Chapter 12
Rhel Varas was not a man given to haste.
He had seen empires burn. He had walked across planets of glass, waded through oceans made of bone. Of all the Executors in the Kargal war caste, he was the most feared—not for his strength, but for his silence. When Rhel moved, it was not to hunt.
It was to erase.
He stood at the edge of the grove where the readings had vanished. Viora danced along his spine like coiled lightning, reacting to something... old. Something wrong.
His Kruger scouts moved ahead, silent as falling dusk.
Six of them. Each trained in a different Viora discipline—Flame Pulse, Echo Edge, Iron Root, and the forbidden Tempest Form.
They were perfect.
And then the forest died.
A single breath of wind swept through the trees, and in its wake, all things stilled.
Kiro stepped from the underbrush like a ghost pulled from a red-soaked myth. His frame broader now, posture more assured—less man, more something born in crucible. The sigils across his arms pulsed faintly, like a heart trapped beneath his skin.
No weapon drawn.