Page 32 of The First Scar
The words landed. The true meaning landed harder.
If you stray. If you hesitate—I will know.
"We are connected now, you and I," he continued, touching the dark amulet at his collarbone. "Your struggles are my struggles. Your... doubts... are mine to share."
Doubts.
He knew—this wasn't protection but surveillance. A leash disguised as a gift.
And we both knew I couldn't refuse it.
But I wouldn't need to.
I had seen what the Nullatheon did to villages—the glitches, the vanishings, the people who aged and unaged in the span of a breath. I had watched children forget their own names. Watched mothers reach for babies who had simplystopped existingmid-cry. The realm was tearing itself apart, and the dual-marked girl was at the center of every rupture.
Whatever I had felt in that tunnel—whatever fissure she had put in my walls—it didn't matter. The people of Velmyra deserved to live without fearing that reality itself might unravel around them. They deserved peace, stability, order.
And if capturing her was the price of that, I would pay it.
"I am honored by your trust, my King." The words came out uniform.
The Oath-stone throbbed—a needle-prick of warning, testing whether that sentence qualified as a lie.
Apparently, it passed for truth. The pain didn't come.
Not yet.
He nodded and touched the dark amulet at his neck. Twin to the thing now lodged in my chest.
"Fourteen days," he said. "Bring her to me. Or the stone will do more than watch."
I knew what he meant. I had seen the aftermath of a failed Oath-stone. The way the body turned itself inside out, organs liquefying, the host drowning in their own blood while it keptpunishing, until there was nothing left but a husk and a lesson.
Fourteen days.
The stone surged beneath my ribs—already counting.
The audience chamber doors closed behind me. The corridor stretched long and empty, lit by sconces that guttered in the draft. Each step registered in the thing behind my breastplate—a dull, wrong pulse that didn't match my stride. My breathing had not yet recalibrated. The body was compensating. The body would manage.
I plucked the arrow from its leather home. The fletching still carried the scent of the square—smoke, blood, her.
Center mass. I had aimed center mass, and my hand had twitched. A fraction of a degree. Less than a breath. Enough to let her live when she should have dropped.
The Oath-stone hissed.I'm watching. I'm counting.
I fed the arrow to the flames and watched the fletching curl and blacken, watched my failure turn to ash.Failure.The word sat wrong. I didn't look at why.
Never again.
I had never hesitated before. Never let sentiment compromise a mission. The dual-marked girl was a rupture—a wound that would not stop spreading. I had seen what the Veil's bleeding did to the innocent. She was the center of it.
And I was the blade that would cut it out.
I let the last of the ash fall to the floor and kept walking. Fourteen days. She would be in chains before the count reached ten.
It didn't take long to find her.
She moved like someone who thought shadows were enough. Clever routes, doubled-back alleys, a dozen tricks that might have worked on lesser hunters. But I had tracked rebel cells through the Thornwood. Had followed assassins across three kingdoms without them knowing my name until the blade was already at their throat.
