Heir of the Fog

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

The Long Night

When the day came, I felt strangely detached. In any surface district no one would have trusted me with so grave a choice, yet here it seemed natural, almost as though the fog itself had claimed me. I would be lying if I said the feeling wasn't, in its own way, refreshing.

Then the human part of my mind spoke up, quiet but insistent, reminding me how barbaric today's trial truly was. The Saruk candidates were adults only by the loose reckoning of orcish custom, their tusks barely grown thick. Those who failed might envy the dead.

I had warned Sharn. She met the warning with a shrug that flashed her ivory blades.

"One season's brood," she told me, voice hushed and reverent, "for a single Ultharis. A fair trade. One Ultharis has a better chance of becoming Baruk than a whole generation that stays Vadruk."

She meant it. Her zeal to harvest Baruks for the abyss radiated from every rune etched in her flesh. I wondered how many other cities lay hidden down here, each with its own Sharn shaping worship into chains—warlocks whose sole purpose was to feed Baruks to the pit.

Dusk never truly fell beneath the cavern roof, yet by the crystal's dimming glow, the entire populace pressed onto the open fields. The cultivation fields that fed Vadis vanished beneath trampling boots, sprouts crushed into the mud without regret. Rough estimates said a thousand throats shouted at once, far more than those slated for Kharvad.

Weapons polished, every warrior assumed I would unleash a monster or order a blood duel. Many looked almost eager at the thought of cutting down their comrades. Sharn herself had suggested a last-one-standing slaughter.

What I intended was worse, and I took no thrill from it. There was simply no clearer instrument for measuring will and Sjakthar, if he truly watched, would understand that language best.

I let the hush settle, tasting the static prickling along my skin. Then I spoke. "Let us begin."

Mana carried each syllable across Vadis, unimpeded by Hazeveil's shadows. The sound pressed on cores like a weighted blanket. I watched Utra in the crowd; recognition flickered across his broad features before he lowered his gaze and stilled his breath like a soldier before a passing general.

I raised my hand. Frost burst from the ground in clean, resonant cracks. Sheets of blue-white surged upward, folding into hundreds of narrow enclosures with three walls and a low roof each, until the field resembled a glimmering maze. The roar of the crowd ebbed into uncertain murmur.

Sharn gestured. Runners darted among the cages, thrusting a single lit torch through a narrow slot in each. The flames wavered, tiny against the frozen walls.

I lifted my voice again, softer but no less absolute. "Strength and might do not concern me. Only will. Guard your fire, and show me its worth."

Out of my lungs drifted mist, colder than any mortal blizzard. It rolled across the ground, obeying the boundaries I willed—wrapping the Saruk candidates in an island of hoarfrost while sparing the onlookers. The temperature dropped further with every heartbeat; breath crystallised mid-air.

Even this weaker version of my aura would have frozen a human solid; the ebony Saruk merely shivered.

"Enter," I commanded.

Confidence faltered. These youths had trained their whole lives for open combat; they did not understand the trial before them. When the frost licked their skin, uncertainty spread.

"What is this?"

"Are we to fight nothing?"

Their protest reached me directly; Kara's translating whispers were unnecessary now. I tasted fear behind each word—raw, new, animal.

I watched hesitation bloom, watched feet slide backward from the cage doors. Mist curled around ankles, soaking trouser legs in rime. "Enter," I said again, voice a stone dropped into a still pool.

This time perhaps a third obeyed, pushing through the open side into the cramped cells. More lingered in bewilderment—waiting for clearer instructions, for an enemy they could see. A final wall of ice slammed down, sealing every enclosure and freezing indecision where it stood. Those outside stared, stunned, as their moment slipped shut with an echoing crack.

My attention shifted to the ones within: torches clutched in mittened fists, breath hissing against translucent walls. Each box had finger-width vents, just enough for air, and just enough for my mist to pour through in gentle, relentless fingers.

I spoke only once more. "Utter a single word, and the flame dies."

Silence engulfed the whole city. Even the restless crowd seemed to sense the line that had been drawn; conversation wilted into throat-clearing, then into nothing. I pressed the monocle against my eye. Its chill seeped into bone.

The world inverted. Living shapes dulled to silhouettes, while gray figures—men, beasts, things without names—stepped out of hidden folds in the air. They converged on the cages with predatory patience, slipping through vents like breath returning to lungs.

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Their whispers felt soft as moss yet sharp enough to carve thoughts. "Shine, shine—through the darkest night one may find the brightest light", they crooned, each syllable stroking the edges of sanity.

A minute passed. Then two. The first torch guttered. The flame danced, cowered, and went black. A muffled cry seared across the hush, too brief to be a plea, too raw to be casual pain. I saw the ghosts recoil from the dark, then flow back in a hungry wave.

Another minute. Another torch. Each extinguishing landed like a drumbeat against the cavern roof, punctuating the heavy breathing of spectators who no longer cared to witness glory. Entire knot-groups of Vadruk began to slip away, tusks clenched, shoulders hunched as if the mist gnawed at their own hearts.

Inside the boxes, I saw differing responses to terror. Some candidates stood rock-still, eyes closed against the apparitions only they could see. Others paced tight circles, whispering prayers that never reached their lips lest the torch hear them. One knelt, pressing brow to ice, forging stillness from desperation.

