The training grounds of the Obsidian Spire rang with the clash of steel and the sharp bark of captains' commands. Morning sunlight spilled golden across the wide courtyard, warm and indifferent to the sweat and strain it witnessed. Knights and soldiers moved in every corner — some flowing through sword forms with practiced grace, others drilling in tight formations, a few channeling magic through their strikes until the air around their blades shimmered blue and white.
At the center of it all, I stood across from Aaswa, both of us gripping wooden practice swords worn smooth from years of use. Sweat soaked through the back of my shirt. My arms burned pleasantly with the good ache of honest work as we traded blow after blow, each of us testing the other's reflexes, pushing to find the crack in the other's guard.
Aaswa caught my strike with a clean block and grinned beneath his dripping brow. "You're getting slower, brother."
I twisted my wrist and came back with a quick counter that nearly slipped past his guard. "And you talk too much during a fight."
His laugh was loud and unguarded, the kind that turned heads across the courtyard. We had trained together long enough that the rhythm of our sparring felt like conversation — comfortable, honest, and occasionally painful. Around us, the other knights kept their focus, their expressions tight with concentration. Nobody was watching us. Nobody needed to.
When the session finally wound down and we lowered our swords, I dragged my sleeve across my forehead and scanned the courtyard. Something nagged at me, a small absence I couldn't immediately name.
Then I placed it.
"Where is Yome?" I asked one of the senior knights passing nearby, a broad-shouldered man who had trained beside Yome for years.
He scratched the back of his neck and glanced around, as if half-expecting to find Yome already there. "He mentioned his fiance was arriving soon. Took leave about a week ago to prepare. Said he'd be back by now, but we haven't seen him."
Aaswa's easy smile faded. He turned to me, and I could see the same thought forming behind his eyes. "A week," he repeated, his voice quieter now. "That doesn't sound right. Yome never misses training. Not once. Not for anything."
The senior knight and a few others nearby nodded in agreement, but their expressions held more bemusement than concern. Men in love did strange things. Everyone seemed willing to leave it at that.
Aaswa and I were not.
Training ended and we drifted into the palace gardens, letting the cool shade of the trees pull the heat from our skin. The flowers along the stone paths bloomed in soft, luminous colors, catching the light in quiet, lovely ways. But neither of us was looking at them.
"Something is wrong, Mirel." Aaswa kept his voice low, his eyes straight ahead. "Yome lives for the training ground. He arrives before the gates are even fully open. He stays until the captains send him home. A fiancée coming to visit doesn't explain a week of silence — not from him. Not without a single message."
"I know." The unease had been sitting in my chest since the moment I noticed his absence, growing heavier with every passing minute. "Let me think. Do you remember anything from our past life about Yome? Anything at all?"
Aaswa was quiet for a moment, his brow furrowed. "Nothing comes clearly. You?"
I shook my head — and then stopped walking.
A gardener crouched a few steps off the path, shears moving steadily through the grass, the soft snipping sound almost rhythmic. Something about the sight of him, the unhurried focus of it, unlocked a door I hadn't known was closed.
A memory surfaced. Old and sharp and unpleasant.
"Wait." I turned to Aaswa. "I remember something."
In another life — the one we had lived before this one — there had been an incident that no one had ever fully understood. A knight had been found dead in a remote stretch of forest outside the city walls. His body was intact, his armor undamaged. But his head was gone. Clean. As though taken deliberately, as a message or a trophy or both.
Investigations had revealed that the knight had recently captured a group of spies from a rival kingdom. Most were common agents, easily handled. But one among them was different — a seasoned operative from a powerful empire, dangerous and without mercy. The murder had been swift and deliberate. And in the confusion and grief that followed, something else had gone unnoticed. Another knight had disappeared around the same time. Quietly. Without explanation.
No one had connected the two disappearances. The war had come not long after, and the details had drowned in larger chaos.
I turned to Aaswa now, my voice barely above a whisper. "In the past life, a knight was killed after capturing spies. Body found without the head. And at almost the same time, one of our own knights vanished — no trace, no explanation. I never connected them then." I paused. "I think I'm connecting them now."
Aaswa's jaw tightened. The easy warmth he usually carried had gone somewhere cold and still. "We go to Yome's house. Right now."
