Chapter 2 — A Vow in Blood
The cell was silent except for the slow dripping of water somewhere in the dark. I sat with my back against the wall, chains biting into my wrists. Cold stone pressed against my spine. It was the night before my execution, though the Kingdom had begun burying me long before the noose tightened.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Heavy. Familiar. The door creaked open and Darius stepped inside, his armor dull in the torchlight. He looked like a man who had been carrying a storm in his chest and was finally letting it out.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said quietly.
“Then throw me out,” he answered, dropping to one knee beside me. “They’re already calling you a traitor in the streets. Some believe it. Some don’t. But the men—our men—”
“They’re loyal,” I finished for him. “Too loyal. That’s why His Majesty wants me dead.”
Darius’s jaw clenched. “The Black Legions are gathering outside the east gate. They’re not waiting for permission anymore. They’re waiting for a signal.”
“There won’t be one,” I said. “Tell them to stand down.”
“I can’t.” His voice cracked—not weakly, but like steel under too much pressure. “They’ll march for you. Even if it kills them.”
I closed my eyes for a long moment. They shouldn’t have to die for me. Not like this.
“Then it’s already decided,” I said softly. “But I won’t let their deaths be in vain. If the lion must fall… then let the Kingdom remember the roar.”
Darius leaned forward until our foreheads almost touched, like the old days before battle. “They’ll hear it,” he whispered. “I swear, Ardyn… they’ll hear it.”
He left the cell without another word. The heavy door shut behind him with the sound of a blade sliding into its sheath. Final.
Minutes—hours, maybe—passed. Time grew thin and stretched, like breath fogging on cold glass.
Then the air shifted.
It wasn’t the guards. It wasn’t Darius. The torches dimmed, not by wind, but by something older. Heavier. A figure emerged from the corner of the cell — cloaked in black, her face hidden beneath a hood that swallowed the light.
“Who are you?” I asked, my hand instinctively tightening around the chain as if it were a weapon.
“A shadow,” she said softly. “A remnant. A promise long buried.”
Power bled from her presence like smoke after a battle. It was suffocating, but not foreign. A flicker of recognition burned through me — not of her face, but of her aura. I had felt this before. A battlefield. A miracle. A debt.
She held out a vial no larger than a thumb, filled with liquid dark as dried blood. It pulsed faintly, alive in her palm. “Drink this at the moment of your death,” she said. “If your will is strong enough, if your vengeance burns brighter than your fear… then the river of time may bend for you.”
“Regression,” I breathed.
Her hood tilted slightly. “A chance. Nothing more. I am not your savior. If your will falters, you will die like any other man. If it holds… the chains of this moment will shatter.”
“Why help me?”
“Because,” she said quietly, “we’ve met before… or we will. But the me you find in the future won’t remember this. This moment belongs to you alone, Ardyn Valemont. Do not waste it.”
Her voice turned cold as winter steel. “Regression is no gift. It’s a debt. And debts always come due.”
And just like that—she was gone. No door opened. No footsteps. The only proof she had been there was the warm vial in my hand.
If this is real… then death is not the end. It’s the beginning.
Outside, before dawn, the roar of men echoed through the sleeping capital. The Black Legions had gathered. Darius stood at their head, their black banners rippling in the cold wind. No songs. No speeches. Just silence. The kind that comes before a storm.
“FOR THE LION!” someone shouted. The cry spread like wildfire. A sound of loyalty. Of defiance. Of death already accepted.
When the guards came for me, the sun had barely touched the horizon. Chains bit into my wrists, but my heartbeat was steady. The vial was hidden beneath my sleeve. Warm. Waiting.
The plaza was overflowing. Nobles on their balconies like crows, and common folk pressed against the iron rails, their faces pale. His Majesty watched from his gilded platform, draped in white and gold — a god in his own theater.
Some in the crowd whispered. Some prayed. Some only stared, frozen in fear. Their lion was being butchered in daylight, and none of them had the courage to roar.
But that changed when the Legions moved.
Like wraiths cutting through mist, black-clad warriors burst from the alleys flanking the square. Arrows arced through the air, striking the execution platform’s outer guard with surgical precision. The crowd gasped as imperial soldiers scrambled to respond.
“BLACK LEGIONS!” someone screamed from the line of guards.
