Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Five: Written in Ash and Blood

  The sun hovered low, the horizon a burning painting of crimson and amethyst, the last remnants of daylight fading into the yawning void of night. Darkness didn’t just descend—it seeped, deliberate and unyielding.

  He reached inward, calling forth the unfamiliar gift that now resided where his familiar abilities once flourished—Shift.

  It thrummed beneath his skin, delicate yet volatile. Unlike his previous powers, this one felt mercurial, temperamental. A stranger’s magic flowing through his veins. He closed his eyes, feeling it respond to his summons, coiling like mist around his intentions.

  When he activated it, the sensation wasn’t of movement but of unbecoming—his body momentarily surrendering its solidity before reforming elsewhere. He touched down with a jolt a few feet away, the book clutched protectively against his chest. He tucked it into his inventory for safe keeping.

  “That was… different,” he whispered to the empty air, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth despite himself.

  In the distance, the first stars pierced the deepening blue, silent witnesses to his small victory.

  He focused, drawing on that strange tether of power again. It felt like pulling on threads in a tapestry, each one shifting and rippling through reality. With a sharp inhale, he willed the Shift forward, this time holding it gently and aiming toward a nearby rooftop. The world around him blurred, bending at the edges as his form flickered—and suddenly, he was there.

  His landing wasn’t graceful. His boots skidded against the slanted tiles, arms pinwheeling as he nearly tumbled backward into the void. He steadied himself, chest heaving, heart hammering in his ears. “Okay,” he muttered to himself, brushing frost from his gloves. “Little touchier than I thought.”

  He tried again, narrowing his focus. This time, the Shift snapped more quickly, the sensation akin to being plucked by an unseen force and dropped somewhere new—he was on the opposite rooftop then. The aether cost was noticeably lower than Soul Step had been.

  He did it again and reappeared on a narrow wall, wobbling as his momentum carried him forward, nearly launching himself into the stone side of a building. His hands shot out to catch himself, the impact jarring but manageable.

  “Great,” he said with a wry grin. “Superpowered parkour.”

  But as he practiced, the ability began to reveal its intricacies. It wasn’t a brute force skill like the ones he’d used before. It required finesse, timing, and an awareness of the delicate balance between here and there.

  He experimented, flickering short distances in rapid succession, then stretching the ability for longer leaps. The transitions became smoother, the landings more controlled.

  He jumped again, twisting mid-air, and appeared atop a lamppost with a snap of displaced air. The glow of the Etheric Cloak cast a faint shadow as he crouched there, his balance steady. “Okay,” he murmured, a flicker of satisfaction crossing his face. “That’s more like it.”

  With a small burst of energy, he shifted through a low awning, reappearing just beneath it, standing in the shadows. He grinned. This version wasn’t just faster—it was smarter. The delicate touch allowed him to maneuver through tight spaces or bypass obstacles entirely.

  Still, it wasn’t perfect. When he tried to stretch the Shift too far, the threads of energy resisted, snapping him back with enough force to throw him off balance. He landed hard on his side, skidding across the cobblestones, his breath escaping in a sharp hiss. “Damn it,” he groaned, pushing himself up.

  Jace stood, brushing himself off. He wasn’t quite smooth yet, but he was getting there. Each mistake taught him something: how to read the flow of energy, how to bend without breaking. As the frozen wind howled around him, he realized this power wasn’t just another tool in his arsenal—it was an evolution, a step closer to the edge of something greater. And Hades hadn’t given it to him out of charity.

  After a bit of a bumble and a stumble, he finally settled on a roof near the town gates, his breath forming small clouds in the cold air. Below him, the town bustled faintly, but the sounds were muffled, distant. He hunkered down on the corner of the roof and pulled the ancient tome from his inventory, its cracked spine creaking softly as he opened it.

