"Call Kaelith. I will speak with him." The authoritative, ice-cold voice echoed off the cold walls of the massive stone hall, seemingly freezing the air itself.
"Of course, Your Majesty," the old maidservant bowed low. Her voice was trembling.
The heavy, carved oak door was knocked on three times, timidly. As the maid stepped inside, even the dim air in the room seemed heavy with tension. "Young master, you need to wake up. His Majesty wishes to see you in his presence."
Kaelith sat up slowly. As he emerged from the silk sheets, there was a century's worth of weariness in his eyes that he tried to hide. "Alright. Tell him I'm coming. He knows I always keep my word... doesn't he?"
"Of course, young lord," the maid said, gathering her skirts and fleeing the room as if trying to escape.
The moment Kaelith thought he was stepping into his father's suffocating, gloomy throne room that reeked of blood and betrayal in every corner, the scenery around him warped like a nightmare. The pillars melted, the gold embroidery blackened. Suddenly, he found himself right in the middle of the council's judgmental, shadowy faces stretching in the pale light of the torches. They were all looking at him like vultures waiting to drop the weight of a new world onto his shoulders.
Kaelith curled his lips into a cynical smile. "It seems you are going to ask me to do the impossible again."
The raspy voice of one of the council members, shooting out from the darkest corner of the shadows, struck the room's stone walls like a whip: "Yes, Kaelith. You will go to the Kingdom of Zarithia. We ask only one thing of you: you will find that hidden, special caravan route established on the border of the 'Great Desert'..."
"NO!"
Leaping from the bed with the echo of his own scream tearing at his throat, Kaelith was covered in a cold sweat, his chest heaving like a blacksmith's bellows. While his eyes darted around in the pitch black, his fingers gripped the hard, salty, and damp wooden bed beneath him. He was panting as he dug his nails into the wood. "No... No, no!"
Trying to shake off the effects of that damned nightmare wrapping around his mind like poisonous ivy, he slammed his fist into the ship's wooden floor. The dull, realistic thud that came from the wood and the sharp pain of a splinter piercing his hand instantly brought him back to reality. This wasn't that godforsaken council room. He was in the middle of the ocean, on a creaking ship mercilessly battered by the waves. He wiped the cold sweat rolling down his face and rubbed his eyes. As the fog in his mind cleared, the most urgent question echoed in his brain: İlker.
He quickly held his breath and listened to his surroundings; beyond the sound of the crashing waves, he weighed the rhythmic footsteps and shouts coming from the upper deck. İlker hadn't died. Kaelith drew a deep breath of salty ocean air into his lungs. "How could it be? How did he get out of this situation?" he thought to himself. Had the captain taken charge, or was it that annoying first mate who stuck his nose into everything? The likelihood of the latter was much higher—certain, even.
The commanding shouts from above and the sounds of heavy armored boots pounding the wooden deck meant only one thing: all the soldiers were upstairs. The deck was an absolute beehive. This chaos was a golden opportunity for him to put his real plan into motion from the shadows. A slow, venomous, yet cunning smile appeared on his lips. "Finally, I'll be able to speak with those prisoners in peace. Perhaps I can turn my temporary failure in this mission into my greatest weapon."
Silently, like a snake blending into the darkness of the night, he slipped out of his room without even making the floorboards creak. He headed for the salt-rotted wooden stairs descending to the lower decks, groaning bitterly with every step. When he reached the second deck, he saw that the narrow, torch-lit corridors were completely deserted.
"Seriously? They didn't leave a single guard on the second deck?" He chuckled silently and cynically to himself. "How tragic that the sacks of gold of the rich go to such novice fools."
When he stood at the top of the stairs descending to the third deck—the deepest, dampest, sunless bowels of the ship—a pitch blackness and a nauseating stench hit him like a physical wall. The smell of rotted wood, sweat, rusty iron, and pure despair...
He softly raised the index finger of his right hand. A momentary spark flashed at his fingertips, followed by a flickering, small, orange magical flame. When the feeble light of the fire illuminated the dim space, Kaelith swallowed involuntarily at the sight before him. This was a literal hell brought to the surface. So many people were packed like sardines into this cramped space where even breathing was a luxury... Nailed close to each other with thick, rusty iron chains that made their arms and legs bleed, they awaited their fatal destiny with the light in their eyes long extinguished.
"I have to do something," Kaelith thought. Deep in his chest, that familiar fire of rebellion, which he knew so well and struggled to suppress, was flaring up once more.
He cleared his throat and spoke in a tone mixed with a whisper, yet resolute enough to be heard from every corner: "Hey... Does anyone among you have ties to Demirtepe?"
Only agonized groans, coughs, and the rhythmic sound of water droplets falling from the ceiling came from the hold. The silence was as sharp as a sword, and deafening.
Kaelith slightly increased the power of the magical fire on his finger, allowing the flame to illuminate the surroundings more clearly. "I'm talking to you. Is there not a single person among you who has breathed the sharp air of Demirtepe?"
Still no answer. Just as Kaelith was about to lose hope and let his shoulders slump, a dull metallic clank echoed from the furthest corner of the darkness, a point the light barely reached. The sound of heavy, rusty chains scraping against petrified wood... From within the shadows, he noticed a hulking man, as massive as a mountain with shoulders resembling a bear, slowly stirring.
A dangerous glint appeared in Kaelith's eyes. "Ooh... So you have a history with Demirtepe, huh?" he smirked, taking a slow step forward while holding the fire's light toward the man.
The large man must not have appreciated Kaelith's mocking demeanor at all, as the muscles in his bruised and battered face tensed. Despite the feral anger burning in his eyes, he kept his lips tightly sealed. The veins on his thick neck had become prominent, but he continued to stand there like a motionless, unresponsive block of stone.
"I'm joking," Kaelith said, opening his hands to his sides as if in surrender. The mocking tone in his voice vanished instantly, replaced by an ice-cold seriousness. "I'm only going to ask one thing of you. You can tell me what you've been through and how you ended up in those rusty chains later. But..." He practically locked his eyes, gleaming in the firelight, onto the man's dark and savage gaze. "...If you want to take revenge on those who threw you into this rat hole, you must join my ranks."
The silence was filled with anticipation this time.
"Do you accept?"
The man didn't answer. He simply took a deep, wheezing breath that swelled his broad chest, and continued to stare into the darkness, right into Kaelith's eyes.
Kaelith waited like a statue for five or six seconds. When he received no reaction, he gave a slight shrug. "Very well then, suit yourself," he said, turning his back and taking his first step toward the stairs.
Right at that moment, the thick chains behind him clattered with a loud, deafening noise. The man, despite his massive bulk, had lunged forward with incredible speed, pulling taut to the very last inch his chains would allow.
Kaelith halted his steps. His back was turned to the man, but a triumphant smile, hidden within the shadows, spread across his face. "I knew it. I knew how that fire of revenge was burning fiercely inside you."
He turned his head slightly back over his shoulder. Half of his face was bathed in the light of the magical fire, the other half in darkness. "Don't worry. You have my word. For your sake, I will do everything in my power to save everyone in this damned place."
Feeling the weight of these words on his shoulders—the harbinger of an approaching great storm—Kaelith slowly began to climb the stairs leading up to the deck.
He was no longer alone.