The silence was worse than the battle had been.

  Kezess lowered the eagle-sight from his eye and resisted the urge to throw it against the wall. The spyglass was military-grade, enchanted to see as far and as sharp as its namesake, but it couldn't see through three miles of darkness and whatever the hell had risen from the desert floor during the fight. Dust, maybe. Or glass—he'd seen a shape falling from the sky, fire bright enough to blind, fists of light descending like divine judgment and even at this distance, great jagged spires climbing toward the sky like teeth.

  And then, exactly one minute ago, nothing.

  The desert horizon sat dark and still. There was no flames nor thunder. No impossible shapes moving against the stars. Just emptiness where two titans had been trying to kill each other moments before.

  "Sir?" One of the guards beside him—a young man whose name Kezess couldn't remember at the moment—was staring at him with obvious anxiety. "What's happening? Is it over?"

  Kezess didn't answer. He wasn't certain he could.

  Below the gate walls, the city sprawled in uncharacteristic silence. The streets that had been full of festival preparations hours ago now held clusters of people standing motionless, faces turned toward the northern sky. Some knelt in doorways, lips moving in prayers to gods that probably weren't listening. Others simply stood, arms wrapped around themselves or around each other, waiting for an answer that refused to come.

  A woman on a nearby rooftop was crying. Kezess could see her clearly from his vantage point: middle-aged, wrapped in a sleeping robe, clutching the railing of her balcony with white-knuckled hands. Whether she was crying from fear or hope, he couldn't tell. Perhaps she didn't know either.

  The protective dome the Archmage had erected still shimmered faintly above the city, its hexagonal panels catching the starlight in geometric patterns. That was something, at least. The barrier remained, which meant...

  Which meant what, exactly?

  "The dome is still up," the young guard said, as if reading his thoughts. "That's good, right? That means the Archmage is still—"

  "It means the spell hasn't failed yet." Kezess's voice came out flatter than he intended. "That's all it means."

  He raised the eagle-sight again and scanned the northern horizon. The Archmage had redirected Ozyarathes's descent toward the empty dunes beyond the city's edge, perhaps fifteen kilometers out. Far enough that the impact wouldn't level buildings. Close enough that Kezess had felt the ground shake when the dragon hit.

  The shaking had stopped sixty-three seconds ago. He'd been counting.

  "Someone's coming," another guard said—this one older and steadier. He was pointing toward the stairs leading up to the wall. "From the palace."

  Kezess turned. A runner was taking the steps two at a time, armor clanking, face flushed with exertion. She reached the top of the wall and bent double, hands on her knees, gasping.

  "Report," Kezess said.

  "The—" The runner sucked in air. "The palace is secured, Chancellor. No further incidents since the Archmage departed. The foreign envoys—the three young ones—they're in the eastern courtyard. Under guard. They haven't tried to leave."

  "And the nobles?"

  "Most fled to the inner chambers. A few tried to leave through the servants' passages." The runner straightened, still breathing hard. "We stopped them. Gently. As you ordered."

  Kezess nodded. The last thing they needed was panicked aristocrats streaming into the streets, spreading rumors and contradictory accounts of what had happened in the throne room. Better to keep them contained until the situation resolved itself.

  However it resolved itself.

  He turned back to the horizon. The silence pressed against his ears like a physical weight. Somewhere in the city, someone was shouting—a single voice, indistinct with distance, that rose and then cut off abruptly. A dog barked once, twice, then went quiet. Even the ever-present desert wind seemed to be holding its breath.

  "Chancellor." The older guard had moved closer, his voice pitched low enough that the others wouldn't hear. "The men are asking questions. They want to know what to do if..."

  He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.

  If the dragon won.

  If Ozyarathes came back victorious, wreathed in flame and fury, looking for someone to blame for the humiliation he'd suffered in his own throne room. Looking for the chancellor who had smiled at precisely the wrong moment.

