Dawn came grey and cold.

  Idris woke to the sound of dripping water. The fire had died to embers during the night, and Ramzah sat exactly where he'd been when Idris finally succumbed to exhaustion. He was at the fissure's mouth, spear across his knees, watching the forest with patient, unblinking eyes.

  "You don't sleep much it seems," Idris observed.

  "I sleep." Ramzah didn't turn. "Just not when I'm on guard duty."

  "I'm touched by your concern."

  "I'm concerned about the Princess's reaction if you die. That’s all."

  Idris pushed himself up. His body protested, three centuries of stone and stillness had not prepared him for a day of running and a night on a cave floor, but he forced himself upright anyway. The fireclaw meat had helped, but he needed more. Needed better. Needed–

  Later, he told himself firmly. One thing at a time.

  "The forest feels safer," he said, moving to stand beside Ramzah at the fissure's mouth.

  "They've moved on," Ramzah agreed. "The mold walkers. Whatever else was hunting. Should be clear, and we should move. Darkthorn's maybe four hours if we push."

  Four hours. Idris nodded and followed Ramzah out of the cave.

  The trail resumed where they'd left it, winding through steelwood and glowing fungi, but the forest no longer felt hostile. Watchful, yes. Idris couldn't shake the sense of being observed, but it was not hostile. As if they'd passed some test and been deemed acceptable.

  They walked in silence for the first hour. Ramzah set a brutal pace, half jogging when the trail allowed, and Idris matched it.

  The forest began to change around them. The steelwood thinned. The glowing fungi grew sparser. And something else began to appear among the undergrowth.

  Stone.

  Not much at first, scattered like rocks among the moss and ferns. But unmistakable. Worked stone, squared and shaped, the kind that came from buildings rather than nature.

  Ramzah noticed it too. His pace slowed, "We're close."

  Idris was staring at a larger fragment ahead, a chunk of carved granite, maybe two feet across, covered in lichen and moss. Even through the growth, he could make out the shape. A curve. A line. The beginning of something that had once been a column.

  He knelt beside it, his fingers tracing the stone through the moss. The carvings were worn nearly smooth by three centuries of weather, but he could feel them. The patterns his grandfather's masons had cut, the same patterns he'd grown up seeing every day of his life.

  The fragments grew thicker as they went. More columns. Wall sections. The remains of a lintel, still bearing the faint ghost of an inscription he couldn't read through the weathering. A paved road surface, cracked and broken, but still recognizable beneath the encroaching forest.

  And then the trees fell away, and Idris saw what remained of Darkthorn.

  He stopped walking.

  The city walls used to be curved in concentric rings, its towers reaching for the sky like fingers grasping at heaven. Pennants flying from every spire, the sound of prayer callers marking the hours and the markets and the festivals.

  Now it was rubble.

  The walls were gone. It was now a ring of gravel that surrounded it. The towers were stumps, their tops sheared off by forces Idris couldn't imagine. The gates that had stood for centuries were dust, their iron bindings melted into strange, twisted shapes that lay half-buried in the grey earth.

  And everything, everything, was covered in the same pall. The color of ash. The color of death. The color of magic that had burned too hot and left nothing behind.

  "Three hundred years huh," Idris whispered.

  The wind that came down from the ruins was cold and smelled of nothing at all.

  Idris stood at the edge of what had been his home and tried to breathe. Tried to make his legs work.

  He failed at the last part.

  His knees hit the grey earth before he knew he'd moved. His hands pressed against the ash-covered ground, and he felt nothing. No echo of the life that had been here. No trace of the people, the voices, the thousands of souls who had called this place home. Just cold ash and proof that his time was over.

  Idris didn't know what to do with that thought. That reality.

  He knelt in the ash and let himself remember. That was all he could do.

  The city in summer, dark stone blazing under the sun. His mother's voice calling him in for lessons. His father's laugh, deep and warm, as he swung Idris onto his shoulders to watch the procession for a celebration. His sister laughing, chasing him through the market after he had stolen a pastry. His brother sitting on the battlements and looking toward the horizon as if he could see something no one else could.

