Kaelen woke to the smell of smoke and the sound of his son's breathing.
He was lying on something soft—furs, he realized, the same furs that had been in their cave for three years. The fire was nearby, crackling softly, its warmth pushing back the cold that had settled into his bones.
He tried to move, and the pain hit him like a wave. Not the familiar ache that he had learned to live with, but something new, something deeper, something that felt like his soul was trying to tear itself apart.
"Don't move."
Theron's voice came from somewhere to his left, and Kaelen turned his head—slowly, carefully—to see his son sitting by the fire, his face pale, his eyes shadowed.
"You shouldn't have used it," Theron said. "The thing inside you. The power. You knew what it would do."
Kaelen tried to speak, but his throat was dry, his tongue thick. He settled for a grunt that might have been agreement or might have been defiance.
"We're not in the cave," he managed finally. "Where—"
"We're in the pass. I dragged you through last night. There's a shelter, a hunting blind, old. The hunters who built it are long gone." Theron's voice was flat, emotionless, the voice of someone who had been taught to report facts without letting his feelings get in the way. "You've been out for a day. Maybe more. I lost track."
A day. A day of lying in the snow, his body eating itself alive, while his son watched.
"You should have left me," Kaelen said.
The words hung in the air between them. He saw Theron's jaw tighten, saw the boy's hands clench into fists at his sides.
"Left you where?" Theron demanded. "Left you to die? Left you to be found by the next Hound that came looking? Left you to freeze in the snow like the wolf I killed on the way here?"
"You killed a wolf."
"I killed a wolf. And I carried you through a mountain pass. And I found shelter, and built a fire, and did everything you taught me to do when the person you're supposed to protect is too weak to protect himself." Theron's voice was rising now, the control he had maintained for so long beginning to crack. "And you want to know why I didn't leave you?"
Kaelen said nothing.
"Because you're my father. Because you're the only family I have left. Because for five years, you have been the only thing keeping me alive in a world that wants me dead." Theron stood, his fists shaking, his face twisted with a rage that Kaelen recognized because he saw it in the mirror every day. "And because no matter how much you try to push me away, no matter how many secrets you keep, no matter how many times you make it clear that you wish you were alone, I am not going to abandon you."
The fire crackled. The wind howled outside the shelter. And Kaelen looked at his son and saw something he had not seen in five years.
He saw himself.
Not the monster. Not the God-Killer. Not the broken thing that had crawled out of the ashes of Valtherion. He saw the man he had been, once. The man who had loved a woman, who had held his daughter in his arms, who had believed that the world could be saved if he was strong enough, brave enough, willing to sacrifice enough.
He saw the man he had killed.
"I'm sorry," he said.
The words came out before he could stop them, and for a moment, he was not sure he had actually spoken them. But Theron was staring at him, his face frozen, his eyes wide.
"What?"
"I'm sorry." Kaelen pushed himself up, ignoring the pain that screamed through his body, forcing himself to sit, to look at his son, to see the boy he had raised in a cave in the frozen wastes. "I'm sorry for what I've done. For what I've become. For the things I've kept from you."
Theron's face was a mask of confusion and something else—something that looked like hope, though Kaelen could not imagine why.
"You said—you always said that sorry was a weakness. That the world doesn't care about apologies. That the only thing that matters is what you do."
"I was wrong." Kaelen closed his eyes, the weight of five years pressing down on him. "I was wrong about a lot of things."
He opened his eyes and looked at his son, truly looked, for the first time since they had fled Valtherion.
"You want to know what happened," he said. "You want to know why we're here. Why we've been running. Why the Hounds are hunting us. Why I carry this thing inside me that is slowly killing me."
Theron nodded slowly.
"Then I will tell you. Not all of it. Not today. I don't know if I can ever tell you all of it. But I will tell you enough. Enough for you to understand."
He took a breath, and the words came.
