Fall of Fire

Chapter fourteen

A Blade in Shadow
Power demands sacrifice; the strong do not hesitate

The chamber was cloaked in shadow, its air thick with tension so heavy it seemed to stifle all sound. The dim torchlight flickered, casting erratic, dancing shadows against the cold stone walls. Valarr stood motionless in the center of the room, his face a mask of cold indifference as he regarded the boy before him.

The boy was small, frail even, but his wide eyes, though betraying fear, held a stubborn fire. His fists were clenched at his sides, his small frame trembling yet defiant. Valarr watched him closely, his grip tightening around the hilt of his sword. Behind that calm exterior, something stirred—an old, buried memory of a time when he had once been in the boy's place, faced with forces beyond his control.

"How old are you?" Valarr's voice broke the stillness. It was quiet, but commanding, each word sharp and precise.

The boy hesitated, but only for a moment. He lifted his chin slightly in defiance. "Ten," he answered, his voice steady despite the fear flickering in his eyes like the flames on the walls.

Ten. Valarr's heart tightened, though his expression remained unreadable. He had been just a boy himself, not much older than this child, when he had first been thrust into the brutal realities of power. He remembered the weight of expectations, the fear of failure, the feeling of being caught in a game he could barely comprehend. The boy before him, small and defiant, reminded him too much of himself. He had once stood in the shadow of men far more powerful than he, expected to play a role in something he hadn't fully understood.

Valarr's grip tightened slightly on the hilt of his sword. For a brief moment, he was torn—torn between the man he had become and the boy he had once been. The boy standing before him should have had a chance to be something more than a pawn in a deadly game. But life had never offered Valarr that mercy, and it wasn't about to start now.

"This isn't your fight," Valarr murmured, his voice barely a whisper. "You don't belong in a war not meant for you."

"When you're born into nothing," the boy said, his voice steady despite his fear, "you don't get to choose your battles, my lord. War finds you, whether you want it or not."

The room fell silent once more. The boy's words lingered in the air, carrying with them a weight far heavier than his small body. Valarr's chest tightened, though his face remained unreadable. The truth of the boy's words gnawed at him—there was no choice in this world, only survival.

And that is why he must do what must be done—because survival leaves no room for mercy. For his house, for his legacy... and, ultimately, for himself.

The sword felt impossibly heavy in Valarr's grip as he raised it with slow, deliberate precision. The blade gleamed, catching faint flashes of torchlight that flickered wildly in the shadowed chamber. Time seemed to stretch, every moment teetering on the edge of inevitability. The air trembled as if recoiling from the sharp whisper of steel slicing through it, the motion cutting not just through the room, but through something deeper—unseen, but palpable.

When the blade descended, the exact moment of impact vanished into the depths of the shadows, swallowed whole by the consuming darkness. The boy's small form blurred, his outline barely visible, slipping from the dim torchlight and dissolving into the gloom. There was no scream, no cry—only an oppressive silence that seemed to crawl across the stone walls, suffocating everything in its wake.

Valarr's sword came to rest, its point buried deep in the stone floor, though the details were lost to the thickening shadows. Even Valarr, for a fleeting instant, seemed to disappear into the dark—his figure obscured, as though the chamber itself sought to consume him. His hand lingered on the hilt a moment longer, the cold bite of the metal grounding him as the weight of what he had done settled into his chest like a stone.