Lord of the realm

Chapter 239: A New Era

The moment the final seal locked into place around Jaenor, something fundamental broke.

The sky cracked.

Not metaphorically.

The actual sky, fractured like glass struck by a hammer. Spiderwebbing lines of darkness spread across the heavens, visible from every continent, every ocean, and every corner of Evanisckar.

The cracks pulsed with colors that shouldn’t exist and leaked energies that made reality itself feel unstable.

In Frostvale, people stumbled from their homes, staring upward in terror as the sky literally fell apart above them. Children screamed. Adults prayed to gods who were too busy dealing with the crisis to answer.

Baren and others who were leaving looked towards the place where Jaenor was fighting, or where they thought he was still fighting.

In the Imperial Capital, Empress Beatrice II watched from her palace windows as the phenomenon spread. Her advisors panicked, shouting theories and contingencies, but she remained silent.

Wondering what they’d done.

Princess Gwendolen stood beside her mother, her sharp mind already calculating implications.

"The sovereigns, they shouldn’t have come," she said quietly.

"They had to come."

Beatrice replied, her voice heavy. "We’ve made a terrible mistake. All of us."

The cracks continued spreading.

Thunder rolled across the heavens, not from storms but from the sky itself protesting its fracture. Lightning that wasn’t quite lightning arced between the cracks, and where it struck the ground, strange things happened.

Animals, birds, and all the wildlife scattered as if they were scared by something or someone.

Wild beasts roared in the far, deep forests.

The disruption continued for nearly two hours. The longest two hours anyone alive had ever experienced. Time itself seemed unstable, making minutes feel like days, making perception unreliable.

People huddled in whatever shelter they could find, convinced the world was ending, that this was the apocalypse given form.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.

The cracks didn’t heal, exactly. They simply ceased spreading. The pulsing energies calmed. The thunder faded to silence.

The impossible lightning dissipated.

The sky remained fractured but stable. Broken, but no longer breaking further.

A terrible silence fell across the entire realm. Not peaceful silence, but the silence of shock, of trauma, of everyone simultaneously holding their breath waiting to see if the crisis would resume.

It didn’t.

Gradually, hesitantly, life resumed. People emerged from the shelter.

Assessed damage.

Tried to understand what had just happened and why.

But answers were scarce.

The Sovereigns, if they knew, weren’t sharing. The Covens issued statements about cosmic disruptions and natural readjustments. The Empire claimed it was under control, that their experts were managing the situation.

None of it felt true.

Everyone knew something catastrophic had occurred.

Something that changed the fundamental nature of their reality.

But without clear information, all they could do was adapt.

The world returned to normal.

*

Back in Frostvale, Baren’s dragon form descended into the village square just as the sky cracks were stabilizing. His passengers, Rena, Taeryn, Darian, and the unconscious Raelana, dismounted with relief at being on solid ground again.

The villagers immediately surrounded them, questions erupting from dozens of mouths simultaneously.

"What happened?"

"Are we safe?"

"What was that in the sky?"

"Where’s Jaenor?"

That last question came from Rosaine, who pushed through the crowd with the desperate strength of someone who’d been waiting in terror for hours. She grabbed Rena’s shoulders, her eyes searching the younger woman’s face.

"Where is he? Where’s my son? Why didn’t he come back with you?"

Rena’s expression crumbled. She opened her mouth to respond, but no words came. How could she explain what had happened? How could she tell this woman that they left Jaenor?

"He’s still fighting," Baren said, his voice carefully controlled.

He’d reverted to human form, and his face showed the exhaustion of someone who’d pushed his dragon transformation to its limits.

"Against the gods and the daemon goddess. He told us to go back, said he’d join us when it was finished."

It wasn’t exactly a lie.

Jaenor had told them to leave. Had promised he’d find them again. The fact that he might not be able to keep that promise wasn’t something they knew.

"When will he return?" Rosaine asked, her voice cracking.

"How long?"

"We don’t know," Rena said quietly, finding her voice.

"But he will come back. He promised. And Jaenor always keeps his promises."

Rosaine stared at them both, reading the things they weren’t saying, the fear and uncertainty behind their words.

But she chose to believe.

Choose to hope.

Because the alternative, accepting that her son might be gone forever, was unbearable.

