Orlen squinted, but he couldn’t see. Or more like he could, but only clouds filled his vision. It was the thick, wet stuff that clung to his face and robes.

He tried to move but felt the air itself push back. He tried to blow it away, using a horizontal bolt of lightning to clear the vision first. As a result, a flat bolt scraped along the parapet. For a blink he saw stone, a helm, a hand on a rail, then the mist stitched the gap shut.

A groan escaped his lips and he cast [Storm Stir], a second circle spell for a wide, fan-shaped arc that superheated air in front of him to open a short corridor. When it activated, the air around him bucked. A narrow corridor opened—two heartbeats, three—and folded closed.

He couldn’t see anything more than that. The cloud ignored his back-to-back casting and swallowed each spell like he’d thrown pebbles in the water.

He cursed under his breath and tried again, and again. But nothing worked.

When Arzan Kellius rose over Fort Glaivegate, Orlen expected a tense battle—lines holding, spells traded, maybe a duel. Instead, exactly what Prince Aldrin warned about hit them: no straight fight, just a single unexpected move that shut the fort down before Orlen even saw him up close.

He’d let himself hope when he counted barely fifty something enemies. Maybe he could bring Arzan down with help. If the strongest Mage in the kingdom fell here, Orlen’s name would be famous. Kill him—even with help—and he’d be remembered. Aldrin had promised a new Mage tower after the civil war; Orlen pictured himself as Tower Master. He had seen that vision.

Instead, he swung at nothing in the whiteout while his men shouted around him—voices asking for help, not knowing what was going on. He heard the noise of shields knocking shields out of their hands. Someone begging for the way to the stairs. Someone else swore that they were at the wall, then walked into another soldier, tumbling over each other. A few Wind Mages tried to carve lanes clear, but their gusts only churned the haze and made it cling harder.

The only silver lining was that the wards still held.

If they could endure this spell, if they could wait it out, they might rally and strike back.

The thought barely formed when the first explosion hit. He felt stone jump under his boots. And a second blast rolled through the fog, flashing blue against the mist. Orlen set his stance, dragged breath into his chest and raised his hand to cast again. Before he could, a third blast rang out.

He stumbled on the ground, palms skidding on stone, and the screams around him spiked. More blasts came until dread ran cold through his chest. When the thunder finally stopped, he didn’t think the enemy had quit. His gut said the opposite.

Orlen attempted to create a spell structure, but it wobbled with the fear building up inside of him. The second attempt went worse than the first, and the frame fell apart. He tried again—same result. His fingers shook and his focus broke.

“F-fuck… I can’t focus… Breathe… breathe in…” He inhaled shakily, his gut clenched at the thought of what could be happening. But he held onto the breath as if his life depended on it. Orlen let out all the air through his lips. He tried his best breathing technique but he couldn’t stop the shaking.

”The structure wouldn’t even form properly.” He tried again but the screams from the explosion rang in his ears from all sides.

Suddenly, footsteps rang out from the direction of the stairs and the dread that was building up reached its peak.

“They’re he—!” someone shouted but his voice faded with a loud, metallic bang.

“Shit! They’re here! Men, raise your shields!” He screamed on top of his lungs while a spell structure finally formed in his hand purely out of anger and urgency.

He could lose a wide bolt and scour a lane, but it would burn friend and foe together. He hated the thought more than he expected. These were his men after all. He had spent years with them living in the fort and he knew his spell would kill them. But was there an option? As he thought that, he felt a presence right next to him.

“Why don’t you surrender? I don’t want to waste more mana today,” a familiar voice came through the screams and sounds of footsteps.

Orlen snarled and snapped the last few lines of the structure into place. He hurled the bolt at the sound.

Lightning tore the mist, and smashed against an unseen wall with a flat, ugly crack. Shattered arcs sprayed sideways. Someone screamed. A man fell, twitching, somewhere in the milk-white haze. He could only hope it didn’t hit one of his men.

His eyes widened when a shape stepped into view. Wind peeled the fog back in slow curls around him. Blue light ran along a floating ring of drones at his shoulders. A pale barrier shimmered between them like glass under water.

Arzan Kellius.

Behind him, shadows moved with purpose—enemy soldiers moving to kill and subdue his own men. The sense of defeat immediately whirled inside of him but he refused to give up. He set his stance, sweat tracking cold over his ribs, and reached for more mana. For the man who had wrecked every plan Orlen made with one bizarre spell.

“I’m going to kill you,” Orlen said. He bared his teeth and glared, even as his heart hammered like it wanted out.

“We both know those are empty—” Arzan began.

Orlen didn’t let him finish and fired first. Lightning burst from his palm in a white-blue flurry, but the man in front of him vanished. A scream tore the mist somewhere to Orlen’s left. Once again he hoped it was an enemy and not one of his own, but there was no time to check. He pulled mana hard and shaped a blade of lightning along his forearm.

A sound came from above.

Orlen looked up and saw Arzan floating, cloak tugged by the air, a tight funnel of wind spinning in his hand. The tornado came down in a rush. Orlen raised his lightning blade to cleave it, but the wind wrapped his lightning instead, coiling it, stretching it thin. His robes flared and for a moment, control slipped. He felt the charge stutter and killed the spell before it could backfire, throwing himself right.