  Kezess had thought about this. During the minutes when the sky had turned to fire and the earth had groaned beneath impacts that should have leveled the city, he'd thought about very little else. If the Archmage fell, if the dragon returned, Kezess would have perhaps thirty seconds to make a decision. Run and be hunted. Stay and be burned. Neither option appealed.

  "We wait," he said.

  "For how long?"

  Kezess didn't have an answer to that. He raised the eagle-sight again.

  The desert remained dark. The dome remained stable. The city remained silent. And somewhere out there, in the emptiness beyond the walls, either a god had fallen or a monster had been humbled.

  Kezess found himself hoping, with an intensity that surprised him, that it was the latter.

  Fifty-eight seconds of silence now. Fifty-nine. Sixty.

  The woman on the rooftop was still crying while the guards were still staring at him and the stars were still distant and utterly indifferent.

  Kezess closed his eyes and waited.

  He had not prayed in... how long? Decades, certainly. Perhaps longer. Prayer felt like weakness, an admission that his own hands were insufficient. And they never had been. He had climbed from refugee to advisor through cunning and patience, through calculated risks and carefully cultivated relationships. He had carved out a place for himself in the old king's court, a position of quiet influence where he could observe and advise without the burden of true responsibility.

  And then Ozyarathes had come.

  The dragon had not asked if Kezess wanted to be chancellor. Dragons did not ask. The old king was dead, his court scattered or slaughtered, and someone needed to make the conquered kingdom function. Kezess had been useful, so Kezess had been kept. Elevated, if one wanted to use that word. Chained, if one wanted to be honest.

  He'd spent five years of managing a tyrant's realm and watching his every word, calculating every gesture, smiling at precisely the right moments and staying silent at all the others. Five years of survival.

  But survival, his father had said, was not the same as living.

  Seventy-four seconds now.

  ...Aelindor.

  Kezess had not even thought of that name in a long while. The One Who Remains. The god of the Tellem and the modern elves, who had watched them scatter like seeds in a storm and said nothing. Who had let them diminish from millions to thousands to handfuls, and offered no comfort, guidance or even a sign that he existed at all.

  The elves had been the Corrupted One's first targets, and that had not been coincidence. Before the darkness claimed him, the Corrupted One had been Vaelthir the Radiant, High King of the Beleheim Empire, ruler of the greatest elven civilization the world had ever known. When the corruption took hold, it turned his knowledge into a weapon. He knew where the armies were stationed, which cities held the most civilians, which mountain passes would let his forces bypass the border defenses entirely.

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  Of forty-five elven kingdoms and empires, three survived after the Ash Wars.

  The trauma had broken something fundamental in the survivors. A symbolic High King still sat on the throne, but his people had scattered across the world in nomadic bands, never more than a hundred to a group. The Rule of Dispersion, they called it. Never gather. Never give the next catastrophe a convenient target.

  It made no sense, honestly. The Corrupted One was dead. Scattering only made them weaker and vulnerable to ordinary dangers. But sadly, trauma was not logical, it was a wound that healed wrong, a shared flinch that had calcified into tradition.

  His father had understood this. Maeron had been a scholar before the Fall, a historian who devoted his life to preserving their people's records. Afterward, he had been a refugee, then a wanderer, then a dying elf in a tent on the outskirts of a human city.

  Promise me, his father had whispered, barely audible over the rain. Promise me you will work to bring our people home.

  Kezess had promised. He had sworn on the name of Aelindor himself, because his father was dying, and what else could he have done?

  The promise had not been forgotten, exactly. It sat in the back of his mind like a stone in a shoe: uncomfortable but ignorable if one walked carefully. He had told himself he was building toward it, that every rung he climbed was preparation and that he would fulfill the promise when the time was right.

  The time was never right, of course.

  ...Aelindor. Kezess thought again. I don't know if you're there. I have not spoken to you since I was a child holding my father's hand, and I'm not certain I believe in you now. But if you are listening, please, please let the Archmage win. Let me live through this night. And if you do, I will stop waiting. I will find a way to unify our people, or I will die trying.