Minutes stretched, sagged, hardened into an hour. The cold grew teeth. Frost spidered over torchwood, threatening to choke the flames even without ghostly aid. I watched, counted breaths in my mind to mark passing time, let the dread rise one careful rung after another.

By the third hour, fewer than ten lights remained. The spirits redoubled their song, promises swirling into lullabies. "Drop the brand, child of stone. Rest your arms; the night will cradle you."

A torch hissed out. Then another. Screams echoed, thin now, spent—each one clipping at the resolve of every survivor left in darkness.

Through the cracks I watched shadows wage quiet war: no wild panic, only minds erecting walls against the dark. If a torch still burned at dawn, its bearer would have withstood every whisper of the buried.

For those whose flames the ghosts extinguished, there would be no mercy. This was a contest of will—of shielding one fragile light against unseen claws and murmured promises of freedom in exchange for surrender.

***

Dawn, such as it ever was in Vadis, arrived as ash-grey seepage through the crystal vault. Only a single box still shone, its light faint but unbroken. The surviving torch cast long trembling bars across the ice, painting the walls with resolute amber.

I lowered the monocle. A hush had replaced the crowd; those few who remained pressed hands to ears as though still hearing voices I had learned to bear.

Sharn, beside me, had not moved for hours. A smile stretched her lips too wide, too bright. When I turned toward her, the yellow of her eyes was gone, drowned beneath iron-grey that caught no reflection at all.

A chill, not of frost, but of recognition, slid down my spine.

Sharn was no longer the one watching.

Despite the lingering hush, I felt the weight of a single gaze still upon me—vast, patient, and cold. Sjakthar wanted me to notice him noticing; the thought surfaced like an echo inside my skull. If he approved of what I had done, that fact alone unsettled me more than any disapproval could have. A dark god's nod was never a comfort.

Cold air sighed through the ruined fields. All but one cage now stood empty—ice walls flung wide, torches smouldered into blackened stubs, their bearers long since silent. One light still shivered in the grey dawn.

I stepped forward.

The survivor was—or had been—scarcely more than a weakling in orcish terms: a female Saruk, small even before hunger had pared her down to bone. She crouched in the frost half-frozen, shoulders shaking with slow, measured breaths. The torch rested between her palms; both hands were charred where she had pressed the brand against her own flesh to keep it burning. At some point she must have fed the fire pieces of herself and yet it lived, and so did she.

I paused at the threshold where ice met mud. Against the distant clamor of the city, with orcs dragging bodies away, Vadruk muttering oaths, the little Saruk's breathing sounded impossibly loud.

Sharn moved to my side. The flat grey had drained from her irises, the familiar yellow creeping back, and with it came an expression of open disgust.

"This is the one?" Her lip curled. "A malformed runt? Run the trial again; let a true warrior prove worthy."

Her protest rolled off me like mist off stone. I knelt. The ice walls dissolved at a gesture, crackling into powder that drifted on my aura. Thin fingers tightened around the torch, ready to fight even the frost-dust I summoned.

"Easy," I murmured, letting a whisper of life-mana flow from my palm into her scorched skin. Warm light pulsed beneath her blistered fingers; the worst burns sealed over, new flesh pink against the black.

But surface wounds were not the whole story. With healing came insight. I felt the architecture of her body—slanted ribs, a left lung half the size it should have been, a heart misshapen and thin-walled. Every beat sounded wrong, an off-rhythm thud that should have claimed her life within her first growth-cycle. Yet here she knelt, having weathered a night that shattered giants.

Not injury. A birth flaw: the kind that would make any society as this one cast its bearer aside, unfit even to waste food on. And still she had endured—no, thrived—in defiance of every logical limit.

Sharn's disapproval grated nearby. "She cannot swing a axe, let alone fight in the pit. Choose another, Baruk."

"No." I kept my voice low, but the word carried finality. "She is the one."

Sharn's tusks clicked as if she would argue further. Then she fell silent, perhaps recalling my position here.

I focused on the orc. Frost crystals clung to her lashes; behind them burned the same silent tenacity I had seen through the monocle—raw will, nothing less. She peered up at me, confused, exhausted, yet unbroken.

I gathered my own will. The air thickened—no surge of visible power, only a tightening, like strings being drawn across distant poles. I had done this twice before, gifting fragments of myself to Hazeveil and Wulric, but each time I had pretended I was stumbling in the dark. The lie ended here. I knew how to shape will as surely as I shaped mana; or at least part of me did, as it had always known.

That fragment, the piece of knowledge always sealed inside my mind library, now stood open before me.

Will should be wielded only by those who had stepped beyond crimson, yet it had whispered at the edge of my thoughts from the moment I first woke beneath the fog. I drew it forward, fashioning a single thread of intent so fine it sang.

I spoke, letting word and will entwine: "Yield not your flame, but join it to mine. Let your ember and my frost burn as one, and rise as the Warlock of Omen."

The words themselves were nothing, sound on air. What mattered was the silent pressure beneath them, a corridor cut between realms. I felt the bond hover, bright and patient, a second heart outside my body.

Her eyes widened. Even half-conscious, she sensed it, the same unseen will she had unknowingly ridden all her life. Fingers still wrapped around the torch, she inclined her head a fraction, not daring to speak lest the flame die. Yes, the gesture said. Take it.