The first time he bled, it was not from a wound. It was from betrayal.

  At twenty, he was arrested. The king himself declared that Kael was a threat, that his power could not be left unchecked. The trial was not for justice. It was for control.

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  “You have done nothing wrong,” the king admitted. “But you could. And that is enough.”

  Kael did not fight.

  He allowed them to shackle him in chains that could never hold him. He let them lock him away, deep beneath the capital, in a cell built for a monster.

  He wanted them to see.

  He wanted them to understand that he was not their enemy.

  For five years, he waited.

  And then, the war came.