  It was barely a prayer at all, more of a transaction, terms offered into darkness but it was honest. And that was all Kezess had left.

  "Sir."

  Kezess's eyes snapped open and was surprised to find the dome was dissolving. The barrier that had sealed them in was thinning and fading like morning frost under sunlight, revealing stars that seemed impossibly bright after so long under that oppressive darkness.

  Below, the capital stirred. Murmurs at first, confused voices rising from the streets, then shouts as more people noticed, then screams that weren't quite terror but weren't quite relief either, just raw confusion, thousands of voices asking the same questions all at once. What's happening? Is it over? What does this mean?"

  "What does this mean?" one of the guards asked, his voice cracking on the last word. "Sir, is it—did we—"

  Kezess was already raising the eagle-sight to his eye.

  He had lost track of how long it had been since he started praying. A minute, probably. Now he swept the enchanted lens across the northern horizon, searching for the approaching doom that had seemed so inevitable.

  And he found something, but it wasn't what he had expected.

  A figure was floating toward the capital, drifting through the night sky without any urgency at all, hands clasped behind his back. Kezess adjusted the eagle-sight, bringing the image into sharper focus, and his breath caught in his throat when he recognized the silhouette. The robes. The silver hair. The unmistakable outline of one of the most powerful mage in recorded history.

  Sael was alive.

  The Archmage was... huh? He was... talking to himself as he floated closer, his lips moving in what looked like animated conversation, though Kezess couldn't see anyone else with him. Perhaps... perhaps he was speaking to a spirit? Or a familiar, or some other magical entity that the eagle-sight couldn't detect. Whatever the case, he seemed remarkably relaxed for a man who had just fought a dragon to the death. There was no tension in his shoulders, no urgency in his movements. He was simply... floating back.

  Then Sael seemed to notice Kezess watching him. The Archmage's head turned toward the walls, and even from this distance, even through the enchanted lens, Kezess could have sworn their eyes met.

  Sael gave him a simple, friendly wave. And then he continued floating toward the capital at that same unhurried pace.

  Kezess lowered the eagle-sight. A smile was spreading across his face, it was slow and almost disbelieving, and he let it come. His hands were still shaking, but now it felt less like fear and more like something he couldn't quite name.

  "The voice amplifier," he said. "Bring it to me. And send someone to ring the bells again."

  "But sir, the bells are for—"

  "Now."

  The guards scattered without further argument, one sprinting toward the bell tower while another disappeared into the gatehouse. Kezess stood alone on the battlements for a long moment, watching the tiny speck of the Archmage grow slowly larger against the stars. He found himself laughing softly under his breath, surprising himself.

  The guard returned with a brass horn etched with runes, the kind used for addressing armies or announcing royal decrees. Kezess took it from him, tested its weight in his grip, and then he climbed.

  The wall's highest point was a watchtower that jutted above the battlements, accessible only by a narrow ladder that hadn't been maintained in years. Kezess pulled himself up rung by rung, his formal robes catching on splinters and tearing in places, and he found that he didn't care even slightly. He emerged onto the platform at the top and looked out over the capital; over the thousands of faces turned upward in the streets below, waiting.

  He took a deep breath. Steadied himself. Then he raised the horn to his lips.

  "People of Ashams!"

  His voice rolled across the city like thunder, amplified a hundredfold by the enchantment, echoing off stone walls and tiled roofs and the distant mountains beyond. Every face turned toward him. Every voice fell silent.

  "Sael the Great has defeated the Tyrant King!" He kept his voice strong and measured, despite his own current emotional state. "Ozyarathes has been vanquished! Ashams is free!"

  For one terrible moment, there was nothing but silence, as if the city itself was holding its breath, afraid to believe what it had just heard.

  Then the scream rose up from the streets below, and it was thousands of voices all at once, crashing against the walls like a wave. It was raw, ragged and joyful in a way that Kezess had never heard before. Windows flew open all across the city. People poured out of doorways and into the streets, grabbing strangers and embracing them, laughing and crying at the same time. Someone started singing an old victory hymn that Kezess hadn't heard in a while, and others picked it up, the melody spreading through the crowds.

