...\~Silas's POV Flashback\~...
...They came for him at dawn....
...Not with horns or drums or lines of soldiers. No, that would’ve been honest. No, they came like thieves cloaked in silence and shadow, blades dipped in sleepbane, boots soft with spell-silenced leather....
...They thought they could take him quietly. Thought he wouldn’t notice the runes scrawled beneath the floorboards of the inn. The way the air trembled with a binding spell half-formed....
...But Silas had been hunted before....
...He always noticed....
...He hadn’t planned to stay in Delhrin long. Just one night. A room above the blacksmith’s, a washbasin, and warmth he didn’t have to steal. It was foolish. He knew better. Mages like him didn’t rest, not truly. They moved, they vanished, they survived....
...But the old woman at the forge had smiled at him without fear. Offered him bread. Called him “boy” instead of “beast.” And something in him, weak, human, desperate, had wanted to stay just a little longer....
...So he did....
...And it cost him....
...The first man through the door died screaming....
...Silas had awoken the moment the lock whispered open. His power was already coiling around him before his feet touched the floor. Light flared in his palm too bright, too fast and when he cast it, the room lit with white fire....
...The man’s armor melted. His skin cracked like glass. His soul didn’t even have time to flee....
...The others were smarter....
...They used barriers. Incantations. Nets laced with null-runes. Spells that didn’t kill, but contained. They weren’t here for blood....
...They were here for him....
...And Silas exhausted, cornered, still half-dreaming of a sky that bled fire, let them take him....
...He could’ve fought. He should have. The mage inside him screamed for release, for vengeance....
...But the part of him that had tasted the blacksmith’s bread just hours before whispered....
..."If you fight, they’ll burn the whole town to the ground to stop you."...
...So he stopped....
...He let them chain his hands. Let them press iron to his throat. Let them call him thing, curse, demon-child....
...They didn’t know what he really was....
...Not yet....
...The journey to Astrale was a blur of cold wagons and muttered prayers. The soldiers spoke of him like he was an object. A weapon to be delivered. A sacrificial lamb too dangerous to be left unguarded. They didn’t meet his eyes. None of them did....
...Except the one girl, the youngest guard. Her name was Maren....
...She offered him water once. Only once....
...When the captain caught her, he whipped her across the mouth....
...Silas remembered the sound of it. The wet crack of skin splitting. The way her lip bled down her chin as she stared at the ground, shoulders trembling, not from pain but from the effort of holding in her scream....
...That night, the bindings on Silas’s hands glowed red with heat....
...He could’ve killed them all. Every single one. Left nothing but ash in that moonlit clearing....
...But Maren had already been punished for one kindness....
...He wouldn’t let her die for a second....
...So he waited....
...And when they reached the High Keep, he didn’t struggle. Didn’t speak. Didn’t cry....
...He let them drag him down stone steps into the earth. Let them paint his skin with glyphs. Let them lock him behind seven layers of spellwork and steel....
...They called him prisoner....
...They called him cursed....
...But they didn’t know that underneath it all, beneath the blood, the silence, the calm, there was something else growing....
...A fire that could unmake kingdoms....
...They were lucky he didn’t hate them....
...Because if he ever did......
...He would burn the world for it....
...⸻...
...Days blurred....
...There was no light in the cell, not truly. Only flickering torch-glow from the corridor beyond. Time was measured in footsteps. In meals pushed through the small hatch. In the way the chains tightened and loosened with the cycles of the ward....
...Silas didn’t speak....
...Not until he came....
...The prince....
...Corin....
...That first meeting had rattled something loose inside him. Not because of fear. Not even because of the Vow....
...But because Corin looked at him....
...Not through him. Not around him....
...At him....
...Like he was a person. A puzzle, maybe. A prophecy. But still a person....
...Silas hadn’t expected that....
...And when Corin had returned again alone, cloaked, quiet, something inside Silas had twisted painfully. Hope. It always hurt the most....
...Now, lying in the darkness again, Silas pressed his forehead to the stone wall and let himself remember....
...The field outside Delhrin, full of wild heather....
...The way his magic sang when he was free....
...The look in Corin’s eyes when he touched Silas’s wrist, like he was touching something sacred....
...Like he wanted to save him....
...But people didn’t save Silas....
...They used him....
...They feared him....
...They burned him....
...The only reason he was still alive was because the prophecy said he had to be. Because the blood in his veins whispered of stars and endings and gods that once breathed magic into the world....
...But if that blood ran dry, if he died in the Binding, would anyone even mourn him?...
...No....
...No, that wasn’t true....
...Corin would....
...That terrified him more than anything else....
...Because Corin wasn’t supposed to care. He wasn’t supposed to see him....
...And now, Silas feared he might die wishing that the prince had touched him one more time....
...Not as a king....
...Not as a warden....
...But as a boy....
...Just one boy to another, in the dark....
...Where no chains could reach them....
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Comments
Dadi Bismarck
Breath-taking finale!
2025-05-20
1