The earth beneath their feet cracked like shattered porcelain. Along the roadside, the lined stalks of once-lush vineyards lay like the desiccated ribcage of a snake —blackened stems hanging limp, bent backward by unnatural heat, withering slowly into dust.

  The channeled waterways had long since vanished. Here and there, charred remains of livestock and work animals marked the path of wildfires —a grim reminder that sudden death moved without warning across the western reaches of the continent.

  Across the parched and lifeless plain, three shadows pressed on toward the citadel of Bheran, seat of power of the Red Khanate.

  Drustan rode at the front, grinning beneath the weight of the sun. His eyes glinted with anticipation at every scorched field, every decaying orchard. The land was in ruins, yes —but it was exactly what they were looking for.

  He looked over his shoulder. “We’re close,” he said, confident.

  The Haunted Cloak swirled beside him, giddy with mischief. “Indeed! Fields laid waste, rivers vanish’d, beasts crisped as banquet’s end —what sign, pray tell, doth not bellow ‘here be dragons’?”

  Drustan laughed —a short, sharp sound —and pointed to the smoke curling in the distance. “It’s real,” he said. “It has to be!”

  The ghostly rag swept before him with mock solemnity. “The beast awaiteth! Our fangs shall clash, then our names shall echo ’cross ale-stained halls, and our purses shall overflow with coin —heaped by every grateful peasant from here to world’s end!”

  Behind them, the rhythmic squeal of a cart’s axle punctuated their march. Thaerion pushed the rickety thing in silence, followed by Haladron and Thurandir, their tongues lolling, panting heavily in the heat. Whim lay curled beneath the linen canvas that covered the party's meager belongings inside the barrow.

  The elf said nothing. Their gaze lingered on a crumbling homestead with shutters hanging and walls blackened to bone. No footprints. No survivors.

  They moved on.

  Drustan raised his waterskin to drink, then frowned. “Empty…”

  The Cloak floated up beside him, feigning concern. “To best a wyrm whilst dry as dust? O, what tale for trembling bards to sing! They shall weep ink at such valor!”

  The boy chuckled again.

  Behind them, Thaerion’s hands tightened on the cart’s frame. Their silence grew heavier.

  Rumors of the dragon had begun in Asphodel, a half-dead town choking beneath heatwaves and dread. The villagers whispered of The Devourer, a name rarely spoken aloud. They said the scaly, winged beast was seen circling the skies, eating the clouds and any prospect of rain.

  The baleful sightings were followed by the Khanate’s tax collectors, who descended upon towns and villages with unprecedented rapacity, leaving a trail of destitute families in their wake.

  Then came the dragon's cult. Sun-sick devotees in bright red robes who arrived just before the walls of flame and vanished after the ashes cooled —their numbers bolstered by the town’s own, newly disillusioned and ready to embrace ruin.

  Drustan kicked a stone from the path, smiling. “We’ll slay it,” he said. “And take whatever riches it has hoarded. If Garland didn’t break us, this won’t either!”

  Three months had passed since the dire happenings at the Magic City.

  The Cloak performed a slow, spiraling loop overhead, humming a war march in an off-key minor chord.

  Thaerion finally spoke. “You chase glory amidst desolation.”

  Drustan turned to him. “What do you mean? We’re here to solve it!”

  “Nonetheless,” the elf said flatly, “it doesn't befit us to be so flippant about it.”

  Drustan offered no reply.

  They passed another corpse —a dog this time, shriveled against a mile marker. Even the flies had moved on. The hunting hounds whined softly.

  Drustan adjusted the strap on his shoulder and marched on. Sweat gathered at his brow, but his steps remained steady.

  Every night since Garland, he’d felt Magic swelling beneath his skin —twitching through his fingers, humming beneath his breath. It no longer asked his permission. It simply was. Like a dragon’s flame. Like hunger.

  He wondered —briefly, secretly— if this too was destiny, then he chased the thought away. Better to think of dragons.

  ***

  Night stretched thin across the plains, the stars dimmed by drifting smoke.

  Flames crackled low as the hounds curled close to the bonfire's warmth, their flanks rising in steady rhythm. Thaerion sat sharpening their spear in silence, with their back to a withered stump. Drustan gazed into the embers, half-asleep, parched and spent.