  The pages smelled of age and secrets, their edges frayed and delicate. By the faint light of the moons, Jace traced the faded script and the detailed sketches that accompanied it. The history of Roandia unfolded slowly, each passage drawing him deeper into its story. Roandia had become a neutral kingdom, a place where all gods and their followers could coexist without fear of conflict. Its central location made it the heart of Terra Mythica, a sanctuary for those seeking refuge or resolution. But it wasn’t always that way.

  Long before the Dark One’s shadow fell, it had been a force to be reckoned with, a power, commanding an army that could shake the very foundations of the world.

  The Tower had stood even then, a monolithic structure that pierced the heavens, and the Games had drawn competitors from every corner of the land, uniting the pantheons in shared trials and spectacles. The kingdom had flourished under Osira’s rule. She had been a queen of unparalleled wisdom and strength, welcoming all peoples—mortals and divine alike. Each culture left its mark, blending into a tapestry of traditions and alliances. Roandia’s markets had been filled with goods from every region, its temples dedicated to all gods, its streets alive with a harmony rarely seen in Terra Mythica.

  But the golden age hadn’t lasted. The text grew darker, the words written in a different hand as they chronicled the kingdom’s fall. Tensions between the gods had bled into the mortal realm, and Roandia, despite its neutrality, became a battlefield. The Tower, once a symbol of unity, became a prize for the gods’ champions, its trials twisted by ambition and greed.

  As Jace turned the brittle pages, he discovered passages dedicated to the neighboring realms. The maritime kingdom of Asurea, whose vast fleet commanded the eastern seas, had maintained a tenuous alliance with Roandia through centuries of trade. Their histories intertwined like lovers, periods of prosperity followed by bitter disputes over shipping routes and harbor taxes.

  To the north lay Frostholm, a realm of eternal winter where clans of frost-touched humans had built magnificent cities within glaciers. The texts spoke of their masterful ice-crafting and of emissaries who had traveled to Roandia bearing gifts that never melted.

  The desert kingdom of Solaran received particular attention, its rivalry with Roandia spanning generations yet never quite erupting into open warfare. Their sun-priests had contributed to the original design of the Tower, leaving mathematical formulas in the margins of the text that Jace couldn’t begin to decipher.

  Most intriguing were the brief mentions of the Unseen Dominion, a realm that existed in parallel to the others, accessible only through gates hidden in deep forests and forgotten caves. Its rulers had attended Roandian royal courts invisibly, their presence marked only by the faint scent of night-blooming flowers and whispered advice that proved uncannily prescient.

  Jace gently turned another page, mindful of its fragility. The past breathed through these records, beautiful and terrible in its complexity. Here, captured in ink and parchment, lay the stories of civilizations that had risen and fallen like the tides, each leaving an indelible mark on Terra Mythica. And somewhere in these accounts, he hoped to find the key to understanding the present chaos—and perhaps, if he was very fortunate, a path toward restoring what had been lost.

  Hours passed as Jace sat on the rooftop, the city sprawling beneath him in tangled veins of stone and flickering aetheric light. Roandia hummed softly in the night, lanterns swaying like fireflies tethered to earth, voices drifting up from the streets below in fragments of laughter and argument. The ancient book lay open in his lap, its brittle pages illuminated by the steady glow of his candle, the flame occasionally dancing sideways when the wind found its way between the tightly packed buildings.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  His fingers traced the old script, mind racing as he pieced together what should have been obvious from the start. The truth had been hiding in plain sight all along, waiting for someone with the right bloodline to see it.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” he whispered to the night air, barely audible above the city’s distant hum.

  Roandia had once been a beacon of power, a kingdom ruled by a strong and just king. But after the war with the Dark One, that king had vanished, his fate never recorded. No body. No grave. No royal succession. Just a silence where history should have been.

  In his place, a Regent had taken over—a temporary ruler meant to hold the kingdom together until the rightful heir returned.

  Except the heir had never come.

