This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Aurora’s Edge had endured centuries of battle, had passed through the hands of warriors far greater than him.

  And now it was gone.

  His fingers curled around one of the jagged shards. A faint pulse of magic still thrummed inside it, but the blade was broken, its power fractured beyond recognition.

  Alric swallowed hard, forcing himself to breathe. His mind screamed at him to do something, to fix it, but for the first time in a long time, he didn’t know how.

  "It’s gone," he murmured. His voice sounded distant, even to his own ears. "All those lifetimes of knowledge and power… shattetered"

  Riya’s voice broke through the fog, her concern piercing through the numbness in his chest.

  He looked up—and there was Rylan.

  For a second, Alric forgot about the sword, about the battle, about everything.

  His brother.

  Rylan stood just a few feet away, half-shadowed in the mist, watching him with an unreadable expression. The weight of time—years lost, battles fought on opposite sides—hung between them, unspoken but undeniable.

  Neither moved.

  Neither spoke.

  Then Rylan did something Alric never expected.

  He knelt.

  Not in surrender, not in defeat. Just… knelt.

  His movements were slow, stiff, like a man unaccustomed to choosing his own actions.

  His voice was quiet. "It’s been a long time."

  Alric’s breath hitched. He felt like a blade had just run through his ribs.

  "Yeah," he said hoarsely. "Yeah, it has.”

  Then Rylan’s gaze flicked down to the shattered remains of Aurora’s Edge.

  "Shit," he muttered. "Didn’t think anything could break that."

  Alric let out a hollow laugh. "Me neithier."

  Rylan’s gaze scanned Alric, taking in his worn armor, the scars that hadn’t been there before.

  "You look different," Rylan murmured.

  Alric huffed a quiet breath. "You look like hell."

  Rylan barked a laugh—short, bitter, exhausted. "Yeah. Feels like it too."

  Alric’s grip tightened around the hilt of the broken sword. "They took you."

  Rylan stiffened.

  Alric’s voice was barely a whisper, raw and low. "I searched for you."

  Rylan looked away. "I know."

  Alric’s jaw clenched. His whole life, he’d thought his brother was dead. Or worse.

  Rylan was neither.

  He was here.

  He was breathing.

  And he had been one of them.

  "You were one of the Anointed," Alric said, his voice tighter than he meant it to be.

  Rylan didn’t deny it.

  Alric’s stomach twisted. How much of his brother was left?

  Rylan rubbed a hand down his face, exhausted beyond words. "I didn’t have a choice."

  Alric opened his mouth—then closed it.

  Of course he hadn’t.

  No one walked away from the Anointed. No one survived being taken without becoming something else.

  Alric’s heart twisted in his chest.

  "I thought you were dead," he admitted. "For years, I thought you were dead."

  Rylan’s throat bobbed. His eyes—his damn eyes, still the same even after everything—shone with something too raw to name.

  "Sometimes, I was."

  The words were quiet. Broken.

  Alric’s breath hitched. He could see it now—the weight Rylan carried, the ghosts clinging to his shoulders.

  Torture. Reprogramming. Forced servitude.

  Rylan had lived through hell.

  And survived.

  Riya stood just beyond Alric and Rylan, watching as two brothers—severed by time, war, and fate—knelt across from each other for the first time in years.

  She shouldn’t be watching this.

  This moment wasn’t hers to witness.

  But she couldn’t look away.

  Alric was barely breathing, his fingers still locked around the hilt of his broken sword, like it was the only thing tethering him to reality.

  And Rylan…

  Rylan looked hollow.

  Not the proud, stubborn boy Alric had once spoken of in the quiet moments between battles. Not the brother he had idolized, the one whose absence had shaped Alric’s every decision.

  This man was someone else.

  A shadow of both the brother Alric had lost and the enemy they had fought.

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  Riya’s pulse hammered in her ears. She knew what it meant to be taken.

  She had seen what the Anointed did to people. What they had tried to do to her.

  And looking at Rylan now—his movements too careful, too practiced, too controlled—she saw someone who had been carved into something else.

  Someone who had been broken and then remade.

  Alric was speaking, voice low and raw, asking questions that Riya wasn’t sure she would want the answers to.

  "You were one of them."

  Riya swallowed hard.

  She didn’t know what she expected Rylan to say. A denial? A defense? Some desperate plea for understanding?

  Instead, all Rylan said was, "I didn’t have a choice."

  Alric’s jaw clenched. His grip on the broken hilt tightened until his knuckles went white. Every instinct screamed at him to be angry, to demand how Rylan could have let them make him into this.

  But he knew better.

  Of course he hadn’t had a choice.

  Her hands curled into fists.

  Riya wasn’t sure how to feel.

  She should have been relieved—Alric was alive. He had survived. After everything, after the war, after Crosshaven, after all the times she had feared she would never see him again—here he was.

  But she didn’t move toward him.

  Because between them, kneeling in the mud, was Rylan.

  And Alric was looking at her.

  That was when it hit her.

  Alric wasn’t just seeing Rylan again. He was seeing her, with him.

  His twin.

  The last time Alric and Riya had seen each other, they had been… what? Something unfinished. Something she had thought she would have time to figure out. But time had been ripped from them, along with everything else.

  Now, years later, she was standing beside his brother.

  Not just beside him. With him.

  And Alric noticed.

  Of course he did.

  Riya saw it in the way his fingers tensed around the hilt of his shattered sword, how his eyes flickered from her to Rylan and then back again, as if trying to piece together a puzzle he hadn’t realized was missing pieces.

