Dawn came grey and cold.

Idris woke to the sound of dripping water. The fire had died to embers during the night, and Ramzah sat exactly where he'd been when Idris finally succumbed to exhaustion. He was at the fissure's mouth, spear across his knees, watching the forest with patient, unblinking eyes.

"You don't sleep much it seems," Idris observed. 

"I sleep." Ramzah didn't turn. "Just not when I'm on guard duty."

"I'm touched by your concern."

"I'm concerned about the Princess's reaction if you die. That’s all."

Idris pushed himself up. His body protested, three centuries of stone and stillness had not prepared him for a day of running and a night on a cave floor, but he forced himself upright anyway. The fireclaw meat had helped, but he needed more. Needed better. Needed–

Later, he told himself firmly. One thing at a time.

"The forest feels safer," he said, moving to stand beside Ramzah at the fissure's mouth.

"They've moved on," Ramzah agreed. "The mold walkers. Whatever else was hunting. Should be clear, and we should move. Darkthorn's maybe four hours if we push."

Four hours. Idris nodded and followed Ramzah out of the cave.

The trail resumed where they'd left it, winding through steelwood and glowing fungi, but the forest no longer felt hostile. Watchful, yes. Idris couldn't shake the sense of being observed, but it was not hostile. As if they'd passed some test and been deemed acceptable.

They walked in silence for the first hour. Ramzah set a brutal pace, half jogging when the trail allowed, and Idris matched it.

The forest began to change around them. The steelwood thinned. The glowing fungi grew sparser. And something else began to appear among the undergrowth.

Stone.

Not much at first, scattered like rocks among the moss and ferns. But unmistakable. Worked stone, squared and shaped, the kind that came from buildings rather than nature.

Ramzah noticed it too. His pace slowed, "We're close." 

Idris was staring at a larger fragment ahead, a chunk of carved granite, maybe two feet across, covered in lichen and moss. Even through the growth, he could make out the shape. A curve. A line. The beginning of something that had once been a column.

He knelt beside it, his fingers tracing the stone through the moss. The carvings were worn nearly smooth by three centuries of weather, but he could feel them. The patterns his grandfather's masons had cut, the same patterns he'd grown up seeing every day of his life.

The fragments grew thicker as they went. More columns. Wall sections. The remains of a lintel, still bearing the faint ghost of an inscription he couldn't read through the weathering. A paved road surface, cracked and broken, but still recognizable beneath the encroaching forest.

And then the trees fell away, and Idris saw what remained of Darkthorn.

He stopped walking.

The city walls used to be curved in concentric rings, its towers reaching for the sky like fingers grasping at heaven. Pennants flying from every spire, the sound of prayer callers marking the hours and the markets and the festivals.

Now it was rubble.

The walls were gone. It was now a ring of gravel that surrounded it. The towers were stumps, their tops sheared off by forces Idris couldn't imagine. The gates that had stood for centuries were dust, their iron bindings melted into strange, twisted shapes that lay half-buried in the grey earth.

And everything, everything, was covered in the same pall. The color of ash. The color of death. The color of magic that had burned too hot and left nothing behind.

"Three hundred years huh," Idris whispered.

The wind that came down from the ruins was cold and smelled of nothing at all.

Idris stood at the edge of what had been his home and tried to breathe. Tried to make his legs work.

He failed at the last part.

His knees hit the grey earth before he knew he'd moved. His hands pressed against the ash-covered ground, and he felt nothing. No echo of the life that had been here. No trace of the people, the voices, the thousands of souls who had called this place home. Just cold ash and proof that his time was over.

Idris didn't know what to do with that thought. That reality.

He knelt in the ash and let himself remember. That was all he could do.

The city in summer, dark stone blazing under the sun. His mother's voice calling him in for lessons. His father's laugh, deep and warm, as he swung Idris onto his shoulders to watch the procession for a celebration. His sister laughing, chasing him through the market after he had stolen a pastry. His brother sitting on the battlements and looking toward the horizon as if he could see something no one else could.

The city in winter, snow on the black slate roofs, smoke rising from a thousand chimneys. The mens hall decked in colors, the fires roaring, the whole population feasting and nesting the cold away. His grandfather sitting in the front seat, old and tired but still smiling, still watching his legacy with pride.

The city in twilight, the callers signaling for evening prayer, the lights coming on one by one in the windows below. Standing on the highest tower with his father, looking out over the kingdom they'd built together, and feeling like he belonged. Like he was part of something vast and eternal and good.

All of it was gone now.

"The palace," he said. His voice was steady. "It's at the center of the city. On the highest ground. We must get there"

Ramzah followed his gaze. The palace was visible even from there. The central keep still stood, though its roof was gone and its walls were cracked. The towers that had flanked it were stumps, their upper stories collapsed into rubble. But the core remained, black against the grey sky.

Darkthorn had been beautiful once.

Walking through its remains, Idris could still see it. The shape of the city beneath the rubble, the bones of what had been. A market square, still recognizable by the fragments of stalls that littered the ground. Streets that wound between collapsed buildings, their paving stones broken but still traceable if you knew where to look.

Ramzah walked beside him, silent for once, his eyes taking in the destruction with something like awe.

"How many people lived here?" he asked finally.

"At its peak? Forty thousand. Maybe more." Idris's voice was quiet. "My grandfather used to say you could walk from one end to the other and hear every language in laughs spoken along the way."

They walked on.

The destruction wasn't uniform. Some buildings had been leveled completely, their stones scattered across the ground like a giant's game of dice. Others still stood partially, their walls cracked but upright, their windows empty eyes staring at nothing. A few, near what had been the wealthier districts, even had their roofs intact. When Idris looked through the doorways, he saw only emptiness inside. Stripped. Gutted. Everything of value was taken long ago.

The palace grew closer with each step. Idris could see more detail now. The cracks in its walls, the collapsed sections, the way the great doors hung askew on broken hinges. But also the things that had survived. The blackstone foundation, solid as the day it was laid. The carvings around the main entrance, worn but still visible. The shape of the windows, their pointed arches still elegant despite the damage.

His grandfather's vision, carved in stone. Still standing. Still there.

They reached the palace steps.

They were cracked, some of them broken entirely, but enough remained to climb. Idris took them slowly, his hand trailing along the stone balustrade, feeling the familiar shapes beneath his fingers. He had run up these steps as a child. Had sat on them as a teenager, brooding over some imagined slight. Had stood at the top as a young man, watching processions approach, feeling the weight of his future settle onto his shoulders.

The great doors loomed ahead. One hung at a crazy angle, barely attached to its hinges. The other lay on the ground, cracked almost in half, its surface scarred by fire and blade.

Idris stepped over it and entered his home.