  Jace exhaled sharply, flipping another page, the parchment crackling beneath his fingertips like dry autumn leaves. The dates blurred together in his mind, centuries of history compressed into fading ink and yellowed pages. This was centuries ago. Even in Roandia, where magic could twist the bounds of mortality, the Regent should have crumbled to dust long before Jace ever set foot here. Yet there he was—his face etched into the brittle pages, the ink faded but unmistakable. Koren.

  Somehow, he was still here.

  Still ruling.

  Still very much alive.

  And not a single other book remained from that era.

  What was he trying to bury?

  Human, his Truthsense had whispered during their brief encounter in the palace. Not a shapeshifter, not a construct, not some magical entity wearing human form. Just a man—a man who had somehow lived for hundreds of years.

  “Impossible,” Jace muttered, running a hand through his hair. “Unless...”

  The thought of a Traveler crossed his mind, but he dismissed it almost immediately. No, that didn’t fit. Jace had been able to spot the difference before. This was something else entirely.

  Jace narrowed his eyes, scanning the timeline again. Something wasn’t adding up. He turned to another section of the book, where Inter-Realm Treaties records had been meticulously preserved. He continued reading.

  Roandia should have collapsed generations ago, its bones picked clean by scavengers of war and time. The land bore scars that should have been fatal—soil poisoned during the great conflict, waterways tainted with memories of blood, a kingdom bereft of defenders. By all natural laws of nations, it should have withered into dust and a cautionary tale.

  And it likely would have—if not for the one asset that was both impossibly valuable and impossibly unstealable.

  The Tower.

  And so it persisted, a stubborn bloom in toxic soil.

  No single kingdom could afford to wage war over it—not with the political landscape as it was. And with none willing to let it fall into the Dark One’s grasp, they did the only thing they could think to do. They funded it.

  Outside gold—coins stamped with the faces of distant rulers who never set foot within Roandia’s broken walls.

  What began as a temporary measure—the Treaty of Seven Kingdoms—had calcified into tradition, as most things do in politics and procedure. The Regent, meant to be a steward of transition, had become a fixture, an institution unto himself. For hundreds of years, foreign kingdoms poured resources into Roandia’s hollow heart, rivers of gold flowing into Roandia’s coffers, all under the premise that one day, the broken kingdom would stand on its own again and pay back what it owed.

  No single realm could claim Roandia without shattering the delicate web of treaties woven in the aftermath of devastation. Balance demanded neutrality. Peace required sacrifice. And no one wanted to buy the debt.

  Even long after the worst of the blight had been driven back, when the land was fertile again and the people could stand on their own, something should have changed. A new king should have risen. The kingdom should have rebuilt itself.

  But it didn’t.

  And no king ever did.

  Jace traced his finger across the fading ink of ledgers.

  For centuries, the system functioned as intended. Records revealed an era where foreign gold transformed into sturdy bridges, thriving markets, and the tentative return of prosperity.

  Until it didn’t.

  The change wasn’t sudden—a cliff’s edge of corruption—but rather a gradual diversion, a stream changing course over decades. Jace marked the shift with his thumb: approximately one hundred years ago, when the numbers began to speak a different language.

  The outside funding hadn’t diminished. If anything, it had grown more generous, swelling with the inflation of goodwill and obligation. More gold poured into Roandia than at any point in its post-war history.

  And yet...

  No new districts had risen. No expansion welcoming traders from distant shores. No academies training new generations of defenders. No granaries standing tall against the threat of winter.

  Roandia had contracted like a dying star, its light dimming even as it consumed more energy. Its people shuffled through narrow streets, backs bent not just with labor but with the weight of generations of unfulfilled promise. Their faces—hollowed by hunger, eyes vacant with inherited resignation—told a story the tome confirmed with cold precision.

  No chance to own. No opportunity to build. No hope to pass down anything but survival skills to their children.

  So where was the money going?

  Jace’s knuckles whitened around the leather binding of the book. He had witnessed corruption before—had seen it rot kingdoms from treasury outward like a sweet fruit spoiling from its core. But this wasn’t merely mismanagement or opportunistic theft.

