As soon as the First Princess finished speaking, a quiet, hissing laugh escaped the Crown Prince’s lips.
"I suppose you are right," Gareth drawled, a cruel grin spreading across his flushed face.
"Dragging the mangled corpse of that trash back to the capital and dumping it at the Empress's feet...
there is a certain poetry to that."
The mere thought of inflicting such profound grief upon his stepmother seemed to give him a sick, intoxicating pleasure.
He clapped a heavy hand on Barkas's armored shoulder, leaning in to whisper mockingly.
"Very well.
Since it means so much to you, I will not stand in your way.
Take your men.
Rush around in the dark mountains until dawn for all I care."
He slapped the Commander’s shoulder one last time, turned on his heel, and swaggered back toward the center of the chaotic camp.
Ayla watched her brother leave, then turned her emerald eyes to Barkas.
"Please, Commander.
Take care of her."
As soon as the royal siblings departed, Barkas signaled the vanguard.
The search party immediately moved north, heading toward the ominous silhouette of the tree line.
Sir Edric Lubon gripped his torch tightly, making his way through the dense, pitch-black forest.
The terrifying thought that the wyvern's trail might have vanished during the altercation with the Prince gnawed at his nerves.
"Watch your step," whispered Sir Theorik, a veteran vanguard knight walking just ahead.
"One slip and you'll end up at the bottom of the gorge before we find the Princess."
Edric didn't reply.
He simply offered a grim nod, raising his torch higher to illuminate the treacherous, uneven ground.
The flickering light revealed a steep, jagged cliff edge dropping away between the straight trunks of ancient pine trees.
"Right here," Edric called out, pointing to a violently torn section of the tree line where the wyvern had clearly crashed through the canopy.
Barkas materialized at his side as silently as a ghost.
Edric stepped back, giving the Commander room to assess the drop.
Barkas held a torch over the edge, illuminating the sheer, vertical rock face dropping into the abyss below.
Without a word, he unhooked a heavy chain-grapple from his belt, secured the iron hook into a deep fissure in the rock, and rappelled down the vertical slope, disappearing into the dark.
Once he felt the chain go slack, signaling Barkas had landed safely, Edric took a breath and followed him down.
The descent was perilous, but the gorge wasn't quite as deep as it had first appeared.
Carefully navigating the jagged outcroppings, Edric reached the floor of the ravine and raised his torch, signaling the rest of the knights to begin their descent.
While the men climbed down one by one, Edric surveyed the area.
The impact of the massive wyvern had triggered a localized landslide.
Massive boulders, uprooted trees, and loose earth were strewn violently across the floor of the ravine.
Combing through the rubble in pitch darkness was going to be an agonizingly slow process.
Impatient and terrified of what they might find, Edric leapt over a pile of scree and began pushing through the debris.
A few minutes later, his torchlight caught on a massive, blackened shape half-buried under a collapsed rock wall.
*...We found it.*
One of the wyvern's leathery wings was entirely charred away, likely blasted by a combat mage's fire spell before it fell.
The colossal beast lay upside down, completely immobilized between the rocks.
Dreading the thought that the Second Princess might be crushed completely flat beneath the carcass, Edric frantically began to examine the perimeter.
Suddenly, he noticed another shadow standing perfectly still in the distance.
Bringing his torch closer, he realized it was Barkas.
The Commander was standing silently beside a massive boulder.
"Commander!" Edric called out, rushing toward him.
"Did you find any sign of—"
Edric stopped dead in his tracks.
The words died in his throat.
Lying in the dirt at the Commander’s feet was a pale, broken body.
The weak, flickering light of Edric’s torch illuminated Thalia’s deathly white face and her tangled, dirt-matted hair.
Edric stared down at her, taking in the blood, the mud, and the heavy rocks burying her lower half.
He let out a long, shuddering sigh.
He had known the chances of finding her alive after a drop from that altitude were practically nonexistent.
There had been hope—a fragile, desperate hope—but seeing her lifeless body with his own eyes made the blood freeze in his veins.
Shuddering, he stepped closer.
Her upper body appeared relatively intact, though battered, but her legs...
Her left leg was pinned beneath a boulder the size of a warhorse, twisted at a horrifying, unnatural angle.
