Idris walked.

At first, he didn’t notice when the forest began to thin again. His feet moved on instinct alone, boots brushing over roots and soft earth, carrying him forward while his mind lagged behind, heavy and slow. Each breath felt shallower than the last. The cool air that had once soothed him now scraped faintly at his lungs.

The hunger was back.

Not the sharp, maddening kind that screamed for blood, but something deeper, hollower. A fatigue that sank into his bones and stayed there. His limbs trembled subtly with each step, a quiet rebellion he chose to ignore.

Just a little farther, he told himself. Somewhere—anywhere—away from that place.

The trees gradually gave way to shrubs, then to low brush. Sunlight grew harsher, less forgiving, pouring down in unbroken sheets that made his skin prickle. The mana in the air thinned too, the forest’s gentle pulse fading until it was nothing more than a distant memory.

That was when he felt and saw it it.

Not birds. Not wind.

Footsteps, but old ones. Pressed into dirt long ago. Wheel tracks, shallow but unmistakable.

A road.

The realization pulled him forward even as his vision began to blur at the edges. He pushed through the last line of brush and stumbled out of the treeline, boots scraping against compacted earth and gravel.

The road stretched left and right, cutting through the land like a scar. Dry, wide, and worn smooth by time and travel. No wagons passed. No voices called out. Just silence, and heat, and the open sky above him.

Idris stood there, swaying.

His heart hammered unevenly in his chest, each beat sluggish and heavy, as if it might forget what came next. His fingers curled and uncurled at his side, searching for strength that wasn’t there. The world tilted slightly, then righted itself, only to tilt again.

His knees buckled.

He tried to catch himself, reaching out as if the road might offer him something solid to cling to, but his hand met nothing but air. The strength finally left him all at once, like a cord snapping clean through.

Idris collapsed onto the roadside, dust puffing up around him as his body hit the ground.

The sky above was painfully bright. Too wide. Too free.

His vision narrowed, light bleeding into white. The sounds of the world faded until there was nothing left but the distant echo of his own heartbeat. Slow… slower…

The sound faded until it lost all meaning.

Idris did not wake.

He drifted.

The brightness above him dimmed, bleeding into ember-red twilight. Heat returned, but not the honest heat of the sun, it was the choking, suffocating warmth of smoke and flame. The ground beneath him was no longer dirt and gravel but smooth stone, warm under his boots.

He was standing.

High above the city.

The balcony curved around him in a familiar arc of dark marble. Beyond it stretched his city. It was sprawling and alive in memory, but dying before his eyes. Towers fell against a sky stained black and orange, their banners aflame, their windows gutted by fire.

The air roared.

Screams carried upward in fragments, torn apart by distance and smoke. Bells rang in panicked, uneven rhythms before falling silent one by one. Somewhere, something exploded, the sound rolling through the city like thunder.

Idris gripped the balustrade.

Stone cracked beneath his fingers.

Below, streets he knew by heart burned. Market squares where he had once walked in disguise were choked with flame and fleeing shadows. Roofs collapsed inward, sparks leaping hungrily from building to building. The river that cut through the city reflected the inferno, turning black water into molten gold.

Magicians stood among the destruction.

He saw them clearly, circles etched into cobblestone, glowing with violent light. Figures raised staffs and hands alike, weaving spells that tore through walls and people with equal indifference. Fire fell from the sky at their command. Lightning ripped down towers that had stood for centuries.

Rage boiled up inside him.

It started as a tremor, low and deep, then surged higher, flooding his chest, his throat, his skull. His heart pounded, not sluggish now but furious, demanding action.

Move, it screamed. Do something.

Idris stayed where he was.

Every instinct screamed at him to descend, to leap from the heights, to throw himself into the burning veins of the city and drown the streets in blood and fire. His rage demanded justice, demanded immediacy. It promised that if he just moved, just acted, the pain would ease.

He did not listen.

He planted his boots more firmly against the fractured stone and forced himself to breathe.

Slow. Measured.

Down there was death. Not the noble kind sung about in old ballads, but the pointless kind. The kind the magicians excelled at delivering. They had circles prepared, formations layered atop one another, traps meant for monsterss and kings alike. If he went to them now, blinded by fury and grief, he would die screaming amid the ruins of what he failed to protect.

And then it would truly be over.

“No,” Idris murmured, voice rough, scraping against the smoke-filled air. “Not like that.”

He straightened.

From here, from this height, he could see the pattern beneath the chaos. Magicians never acted without structure. Never burned without purpose. The fires were not random, they were herding the survivors, collapsing districts into kill zones, tightening the noose street by street.

And all of it radiated outward from the palace.

From him.

They would come.

They had to.

So he waited.

Stone cracked beneath him as he folded his hands behind his back, posture painfully calm against the burning horizon. Flames reflected in his eyes, but they did not flicker. His rage did not vanish, it compressed, drawn inward, forging into something denser and far more dangerous.

Minutes passed. Or hours. Time lost meaning beneath the smoke-choked sky.

The memory played itself over and over in his mind. The memory of his kingdom being slaughtered before his eyes. It was a ghost continued to haunt him, and would continue to do so until he did his people justice.