"Then I’ll wait," she said simply.

"However long it takes. I’ll wait for him."

All of them waited all day, hoping he would come back.

And just like that, a day passed.

The next day, Baren flew back to the battlefield site alone. He needed to see for himself, needed to confirm what had happened, and needed some kind of closure or understanding.

What he found was devastation.

The forest was gone, completely.

Where there had been ancient trees and living ecosystems, now there was only scorched earth and broken stone. The battle between gods had left nothing alive, nothing intact.

And cutting through the center of it all was the scar.

The massive cleave that Jaenor’s deflected attack had carved into the ground. It stretched for miles, a perfectly straight canyon that disappeared into darkness so deep that even Baren’s enhanced dragon vision couldn’t perceive the bottom.

He landed at the edge, transformed to human form, and stared into that abyss. Somewhere down there, sealed beneath miles of rock and divine power, was the boy he grew up with.

Watched helplessly as he didn’t know what had happened here.

Baren remained at the edge for nearly an hour, silent, processing.

Then he flew back to Frostvale, his heart heavy with truths he couldn’t share.

When he told them what he’d found—the ruins, the scar, the emptiness where a battle had occurred—they absorbed the information with varying degrees of acceptance.

Rosaine nodded slowly, her expression distant.

"He’s alive. I know he is. A mother knows these things. He’s just... delayed. He’ll come home when he can."

Rena said nothing, but her eyes were red from crying she’d done in private. She knew better than the others what had likely happened. Had seen the gods surrounding Jaenor and had witnessed the beginning of whatever they’d done to him.

Taeryn tried to maintain optimism.

"He’s fought his way out of impossible situations before. He’ll do it again. We just have to be patient."

Darian was the most pragmatic. "If he can return, he will. If he can’t, then we honor his memory by living well. By protecting the things he cared about. That’s all we can do."

They agreed, implicitly, to wait.

To hope.

To believe that somehow, someday, Jaenor would find his way back to them.

Rosaine was having a hard time controlling her tears, but she stayed strong, praying that her son would come back to her.

Days passed.

Then weeks.

*

The world transformed in Jaenor’s absence, though few connected the changes to his sealing.

The Coven Council moved swiftly to consolidate power.

Wendelina disappeared from the council and the covens. Nobody but the few upper echelons was aware of her disappearance.

The battle with demons was over, and the legions retreated right after that day. No one knew what exactly happened that day, but the realm was free from the demons once again.

The covens worked as usual.

Inga was elevated in her place.

At twenty years old, she became the youngest Mother Supreme in the Covens’ thousand-year history. Young, powerful, and wielding artifacts of tremendous capability, she represented a new direction for the organization.

Her first act was to secure those artifacts. The crown and sword from Ki’thara village were placed in the Silver Spire’s deepest vault, guarded by the council’s most trusted members, warded with protections that would take divine intervention to breach.

They’d seen what happened when such power fell into the wrong hands.

They wouldn’t make that mistake again.

The Empire reorganized as well.

Empress Beatrice II, shaken by how close they’d come to catastrophe, implemented reforms that strengthened cooperation between imperial authority and the Covens.

Princess Gwendolen was given unprecedented power to coordinate responses to future crises.

Princess Baelyna, always ambitious, found herself sidelined as her sister’s influence grew.

The political maneuvering intensified, but it was all underneath the surface, hidden from public view.

And the public?

The common people of Evanisckar?

They knew something had happened.

But without clear information, without leaders willing to explain, they created their own narratives. Some said it was divine judgment for humanity’s sins. Others claimed it was a natural phenomenon, unprecedented but manageable. Still others whispered about a great battle between gods and a mysterious warrior, though those stories were dismissed as fantasy.

The name Arkwright faded from common knowledge. Jaenor’s actions, his battles, his very existence—all of it was suppressed by those with power.

The Coven council didn’t want people to know what happened on that day.

The Empire didn’t want people knowing they’d participated in sealing someone who’d fought to protect others. The Sovereigns certainly didn’t want mortals questioning divine judgment.

So the story was buried.

Erased from everything except the memories of those who’d witnessed it directly.

*

Years passed.

In Frostvale, Rosaine maintained her vigil.

