B3 - Epilogue

Zakar strode down Ylaashire's main dirt thoroughfare, boots kicking up dust beneath the rays of the setting sun.

Hardly a soul lingered outside among the dwellings made of wood. The settlement blended seamlessly into the surrounding forest; simple timber structures were nestled between trees, and even the largest longhouses rose no higher than three stories high, as if the town refused to reach the canopy above.

In his right hand, Zakar still gripped the black parchment scroll. His knuckles had turned white beneath his gloves.

Kaiser had already headed for the healing ward on the eastern edge of town, choosing the treatment of a Grove Healer over wasting another scroll on his broken bones and frostbite.

Zakar hadn't bothered. His own injuries still bled beneath his armor.

He had somewhere far more important to be.

'You can't go see him looking like that,' Rai growled through their bond. 'All those wounds make you look weak.'

Zakar blocked the beast's voice from his mind. Every step was driven by the same word.

How?

How had that pathetic boy broken the binding? He was nothing more than a mere Iron. Yet he had shattered the chains forged by a god.

Even members of the Apex Predators had failed to break them during the Cleansing a decade ago. Those chains were supposed to be absolute.

The perfect leash.

It had allowed the Bloodfangs to keep the bloodline of the traitors under control for half a century. So how had the boy freed himself?

Zakar veered off the main road.

A narrow path vanished behind a wall of tangled thornbushes, concealed from the rest of the town. At its end, a staircase plunged beneath the sprawling root system of the forest.

As he had done countless times before, Zakar descended the stone steps. Moss carpeting the walls grew denser with every level, and the air became colder. At the bottom stood an weathered oak door bound by black iron.

Hundreds of tiny runes had been carved across both wood and metal, their grooves so densely packed that they seemed to overlap. Aether flowed through them and feed the entire formations buried within the surrounding stone. Bonds, contracts, communication artifacts—nothing could break through the barrier in either direction. For prisoners as valuable as those sometime held below, allowing an ennemy to use a contract or exploit a bond to kill them from afar would have defeated the entire purpose of keeping them alive.

Zakar placed a hand on the iron handle and channeled aether into the runes. They flared one after another, recognizing his authority before the locks hidden within the door released with a series of heavy clicks.

He pushed it open and stepped through.

Zakar seized the handle and channeled aether into it to push it open.

Without slowing his stride, he stepped into the prison, which was lit by a few torchlits.

"Zakar?" a gruff voice came from the left.

Barroth lounged behind the wooden guard desk, a greasy tin plate resting before him. A thick slab of roasted drake meat hung from the two-pronged fork in his hand, dark juices dripping onto his scarred knuckles and splattering across the tabletop.

"Out," Zakar ordered.

Barroth frowned, the fork halfway to his mouth.

"What do you—"

"Get out."

This time, the words cracked through the chamber like a whip, and Barroth flinched.

The man's eyes widened as he took in Zakar's state, then he let the fork fall onto the plate and rose from his chair before rushing for the exit.

When he passed by, Barroth's gaze drifted to the black scroll still clenched in Zakar's hand.

The man's expression darkened. But he asked no questions.

The prison door slammed shut behind him and silence returned.

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Zakar reached into his Endless Pouch and withdrew a small pendant adorned with a crystal-clear jewel: his Truth-Revealing Necklace.

His sharp gaze swept past the rows of empty iron cages and locked directly onto the lone figure shackled at the rear of the prison. Zakar's boots echoed against the cold flagstones as he advanced.

"A child." His voice was barely more than a whisper. "You abandoned everything. You threw away your future and ran like a coward, knowing your entire clan would be butchered." He stopped before the iron bars, eyes fixed on the bloodied prisoner. "All for a pathetic child."

The man kept his matted head lowered, his gaze anchored on the cold stone floor. Yet for the first time in nearly a decade, Zakar caught the faintest reaction—a subtle tightening of the prisoner's fingers, as though they longed to curl into a fist.

"Yet in the end your sacrifice amounted to nothing... isn't that right, Ulric?"

Zakar stepped closer until he stood barely inches away from the iron bars.

"And just when we believed there was no way left to make you suffer, a new tool revealed itself. How thoughtful of him."

He let the words hang. His eyes swept over Ulric's face, then his posture, searching for the slightest crack in the man's composure—a twitch, a hitch in his breathing, anything.

Yet Ulric remained perfectly still.

"The moment I get my hands on him, I'll drag him across the sea and chain him in the cell beside yours so I can tear him apart piece by piece," Zakar continued as his muscles tensed. "And I'll make sure you watch every single second of it."