The first line fell before they could rally. The second pushed forward with shields, trying to form a wall. The Legions moved like smoke — cutting, striking, fading. For a moment, the air itself trembled with the possibility of escape.
“Darius,” I whispered under my breath, even as the soldiers around me tightened their grip. I could hear his voice in the distance — barking orders, as fierce as any commander I’d ever trained.
But the trap had already been set. This wasn’t His Majesty’s doing. It was far too precise.
Archers appeared on the upper balconies — not scattered, but positioned at perfect angles, waiting for the exact moment to fire. Mounted lancers emerged from the northern alleys in a pincer formation that cut off any retreat. The ground beneath the Legions was already sealed in iron and strategy long before they ever arrived.
The Strategist.
Every move the Legions made had already been anticipated. The archers targeted their sprinting routes. The lancers timed their charge down to the heartbeat. Even the streets they had chosen for approach — the same streets they’d used for covert missions in the past — were already bricked with hidden spikes and choke points. They knew. They knew everything.
“They’re walking into a mind sharper than any blade,” I murmured.
It was a dance they could not win. Each feint the Legions threw was mirrored by flawless counter-movement. Each push dissolved against pre-laid formations. Darius and his men fought like wolves, but wolves cornered by a hunter who had built the trap days before the hunt began.
That’s the Strategist’s way. They don’t fight wars. They end them before they start.
One of my veterans — Jalen, a man who once carved through a battalion alone — fell to a volley that came from three different angles at once. No soldier could have done that. Only a mind that played war like chess while everyone else was still learning to move the pawns.
Their last stand was inevitable. The air was filled with smoke and blood as the Legions were forced back against the plaza wall. Even as they bled, their formation never broke — not once. Darius fought until his spear snapped in half. The men around him roared their last breaths in my name.
They fought against a mind, not an army. That’s why they lost.
His Majesty Aldros Latimer IV’s voice cut through the chaos like a blade. “FINISH IT!”
Steel clashed, and finally the Legions were surrounded, crushed under numbers but never broken. Even as they bled, their eyes never left me.
“Grand Duke Ardyn Valemont,” the executioner intoned over the sound of distant fighting, “by decree of His Majesty Aldros Latimer IV, you are sentenced to death for high treason against the crown.”
“I served this Kingdom,” I said, loud enough for them all to hear. “I bled for it. Killed for it. And now I die for it. Remember that.”
A murmur spread through the plaza. Not cheers. Not approval. Just the sound of a people realizing something they couldn’t say out loud.
They know.
“Begin,” Aldros commanded.
As the headsman raised the blade, something broke in the crowd. A voice rose. Then another. And another. Shouts, cries, curses — a wave of defiance crashing against the throne’s fear.
“LION OF VALEMONT!”
“TYRANT!”
“HE FOUGHT FOR US!”
The guards shoved the crowd back, but the dam had burst. The love they held for me was louder than their fear. This was no silent execution anymore — this was an uproar. A roar.
I lifted my head, scanning the rooftops where the Strategist’s trap had unfolded with surgical perfection. Even though I couldn’t see them, I knew they were there. Watching. Calculating.
One day, I’ll drag you out of the shadows you hide behind. And on that day, even your perfect war will burn.
As the world burned around me — as blood and steel mingled with the cries of the people and the broken bodies of my Legions — I bit the cork off the vial and drank.
The liquid burned like molten iron. The world slowed, blurred, and trembled. My heart thundered, not in fear, but in rage.
Will.
Vengeance.
Fire.
The blade fell.
Time shattered.
The sound wasn’t steel against flesh — it was reality itself cracking open. Shadows and light twisted together as my body collapsed, but my mind was already falling backward. Back through blood. Back through betrayal. Back to the fire where everything began.
When I opened my eyes, the stone plaza was gone. The sky was brighter. The air softer. My hands… smaller. The room around me was one I had not seen in decades. My childhood room. A mirror stood in the corner, catching the sunlight.
I walked toward it slowly. My reflection stared back — a boy of ten with a familiar gaze, too sharp for his age.
A grin stretched across my young face, not warm, not innocent — but dark. Hungry.
This isn’t mercy. This is a second hunt.
The boy in the mirror smiled back with a sinister curve to his lips.