Instinctively, Edric reached out to move one of the smaller rocks resting on her waist—and instantly triggered a minor collapse.
A pile of loose stones clattered down around her.
Edric winced, cursing his own clumsiness.
He opened his mouth to call for the other knights to help clear the body, but then he looked up at Barkas.
A fresh wave of horror washed over him.
Barkas was standing over her broken body, as motionless as a carved marble statue.
His face was entirely, perfectly empty.
There wasn't a flicker of grief, shock, or even pity in his pale blue eyes.
It was a look so devoid of humanity it was profoundly terrifying.
Edric knew about the long-standing, toxic animosity between the Commander and the Second Princess.
But Barkas had literally grown up beside her.
He had known her for ten years.
*How can he just stand there staring at her corpse with absolutely no reaction?!*
"What are you doing?!" Edric shouted, his grief turning to rage.
"Help me clear the rubble!"
Barkas didn't move a single muscle.
Edric, his face twisted with furious indignation, dropped his torch and fell to his knees.
If Barkas wasn't going to help, he would move the damn rocks himself.
He placed both hands against the massive boulder pinning her leg and pushed with all his might.
And then, a sound drifted up from the dirt.
It was a faint, hoarse, wet rasp—like the sound of a small animal suffocating.
Edric froze.
He leaned down, bringing his face inches from hers.
In the dancing orange light of the dropped torch, he saw the Princess’s pale face twitch.
A spasm of agony rippled across her features.
Edric’s legs gave out completely.
He collapsed backward into the dirt, letting out an explosive gasp of sheer relief.
"She's alive!" Edric screamed back toward the cliff face.
"She's still breathing!
Get the healers!"
As if in response to his frantic shouting, Thalia’s thin, dirt-caked eyelids fluttered.
They slowly parted, revealing dull, completely unfocused blue eyes.
She was hovering on the very edge of consciousness.
Edric scrambled to his feet.
He needed to get the combat mages down here immediately to cast a stabilization spell before she bled out internally.
He bent down to grab his torch to signal the others.
But as he reached down, he saw something that made him freeze entirely.
A vague, weak semblance of a smile was forming on Thalia’s deathly white face.
A barely audible whisper slipped past her cracked, bloody lips.
"Bar...
kas..."
Edric watched, utterly stunned, as she breathed his name like a desperate prayer.
And in that same moment, Barkas, who had been standing like a stone golem, finally moved.
He slowly knelt in the dirt beside her.
Seeing his face hovering above her, Thalia shifted weakly.
A spark of profound, overwhelming relief ignited in her hazy, unfocused eyes—as if a divine ray of salvation had finally pierced the dark abyss she was trapped in.
"I...
knew it..." she whispered, her voice bubbling with wet, ragged breaths.
"I knew...
you would come...
to save me..."
As her eyelids fluttered and closed, hot tears spilled from the corners of her eyes.
They rolled slowly down her pale cheeks, cutting clean tracks through the layers of dust and dried blood.
The fiery reflection of the torchlight danced across Barkas's face, illuminating his empty, lifeless eyes.
But despite the light, he seemed entirely shrouded in darkness.
He looked as though he were trapped at the bottom of a deep, inescapable well, staring at something Edric couldn't see.
For a reason he couldn't explain, Edric held his breath.
A deep, unsettling chill settled in his bones.
Operating purely on instinct, Edric reached out and placed a hand on Barkas's shoulder.
"Commander," Edric asked softly.
"Are you...
are you alright?"
Barkas slowly lifted his head and looked at him.
His perfect, aristocratic brow furrowed slightly.
It was an expression of genuine, unadulterated confusion—as if he truly could not comprehend why Edric would ask him such a question.
Edric didn't know why he had asked it either.
*Why did I suddenly feel like he was the one who was broken?*
Edric continued to stare into Barkas's unnervingly calm face, desperately trying to pinpoint the crack in the Commander's armor, when the heavy crunch of boots on gravel echoed through the ravine.
Snapping out of his trance, Edric grabbed the torch and raised it high in the air.
Seeing the signal, half a dozen knights and a combat mage sprinted toward them through the dark.