Ropes of flaring mana sliced through the space he had just left, hissing like hot wire.

“You managed to anticipate it,” Arzan’s voice came, calm, almost pleased. “That’s honestly impressive.”

Orlen ground his teeth and began another weave. Lines and circles formed in a deadly spell—

Cold ran through him like a blade of ice.

His hands stopped moving.

What the fuck is happening?! No… No!

The spell structure wavered. “No, don’t!” Breath fogged in front of his lips. The mist itself seemed to tighten, and for a heartbeat Orlen couldn’t tell if it was fear, a frost spell, or the weight of a stronger will pressing down on his own.

A beam of white light cut through the mist and hit his legs. Ice climbed fast, biting his bone. Orlen tried to throw a lightning bolt to shatter it, but a boot hit his chest and sent him skidding over stone.

He slammed into a wall. Pain lanced bright across his body. The ice webbing his shins had already cracked; he smashed it apart and forced himself up, hands lifting to weave—

Red-hot, smoking chains whipped out of the fog. He flinched, his eyes squeezing shut a heartbeat before they struck. Fire-wreathed links wrapped his chest and arms, cinched tight, and dragged him down. He groaned as his knees hit stone. He could only lift his head by will alone.

Arzan stood over him.

He looked exactly as the rumours described—proud, confident, a man who knew he’d already won the battle before it even began.

Orlen ignored his stance and tried to set a spell structure in his fingers. The chains tightened, digging in, and burning.

The pattern unraveled from pain alone.

“Don’t attempt it,” Arzan said, voice even. “You’ve already lost. You’ll see it in a few seconds. The spell should be timing out now.”

Orlen said nothing. He glared up, mind racing. Is this it? Will he kill me? Parade me? He had no answer and no air for questions.

The fog began to thin.

First it peeled back from his boots, then from the nearest stones, then from the shattered gate that led down. Shapes took color. Sound sharpened. The last of the cloud tore like gauze in sunlight, and the sight before him punched the breath from his chest.

All around him, his soldiers lay on the stones—knocked out, some bleeding, some groaning. A handful still swung blades out of habit, then saw their fellows bound and silent and let the steel drop. A few broke for the stairs. A golem stood there already, head turning, big hand closing around each runner and setting them down like sacks.

The Mages fared worst. Their hands were locked in tight cuffs—dull gray bands that drank the light. Made of Syphon stones, he immediately recognised it. Orlen’s stomach dipped. With those on, a Mage was just a man.

They had nearly two hundred men on the roster. Arzan’s force looked barely fifty. Still, the fifty moved through the courtyard with calm speed, looping glowing ropes, checking pulses, stacking weapons in a neat pile while drones watched from above.

Maybe others would run away and get help… Orlen’s last hope reached for the men beyond the walls, the ones in the yards, the ones in their rooms—

“I’ve sent more soldiers around the fort,” Arzan said, as if answering the thought. “None of yours will run. Not unless they plan to cross the border.”

Orlen fixed on him, venom in his voice. “You won craftily. That’s not how a true Mage fights.” he spat on the floor, blood dripping from the corners of his mouth where his lip had scraped.

“A win is a win,” Arzan replied. “A true lord doesn’t let his men shed even a drop of blood. That’s what I did today. And I don’t need a lecture from you. In war, it doesn’t matter how you win—only that you win.”

Orlen ground his teeth until his jaw hurt. The words were clean, hard, and—worst of all—true. It didn’t cool the heat in his chest. It only made the loss burn deeper.

Such a spell—he had never seen anything like it. Maybe only a Fourth Circle Mage could have stood against it; maybe not. It didn’t matter. He had lost. The chains were hot on his ribs, the syphon cuffs drank everyone of his Mages, and he could do nothing.

“What do you want to do with me now? Kill me?” Orlen asked, voice rough.

“No,” Arzan said. “I gain nothing from that. I want to ask you some very important questions.”

Orlen narrowed his eyes. “What questions? I’ll tell you nothing.”

“I think you will,” Arzan replied, calm as ever. “It isn’t something you shouldn’t know. I have many questions, but only one matters now.” He turned his head, gaze cutting far beyond Glaivegate’s walls. Orlen followed it and saw nothing, yet Arzan spoke as if he saw something. “From what I know, Aldrin has been in talks with the Caelond Kingdom, and I still see their fort over the border. I expected them to help you—they have good Mages. They didn’t. Care to explain why?”

“How would I know what a prince and another kingdom are planning?” Orlen scoffed. “I was tasked by the king to hold this fort. That’s all.”

“Yet you failed at it,” Arzan said, without anger. “You can keep your mouth shut, but that won’t last.”

“Try me.” Orlen set his jaw and held the stare. Behind his teeth, his resolve tasted like iron. Behind his calm, his hands shook in the chains. He could feel drones humming above, the golems’ steps thudding through stone, the quiet murmur of captives being counted and bound. He had no faith he could withstand true pressure from this man. But he was still loyal. He would not spoil Prince Aldrin’s plan. More than the fear of pain, he wanted one thing—to watch Arzan stumble, to see his rise break. So he glared, said nothing, and swallowed the tremor in his chest.

***

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