  The city in winter, snow on the black slate roofs, smoke rising from a thousand chimneys. The mens hall decked in colors, the fires roaring, the whole population feasting and nesting the cold away. His grandfather sitting in the front seat, old and tired but still smiling, still watching his legacy with pride.

  The city in twilight, the callers signaling for evening prayer, the lights coming on one by one in the windows below. Standing on the highest tower with his father, looking out over the kingdom they'd built together, and feeling like he belonged. Like he was part of something vast and eternal and good.

  All of it was gone now.

  "The palace," he said. His voice was steady. "It's at the center of the city. On the highest ground. We must get there"

  Ramzah followed his gaze. The palace was visible even from there. The central keep still stood, though its roof was gone and its walls were cracked. The towers that had flanked it were stumps, their upper stories collapsed into rubble. But the core remained, black against the grey sky.

  Darkthorn had been beautiful once.

  Walking through its remains, Idris could still see it. The shape of the city beneath the rubble, the bones of what had been. A market square, still recognizable by the fragments of stalls that littered the ground. Streets that wound between collapsed buildings, their paving stones broken but still traceable if you knew where to look.

  Ramzah walked beside him, silent for once, his eyes taking in the destruction with something like awe.

  "How many people lived here?" he asked finally.

  "At its peak? Forty thousand. Maybe more." Idris's voice was quiet. "My grandfather used to say you could walk from one end to the other and hear every language in laughs spoken along the way."

  They walked on.

  The destruction wasn't uniform. Some buildings had been leveled completely, their stones scattered across the ground like a giant's game of dice. Others still stood partially, their walls cracked but upright, their windows empty eyes staring at nothing. A few, near what had been the wealthier districts, even had their roofs intact. When Idris looked through the doorways, he saw only emptiness inside. Stripped. Gutted. Everything of value was taken long ago.

  The palace grew closer with each step. Idris could see more detail now. The cracks in its walls, the collapsed sections, the way the great doors hung askew on broken hinges. But also the things that had survived. The blackstone foundation, solid as the day it was laid. The carvings around the main entrance, worn but still visible. The shape of the windows, their pointed arches still elegant despite the damage.

  His grandfather's vision, carved in stone. Still standing. Still there.

  They reached the palace steps.

  They were cracked, some of them broken entirely, but enough remained to climb. Idris took them slowly, his hand trailing along the stone balustrade, feeling the familiar shapes beneath his fingers. He had run up these steps as a child. Had sat on them as a teenager, brooding over some imagined slight. Had stood at the top as a young man, watching processions approach, feeling the weight of his future settle onto his shoulders.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The great doors loomed ahead. One hung at a crazy angle, barely attached to its hinges. The other lay on the ground, cracked almost in half, its surface scarred by fire and blade.

  Idris stepped over it and entered his home.

  The entrance hall was a skeleton.

  The tapestries were gone. Burned or stolen or rotted to nothing. He couldn’t even guess. The chandeliers that had hung from the ceiling were twisted metal on the floor. The marble floor was cracked and stained, great chunks missing where something—someone—had torn it up for reasons Idris couldn't guess.

  But the bones were still there. The columns that lined the walls, blackstone from the Mourning Mountains, still standing despite everything. The grand staircase, curving up toward the upper floors, its steps worn by centuries of use but still intact.

  Ramzah had stopped just inside the doors. His head was tilted back, his eyes traveling up the columns to the vaulted ceiling far above.

  "This place," Ramzah breathed. "It must have been…"

  "Magnificent," Idris finished for him. "It was."

  They stood for a moment in the ruined hall, two figures dwarfed by what remained. Then Idris moved toward the staircase.

  "The throne room," he said. "Upstairs. At the end of the main hall."

  He climbed.

  The upper floors were worse than the entrance. Walls had collapsed, spilling stone across corridors. Ceilings had fallen in, exposing rooms to the sky. Furniture that had once been elegant was now just splinters, rotted and broken beyond recognition.