  He didn't ask. He didn’t need to. It was obvious, in the way they moved, in the space they took up together. In the way Rylan had shifted closer without thinking.

  And Riya?

  She felt exposed.

  Like something private had been laid bare in front of him, something she hadn’t been ready to explain. Something she didn’t even know how to explain.

  She opened her mouth, then closed it.

  Because how did she?

  How did she tell Alric that she had spent the last eight months captive, beaten, and breaking? That Rylan had been the only thing that had kept her sane? That he had been the only person who understood what it was like to be trapped in the belly of the beast with no way out?

  How did she tell him that in the endless, brutal nights of the Anointed’s dungeons, Rylan had been her anchor?

  That somehow, in that nightmare, she had found something real?

  There was no explanation he would want to hear.

  Rylan shifted beside her, and she felt the faintest brush of his arm against hers. A silent reassurance. A reminder of everything they had been through together.

  And Alric saw that too.

  Riya knew he did.

  His throat bobbed as he swallowed, his face unreadable, but his knuckles were white against the broken hilt of his sword.

  And in that moment, she knew.

  She had thought he would ask. Would demand some kind of answer, some explanation, anything that would make it make sense.

  But he didn’t.

  He just looked at her. Looked at Rylan. Looked at the space between them—the space that used to belong to him.

  And he swallowed it down like a man biting on a blade.

  Like a man used to swallowing wounds he couldn’t afford to feel.

  Alric forced himself to look away.

  Instead, he just looked down at the shattered remains of Aurora’s Edge.

  And Riya let him.

  Because right now?

  Right now, she didn’t know what to say either.

  Elara moved forward, kneeling across from Alric. She studied him for a moment—really studied him.

  But not just him.

  Her eyes flicked to Rylan, then to Riya, then back. She had noticed it long before Alric had. The quiet way Riya shifted toward Rylan, the near imperceptible tension in her shoulders, the way Rylan had angled himself slightly in front of her, a half-instinctive gesture of protection.

  Noted.

  Elara had kept her mouth shut, because there were bigger problems at hand. But Alric was noticing now.

  And now, it was going to be a problem.

  Without a word, she reached into her sleeve and pulled out a pair of delicate rose quartz spectacles.

  She perched them on her nose, the lenses catching the fading light, and the world shifted.

  Her breath caught.

  Alric was glowing.

  Fine golden veins of magic coursed through his skin, shimmering like molten metal in a forge. The connection to the sword was still there.

  The magic wasn’t lost.

  It had simply moved.

  Elara turned slightly, adjusting the glasses—and then she froze.

  Something flickered on the edge of her vision.

  Another glow.

  Distant. Faint. But unmistakable.

  It wasn’t just Alric.

  Emeric still had it too.

  Elara’s mouth went dry.

  "You’re still connected to it," she whispered. "Even broken, it’s still tied to you. And to him."

  Alric tensed, his grip tightening around the hilt. The weight of what she said settled deep in his chest.

  Riya’s head snapped toward Elara. "What?"

  Elara pulled off the glasses, rubbing her temples. "It didn’t just shatter. You two were both pulling from it in the fight. That’s what broke it—too much strain, too much magic, drawn into one blade at the same time."

  She exhaled slowly, looking back at Alric. "But that connection isn’t gone. Even now, I can still see it."

  A tense silence followed.

  Alric ran a hand through his hair. His pulse still hammered in his chest, but the initial shock had given way to something colder.

  Riya’s face was pale. "If Emeric can still draw from it…"

  Alric nodded grimly. "He might already be feeling it. The sword might be broken, but the magic isn’t. Which means—"

  "We’re not just fighting him," Rylan finished. "We’re fighting him with half of what should be yours."

  Alric let out a slow breath. The weight of that truth settled into his bones.

  The sword had carried the past, the weight of every warrior who had ever wielded it. Maybe… maybe now it was time for something different.

  Something of his own.

  Something stronger.

  And that meant he wasn’t done.

  Alric exhaled sharply, forcing past the lingering shock. The old instinct—the one honed over years at a forge—kicked in.

  He turned a shard over in his palm, running his thumb along its fractured edge.

  "The steel couldn’t take it," he muttered. "Too much strain. Too much magic, pulled in two directions at once."

  Riya, still kneeling beside him, glanced up sharply. "What are you saying?"

  Alric exhaled. "I’d have to melt the whole thing down."

  Not a question. Just fact.

  Rylan frowned. "Can you do that?"

  Alric rolled the shard between his fingers. "Physically? Yeah. But—" He hesitated, his fingers tightening on the hilt. "I’ve never worked on something enchanted before." He glanced at Elara. "If I melt it down… is the magic gone too?"

  Elara adjusted her glasses, glancing at the shards in Echo’s beak. "Blacksmithing isn’t my expertise," she admitted. "But reforging something magical? That’s not just metalwork. That’s rewriting the spell woven into it."

  She hesitated. "Every enchantment is different. If we don’t understand how Aurora’s Edge was forged…" She glanced at Alric, her voice softer now. "We might not just break the magic. We could sever it completely."

  Caden, leaning lazily against a tree, plucked a casual note on his lute. "Then we start with Dornach," he suggested. "The library there is full of dusty old books on things people have long forgotten. If there’s any record of how Aurora’s Edge was originally forged, that’s where we’ll find it."

  Alric stood slowly, gripping the hilt of the broken sword.

  "Dornach it is."