Chapter 11: A Name Best Forgetten

The cell was cold.

Damp stone walls sweated moisture, the air thick with the scent of mildew and rusted iron. A single torch flickered in the corridor beyond the bars, casting jagged shadows across the cracked floor.

Kael sat slumped against the wall, one arm cradling his side where Varkas's blow had nearly broken him. Dried blood clung to his brow, matted in his hair. The Blood Stone hung cold and inert against his chest.

Across the cell, Seris stood silently by the window — though calling it a window was generous. It was a narrow slit in the wall, barely wide enough for a finger. The weak shafts of moonlight traced the edge of her sharp features, catching the glint of gold in her eyes.

Neither of them spoke.

Not out of hostility. But out of exhaustion. Uncertainty.

And unspoken questions.

Kael's gaze lingered on her for a moment. Thinking in his mind. "Who was she really? Why risk herself for me, a creature she barely knew?" But his tongue was too heavy, his body too broken to ask.

Seris felt his gaze but didn't meet it.

Her thoughts were elsewhere — in another time, another ruin of a place....

Years ago.

She had a name once.

A name sung by merchants passing through, whispered by hunters around dying campfires. A name tied to a family, a title, a future.

All of it gone.

The night the Blackhorn Company came.

Her village hadn't stood a chance. They rode in with the dusk, a swarm of mercenaries and bounty hunters eager to fill their pockets and coffers. A contract posted by the kingdom itself — exterminate the rogue bloodlines.

Her bloodline.

Seris never knew why the king feared them. She only knew the price of being born under the wrong stars.

She remembered the smell of burning thatch, the screams. How her mother shoved her into the space beneath the floorboards, her blood-slicked hand trembling.

"Don't make a sound," her mother had whispered, eyes wild.

She didn't.

Not when the mercenaries stormed through, not when the house came down around her. Not even when the blood pooled thick and hot through the slats above her.

She stayed there long after the world fell silent.

It was Varkas who found her.

Back then, younger. Less scars, but the same cold glint in his eye. He dragged her from the ruin, saw the odd shimmer in her gaze, the mark of ancient magic her blood carried.

He'd laughed. "Another cursed brat. Lucky for you, girl — you're worth more alive."

She became property then. Bought and sold in the underworld like a blade or a beast. Passed from mercenary bands to black market mages. They tried to bleed the magic from her, bind it, twist it.

But it didn't break her.

Not fully.

She learned to smile with a knife in her palm. To listen more than she spoke. To bury names and faces until they meant nothing.

And when the chance came — when one careless guard left a dagger within reach — she took it.

The ship burned that night. The screams didn't haunt her. She left it behind, her hands bloody, her name discarded.

She chose Seris because it meant nothing.

Freedom tasted bitter. The world was no kinder. Monsters were hunted, magic scorned, and every town had a Varkas of its own. But she kept moving, carving out a life in the spaces between hatred and coin.

She'd crossed paths with Fenrahl once, years before Kael. The old beast had seen the hollow in her, recognized a survivor's shadow. They'd shared no pact, no bond — just a weary nod, one exile to another.

And now here she was.

Chained again.

For a cause she didn't fully believe in. For a monster she didn't trust.

Because somewhere in her spite-stained soul, a sliver of the girl under the floorboards still existed.

And she wasn't ready to let the world snuff her out.

Not yet.

The torch outside their cell guttered.

Seris exhaled and turned away from the window.

Kael was watching her. The question in his eyes was almost a plea.

She said nothing.

Instead, she sat cross-legged on the stone, back to the wall, one hand resting on the hilt of her blade. The chain around her ankle clinked softly with the motion.

Somewhere down the corridor, a guard's footsteps echoed.

Kael tensed.

Seris didn't flinch.

Whatever came next — she'd faced worse.

And when the moment was right, she'd carve them a way out.

Not for loyalty. Not for honor.

But because she hated cages.

And she hated men like Varkas even more.