The fire smoldered as day turned to night. To say that Kaelith had left an impression on both Ethan and Maya had been an understatement. What had Kaelith forced them to do? Ethan felt drained beyond description. It didn’t matter. He, and Maya, had resigned themselves to their fate.
There was something strange happening.
The two of them could tell that the world that had once embraced them was starting to push back. No matter what the two of them could do, it was never good enough. In fact, everything “good” they seemed to do was perceived as the opposite. Before Ethan could even really get used to this feeling, they were trying to take it away from him. Slowly, but surely, the two of them were feeling protective over each other. Confusing as this feeling was, they had no opportunity to deal with these feelings. Training, battling the Demon King’s forces, fighting a cult; they had been on “go” since they arrived in this world.
They needed a vacation.
Selora’s words rang in their head. War is never clean. Was this the casuality of war? Ethan and Maya refused to lose themselves. They would be themselves to the very end. No matter what, the two of them would stand for and support each other as long as they were in this world. Nothing and nobody would shake them. For the sake of their sanity, a quiet pact had already been made. That pact could not be broken.
Ethan and Maya worked alongside Aldric’s men until their hands bled—dragging beams off collapsed homes, searching for survivors, digging shallow graves when they found none. The air was heavy with smoke and the copper tang of blood, the cries of the living weaving with the silence of the dead.
When Ethan knelt to lift a burned child’s body from the wreckage, the soulfire stirred again in his chest, hungry, violent. He forced it down, jaw clenched, until the rage turned to bitter ash in his mouth.
One of the surviving farmers spat at his feet. “Where were you?” the man rasped, face streaked with soot and tears. “You’re supposed to be our heroes.”
Ethan froze, faced wracked with grief. Maya stepped forward before he could speak, voice quiet but firm. “We came as fast as we could.”
“Not fast enough,” another villager muttered. “Not for them.” He gestured to the line of bodies wrapped in singed cloth. “If you can burn like the demons, what good are you to us? You’ll only bring more fire.”
The words cut deeper than any blade. Ethan said nothing, only shouldered another body and carried it to the growing row of the dead. When the smoke finally cleared and the fires died, Ethan and Maya sat apart from the others. They didn’t eat. The silence between them was filled with the weight of blame—villagers’, their own, each other’s.
“Maybe they’re right,” Ethan said hoarsely. His hands shook, still blackened with soot. “Maybe I am just another fire waiting to burn them.”
Maya’s eyes were shadowed, her body weary from chronomancy’s toll. “No. You’re not Kaelith. You’re not him.”
But she didn’t say more. And Ethan felt the doubt coil anyway.
The return to Arathen was no triumph. Survivors were escorted within the city, but the whispers spread faster than the refugees: villages burned, cultists escaped, the heroes barely contained. In the high council chamber, the air was thick with incense and unease. King Gravell sat in brooding silence while High Magus Selora, Veylan, Lord Varic, and Captain Aldric debated with voices sharp as steel.
“They are unstable,” Varic declared, his rings flashing as he slammed a hand on the table. “The villagers fear them as much as the demons. This… soulfire cannot be controlled.”
“They faced Kaelith directly again,” Aldric countered, his scarred face unreadable. “Most of my men would have broken at the first blow. They held. Again.” Despite being apprehensive and aggressive before, he had seen the help the Heroes had given the people firsthand. The reaction from Varic seemed short-sighted. More than anyone else, it was clear Varic was more against the Heroes than anyone else.
“Holding is not enough when half a village burns,” Varic shot back.
Selora, who had been silent, finally spoke, her voice measured, eyes fixed on the flickering braziers. “The Oath is awakening in them. This is what it was meant to do—draw forth what lies deepest in their souls. Rage for one. Time for the other. Dangerous, yes. But necessary.”
Veylan leaned back, his expression unreadable beneath his hood. “Dangerous tools. And tools have owners. Unless…” He let the word hang, deliberately, “…the tools believe themselves free.”
A ripple of unease passed through the chamber.
