The road to Veyra wound through wind-scoured plains. Unlike Kareth Vale, here the land still breathed life—fields bent under farmers’ plows, and caravans rattled along trade routes while merchants barked prices into the wind. Yet beneath that surface hum of normalcy, Ethan and Maya felt the tautness everywhere. People’s gazes lingered too long, their whispers trailing in hushed awe and suspicion. The summoned ones. The king’s weapons.

At night, the campfire seemed both comfort and warning. Ethan brooded over it, his flames hovering closer to the surface now, eager to leap free. Sometimes he caught himself staring too long into the fire’s heart, wondering if the villagers were right to fear him.

Across from him, Maya hunched over her journal, writing in quick, deliberate strokes. The light painted her features hollow with fatigue. When Ethan asked why she pushed herself, she only said, “If I stop writing, I forget who I was before all this. And I don’t want to lose that yet.”

He smiled faintly, warmed by the reminder of their pact to remember themselves, even here. But the Magi’s warning still haunted him: Fear runs deeper than gratitude. And as the hollow way villagers’ eyes slid past him replayed in his mind, Ethan felt the truth in it.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Do you think he’s right? That they’ll never see us as anything but a threat?”

Maya didn’t answer at once. She pressed the quill to her nose, eyes unfocused. The city they approached murmured faintly in the distance—dogs barking, carts creaking, voices drunk with laughter. Life went on. Yet here they sat, caught between worlds.

“They didn’t choose us,” she said finally, her voice quiet but firm. “We’re not their kin, not their neighbors. We’re strangers dropped into their war. Borrowed weapons.”

“Borrowed,” Ethan echoed bitterly. “Like we’ll just… be put back when we’re used up?”

She turned to him, candlelight cutting shadows under her eyes. “If they even can.”

The silence that followed pressed heavier than the wind. Ethan studied her pale features, the tremor in her hand as she brushed hair back. She was exhausted. They both were.

“Back home… I barely stood out. Now people flinch when I walk by. I don’t know which feels worse,” he muttered.

Her lips curved in a sad half-smile. “At least when they ignored you, they didn’t whisper prayers that you wouldn’t burn their lives down.”

They laughed softly, the sound brittle.

"You know what's wild? I think, in a lot of situations like these, the people end up being the worst part of it all. In movies and fiction about life or death situations, people will always choose themselves." Ethan reminisced. "What do you think?"

 Maya lowered her gaze. “Yeah... Stuff like that scare me more than the monsters,” she admitted.

The fire sputtered low, and they spoke no more. Yet the thought lingered, unshakable: perhaps the greatest threat they faced wasn’t the Demon King’s army, but the mistrust of those they were meant to save.

By morning, Veyra’s gates loomed before them, carved with the sun sigil. Inside, the city reeked of rot and incense. Though its streets bustled, its markets thinned, its guards nervous-eyed.

Governor Calenne, sharp-eyed and proud despite her weariness, welcomed them into her gilded hall. “Heroes,” she said, bowing low. “My city is sick. Caravans vanish, granaries lie empty, guards desert. And those who remain whisper of black-cloaked figures gathering at the temple after midnight.”

Maya’s breath caught. “Cultists.”

Calenne nodded grimly. “I dare not send my men. Too many vanish. But you—fire and time flow in your veins. Perhaps the gods sent you for this.”

Ethan muttered, “Or the king shoved us into it.”

Still, that night they made ready. Their inn was small and plain—two cots, a washbasin, and a narrow window overlooking crooked roofs. To Ethan it was no sanctuary, only a staging ground.

Maya spread her notes across the cot, sketching a map of Veyra. Her fingers trembled faintly as she traced the empty districts. “Here—the merchants’ children gone. Here—the patrol’s torches found guttered. And all of it leads to the dead quarter. Too dark, too quiet.”

Ethan leaned close, listening. Her voice steadied him, even when her face was drawn and pale.

“So, we walk into their nest,” he said.

“We walk quiet. We observe. We don’t start a fire unless we must,” she reminded him.

When the candle was snuffed, moonlight alone lit their way. They moved into the streets, cloaks drawn tight. By day, Veyra bustled; by night, it hushed, alleys damp and cobbles slick.

As they entered the dead quarter, Maya’s hand caught Ethan’s arm. “Listen.”

He heard it then—ordered footsteps. Three hooded figures gliding through the street, one cradling a bundle wrapped in cloth.

Maya whispered, “We follow.”

Her grip steadied him, and though fire stirred in his blood, he clenched it back.

The cultists walked with eerie precision, vanishing into a shuttered apothecary. A sliver of red light flickered as the door groaned shut.

Maya closed her eyes, fingers twitching. Ethan had seen that look before—her chronomancy. The air around her stilled, sound thinning, as if she skimmed the surface of moments already past.

“They’ve done this before,” she murmured, voice distant. “The same knock, the same words. Over and over. Tonight is different—they bring a sacrifice.”

Ethan swallowed. “How do you know—”

She blinked, and the shimmer left her gaze. “Because I saw it.”

Together they slipped in through a rear window, into a storeroom stinking of rot and mold. From below, chanting thrummed steady as a heartbeat.

They crouched by the trapdoor, crimson glow spilling through the cracks.

Below, cultists circled a bound man, their priest’s voice rising:

“Through sacrifice, the veil shall tear. Through blood, the Shadowborn shall walk again.”

Ethan’s stomach lurched. That word caught his attention: Shadowborn. He knew that was important, just by the sound of it.

Maya’s hand gripped his wrist, colder than ice, snapping him back to reality.

Her whisper was ragged but firm. “This is no meeting. It’s a summoning.”

And time itself seemed to pause around her, waiting for what she would do.