The suffocating smell of smoke and roasting meat woke Prince Tarek from a dreamless sleep.
His eyes snapped open. The inside of his royal pavilion was glowing with a sickly, violent orange light. He was on his feet before his mind fully grasped the danger, abandoning his heavy enameled armor and grabbing only his sword. He burst through the canvas flaps into a waking nightmare.
Outside, the Vanguard of the Dragon had been reduced to an inferno.
Massive columns of fire roared into the black sky. The snow beneath his bare feet was rapidly melting into a boiling, bloody mud. Tents that had symbolized Imperial dominance hours ago were now collapsing cages of flame.
But worse than the fire was the sound.
Seventeen hundred men were breaking. The legendary discipline of the Dragon Empire had evaporated, replaced by the raw, animal instinct to survive. Soldiers trampled over their wounded brothers, abandoning their heavy steel plating, their weapons, and the silver they had looted, carrying nothing but their own terror.
Tarek lunged forward, grabbing a fleeing infantryman by the collar of his tunic. "Hold your ground! What happened?!"
The soldier's eyes were wide and white with panic. His face was smeared with soot. "The command pavilion—dead! The generals are dead! The horn sounded the retreat! The camp is gone, Your Majesty, it's all gone!"
The man violently shoved his Prince away and disappeared into the smoke.
Tarek staggered back, staring at the chaos. His tactical mind fought through the shock, assembling the pieces.
The command tent. The retreat horn. The unbridled horses running wild through the flames. The oil spreading too fast, perfectly cutting off the weapon caches.
This is not panic. This is a design. Someone had meticulously decapitated his army, severed its nerves, and set its corpse on fire. For a fleeting second, he thought of his older brother, the First Prince. Did he send an assassin to ruin me? But Tarek immediately dismissed it. His brother was a blunt instrument. A butcher. This attack was surgically precise. A ghost had done this.
Tarek pushed through the stampede, his bare feet blistering on the hot mud. He saw men fighting each other over discarded waterskins. He saw a captain screaming for order, only to be shoved face-first into the mud by his own fleeing troops. Titles, honor, and empire meant nothing when the fire was burning your back.
At the edge of the camp, away from the worst of the flames, Tarek spotted a young cavalryman sitting atop a stolen horse. The soldier's armor was clean. He wasn't helping the wounded; he was simply watching the camp burn with cold, calculated detachment, waiting for an opening to flee.
Tarek stepped directly in front of the beast. "Dismount. I require your horse to ride to the northern ridge and rally the Vanguard."
The young soldier looked down at the Prince. His eyes held no reverence. Only the brutal arithmetic of survival. "Move."
Tarek's jaw clenched. "I am Prince Tarek of the Dragon Empire. You will dismount and obey your commander, or—"
"You're a dead man in a ruined shirt," the soldier spat, his voice trembling with a terrifying mixture of fear and rage. "Look around you, Prince! There is no Empire here! No food. No commanders. No winter gear. You led us into a frozen hell, and now you want the only thing keeping me alive?"
The soldier violently kicked his spurs into the horse's flanks. "Get out of my way, you arrogant bastard, or I'll trample you myself!"
Tarek lunged, grabbing the horse's bridle. "I will mount your head on a spike—"
The soldier's heavy steel boot lashed out, catching Tarek square in the chest.
The Prince of the Dragon Empire fell backward, crashing hard into the filthy, ash-choked mud. Tarek gasped for air, humiliated, tasting blood and dirt. Above him, the soldier drew his sword, preparing to strike down his sovereign to secure his escape.
A heavy steel spear suddenly materialized from the smoke.
It struck the young soldier with devastating force, punching straight through his breastplate and lifting him entirely out of the saddle. He crashed to the ground, dead before he realized he had been hit.
Through the thick black smoke, Karesh and Temur strode forward.
Temur lowered his throwing arm, his scarred face twisted in disgust as he looked at the dead traitor. Karesh reached down, grabbing Tarek by the arm and hauling the Prince out of the mud.
"We must move, Your Majesty," Temur barked over the roar of the flames. "The fire is boxing us in."
Tarek stood trembling in the filth. His royal silk was torn and stained black. His lungs burned. He looked at his two greatest warriors—the last surviving Fangs of the Emperor—and saw something in their eyes that cut deeper than any blade.
Pity.
"Move where?" Tarek's voice cracked, the reality of his ruin finally crushing him. "To the capital? So my brother can laugh as I am executed for incompetence? So my father can parade me before the nobles as the Prince who lost two thousand Imperial soldiers to a forest of savages?"
Tarek let out a hollow, broken laugh. He dropped his sword into the mud.
"It is over. This campaign was my ascension. It was my proof. And now..." Tarek gestured wildly at the burning camp. "I have no army. No supplies. We are three men freezing to death in a wasteland. I am a king of ashes."
Karesh stepped squarely in front of the Prince, his stone-cold eyes unflinching. "Dying in the mud will not restore your honor, Prince. It will only prove your brother right."
"Then what is left, Karesh?!" Tarek screamed over the fire.
"Survival," Karesh replied, his voice an anchor in the storm. "We track the deserters. We regroup in the deep woods. We eat roots, we hunt beasts, we freeze and we bleed until we have forged a new Vanguard from the survivors. We do not stop."
Temur stepped up beside him, nodding slowly. "It is the way of the true Dragon, Your Majesty. When the mountain erupts, the dragon does not weep in the lava. The dragon takes to the sky. It waits for the fire to burn itself out, for the embers to cool. And then... the dragon returns to claim the scorched earth."
Tarek stared at them. The heat of the fire was blistering his skin, but their words sparked something cold and hard in his chest. "You want me to live like a hunted animal."
"I want you to live to wear the crown," Karesh said simply.
Before Tarek could answer, the sound of heavy hooves crunched through the melting snow.
A rider emerged from the thick curtain of smoke. He rode a warhorse and wore a heavy, hooded cloak that swallowed his features. A dark metal helmet obscured everything except a pair of cold, unreadable eyes.
The rider pulled back on his reins, stopping a few paces from the Prince and his guards. Karesh and Temur immediately raised their weapons, shielding Tarek.
But the rider did not draw steel. He simply looked down at the ruined Prince.
"Your Majesty," the rider said. His voice was smooth, deep, and entirely devoid of panic. "I know a cavern network in these crags. Deep enough to hide from the smoke. Warm enough to survive the frost. If you wish to live to see the dawn, follow me."