King Gravell finally stirred. His voice was low, gravelly, carrying the weight of finality. “The villagers’ fear is useful. Fear binds loyalty. But if these ‘heroes’ forget their place…” His gaze hardened. “We will remind them.”
Selora’s eyes flicked toward the doors, as though she could feel Ethan and Maya waiting beyond. Her lips pressed thin, but she made no mention of their presence. “This seems to be a conversation we’re having quite often. Let us be done with these formalities already.”
Varic shot daggers at Selora. “These conversations keep happening with the Heroes under your watch, do they not?”
Selora sighed, doing her best attempt at staying calm. To be frank, Varic was not her favorite. The very language he used made her deathly sick. For all his venom, Gravell saw through his poorly veiled attempts to grasp more power. The King knew, believing others to be much better in higher positions than him. Selora spoke, “These Heroes--their names are Ethan and Maya, for the record--were summoned by all of us in the Council. We agreed to summon them so we would be able to defeat the Demon King. Circumstances be as they may, Arathen as a—”
“Arathen as a whole summoned them,” Varic interjected, ignoring their existence as people. Varic believed them to be tools and nothing more. “But did you not agree to shoulder the responsibility whenever something like this arised?”
“They are doing their duty as Heroes." Selora shot back quickly, "Even after being brought her beyond their will, they still fight for the people. You have reservations for things that are simply not happening. Your distrust of them is obvious.” Selora stood firm in her words. “They even unconvered the re-emergence of the Shadowborn. We believed them to be gone. That alone should be enough to prove their allegiance to us and the rest of Aeloria.”
King Gravell held up his hand and spoke slowly. “Bickering over these two solves nothing. They have been given the power by the Binding Oath. They are our Heroes whether we like it or not. It is crucial that we stay focused on our goal.” The room became silent as they awaited the King’s next words. “Simply put, if these heroes forget their place… we will remind them.”
The chamber doors were thick oak, banded in iron. But sound carried strangely in the stone halls of Arathen’s palace, curling down corridors and through torchlit alcoves.
Ethan and Maya had been summoned and were told to wait. And so they waited—outside the great doors, sitting on a carved bench beneath a banner of the king’s crest. The silence stretched, broken only by muffled voices seeping through the cracks.
Maya leaned forward, brow furrowed, straining to listen. Ethan tried to still his restless hands, but his fingers kept tightening into fists.
“…unstable… fear them as much as demons…” A man’s voice, sharp. Varic, they guessed.
“…held against Kaelith…” Another voice—Aldric, firm but weary.
Then a woman’s tone, cool and precise. Selora. “Dangerous, yes. But necessary.”
Maya’s pulse quickened. Ethan’s jaw tightened.
There was a pause. Then another voice, low and silken, unmistakably Veylan’s: “Tools have owners. Unless the tools believe themselves free.”
Ethan went rigid. Maya’s hand brushed his arm—gentle, grounding. But her eyes were troubled.
Through the heavy doors came the king’s final words, faint but clear: “If these heroes forget their place… we will remind them.”
Silence followed. The council chamber sealed its secrets again, but the words had already struck like a blade.
Ethan exhaled slowly, trying to unclench his fists. “Tools.” His voice was quiet, bitter. “That’s all we are to them. Maya, is that not what I fucking said at the beginning? That we are here to be used?”
Maya’s lips pressed tight. She looked away, toward the shadows of the corridor. “We knew they didn’t summon us out of kindness.”
“But to threaten us? Like that?” Ethan hissed. The soulfire stirred faintly at the edge of his anger, and he forced it back down.
Maya’s voice softened, though her eyes remained hard. “Then we don’t give them reason. We keep our heads down. We survive.”
Ethan looked at her, saw the flicker of something else in her expression—fear, yes, but also calculation. She had heard the same words he had. She was already measuring them, weighing what trust they could give, and what they must keep to themselves.
The chamber doors opened at last. A scribe beckoned them inside.
Ethan and Maya rose, masks of composure sliding into place. But inside, both carried the sting of the truth: they were not saviors in Arathen. They were weapons. And weapons could be broken, or turned.
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