Why does it always fall on me to clean up the old man’s disasters?

  We should’ve been halfway home by now, sleeping in the shade of the hills, arguing over supper, pretending Master Omni didn’t always wander into trouble like a moth chasing fire. Instead, here I am: pressed against the jagged stone of smoke broken alleyway, hiding from Evokians while the entire city of Vaga tears itself apart.

  “Dammit, Tyrus…”

  The name slipped out between clenched teeth.

  It was supposed to be simple… Simple! A rare thing for us.

  We’d bribe a handful of bored Evokian soldiers, strip them for their armor, and sneak into the fort they’d turned into a dungeon. I had spent all night forging those pardon papers by the city’s lantern light, hands cramped, ink smudging my sleeves, while Tyrus snored his drunkenness into the rooftop’s floorboards.

  And then he had the nerve to give me that proud Ura grin in the morning like he’d been preparing the whole night.

  I had managed to escape when the guards spotted us; lucky for me, Evokians run like oxen when wrapped in plate steel. I shouted for Tyrus to run too, but instead the fool grabbed my staff and made a stand.

  Of course he did.

  Of course, he wanted his “warrior’s moment.”

  Thinking about him twisted something sharp in my chest: anger, guilt, maybe both. I didn’t have time to separate them.

  Because Vaga was unraveling.

  From where I crouched, I could hear the city collapsing into chaos; merchants shuttering stalls, Vagabondian families fleeing into alleyways, Evokian troops marching in endless columns as Dresdi’s banners rippled above them. Horns bellowed from the walls. Drums pounded from the eastern gates, each one like a hand slapping my nerves raw.

  The army wasn’t arriving.

  It was swallowing Vaga whole.

  And I was stuck in its throat.

  What was I to do now? The streets of Vaga were flooding with Dresdi soldiers, trickling into the city in an unending stream. As I looked at the crowded kingdom from the roof of the Xarccana, guilt tightened around my ribs like a deadly vice. Maybe it had been a bad plan… My bad plan…that got Tyrus killed. Had I led him into his death without even realizing it?

  “I have to move,” I told myself. It was the only thing I could do.

  I gathered what scraps I could on my way down from the roof and fashioned a makeshift cloak. I doubted the Evokians had gotten a good look at me beneath the helmet and armor, but caution was survival, and I wasn’t planning on dying today.

  To say Vaga was busy that evening would be an understatement. Every shop, restaurant, gambling house, and brothel was crowded with Evokian guards. But the air had changed; darkened. The Dresdi men didn’t resemble the Evokian guards we’d encountered earlier. These men were drained, hollow-eyed, carrying stories in their gaze that were better left untold.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Then came the sound: a woman’s scream, sharp enough to cut through the roar of chaos. I turned toward one of the brothels. An Evokian soldier dangled her naked body over a balcony by her ankle, arms thrashing as she begged for mercy. Below him, a swarm of soldiers cheered, drunk on violence, chanting for him to drop her.

  A handful of the original Evokain guards, the ones assigned to protect Vaga, tried to intervene, shouting orders, attempting to force back the mob. But the newly arrived Dresdis forces shoved them aside, drew their swords, and dared them to try again. The same scene was erupting everywhere I looked; every street, every alley, every corner of Vaga was turning into its own nightmare.

  The Dresdi soldiers treated the occupied kingdom not as a place they were meant to safeguard, but as a conquest to tear apart. The loyal Evokian Guard tried to contain the riots, but were met with steel and blood. It looked less like a disagreement and more like a civil war; Evokian against Evokain, protector against invader.

  Fires bloomed across the city, hungry and wild. Shops crackled. Homes burned. Smoke rolled across the rooftops like a living thing.

  “Get them the fuck BACK!” an Evokian guard roared as his battalion collided with a pack of drunken Dresdi men spilling out of a bar, swords already wet with someone’s blood. They crashed past me, a violent tide I barely escaped as I pressed myself against a wall.

  I quickened my pace, weaving through civilians who were scrambling to flee; mothers clutching children, old men stumbling from the floor, people screaming as the city they trusted turned on them without any warning.

  Dresdi’s men had finally reached the city; feral things shaped by years of unbroken warfare against the southern river tribes. They’d spent endless nights and sunless days trapped in the green cage of the jungle, losing pieces of themselves to survive it. Some weren’t even men in the traditional sense; they were orphans raised by Dresdi’s vicious command, molded in war before they were ever taught what peace looked like. Violence was their language. Blood was their inheritance.

  The Evokain guards of Vaga were not prepared for the creatures Dresdi had forged in that hell. These weren’t disciplined soldiers; they were weapons with no off-switch, and now the guards were coming face to face with their own twisted reflections, comrades by name and enemies by circumstance.

  By the time the sun surrendered to the night, Vaga was an inferno. Entire districts burned like pyres. The streets were carpeted with the dead, the ravaged, the discarded. Screams had given way to sobs, and sobs to silence. And still…still…Dresdi’s forces poured in through the gates as though dredged from some bottomless pit.

  I had no plan left for rescuing Master Omni. Hope was all I had: the desperate idea that the chaos would thin the dungeon’s defenses. But standing amid the ruin, watching the horrors unfolding around the innocent, a new fear curled in my gut.

  If this was what Dresdi’s army does to free citizens…

  What would they do to the prisoners?

  Would they even care, at all, that Master Omni is a Kesh Lord?

  The guttural chorus of violence ripping through Vaga suddenly fractured; broken cleanly by the blast of several war horns. The sound cut through the night like a blade. I scrambled up a narrow terrace, boots slipping on soot and loose tiles, until I could see over the burning rooftops.

  The city’s chaos dimmed, as if even carnage itself understood the meaning of those horns.

  Through the smoke-choked gates of Vaga rode a formation of Evokain cavalry; perfect rows of iron silhouettes cutting through the firelight. And at their center…

  Dresdi.

  There was no mistaking him. His armor was a cathedral of red and gold, rumored to be wrought from pure Evokian steel, each plate engraved with victories the rest of the world wishes to forget. His horned helmet, three gleaming spires, rose like a crown forged from another man’s nightmares. And in his fist, lifted high for all to see, he carried the weapon every child in the southern domains had been warned about:

  The Red Dragon.

  A roar tore through the mob of invading soldiers. Whatever brutality they had been indulging in was abandoned instantly, replaced with a frenzy of cheers and applause so violent it shook the street. They worshiped him. Not as a commander…

  … But as something far worse.

  Supreme General Dresdi had arrived in Vaga.

  I slipped down from the terrace and ducked into a narrow alleyway, letting the shadows swallow me whole. I slid to the ground, back against cold stone, the makeshift cloak pooling over me like a one-man shelter against the end of the world. The poison thought returned, uninvited and relentless:

  What if this was my fault? What if Tyrus died because of me? What if Master Omni…

  My breath stuttered. My pulse wouldn’t slow.

  So I did the only thing I had left.

  I prayed.

  Just as Master Omni had always told me:

  “When we cannot see the vision…we must pray.”

  And for the first time in years, I realized…

  I couldn’t see a damn thing.