The stench of coppery blood hung heavy in the alley behind the Citadel’s infirmary. Rushed boots and cruel laughter had drawn Miyara to the spot. She found him slumped against a stained stone wall in the deepening twilight, dark liquid soaking through his coarse tunic. Tiraz. His usually gentle face was ashen, slick with sweat, and a shallow, rattling gasp escaped his lips. “Fool,” she breathed, her voice raw with a fury that surprised even herself. How could he be so reckless? So utterly, impossibly like *him*? She knelt, her fingers fumbling at his neck for a pulse, a fierce protectiveness seizing her. It fluttered thin against her palm, fragile but present. Zandir’s scum would have left him to bleed out, a lesson for anyone who dared cross the ‘Chosen One.’ But Miyara had learned long ago that the most dangerous battles weren’t fought with spears, but in the shadows. This was no place for a proper healing ritual. The Citadel had forgotten places, hidden veins beneath its gilded skin, and she knew one that would serve. Gathering his limp frame, Miyara hauled his arm over her shoulder. He weighed startlingly little, yet dead weight tested her balance as she hauled him down through service tunnels and abandoned supply vaults. The soft scuff of his worn boots against the dust-laden flagstones was the only sound. She took shelter in a disused vaulted cell beneath the old armory, past an iron grate eaten through by corrosion. A single, half-burned lumen-stick provided meager light. She lowered Tiraz onto a pile of canvas scraps, his head lolling to the side, his breathing still shallow, each exhalation a struggle. Fingers accustomed to spear-ash shook against the leather ties of her satchel as she pulled out ground nylos-root and a glass phial of balm. She had found these after… after Roshir. They were for her own wounds, but he needed them more. Dark moisture continued to pool across his sternum. The glass-spike must have gone deep. “Why, you idiot…” she murmured, tearing at his tunic. The fabric was soaked, adhering to his skin. As she ripped it away, exposing his chest, she saw it. Not just the fresh, ragged wound where the glass had pierced him, but something else. Something beneath the blood and bruising, etched into his skin, a ghost of a scar she knew intimately. Over his heart, pale and distinct, sat the raised imprint of a fractured star, formed from interlocking ridges no weapon could leave. It was the mark of a soul-binding, the unique sigil Roshir had borne, a mark of his family’s ancient vow, one that no one else in the world possessed. Miyara dropped the opened pouch, spilling pale nylos powder across the floorstones. Memory threw her straight to the day the Glass-Rift shattered the southern sands outside Oraz six years back. She had been an unblooded recruit with an ash pole, rooted in panic while a jagged shard-golem sprang. Roshir, then a young Sword-Captain, had shoved her aside, taking the monster’s claw to his side, a reckless sacrifice that had saved her life. He had bled, just like this, his unique mark a stark contrast to the crimson blossoming around it. “Roshir…” The name slipped out thin, sharp with dread. The star-mark on Tiraz’s chest seemed to pulse in the dim light, mocking her certainty, her grief. Tiraz stirred, a soft groan escaping him. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused at first, then slowly settling on her face. A weak, gentle smile touched his lips, despite the pain contorting his features. “Miyara?” His voice was a raspy murmur. She stared down at the bared mark. The posture, the reckless kindness, the way he moved… and now, this. This undeniable, unmistakable scar. “That mark…” Her voice was thick, trembling. “Where did you… how did you get that?” She pointed a shaking finger at his chest. “That’s… that’s Roshir’s family sigil. How can you have it? You’re just a decoy, you were born to—” He coughed, a wet, rattling sound, and a fresh trickle of blood escaped the corner of his mouth. “My family… it’s a birthmark, Miyara,” he managed, his smile unwavering, despite the obvious agony. “A rather… unfortunate one, wouldn’t you say? Always makes me feel like I’m walking around with a target on my chest.” His eyes held a knowing glint, a challenge hidden beneath the feigned ignorance. Her hand hovered over the scar, her fingertips aching to trace its familiar contours. He couldn’t be. It was madness. Roshir was dead. She had seen the reports, mourned him for years. Yet, the way he looked at her, the warmth in his eyes, the almost impudent calm… “No,” she insisted, her voice gaining strength, conviction. “Don’t lie to me. I know that mark. I know that smile. Roshir, you can’t… tell me, is it you? How are you…?” “It’s just Tiraz, Miyara,” he said softly, his gaze steady, almost pleading. “A humble decoy, as you said. Perhaps I just remind you of your friend, hmm? It’s a common enough occurrence, I’m told. A trick of the light, a lingering grief…” He winced as she pressed a poultice to his wound, his eyes shutting briefly, but the smile never left his face. He was denying it, but the denial itself felt like a confirmation. “Don’t you dare patronize me,” she hissed, stepping closer. “That mark, it’s not a trick of the light. And your kindness, your sheer idiocy, throwing yourself in front of danger like a… like a true…” She stopped, leaving his name hanging between them. “Roshir, you cannot keep lying. This is too important. If you’re truly…” A sudden, metallic clang from the grate above shattered the fragile moment. A tremor ran through the stone. “They’ve found us,” Miyara breathed, her hand instinctively flying to the hilt of her spear. A dark shadow fell across the entry point, followed by the soft whir of a thrown projectile. A needle-thin dart, tipped with shimmering glass-dust, arced through the dim light. It struck Miyara in the neck before she could even turn. Her muscles seized. A cold, burning sensation spread rapidly, numbing her limbs, freezing her in place. Her spear clattered to the floor, her vision blurring at the edges. She tried to cry out, but only a strangled gurgle escaped her throat. Her body sagged, her eyes still fixed on the man on the floor, who now slowly, painfully, pushed himself up. Tiraz, still bleeding, still pale, reached for her fallen spear. As his fingers closed around the polished shaft, the gentle smile that had been his constant shield vanished, replaced by an arctic glare, ancient and deadly. His stance shifted, not into any form a buffer would know, but into the fluid, chaotic, utterly unique sword-stance of the Whispering Blade—a technique only Roshir, the lost Swordmaster of the Xanaji, had ever mastered.

Scars of the Past