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I don't let the relief show on my face. Not here. Not yet. But something settles in me, a tension I didn't realize I'd been carrying since the tower door finally opened.

I draw my hood back up before we step through the doorway. The air is warmer than the passageway behind us, carrying the scent of old stone, oil, sweat, and iron. Familiar … and not.

Beyond the door lies a chamber with stone walls and a low ceiling crossed by timber beams. Several oil lamps cast steady light across the space. An unexpected wave of familiarity washes over me.

This was once our central meeting room—part command, part sanctuary. The maps on the wall are marked in the system I designed, though the ink is faded, and some symbols altered. A large tableanchors the room. The chairs around it are mismatched, but the formation speaks of discipline. The opposite wall holds shelves of supplies—papers, weapons, and dried provisions.

Three people look up at once. Two men, and one woman. They wear the simple clothing of mountain traders, similar to Kelren, but there is nothing casual in their stance. Their hands immediately move toward weapons, and their eyes lock on us.

No one speaks.

I scan their faces. The oldest of them, a scarred man with silver-gray hair, stands partially behind the table. His expression is stone, his eyes sharp and focused. He may look older, but I know him. Even in silence. Even after all this time.

Varam Kellis. My second-in-command. My closest friend.

His face has new scars layered over the ones I remember, but his eyes are the same.

“Kelren?” It’s him who breaks the silence, moving around the table with the fluid motion of someone who never learned to rest. “Report? Who have you brought here?”

Kelren steps forward, his voice unsteady when he speaks. “Commander …” He shakes his head, as if to clear it, and points at me.

Varam’s gaze shifts. He scans me, seeing a hooded stranger in the heart of his sanctuary. His expression hardens further, his hand resting on the dagger tucked into his belt.

“Identify yourself.” The command carries the weight of habit, of exhaustion layered over authority, and of the expectation of being obeyed.

I reach for my hood and lower it slowly, letting the light touch my face.

The effect is immediate. The air in the room pulls tight. Varam doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. His body doesn’t react, but his mind does. It’s there in the dilation of his pupils, the way his breath stills.

His lips part. A word forms, then dies.

The woman’s cup drops to the table, the liquid spreading in a dark pool. Someone’s breath cuts off mid-draw. But I only watch Varam.

“Sacha?” He says it like it’s a word he never thought he’d say again.

My given name, not my title. The voice of my closest friend, not my second-in-command. In that single word lies years of grief, of orders issued without my counsel, of battlefields crossed alone.

“Varam.” I haven’t uttered his name in the entirety of my captivity. Saying it feels like laying down a weapon I forgot I carried.

He grips the edge of the table with both hands. His knuckles whiten. The wood creaks under his grip. He sways, his legs betraying him for just a moment.

“Impossible.” The word is hoarse. “What witchcraft is this?”

“No witchcraft.”

“I identified your body myself.” His voice breaks. “They paraded it through Ashenvale. I watched them burn it. There was no question. The ring on your finger. Your face.”

He believed he failed to save me. But now, faced with me whole and unchanged, something worse is filling his thoughts.The possibility that I was never dead at all … and he never came to find me.

“You didn’t know, Nul’shar.”My friend. My brother.“You thought I was dead.”

“They said you fell. They said you were overrun at Thornreave Pass. We tried to recover what we could …”

“They gave you a body.”

“They gave usgrief!” The word is sharp. He sucks in a breath through his nose, balancing himself. “And a funeral pyre. One we didn’t question.”

Silence falls between us.