Again, Ulric didn't react.

The man's head remained dropped against his chest, as if he was somehow completely unbothered.

Zakar ground his teeth, and heat spread through his chest as his core pulsed, urging him to unleash his fury—to crush the man and finally end him. But before that, it wanted some resistance. There was no satisfaction in killing prey that neither fled nor fought back.

Yet Ulric was giving it nothing. Not a flicker of fear. Not an ounce of defiance. Nothing at all.

People of the Bloodfangs had already spent years breaking his body—flaying his flesh, starving him, pushing him to the edge of death again and again—in a futile effort to learn where he had hidden everything he'd stolen from them. Yet the man had never said a single word.

With a grumble, Zakar turned away from the cell and moved to tuck the Truth-Revealing Necklace back into his pouch on his way out.

But then, the scrape of heavy iron chains echoed through the chamber.

"You know I can smell it."

The voice drifted from the darkness behind him, rough and brittle, like two dry stones grinding together. It sounded so raw, so neglected, that one could have believed the man hadn't spoken in years.

Zakar spun around, jaw tightening as he glared through the iron bars.

"Smell what?"

Slowly, Ulric raised his head. With shackled hands, he brushed the matted strands off his face, revealing a pair of piercing golden eyes that locked onto Zakar's. A cold, feral smile spread across the man's cracked lips.

"Your fear."

Zakar's core erupted.

A surge of aether left his Well and poured into the dark parchment scroll still clenched in his fist.

Beyond the reinforced bars, Ulric's body seized. His chains crashed against the stone floor as he collapsed to one knee under the merciless grip of the divine binds. Thick veins bulged along his neck and temples while aether burned through his flesh, bleeding out from him in wisps.

Yet despite the pain, not a single cry escaped the man's lips.

His jaw remained locked shut.

"Know your place, Elrod," Zakar spat, cutting off the flow of aether into the scroll.

Ulric slumped against his chains, his chest now rising and falling in ragged breaths. Slowly, the man lifted his head and wiped the thin trail of blood running from his nose. His golden eyes burned through the darkness with an undeniable ferocity.

"You are right to be afraid," he rasped. "We made sure he would grow hungry. That he would see the worst this world had to offer and forge the will to overcome all of it without us."

His gaze lingered on Zakar's face, and something almost resembling satisfaction flickered across the man's battered features.

"And from your reaction..." A faint smile appeared on his lips. "I can only assume it worked and he broke the binding."

Zakar's expression tightened.

Ulric's smile widened. "He carries her blood in his veins. Nothing you do will ever stop him."

Her blood.

Zakar clenched his jaw. Clarissa Velarys. The Unbound.

Was her lineage the true reason the boy had shattered a binding powerful enough to leash even half-gods? Could it really be that simple? Or was there something else lurking beneath the surface?

Ulric leaned forward until the chains groaned beneath his weight. "When he reaches these shores, even your pitiful god won't be able to save you. He will slaughter you all where you stand."

"Shut your damn mouth!" Zakar roared.

He squeezed the scroll once more and flooded it with aether.

Ulric's body arched violently. His breath caught in his throat as every muscle locked, his chained limbs slamming against the stone floor while the divine blaze tore through his flesh.

Only when Zakar finally let the aether die, his own chest heaving from the anger, did the prisoner's body go still.

Ulric let out a low chuckle. He raised his head again, blood staining his cracked lips as his grin broadened even more. "My son will bring a much-needed purge to Draeria."

Zakar strode to the front of the cell and slammed his fist against the iron bars. "Your son is nothing more than an insect! An insignificant bit of prey walking blindly toward his own death!"

Ulric held his gaze for a long moment. Then, his eyes drifted to Zakar's right hand and his smile widened even more with something that looked like pride.

Zakar frowned and instinctively followed the man's gaze.

His breath caught.

The Truth-Revealing Pendant clenched in his hand had changed.

The once perfectly clear gem had now turned pitch-black. The artifact had judged that Zakar believed his own words were a lie.

"Hide. Run. Gather every man you can," Ulric said, his voice carrying a deep and chilling weight. He lifted his head and met Zakar's gaze. "None of it will matter."

Zakar stood frozen as the man leaned back into the shadows of his cell, his golden eyes burning like twin suns through the darkness.

"My son is the storm you won't survive..." A faint, yet savage smile lingered on Ulric's lips. "...the reckoning this place, and the Sanctum of the Gods, has long deserved."

– End of Book 3 –