  The Haunted Cloak hovered nearby, playing with its sword like a knight resting in secret between watches. It hummed a grim marching tune under its breath, pausing only to glare at Whim, who circled overhead with growing mischief.

  “Do not tempt me, tiny beast,” the Cloak warned, raising his blade. “Thy wings shield thee not from justice!”

  Whim hooted in defiance, dropped low, and in a flash of claws and feathers, snatched the Cloak’s scabbard clean from its hip. The ghost gave a strangled gasp.

  “Thou irreverent imp!” it bellowed, giving chase.

  The griffling spun in gleeful loops, the scabbard clutched between its talons like a prize, always just out of reach. The cloak, still getting used to the rough needlework that fixed its cape after the damage caused by the Maussolum, tried its best to outmaneuver the critter, with no success.

  The commotion woke Drustan, who burst out laughing. Even Thaerion allowed himself the trace of a smirk.

  “Whim!” the boy called, breathless with laughter. “Give it back!”

  “Obey the young master, thou treacherous flighted devil! I’ve slain barons for less!”

  Whim only chirped louder, banking hard into the wind —but then, in a moment of oversight, dropped the scabbard down a nearby well with a hollow clatter that echoed into silence.

  A long pause.

  “…Thou art excommunicated,” the Cloak muttered.

  Drustan wiped a tear from his eye. “You’ll have to find another one.”

  “Nay,” the Cloak said gravely. “I shall carry my blade bare, forevermore —a warning to feathered thieves across the land!”

  Whim rubbed its head and back smugly against the Cloak before moving on to Drustan's lap, where it curled up to spend the night.

  The fire crackled on. The road waited. But for a while, laughter lingered.

  ***

  The first eruption of flame surged from the heart of the temple —a vaulted sanctum at the base of the central tower. Fire jetted through the ornate lattice of the inner gates and spiraled upward within the hollow spire: a column of ignited air, hungry to consume everything in its reach—silken cushions, wooden trusses, hanging tapestries, glass sculptures, and any fool who dared to stand before it.

  Drustan barely had time to raise a barrier. A dome of golden light flared around him and Thaerion, catching the second wave of fire with a shuddering pulse. Heat pressed against the shield like a living beast.

  The boy clenched his jaw, hands trembling, as a third blast cracked the ward’s surface, fine fractures webbing across its shimmering curve.

  Then the inner gates burst open in a thunderous roar. Ishkair hovered through the breach —a puppet on invisible strings, limbs jerking as he rose through the center of the hollow tower. His eyes blazed with orange light. Tongues of fire pulsed from his skin, as though his blood had turned to molten brass.

  "So you came hunting dragons!" the vizier spat, before breaking into manic laughter. "Very well. Behold a god!"

  Thaerion stood motionless inside the dome, spear in hand, gaze locked. Their lips performed a solemn invocation: the Song of Ending, an elven battle hymn older than the ten kingdoms —performed to make a single strike certain and fatal to any mortal foe.

  But it required time. Five uninterrupted minutes of chanting.

  Drustan dropped beside the elf, reinforcing the shield. Another inferno slammed against it, and the dome flickered. Sweat ran into his eyes. His arms ached with strain.

  Thaerion didn’t glance at him. Blood touched the corners of their mouth as they raised their voice —low, unwavering, slicing through the chaos in an ancient cadence.

  "...rise, O heart of Tel-Elnas..."

  All around them, the battle expanded.

  The Cloak, Thurandir, and Haladron held the high ground on narrow mezzanines that spiraled up the tower's interior. Arched walkways jutted from the walls, connecting to shattered galleries and ruined annexes, remnants of what was once a grand celestial observatory and temple in the shape of a ziggurat.

  From those outer corridors came the onslaught.

  Ishkair's summoning altars, hidden behind broken archways, glowed with necrotic fire. Through them poured wave after wave of skeletal minotaurs —unholy constructs forged from the singed remains of cattle and soldiers, now clad in cracked bronze and stitched sinew.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  They charged across suspended bridges and crumbling stairs, hooves drumming ceaselessly on stone.

  "...let shadows break upon thy spark..."

  Things had escalated very quickly. The party arrived in Bheran mere hours before, welcomed by silence. No guards. No fanfare. Just smoke drifting through the streets and the dull hush of a city drained of life. Behind shuttered windows, the starved and frightened stared out like ghouls. In the plazas, red-robed cultists muttered to the Devourer.