"I was born in Valtherion, the son of a soldier and a weaver. I was nothing, no one, the kind of child that the Skylords' priests walk past without seeing. But I was strong, and I was fast, and I was willing to do things that other soldiers would not do. So I rose. I rose through the ranks of the Bronze Cohorts, became a commander, became a general. And Valkara saw me."
He touched his chest, feeling the marks beneath his clothes.
"She chose me. Made me her champion. Her Fist. Gave me power that no mortal had ever held, power that should never have been given to anyone. And I used it. I used it to win wars, to break nations, to reshape the world in the image of the Skylords."
He looked at his hands—the hands that had held his daughter, that had killed a thousand men, that had burned a legion to ash.
"I thought I was saving the world. I thought I was doing something good. Something noble. And then the war came. The war that Thalrik started, the war that Valkara told me was necessary, the war that I fought with everything I had."
He stopped, the memory pressing against him, trying to drag him back into the darkness.
"The Ironhearts," he said. "My legion. My brothers. I led them into battle, and I left them there. I burned them alive to win a victory that meant nothing, because the war was already lost, because Thalrik had never wanted to win, because Valkara had known the truth and told me nothing."
He looked at Theron, and for the first time in five years, he let his son see the grief behind the rage.
"Your mother. Your sister. They died because of what I did. Because of what I became. Because the Skylords looked at me and saw a weapon, and when the weapon was no longer useful, they tried to destroy it."
He was silent for a long moment, the weight of his words settling between them.
"The thing inside me—the power that I used against Sera, against Malkor—it's the remnants of my pact. What Valkara left behind when she shattered it. It's broken, corrupted, eating me alive. And I have been trying to control it for five years, trying to keep it from consuming me, trying to keep it from consuming you."
He looked at his son, and for a moment, he was not the God-Killer or the Shattered Oath. He was just a man, broken and tired and afraid.
"I know what I am," he said. "I know what I've done. I know that I am not the father you deserved. But I want you to understand: everything I have done, every choice I have made, every secret I have kept—it was to protect you. To keep you alive. To give you a chance to be something more than I ever was."
The fire crackled. The wind howled. And Theron, his son, looked at him with eyes that held the weight of five years of running.
"I know," Theron said quietly. "I've always known."
Kaelen stared at him. "How?"
"Because you didn't have to keep me alive. You could have left me. You could have let the Skylords take me, use me, do whatever they wanted. But you didn't. You ran. You hid. You taught me to fight, to survive, to be strong. And every night, when you thought I was asleep, you would sit by the fire and watch me, and I could see—I could see that you were trying to protect me from something. Something that was inside you."
He moved closer, and for a moment, Kaelen thought his son was going to embrace him. But Theron stopped a few feet away, his face still pale, his eyes still shadowed.
"I don't know if I can forgive you," Theron said. "I don't know if I can forgive you for the secrets, for the silences, for the years of running without ever telling me why. But I know that you're my father. And I know that whatever happens next, we're going to face it together."
Kaelen looked at his son—this boy who had been forced to grow up too fast, who had learned to kill before he learned to read, who had carried his father through a mountain pass and built a fire and waited for him to wake.
"You're not going to run," Kaelen said.
"No."
"The Hounds are coming. More of them. And the things I've done—the things I'm going to have to do—they're not going to stop. They're not going to rest until I'm dead."
"Then we fight them together."
"It's not that simple."
"It is." Theron's voice was steady, unwavering. "It's exactly that simple. You told me once that the only way to survive is to keep moving. To never stop. To never look back. But you were wrong. The only way to survive is to have something worth surviving for."
He knelt beside his father, and for the first time in five years, he let the walls fall.
"I'm not going to let you die," he said. "I'm not going to let you become the thing you're afraid of becoming. And I'm not going to let the Skylords take anything else from us."
Kaelen reached out and put his hand on his son's shoulder. The marks on his chest were burning, the hunger inside him was waiting, and the road ahead was dark and long and full of things that would try to destroy them both.
But for the first time in five years, he was not alone.
"Then we fight," he said. "Together."