CHAPTER 288: AFTERMATH (4)

Lindarion didn’t recognize him.

But he was watching.

Quiet.

Measured.

Jaren gestured toward him. "That’s Commander Corin. He runs the Eastern Vanguard. He doesn’t talk much."

Corin offered a single nod. Not friendly. Just fact.

Lindarion stepped forward slowly, eyes sweeping the table again. Maps. Charts. Messy sketches of twisted creatures and crude drawings of cavern networks. Nothing showing Solrendel. Nothing about his mother. His home.

"You all think this is manageable," he said quietly. "It’s not. This isn’t a war we win with a well-timed flank."

Taron gave a sharp grin. "Didn’t say we’d win it with a flank. Said we’d win it with patience."

"They’re already winning," Lindarion snapped. "They’re ten steps ahead. Every city burned, every gate cracked—that’s planned. Coordinated. And you want patience?"

Jaren stepped closer to the table. "What do you want, Lindarion? To teleport to Solrendel and charge in alone?"

"If that’s what it takes."

"That’s suicidal."

"So is waiting."

His voice had risen.

Ashwing twitched outside the tent flap, senses sharp in the bond.

Jaren didn’t flinch. "Your mother wouldn’t want you rushing in like this."

Lindarion’s throat tightened. "Don’t speak for her."

He didn’t realize his fists were clenched until the parchment beneath one of them crumpled. His core was humming again, an edge of warmth laced with something cold beneath it. Not just anger.

Grief.

Rhessa stood up then. "He’s going to snap."

Corin didn’t move.

Taron scratched his jaw. "Let him. Better here than on the front."

Halren muttered, "We don’t have the leeway for emotional outbursts—"

"I said," Lindarion’s voice cut through them like glass, "—I’m not asking for permission."

He straightened.

Calmer now.

Or quieter.

Which was worse.

"I’m going to find my mother," he said. "You can spend the next two weeks drawing lines on a map if you want."

He turned to go.

Jaren’s voice followed him. "If you step out that door, I can’t protect you."

Lindarion paused at the edge of the flap.

He didn’t turn around.

"You never did," he said, and walked out into the cold.

—

The cold didn’t bite.

It cracked.

Thin air, tight wind, and that heaviness still sitting in his chest like something had lodged between his ribs. The kind of heaviness that didn’t leave, even when you exhaled.

Ashwing leapt from a wooden crate and followed him without a word.

Lindarion’s boots hit frost-stained dirt as he stepped past the line of supply tents. Soldiers moved around him. Some stared. Most didn’t. A few bowed their heads. He didn’t return it.

Not because he didn’t see.

Because if he stopped moving, he might think again.

And that wasn’t an option.

His mother was gone.

His father might die.

And somewhere, beneath a city he couldn’t reach, with allies he didn’t trust, a creature too strong for this plane was holding Luneth like she was his.

The flap closed behind him. The muffled voices of the warleaders didn’t follow.

Only the sharp air.

Only the drum of his own footsteps.

He made it ten paces before someone stepped into his path.

"Prince Lindarion," said a guard—one of the camp’s lieutenants. Maybe twenty-five. Human. Red uniform coat a little too clean. Probably hadn’t seen the front yet.

Lindarion didn’t stop.

"Sir," the guard tried again, stepping fully into his path, hand raised flat, like Lindarion might’ve forgotten how walking worked. "You’re not permitted beyond the inner perimeter without an escort."

Lindarion’s eyes flicked up.

No fire in them.

No rage yet.

Just silence.

Ashwing landed on a nearby branch.

’Don’t,’ the dragon said through the bond. ’He doesn’t know who he’s talking to.’

’I know.’

The guard’s hand didn’t drop.

Lindarion didn’t stop walking.

He moved right up to the man. Half a breath away.

"I’m not in the mood," he said quietly.

"That doesn’t change the orders," the guard replied, trying to keep his voice even. "Sir."

That last word was forced. Uncertain. A last-second add-on.

Lindarion didn’t blink.

Didn’t raise a hand.

Didn’t draw his blade.

He just let it loose.

His presence.

No chant. No gesture. Just mana. Prismatic in his core. Heavy in his bones. Sunlight and storm, old magic woven through elf blood and discipline that wasn’t learned in barracks.

The air folded.

The wind stopped.

The ground cracked under the guard’s boots.

His knees hit the dirt before he realized he’d moved.

"Wh—" The man’s voice caught in his throat. His spine arched back like his body was trying to retreat from itself. Sweat beaded down his forehead.

"Lindarion," Ashwing said, warning now.

’He tried to block me.’

"You’re scaring the rest of them."

Lindarion didn’t care.

Other soldiers around the square had stopped walking. A few stood frozen. One or two reached for weapons and then thought better of it.

The guard was shaking now.

Not from pain.

From pressure.

Raw, invisible, total.

"Tell your captain," Lindarion said, voice steady, "next time he sends someone to hold me back, make sure they understand what I am."

The air snapped, like a tight wire being cut.

The guard dropped forward on all fours, coughing.

Lindarion stepped around him without another glance.

Ashwing let out a soft exhale and fluttered to his shoulder.

"Dramatic," the dragon muttered. "Very princely."

Lindarion didn’t answer.

Didn’t smirk. Didn’t shrug.

He kept walking.

Into the treeline.

Toward the edges of the camp where no one else had business going.

Not tonight.

He needed to think.

And thinking required quiet.

But more than that—

He needed a plan.

Because they weren’t going to help him.

Not fast enough.

Not smart enough.

And someone needed to bleed for what had happened to Solrendel.

—

He didn’t hear the wind anymore.

Just the hum of mana in his blood.

Soft. Quiet. Like a low drumbeat that had started the moment he’d stepped out of that war tent. Not rage. Not panic. Something older. Thicker.

The kind of silence that came before motion.

He stood by the treeline now. Past the guard posts. Past the tents and command signals. Just outside the edge of everything sanctioned and structured.

Ashwing sat beside him on a broken log, tail twitching. Still in lizard form. Wings tucked. Head low.

"You’re really gonna do it?" the dragon asked.

’Yes.’

"You know what they’ll say."

’I don’t care.’

Ashwing tilted his snout, looking up at him. The dragon didn’t speak again. Not aloud. Not through the bond. He just looked.

Waiting.

The silence between them stretched.

Lindarion finally turned his gaze upward, past the thin canopy of early spring leaves. Past the low clouds still glowing faintly from the fires far behind them. Toward the stars. The ones that always looked colder from this far south.

Solrendel was hundreds of leagues away.

But he could feel the pull in his gut like gravity.

They had his mother.

And no one was going to move fast enough to stop them.

The soldiers weren’t ready.

The generals weren’t ready.

’So I’ll go alone. I’ve done worse.’

His jaw set. Hands tightened slightly at his sides.

"Alright," Ashwing said quietly. Then he stood.

And began to grow.

No glow.

No noise.

No mystic storm or celestial symbols.

Just a shimmer of heat. A ripple in the air. A shedding of weight.

Scales unfolded outward like layered obsidian plates. The wings curled once, snapped out, and filled the small clearing with pressure, not magical, just size.

Ashwing in full form wasn’t huge by dragon standards.

But he was lean.

Fast.

His wingspan stretched wide enough to shade the trees. His eyes, a deep gold now, locked on Lindarion.

"You sure about this?" the dragon asked.

"Yes."

"You know this is probably suicide."

"I’m going home."