The Champion Fled

Near noon on the nineteenth of Emberfall, ninth charter-year of the Compact, Lastbell Keep is a wreck. Heat sits on broken stone. Dust hangs in what used to be a hall. The demon king is already down in the rubble. The fight is over.

Maelis is in front of you, tall in hunt-leather filmed pale with plaster, a scored bracer still buckled over a shaking hand. She is looking at you.

"Fuck." She bites it short. "Retreat's gone. Fully. Every way out of this wreck is sealed. We're boxed. That's the whole map."

Her fingers twitch in the air between you. Champion Alden is not in the keep. He left after the king was already down, and the anger in her has somewhere to go.

Vessa stands a step off in the same noon light, as tall, dust on her jaw.

"Binding's empty. Well's dry. I've got nothing. Not a fucking thread."

A huge unfamiliar power is stirring in you anyway, pressing from the inside, wanting out. It has no measured name. The keep does not open. Maelis's hands are still trembling, and they are still aimed at you.