  Idris walked through it all with a kind of numb detachment. This room had been his mother's sitting room. This corridor had led to his father's study. This door had opened onto the library, with its thousands of volumes, its rolling ladders, its deep chairs where he'd spent countless hours reading by firelight.

  The library was gone. The walls remained, but the books were ash on the floor, their pages crumbling to nothing at the slightest touch. Idris looked for a long moment, then turned away.

  The main hall stretched before him.

  It was long and high, its ceiling supported by the same blackstone columns as the entrance. Windows lined one wall, most of them broken, their stained glass shattered into fragments that still glittered among the rubble on the floor. At the far end, raised on a dais of blackstone, stood the throne.

  It was still there.

  Idris's breath caught.

  The throne of Darkthorn was not a comfortable thing. It was carved from a single block of blackstone, its back rising into two twisted spires that framed whoever sat in it like the wings of some great bat. It was stark and severe and ancient, and it had held the rulers of Darkthorn for thousands of years.

  It still stood. Cracked, yes—a great fissure ran from one arm down to the base—but standing. There. As if waiting for someone to return.

  And in front of it, driven into the stone of the dais like a spike through a heart, was a sword.

  Idris stopped walking.

  Ramzah stopped too, sensing the shift in him.

  "That's it," Idris said. His voice was barely a whisper. "That's my grandfather's sword."

  He approached slowly, as if in a dream. The sword was sunk deep into the blackstone, its blade buried almost to the hilt. The crossguard and the pommel were visible. The crossguard shaped sharp, spread like wings, the pommel with a dark magenta gem that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.

  Even after three centuries, it looked new. No rust. No tarnish. No sign of the damage that had destroyed everything around it.

  His grandfather's sword. The blade that had been forged in the fires of the Mourning Mountains, made to be quenched in the blood of the dragon Bahamut, passed down through generations of his family.

  He reached out and touched the hilt.

  Power.

  It roared through him like nothing he'd felt since waking, not the dull hunger that had plagued him, not the weakness that had dogged his every step, but power. Clean and cold, flowing from the sword into his hand, into his arm, into his chest, filling the empty spaces that sleep had carved in him.

  His vision cleared. His muscles tightened. The hunger, still present, retreated to a manageable ache.

  For a moment, he was whole again.

  Then the flow stopped, and he was just Idris. Still weak, still hungry, still three centuries out of his time, but with his hand on his grandfather's sword and the weight of his legacy pressing down on his shoulders.

  Idris stood frozen for a long moment, his hand still wrapped around the hilt, the echo of that power still tingling in his veins.

  "Well?" Ramzah's voice came from somewhere behind him. "Can you pull it out?"

  Idris didn't answer. He was staring at the sword, at the dark magenta gem in its pommel, at the way the light seemed to bend around it.

  Idris turned and sat on the throne.

  The blackstone was cold beneath him. It seeped through his clothes, into his bones, and for a moment he was a child again, sitting on his grandfather's knee in this very seat, listening to stories of dragons and wars and the founding of their line.

  Then his hand, still wrapped around the sword's hilt, moved.

  He didn't guide it. The sword guided him, pulling, directing, positioning his grip. His other hand rose of its own accord, joining the first on the hilt, and he felt it, the rightness of it, the way the blade seemed to fit his palms as if it had been made for him alone.

  The throne room faded.

  There was only the sword. Only the connection. Only the blood deep recognition of something that had been waiting three hundred years for his return.

  And then the blade moved.

  The metal itself shifted, rippled, and from just above the crossguard, four thin spikes erupted. Straight into Idris's hands.

  He screamed.

  It wasn't pain, not exactly. It was more than pain. It was an invasion. The spikes driving through flesh and muscle and bone, not cutting but merging, becoming part of him even as he became part of them. He could feel the sword's essence flooding into his body, could feel his own essence flowing back along the blade, could feel the boundaries between himself and the weapon blurring, dissolving, fusing.

