[During the Black Spire War]

  The standoff at the Black Spire had lasted for an hour.

  The Alliance army, led by Odion, stood in the valley. They were a ragged force. Their armor was dented, their supplies critically low. Odion stood at the front. He looked at his bandolier. He had his personal combat vials, but the supply wagons behind him were empty. They had used everything to save Oakhaven. They had burned through their reserves to get back here in time.

  And they had no Quartermaster to perform a miracle.

  We can't win a siege, Odion realized, a cold knot forming in his stomach. If we stay here for more than a day, we starve. We are running on fumes.

  Above them, on the ramparts, stood the Soulfather, Gadriel. He looked like a weary king in black robes.

  “You bring steel to a house of mourning,” Gadriel’s voice boomed. “You speak of mercy while you leave your own hearth unguarded?”

  “My home is safe,” Odion shouted back, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

  “Is it?”

  Gadriel opened his eyes wide. He unleashed the Gaze.

  A wave of cold, psychic static washed over the entire Alliance army. Every soldier in the valley gasped, clutching their heads. In their minds, the world caught fire.

  Odion’s breath hitched. He saw Oakhaven burning. Again. He saw the smoke. He saw Hellen screaming. He saw shadows creeping toward his own door.

  “My children are hungry, Champion,” Gadriel whispered into Odion's mind. “While you march here for glory... who holds the door for your wife?”

  “Liar!” Odion roared.

  He knew it was a lie. He had just come from Oakhaven. He had seen the crater. He had buried his friend, if only there were anything left to bury. The village was safe because the price had already been paid.

  But he looked at his men. He looked at Corporal Torg. The young man was pale, shaking, gripping his reins so tight his knuckles were white. Torg didn't know Oakhaven was safe. Torg believed the vision.

  Odion did the math. And Odion didn't know there was a second wave. If they stayed, the men would break from fear. If they fought, they would run out of supplies in two days. Whatever happened, they would die here.

  And then Odion thought of the bundle of blankets the Midwife was holding. The boy with the clear blue eyes who was now an orphan, waiting on the doorstep of a broken man who hated screaming.

  He gave everything so his son would live, Odion thought. If I let these men die here... if I let this war drag on... that boy grows up in a graveyard.

  He couldn't save his friend. But he could honor the debt.

  “Corporal!” Odion barked, grabbing the young Torg by the shoulder.

  “Sir?” Torg blinked, tears streaming down his face. “My ma... I saw her...”

  “It's... it's real, Corporal!” Odion lied. “We have to go!”

  “Sir?”

  “Take the column. All of them. Ride for Oakhaven. Double time.”

  “Sir?” Torg’s eyes went wide with panic. “We can't leave you. He's a Lich! You can't face him alone! You'll die!”

  “I am not fighting him,” Odion lied again, his voice steady. “I am holding his attention. I will buy you the time you need.”

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  He gripped Torg's armor, pulling the young soldier close.

  “Go to your families, Torg. Save them.”

  He looked toward the horizon, thinking of the blue-eyed baby who would never know his father.

  “I suffer so they won't.”

  “RIDE!” Odion screamed, shoving him back. “SAVE THEM!”

  The army turned. The thunder of hooves filled the valley as they retreated, racing against a nightmare that had already been defeated, leaving their leader a solitary figure in the dust.

  Odion waited until they were gone. Until the dust settled. He was alone. He looked up at the ramparts. Gadriel was watching him. Odion reached into his bandolier. He pulled out the Red Vial. Then the Blue. Then the third—the chaotic mixture Macus would one day identify as a death sentence.

  “You wanted me alone,” Odion whispered to the figure on the wall. “You wanted a duel.”

  He uncorked the first vial.

  “Be careful what you wish for.”

  He drank.

  The potion was acid in his throat. This was his third dose. The lethal dose.

  Red Vial. Adrenal Strength. It hit his blood like a hammer.

  Blue Vial. Regenerative Catalyst. It knit the torn muscle back together in milliseconds, trapping the heat inside.

  He remembered Aether's parting words: “Continue that path... and you will die screaming.”

  Odion didn't care. He had paid the price for the Quartermaster's son. And he had paid the price for his own son.

  I am the fuel, he accepted.

  The world smeared into light and screaming colors. His body became a super-heated pressure vessel on the verge of melting down.

  He moved.

  He was not a man. He was a judgment. He was a phantom, a blur of motion that the undead army guarding the gate couldn't even register. He didn't fight them. He erased them, a scalpel of hyperspeed cutting through the horde like a giant spear.

  He reached the ramparts in a blink.

  Gadriel, the ancient lich, did not raise a weapon. He simply turned his Gaze—a perverted version of the Paladin's Truth Gaze, twisted into a weapon of horror which had terrified an army—onto the single man.

  But the psychic attack washed over him like a drop of rain in the ocean of his own suffering. The fire in his blood was louder than any nightmare Gadriel could conjure. Odion’s mind was already broken. The psychosis from the overdose was a roaring fire. Gadriel’s vision was just a single, cold spark in a blazing inferno. It didn't stack.

  But the spell's failure had a side effect. With its killing intent nullified, the Truth leaked through.

  He didn't just see the Lich's fear. He saw his plan.

  He saw the misunderstood prophecy. He saw a loop. He saw a golden thread weaving through time, manipulated by a god with a Two-Faced Mask. Odion saw the face of the Weaver. He saw the familiar jawline. He saw the white hair of the enemy.

  My blood, Odion realized, the horror nearly stopping his heart. The threat isn't over. It's just being born.

  But then, the spell fractured. The connection went deeper, past the cycle, down to the Source. The Truth leaked through. The vision shifted from the future to the past.

  Odion saw it. He saw a cold temple. A dead, premature child. A wailing, desperate father pouring his own life, his own soul, into a still body, damning himself to save her.

  He saw the misunderstood prophecy. He saw a man who had embraced death to give life.

  Odion, a man who drank death to preserve life, understood. This was not a monster. This was his parallel.

  The vision shattered.

  Odion stood over the broken form of the Soulfather. He struck. The blow was final. Gadriel did not resist. That single blow bought the world twenty years of silence.

  Odion turned. He saw Maeve, her face pale, her gaze hollow, watching him strike Gadriel. He saw the dark shadow—the Mirror Twin—at her side. He could have killed her. He was fast enough. The Quartermaster's death demanded a balance.

  But he didn't.

  His purpose was gone, replaced by a terrible, hollow pity. He saw the lonely child that his parallel had damned himself to save.

  The debt is paid with the father, Odion thought, his rage fading into a heavy, weary compassion. I will not undo his sacrifice.

  His legs buckled. The hyperspeed was ending. The burn was beginning. He collapsed, his body convulsing, the overdose claiming its price. He lay on the battlefield, the world turning black, waiting for the screaming to begin.

  Maeve and her shadow walked over. They stood over the fallen alchemist, looking down with identical expressions of curiosity. The shadow nudged his foot with her boot.

  “Aren't we going to finish him?” a voice asked. It sounded like Maeve, but sharper. The Twin.

  “Leave him be. He is at death's door already,” Maeve's voice replied, flat and curious. She tilted her head, observing his steaming form. “Curious. We observe.”

  “After that,” the Twin asked, “are you going to use him as your pet?”