  All trails led here. Not to a dragon, but to a madman risen amid collapse.

  "...when dire need calls my spear to flight..."

  Once a petty magician, Ishkair had long nursed delusions of grandeur. Then, completely unexpectedly, few months ago, a mysterious surge of power had overcome him, nurturing a delusion of divinity in his frail mind, to the point of driving him into murderous insanity.

  "...may fortune bend along its arc..."

  The elf's hounds herded the skeletal beasts across the high catwalks, corralling them into tight formations. The Cloak swept through their midst, sheathless blade flashing, severing joints and vertebrae with surgical precision.

  It was effective —but temporary. Unless pulverized, the constructs reassembled themselves, rising again with tireless menace.

  Another blast struck the barrier and climbed the interior of the spire. Drustan screamed. Blood streamed from his nose. Still he held.

  Then—the Song reached its crescendo.

  Thaerion's spear flew.

  The weapon cut through the air like a beam, its path fated from the first syllable sung. It struck Ishkair full in the chest.

  Fire erupted from his mouth and eyes. The ruby-and-ivory crown atop his brow shattered. A final bloom of light—pure, white, absolute—flared outward and collapsed in on itself.

  Ishkair fell.

  His body struck the stone dais with no final word.

  Across the tower, the skeletal minotaurs froze mid-charge. Then, one by one, they crumbled like spilled offerings.

  "Lo! The would-be god is felled!" the Cloak bellowed, raising its chipped sword high. "Let tales of our glory echo through the streets!"

  But triumph rang hollow.

  Thaerion dropped to their knees beside Drustan, who had already collapsed, trembling and weeping. The barrier spell had nearly broken.

  And so had he.

  ***

  By the time the sun rose over the temple's fractured spires, Ishkair’s corpse had already been removed —rolled into a linen shroud by two temple porters and carted away among the commoner dead.

  No banners were raised. No horns were sounded.

  The people expected nothing from the Red Khan, except for a new vizier to be appointed by the following week. The sovereign, rarely seen by his own subjects, was even less inclined to humor the adventurers who had rid his realm of Ishkair’s madness —let alone offer any manner of reward.

  The citadel returned to silence, as though nothing had changed.

  Perhaps nothing had.

  The imperial guard remained focused on controlling its own citizens. Another tax rise was imminent, as the land buckled under heatwaves, drought, and wildfires.

  The red-robed cult of the Devourer —whose apocalyptic creed never depended on Ishkair’s theatrics— endured. Their gloomy hymns drifted through the morning air like smoke: soft, persistent, unchallenged.

  “They’re not even afraid,” Drustan muttered, watching a line of cultists chant along the derelict market road, spreading ash from bowls in their hands. “They just… keep going.”

  “They have an answer, however bleak. That’s more than most can offer to desperate folk.” Thaerion said, protecting his eyes from the unrelenting sun on the cloudless sky. “It’s clear now that Ishkair wasn’t the source of this land’s ruin —only its most recent opportunist.”

  The Cloak hovered above a toppled pillar, metaphorical arms crossed in theatrical contemplation. “Shall we cut them down, then?” it mused, dry as parchment. “Perchance some resentful fool may still pay us for the favor.”

  Drustan grimaced. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Chide me not for seeking to mend this woeful errand,” it shrugged.

  They said nothing more.

  ***

  That afternoon, while crossing the outskirts of Bheran, the party came upon farmlands turned to brittle dust. Once-green rows of crops now stood skeletal, cracked by thirst, the soil stripped of memory.

  Drustan dismounted and stepped into one of the ruined fields. He knelt in the dirt and placed both hands upon it, closing his eyes as golden light began to bloom around his fingers.

  He reached deeper, whispering old Republican prayers Ophelienne had taught him, back when such words still felt anchored to something real.

  The light flared. Then flickered. Then failed.

  Nothing stirred. The earth did not respond.

  He sat back, stunned. Whim nudged against his side, offering what comfort it could.

  “Why doesn’t it work?” he asked aloud, voice raw with frustration —at himself, at the gods, at the silence.

  No one answered.

  The Cloak moved on without comment. Thaerion, who had watched from the edge of the field, approached slowly, arms folded.