Every day, she would walk to the edge of the village and stare in the direction where the battle had occurred.

Waiting.

Hoping to see her son’s figure approaching from a distance.

She ate less. Slept less. Her health declined as concern consumed her, and hope deferred made her physically ill.

The other villagers tried to help, tried to convince her to let go, to accept that Jaenor might not return.

But she refused.

Couldn’t accept.

Wouldn’t accept.

Ten years after the sealing, Rosaine made a journey. She was frail now, aged beyond her years by stress and grief, but she was determined. She traveled to the battlefield site, to the massive scar that still marked the landscape.

She wanted to be close to him, be in the place where he was last seen.

Rosaine was sitting at the very edge of the abyss, her legs dangling into darkness, her face peaceful.

She’d stopped eating entirely by then. Had been fading for days, her body giving out under the weight of prolonged grief.

As the sun rose the next day, Rosaine closed her eyes for the last time. Her breathing slowed and then stopped. And her body, light as a feather from months of not eating properly, tipped forward.

She fell into the crack.

Into the darkness.

Down toward where her son lay sealed, though she’d never reach him. Her body would disappear into the depths, swallowed by the earth, joining the countless other things that had been lost to that divine wound.

The woman who’d helped raise Jaenor, who’d loved him, who’d believed in him when few others would, was gone.

And the world moved on, indifferent to one more death among millions.

*

Frostvale had changed.

Grown, actually.

What had been a small, isolated village was now a proper town.

New buildings.

More people.

Trade routes that connected them to larger settlements.

And leading them all was Chief Rena.

She’d never married. Had received proposals—she was still beautiful, still capable, still young enough to bear children. But she’d refused them all. Her heart belonged to someone who might never return, and she wouldn’t settle for less than what she’d felt for him.

At forty years old, she was respected, even loved, by her people. Fair in her judgments. Strong in crisis. Wise beyond her years.

But in private, alone in her quarters, she would sometimes take out a small wooden carving. A figure of a boy with six wings, carved by Taeryn years ago as a way to remember their friend.

She’d stare at it, running her fingers over the worn wood, and wonder.

Wonder if he was alive. Wonder if he was aware. Wonder if he ever thought about them.

Where was he, or what was he doing now?

Baren had three children now. Two sons and a daughter. His wife, Ryanna, was a good mother, patient with his occasional melancholy, and understanding when he’d disappear for hours to stare at the horizon.

He’d named his eldest son Jaenor.

A small rebellion, a quiet way of keeping his friend’s memory alive despite the world’s attempt to erase it. When people asked about the unusual name, he’d claim it was from an old family tradition.

Only those who knew understood the truth.

Taeryn had married a merchant’s daughter and had two children, both girls, both spirited and strong like their father. He’d settled into comfortable domesticity, though he still trained regularly and still maintained his combat skills.

Just in case.

Just in case Jaenor returned and needed help with whatever came next.

Darian remained unmarried, dedicated to his role as the village’s primary guard. He’d trained dozens of younger fighters over the years, passing on techniques he’d learned from his time traveling with Jaenor.

He never forgot where those techniques came from. Never forgot the boy who’d shown him what real courage looked like.

The four of them—Rena, Baren, Taeryn, and Darian—would meet sometimes. Usually on the anniversary of the day Jaenor had told them to leave, the day they’d last seen him free.

They’d share drinks.

Tell stories.

Remember.

Keep his memory alive in a world that had forgotten him.

"Do you think he knows?" Rena asked one such night, wine making her more melancholy than usual.

"Do you think, wherever he is, he knows we’re still waiting? Still hoping?"

"I think he knows we tried," Baren said quietly.

"That we’d have saved him if we could. That matters, even if we failed."

"We didn’t fail," Taeryn insisted, though his voice lacked its usual confidence.

"He’s not dead. Just... he’ll come back. Somehow. Someday."

"Twenty years," Darian observed.

"Twenty years. The world still feels wrong in ways I can’t articulate."

They clinked their cups together, a toast to absent friends and desperate hope.

And somewhere, miles beneath the ground, wrapped in divine seals and daemon power, surrounded by stone aged through millennia and space folded outside normal reality, Jaenor Arkwright sealed.

The world had moved on, thinking the problem solved, the threat contained.