The Char district lived up to its name. A labyrinth of burned-out tenements and soot-stained alleys from a fire decades ago, it was a place the Sunforged Guard patronized but rarely patrolled. Which made it the perfect place to disappear.

Sera led Kael through peeling wooden doors into what looked like an abandoned tavern. Inside, five people wearing the Mark of the Shattered Crown were already moving with hurried purpose. A man with a missing eye threw sera a heavy canvas bag.

"Regents declared martial law in the lower rings," he growled. "We have to move."

"We are moving," Sera said, tossing Kael a leather breastplate and a solid, unadorned broadsword. "This is Kael. He's got the first shard."

The room went dead silent. Five pairs of eyes stared at Kael, taking in his soot-stained face and the faint, rhythmic pulse throbbing against his chest beneath his shirt.

"The executioner," a woman murmured, stepping out from the shadows. She leaned on a polished oak cane, though her stance suggested she didn't need it. "I am Elara. Brother Aldric told me you were close to the altar."

"I was close enough to get blown up." Kael strapped the breastplate on. It was tight, but it covered his cracked ribs. "Sera says we're going to the Drowned Reaches."

"The second shard fell there," Elara confirmed, spreading a weathered map over a cracked table. "But Regent Valdric's hunters—the Ashblades—are already riding south. You have a two-day head start if you leave now and take the smuggler's path through the Weeping Woods."

Kael attached the broadsword to his hip. The weight was comforting, a return to the physical world, though the shadows still murmured in his veins.

"Why me?" Kael asked Elara directly. "You people are a rebellion. You have soldiers. Why did it choose an executioner?"

Elara's eyes, milky and ancient, met his. "The throne doesn't see occupation, Kael. It sees capacity. The God-Kings were not merely rulers; they were judges. They decided who lived and who died. Who else has that capacity in their bones more than the man who wielded the axe?"

Kael didn't like that answer. He didn't like what it implied about the 'king' the shard remembered inside him.

"Horses are out back," the one-eyed man interrupted. "Four hours of sleep is a luxury you don't have. Ride now."

Sera nodded. "We ride."

As they mounted up and slipped out the back gates, rain finally began to fall. It hissed against the hot stone of the burning city behind them. Kael looked back only once. The Hollowing—that tear in the sky at the edge of the world—had deepened, stripping color from the clouds.

The world was dying. And an executioner had to save it.