Chapter Three : Three Fates
651 Words
{ Lysander};
The boy hadn’t slept in days.
Lysander sat by the ashes of what was once his mother’s stall, turning a burnt piece of wood between his fingers. The smell of smoke still clung to everything – his clothes, his hair, the earth beneath his feet. Valmere was gone.
The few who survived gathered in silence along the road, waiting for soldiers who might never come. Some prayed. Others simply stared. Lysander did neither. He couldn’t bring himself to speak to anyone, not after watching the mist take everything.
He remembered how it felt – the cold, the voices, the way the ground turned to glass beneath their feet. His mother’s hand had slipped from his just before the mist reached her. She hadn’t screamed. She had simply vanished, like a candle flame in the wind.
Now he sat alone, listening to the far-off rumble of thunder that never became rain. He didn’t know what to believe anymore – gods, fate, or curses. All he knew was that something inside him had survived when it shouldn’t have.
And somewhere deep within, it whispered to him.
Go north.
**##**
{ Lady Aurora};
Far above the ruined plains, the noble walls of Shiloh still stood – though even they could not hide the fear inside them.
Lady Aurora paced her chambers, her pale fingers tracing the cracks forming across the marble floor. She had not seen her father in days. The king’s council met behind locked doors, and the servants whispered of betrayal.
She had tried to shut it all out – the cries from the lower city, the smell of rot carried on the wind – but she could not escape the guilt that had begun to grow inside her.
Her family’s crest, once a symbol of pride, now felt like a curse. Her ancestors had sworn to guard the relic that sealed the darkness, and yet it had vanished under her father’s rule. The people were starting to talk. Some said the curse had returned because of royal blood.
That night, she went to the balcony and looked down at the city below. Torches flickered through the fog, and for a moment she saw faces – not human, but hollow and watching.
Her breath caught in her throat.
She turned away, clutching the small silver pendant her mother had given her before she died. Its center stone pulsed faintly, as if alive. She didn’t understand why, but she felt it too – the same pull calling her north.
**##**
{ Theseus };
In a tower hidden within the forest of Bethsaida, a young mage sat before a dying fire.
Theseus’s hands trembled as he read the old texts scattered across his table. Every page spoke of the same legend – the first sorcerer, the one bound beneath Ammon’s soil, the one whose anger had shaped the curse itself.
He had spent years studying those forbidden writings, chasing the truth others were too afraid to face. And now, with the relic gone and the curse rising again, every warning he’d ever read had come to life.
He pushed the last book aside and stared into the fire. “It’s beginning,” he whispered. “Just like before.”
A knock came at his door – frantic, desperate. It was a messenger from the capital, mud-stained and half-starved. “The king calls for all mages!” he gasped. “The curse spreads faster than anyone expected!”
Theseus didn’t answer right away. He looked out through the open window, toward the northern mountains shrouded in storm. The same voice that haunted his dreams spoke again – quiet, steady, certain.
Go north.
**##**
Three lives.
Three paths.
Each drawn toward the same place — the heart of the curse, where the past still breathed.
They did not know it yet, but when their paths crossed, the fate of Ammon would begin to change.
- Writer