We asked the other knights for the address and left the Spire at a pace that stopped just short of running.
Yome's home sat on the quieter edge of the noble district — modest in size but well-tended, the kind of house kept by a family that took pride without pretension. Window boxes held small yellow flowers. The front step was swept clean.
We knocked. Called his name.
Silence answered.
Then the door opened and Yome's parents appeared, their faces cycling from surprise to recognition to a deep, instinctive bow.
"Your Majesty! Lord Aaswa — please, you honor us, come inside, let us prepare—"
I raised a hand gently. "No need. Please. We're here as his friends, nothing more. We only want to know where Yome is."
Something passed between his mother and father. A look that carried weight.
"He left a week ago," his mother said carefully. "He told us he was going with friends — that they were helping him prepare for his fiancée's arrival. He said we shouldn't worry. That he'd be back soon." She folded her hands together. "We haven't heard from him since yesterday."
Aaswa kept his expression composed, his voice easy. "Did he mention where they were going? Who these friends were?"
His father shook his head slowly. "No, my lord. He seemed in a hurry. He just said it was important."
We thanked them warmly and left quickly, though not quickly enough to miss the way his mother's hands trembled slightly as she closed the door.
We rode hard, leaving the city through the outer gates and pushing into the forest beyond the walls. The trees closed around us quickly, the road narrowing to a track and then to little more than a suggestion of a path. We rode from memory — from my memory — until we reached the place I had seen in that old, borrowed life.
A clearing. Three paths splitting away from it in different directions, each swallowed by shadow and undergrowth.
Aaswa pulled his horse to a stop and surveyed them. "Three ways. Which one?"
We chose the first path. It led us toward a cluster of merchant stalls and small shops — traveling vendors, a smithy, a spice seller with sacks stacked under a canvas awning. We moved through quickly, watching carefully. Nothing out of place. Nothing that felt wrong in the particular way we were dreading.
We doubled back and took the second path.
It wound through increasingly secluded terrain before opening abruptly onto a wide building draped in red silk banners, paper lanterns swaying gently from the eaves even in the daylight. Music drifted softly through the walls.
Several women appeared at the entrance almost immediately, their smiles practiced and warm.
"Come inside, my lords," one said, stepping toward me with light, deliberate grace and curling her fingers around my arm. "Let us make your evening something worth remembering."
Another had already moved to Aaswa's side. "The finest wine in the district. The softest rooms. Stay a while."
We declined as politely and as firmly as the situation allowed, disentangled ourselves, and returned to the clearing.
The third path waited. Darker than the others. Narrower. The trees along it grew close together, their branches lacing overhead until they blocked most of the sky.
Then, quietly and without announcement, Cretel's voice arrived inside my mind.
I have found the place you are looking for.
I stopped. "You've been silent for a long time. Where were you?"
Evolving. The voice was calm, unhurried. My power needed time to deepen before I could be of real use to you. That time is done. Pay attention now.
A soft golden light bloomed in the air before us, shaping itself into an arrow that hovered at chest height, pointing steadily down the third path.
Aaswa saw it too. He said nothing. Neither did I.
We followed.
The forest pressed in close on either side as we moved deeper along the trail. Branches reached across the path and caught at our sleeves. Roots buckled the ground beneath our boots. The golden arrow drifted ahead of us at a steady pace, patient as a lantern in a dark hall, and we followed it without question until the trees pulled back and the path spilled into a small, hidden clearing ringed by tall oaks.
We both stopped at the same moment.
A body lay in the grass at the center of the clearing. The armor was familiar — the sigil of the Obsidian Spire worked into the breastplate, though the metal was torn now, and dark with dried blood. The figure lay perfectly still in the way that only the dead can manage, utterly absent of tension or breath or weight.
There was no head.
Aaswa and I stood without speaking. The clearing was very quiet. Birdsong had stopped somewhere behind us without our noticing, and now the only sound was the faint movement of leaves overhead.
I had seen this before. Not in this life — in the last one, in a memory that had surfaced beside a gardener's gentle shears and a morning garden full of soft flowers.
I had seen it before, and I had not understood it in time.
The knight was dead.
To be continued...