  Ramzah was shouting something. Idris couldn't hear him. Couldn't hear anything except the roar of blood in his ears and the song of the sword in his soul.

  Three centuries of separation. Three centuries of waiting. Three centuries of the blade buried in stone, alone, abandoned, dreaming of the hand that would finally return to claim it.

  I'm here, Idris thought. I'm here. I came back.

  The spikes dug deeper.

  And then, as suddenly as they'd appeared, they retracted.

  They slid out of his hands as smoothly as they'd entered, leaving behind not wounds but marks—four small scars on each palm, arranged in a pattern that matched the crossguard's design. They glowed faintly for a moment, magenta like the pommel stone, then faded to silver against his pale skin before healing completely.

  Idris sat in the throne, breathing hard, staring at his hands.

  The sword was quiet now. Waiting.

  He made a motion with his hands and the sword shattered into iridescent glitter. He brought his hand back and it appeared in his grip. He repeated the process twice, summoning and dispelling the sword with ease.

  He smiled.

  It was a small thing at first, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth. But it grew, spread, became something wider and wilder than anything Ramzah had seen from him since they'd met.

  "Idris?" Ramzah's voice was cautious. Wary. "What just happened?”

  "It remembers me," he said. "The sword remembers me. It accepts me."

  He stood.

  The throne released him reluctantly. He could feel it, the way the blackstone seemed to pull at him, trying to keep him seated. But he was done sitting. He was done waiting. He was done playing the passive victim of a world that had moved on without him.

  He was Count Idris of Darkthorn, last son of the Al-Bey, and his sword was again claimed.

  Idris summoned the blade once more, and lifted it high.

  The blade was massive. Nearly as tall as he was, its length towering above everything around it. The dark metal seemed to glow with its own inner light, and the pommel gem was now glowing, pulsing like a heartbeat, like a second heart beating in time with his own. He held it aloft with both hands, feeling its weight. It was not heavy, not light, but perfect.

  The sword was his.

  His grandfather's sword. His family's sword. His sword.

  He laughed.

  It started as a chuckle, then grew into something bigger, something that echoed off the ruined walls and filled the empty throne room with sound. He laughed and laughed and laughed, and the sword sang with him, and for one perfect moment, the weight of three centuries lifted from his shoulders.

  "It's good to be back," he said.

  He lowered the blade, resting its point on the cracked stone of the dais. Its hilt at chest height, its blade a mirror of darkness stretching down to the floor. It looked right there. It looked home.

  Ramzah stared at him from the entrance to the throne room. His expression was complicated, awe and wariness and something that might have been the beginning of respect.

  "That's..." He trailed off, searching for words. "The Dawnbringer… you really are a son of the Al-Bey clan"

  Idris grinned at him. Baring his fangs and the joy of reclaiming something long lost.

  Ramzah took a step closer, his eyes fixed on the blade. "What can it do? I’ve always heard of it, but what is so special about it?"

  Idris considered the question. His grandfather had told him stories—of battles won, of enemies felled, of feats that seemed impossible until you saw them with your own eyes. But stories were just stories until you tested them yourself.

  "I don't know yet," he admitted. "By the time I had gotten it I was at war with the mages so I didn’t have much time to figure it out. Now however, I shall."

  He looked around at the cracked walls, the shattered windows, the rubble that had once been the heart of his kingdom. Three centuries of loss, spread out before him like a wound that would never fully heal.

  But he had the sword. He had his name. He had a princess who had sworn to help him rebuild.

  And he had three days to get back to the convoy before they left without him.

  "We need to move," he said, echoing his own words from earlier. But this time, they felt different. This time, he had something worth moving for.

  He turned toward the door, Dawnbringer in his hand, its point trailing behind him like a banner. Ramzah fell into step beside him, and together they walked out of the throne room, out of the palace, out of the ruins of Darkthorn.

  Behind them, the throne sat empty, waiting for a return that Idris was going to wager his life to make.

  Ahead of them, the forest waited, and beyond it, a princess, and beyond that, a future Idris was only beginning to imagine.