of moonlight. The gates remained sealed, untouched by the fire raging behind him.

  Somewhere in his mind, the prince’s words followed him — soft, distant, unending.

  The square before it was silent. Deathly. Corpses lay scattered in every direction, twisted in the dirt as if they’d been frozen mid-flight. Men, women, children, all caught at the edge of escape and slaughtered where they stood. No one remained alive. Only a carpet of still forms and shattered steel littered the way forward.

  And Ryn was alone in the silence, staring at the wall that promised safety, but delivered nothing.