  This was systematic. Intentional. Almost... architectural.

  He closed his eyes, seeing not darkness but the layered map of Roandia he had committed to memory. Streets and districts arranged not for prosperity but containment. Resources distributed not to nurture but to maintain precisely the right level of deprivation. The pattern suddenly overlaid with another image: the Faterender they had encountered in the abandoned district, its body twisted with malicious hunger, feeding on concentrated suffering like a connoisseur of fine wine.

  Such creatures couldn’t manifest in places of contentment and hope. They required pain—not chaotic and dispersed, but carefully cultivated, concentrated pain—to materialize in this realm.

  And Roandia, Jace realized with a chill settling into his bones, wasn’t just experiencing suffering.

  It was farming it.

  A shiver crept up his spine, and he forced himself to look up, steadying his breath, willing the tension from his shoulders as his eyes burned with exhaustion. He had to talk to the others about this. He stood then checked the time. Less than an hour until the Ceremony. It would have to wait until after.

  He exhaled slowly, closing the book with a quiet snap. His Truthsense burned at the brink of his awareness. There was something he was missing—something dangerous. Something that powerful people would kill to keep hidden.

  His fingers touched the White Raven Ring, the cold metal grounding him.

  Don’t cause trouble. Not until you’re stronger. His brother’s words echoed in his memory, alongside Hades’ cryptic warnings. They were trying to protect him from something. Someone.

  But how could he walk away now? How could he focus on conquering the Tower when an entire kingdom suffered under the weight of obvious corruption?

  I could claim my birthright, he thought, and the idea sent a thrill of both terror and exhilaration through him. I could tell them who I really am. I could end this.

  But then what? He still needed to face the Tower.

  Conflict twisted in his gut like a living thing. The practical voice in his head—the one that sounded suspiciously like his brother—urged caution. The Tower first. Gain power, gain allies, then come back.

  But the faces of the slaves they had encountered flashed before his eyes. The hollow-eyed children. The resignation in the faces of the citizens. Every day he delayed was another day they suffered.

  The others needed to know what he had discovered. Perhaps together, they could find a middle path—not a full confrontation with the Regent, but something to ease the suffering, to begin unraveling this centuries-old web of exploitation.

  The night wind tousled his hair.

  “Just a little longer,” he promised the sleeping city below. “Hold on just a little longer.”

  I need to show this to Scooby-Gang, he thought.

  He was about to tuck the book back into his inventory when his Truthsense flared like a candle caught in a sudden draft. The sensation crawled along his spine, a gentle but insistent pull that whispered of revelations yet uncovered. Jace hesitated, his gaze drawn back to the book as if invisible threads connected his fingertips to its binding.

  “There’s more,” he murmured, settling back onto the rooftop.

  He reopened the volume, thumbing carefully through brittle pages until he found an account he had overlooked—a personal chronicle written in a different hand than the official records. The ink had faded to the color of dried blood, barely visible against the parchment’s weathered surface. He noticed handwritten script scattered throughout, each entry was ended with a single letter; “—H”. He combed through the book, looking for every entry he could find.

  In the year of the Crimson Rain, when shadows grew long across the land, King Alderic and Queen Orisa ruled Roandia with wisdom that transcended mere politics. They were not just monarchs but guardians of ancient knowledge, keepers of secrets that predated the kingdom itself.

  The Queen possessed the Sight, perceiving truths veiled from common eyes. The King carried the Sun’s blessing, his decisions guided by a wisdom beyond mortal understanding. Together, they maintained the Balance—that delicate equilibrium between the realm of men and the forces that existed beyond perception.- H.

  His fingers traced the words, feeling each one resonate through his Truthsense like notes struck on a perfectly tuned instrument.

  When the Dark One rose from the shadows, it was not mere conquest he sought, but the secrets the royal bloodline protected. For in that knowledge lay power that could unravel the fabric of existence itself. – H.

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  (I feel like a kid awkwardly hawking Girl Scout cookies outside a grocery store.)