  Kezess stood on the watchtower with the horn still raised, listening to the sound of liberation wash over him. The smile was still on his face, broader now, and he let it stay there. He had earned it. They all had.

  His cheeks were wet. He touched them, almost curious, and his fingers came away slick with tears. He hadn't even noticed when they started falling.

  We survived, he thought. We actually survived.

  And with that, he had a promise to keep.

  ***

  "Hmm."

  Sael floated closer to the city walls and watched the crowds swelling in the streets below. There were a lot of people down there. Thousands of them, probably, all pressed together in a writhing mass of celebration, and more pouring out of buildings by the second.

  After this announcement, they would want him to give a speech, wouldn't they? He could feel it coming. The moment he touched down, someone—probably that elf on the watchtower—would usher him toward a platform or a balcony or some other elevated surface, and then thousands of expectant faces would turn toward him, waiting for wisdom, inspiration or just words.

  Sael did not feel like giving a speech.

  In fact, he would say no. He would say no politely, of course, because there was no reason to be rude about it, but he would say no firmly and without room for negotiation. He was emotionally tired and boundaries were important. If he didn't establish his now, people would assume he was the type of person who gave speeches, and then he would be giving speeches for the rest of his life.

  He was not that type of person. He was the type of person who liked quiet walks and interesting conversations and not being stared at by thousands of people simultaneously.

  Something shifted against his chest.

  Sael blinked and looked down. His robes bulged slightly near his sternum, and then bulged again, accompanied by a small, irritated clucking sound.

  He parted the fabric carefully, revealing a chicken. It was white-feathered and dignified-looking, all things considered, though its eyes held a weariness that seemed out of place on poultry. It had tucked itself into a small pocket dimension he'd woven into his robes for exactly this purpose, carrying small, defeated entities who needed transport.

  "They really do seem happy you're gone," Sael observed.

  The chicken—who had, until approximately ten minutes ago, been a dragon capable of leveling cities—stared at the celebrating city ahead. Its tiny yellow eyes reflected the torchlight and the dancing figures and the general atmosphere of unbridled joy.

  "...Yes," the chicken said.

  Its voice was still Ozyarathes's voice, deep and resonant, though it emerged from a beak approximately two inches long. The effect was profoundly strange.

  "What are you going to do from now on?" Sael asked.

  The chicken was silent for a long moment. A firework exploded somewhere in the city—someone had found celebratory munitions remarkably quickly—and painted the sky in shades of gold and crimson.

  "...I don't know," the chicken admitted.

  "You're about level 100 now," Sael said. "Quite strong, for a chicken."

  There was no answer to that.

  Sael considered the creature for a moment. The wind tugged at his robes and his hair, and the sounds of celebration drifted up from below, muffled by distance.

  "You know," he said, "you could come back with me, if you'd like."

  The chicken turned its head to stare at him with one beady eye. "What good would that be to me?"

  "Well. For one thing, if I see that you behave well, the hundred years could be reduced." He tilted his head, considering. "Mere years, perhaps. Or months, depending on how much you change."

  The chicken said nothing.

  "It's something to consider," Sael added. "A century is a long time to be a chicken."

  "I am aware of how long a century is," the chicken said stiffly. "I have lived through many of them."

  "As a dragon."

  "...As a dragon, yes."

  "Ah. So you’re not young. Just… emotionally untrained.”"

  More silence. Another firework. The crowd's singing had taken on a rhythmic, almost hypnotic quality, heard even from this distance.

  "...Sure," the chicken said finally.

  "Hmm."

  Satisfied, Sael adjusted the folds of his robe, settling the chicken more comfortably against his chest. It grumbled but didn't resist.

  "We should go have a meal with the children," he said. "Discreetly. They must be hungry. Are you hungry? I think I smelled chicken somewhere."

  There was no answer to that.

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