  “Just because a power is called sacred,” the elf said softly, “does not mean it was made to heal.”

  Drustan looked up. “Then what is it for?”

  “I don’t know,” Thaerion replied. “And I do not think you do either.”

  The boy rose, brushing the dust from his knees. The breeze was warm and dry. Somewhere behind them, a bell rang —not in joy, nor in mourning, but merely to mark the hour.

  The world moved on, indifferent.

  ***

  That evening, they made camp in the ruins of an old granary.

  The hounds curled by the fire. Whim gnawed thoughtfully on a charred beam. The Cloak hummed a gleeful tune whose lyrics Drustan was certainly not old enough to understand.

  Thaerion sat apart, eyes fixed on the sky.

  Drustan approached. “Something wrong?”

  Thaerion didn’t look away. “I knew what I was before. A blade. A sentinel. A function. I was not at peace with it, but I understood it.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I wander with a prince, a ghost, and two dogs.”

  Drustan smiled faintly. “That’s all you think we are?”

  “No,” Thaerion said. “But I’m still not sure what else.”

  They sat in silence for a while longer. In the distance, Bheran’s lights flickered like dying coals.

  The Devourer’s hymns still drifted on the wind.

  No victory had come. No resolution. Only survival.

  And the long road ahead.

  ***

  The way back from a destination often feels shorter —but leaving the barren western lands felt twice as long as getting there.

  Dust clung to their boots. The wind carried a constant tinge of pine smoke. The road unfurled in recursive ribbons, with no destination in sight beyond the next bend.

  Then, just past a curve in the hills, a squat building emerged —timbered, leaning slightly, its paint peeling in flaking green. A carved sign swung overhead, creaking on rusted hooks: The Mulish Unicorn.

  “Civilization,” Drustan said.

  “Generous use of the term,” Thaerion muttered.

  Still, after the unnervingly empty roads of late, the tavern felt almost cozy. Heat pulsed from a hearth, churning scents of stale onions and wet straw. Locals hunched at mismatched tables, clutching mugs of a dark and bitter ooze. No one gave the newcomers a second glance —just another band of wanderers treading the rim of ruin.

  Near the fire, a bard stood lute-in-hand, weaving his voice into the din:

  It clucked by day, it hissed by night,

  It bit the moon and cursed the light!

  Its breath was foul, its mind unclean

  —It laid an egg, big as Fat Pauline!

  Drustan slipped into a bench in the back of the room, careful to keep Whim hidden beneath his cloak. Thaerion and the Cloak followed as the bard launched into the next verse, mangling history with theatrical gusto:

  From swamps they came, a wretched host,

  To fight a beast no bard would boast!

  A thousand wings, ten thousand eyes

  —The Hydra Hen did terrorize!

  “Wait a minute…” Drustan blinked. The target of the tale suddenly clicked.

  The prince, he slipped upon its slime,

  The knight got pecked six different times!

  The hooded thief got sight of a dame

  —Then stabbed a goose and called it a day!

  Drustan snorted. He couldn’t help himself.

  “I do approve,” the Cloak said. “Verily, a flourish most divine!”

  The song ended to drunken cheer. The bard bowed, tipped his hat, and pocketed a few tossed coins. Then, leaning against the mantle, he spoke more plainly.

  “Now, for those not already chasin’ ghosts —news from the wretched Lauflener march!”

  Some of the patrons booed, and then the room fell quiet.

  “The Blue Banner flies over Gildsheaf Keep,” he said grimly. “Lauflen crossed Long Creek last week. Garland’s gone. So are the villages. The whole forest fringe belongs to them now. No word from the local commanders. They say the beloved Commoner Lord Jaufre Iron Heart has retreated east.”

  “Garland…?” Drustan’s voice was barely a whisper, yet the air around him crackled. "Ophelienne…"

  Whim hissed and flapped away from the boy as static raised the hairs on his back. The Cloak drifted closer, its fabric stiffening like a drawn shield.

  “Easy, little prince,” it murmured. “The storm in thee is not for this place.”

  Drustan exhaled, slowly. His fists unclenched. Around them, the tavern's chatter continued, oblivious to the defused explosion on the rear end table.

  The world kept turning and changing. The long road ahead had just grown more daunting than ever.