Prologue: days before the end
Part one: Heroes Meet
This is part one of ten in the first of gods book.
Miht 19th, 20 AMW, 2 months before the magic war ends
The night air was cool and dry, rustling the leaves like a whisper passed from tree to tree. From their perch high in the canopy, the lights of the elven city shimmered below—lanterns swaying on curved balconies, soft glows underwoven with ancient enchantments.
McKenna sat on a wooden bench carved from a single branch, his sword propped beside him. Zakarol approached from behind, his robes marked with ash stains from the healing tents.
"You're up late," Zakarol said, settling beside him.
"Didn't sleep well," McKenna replied, eyes on the distant horizon. "Didn't feel right to."
Zakarol followed his gaze. "The scouts say the border near Selmouth is quiet. Too quiet. It never means peace."
"No," McKenna said, his voice low. "It means Saikaryos is preparing something."
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the occasional horn echo in the distance—probably another shift rotation down at the battlements.
"We lost a company in the Drenmar Marshes," Zakarol said. "Two dozen Vailan infantry. Dragged into the muck by what survivors say were dead mages—risen from the clay itself."
"I fought at Drenmar last winter," McKenna muttered. "I think it was last winter anyways. This war has been slowly burning for almost 20 years."
McKenna looks back at the small cabin he and zakarol are living in. "Well anyways we pushed them out of the northern edge. Thought it was clean. Guess we were wrong."
"They're not just resisting anymore," Zakarol added. "They're adapting."
McKenna ran a hand over his face. "That's been the pattern. They fall back. We push forward. Then they come back twice as twisted."
He looked at Zakarol, his expression hard. "You ever see what they did at Cragfen?"
Zakarol nodded. "Only what the survivors described. I arrived too late for the worst of it."
"I was there," McKenna said. "Forty-two knights under General Allisar. Good morale, strong position. We were holding the ridge—until the dark clouds came."
He stared off into memory.
"The sky split. Black fire rained down. And then... illusions. We saw our own dead charging us, screaming in our comrades' voices. Some men dropped their weapons. Others turned on each other. By the time I reached the command post, Allisar had taken his own life."
Zakarol was silent, watching McKenna carefully.
"We barely made it out. A handful of us. No victory. Just... less loss than it could've been."
Zakarol finally spoke. "We call them spirit-wounds—not just scars of the body, but things that follow you. Things that shape you, even when the flesh heals."
"I've had more than a few of those," McKenna said. "Cragfen, the Siege of Olnar, the Burned Fields near Ivessa. The worst was Kareth Pass. Thirty mages, all marked, surrounded us in the snow. Every one of them chanting the same name."
Zakarol looked up. "Saikaryos."
McKenna nodded. "I didn't even see him. Just... felt him. Like the air was suffocating. Like time itself wanted to stop."
The elf didn't respond at first. He simply sat with that name hanging in the space between them like sm
"My people used to believe he was a myth," Zakarol said quietly. "A cautionary tale to keep apprentices humble. But now, the elders can't sleep. The roots of the sacred trees are thinning. Rituals falter. Magic doesn't flow the way it used to."
He looked up at the stars, searching for something that wasn't there.
"Some say he isn't a mage at all," he added. "They think he's something older. A break in the pattern. A wound in the world that never closed."
"I believe it," McKenna said, fingers tightening around the hilt of his sword. "I've fought monsters. I've killed warlords, necromancers, creatures made of smoke and nightmare. But Saikaryos? He's different."
Zakarol glanced over. "Do you think you'll face him?"
McKenna nodded once. "If we want to end this war for good, someone will have to. I've fought every tier of his command. Mages who never blink, generals who chant in tongues. They all bleed the same. But I don't think he does."
He leaned forward, elbows on knees. "You ever wonder what the world will look like when this is over?"
"Every day," Zakarol said. "The elven high council is splintered. Some want to pull back from the world. Others want vengeance for what the Dark Mages did to our sacred groves. And our people? They're afraid. Not of death, but of what comes next. What will fill the space war leaves behind."
"I worry the Vailan Empire isn't much better," McKenna admitted. "Victory feeds ambition. And ambition's just a slower kind of rot."
Zakarol gave him a sidelong look. "You still think it's worth fighting?"
"I don't fight because I think it'll fix everything," McKenna said. "I fight so there's still a world left to fix."
The wind picked up, fluttering the banners strung from the towers above. The noise of the city below never truly died—not with so many injured, so many grieving, so many waiting for the next dispatch from the front.
"I'm tired," McKenna admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. "But not done."
Zakarol gave a small nod. "None of us are."
They sat in silence again, both gazing into the distance—toward the battlefields that waited, the uncertainty ahead, and the hope that maybe, just maybe, this war's end would be the beginning of something better.
