The betrayal within the Alaric's council
The wind had turned cold again, the kind of wind that howled through bone and memory. The towers of Ironfang were wet with fog, stone slick and silvered by the approaching moonrise. In the heart of the keep, firelight flickered in long, quiet corridors, where voices had grown hushed over the last few days. Something was wrong. Not in the way of enemies at the gates, but in the more insidious fashion—the kind that sat across from you at the table and smiled with a familiar face.
Alaric stood alone at the central war table. The ironwood map stretched before him, not in carved representations of land but as a living topography—layers of spell-glass and elemental sigils projected territories, ley lines, scout activity, and glowing signs of instability. Every time he moved a piece, adjusted a beacon, or etched a new mark of danger, something changed before it should have. It was as though the shadows moved faster than they ought to.
He didn't want to say the word yet. Not even to himself.
Traitor.
The moment you thought it, you gave it form. And the moment it had form, trust began to crack. So he waited. Watched. Listened. But after the seventh misstep in eight days—after another scout was found with his throat slit and a Hollow Pact rune etched into the stone beneath his blood—Alaric knew waiting would not protect them anymore.
He called the Sentinels at dusk, under the long ring of bells that once sounded only for war. The sound echoed like thunder through the Hollow. The council chamber was cold when they arrived—Kael in his storm-gray armor, always first to step in when blood was expected; Lira with her knives hidden and her gaze sharper than all of them; Nyra, cloaked in nightspun velvet, ever watchful; Mira, eyes shadowed from too much time in the dreamscape; Thorne, silent and golden-eyed, still bearing frost on his furs from the northern patrols. And finally Verik, quiet as ever, leaning against the far pillar, watching.
Alaric stood at the center of the room, his cloak drawn back, arms folded behind his back. "We are bleeding," he said, his voice calm, too calm, like the quiet before a river flood. "And not from outside."
Eyes shifted. No one spoke.
"Routes burned. Allies ambushed. Rituals compromised. The Hollow Pact is not winning by strength. They are winning by foresight. They know what we do before we do it. And that only means one thing."
The silence turned heavy.
"A spy," Kael growled. "Among us."
Lira's hand went to her blade hilt, not in threat, but out of instinct.
"We can't know," Nyra said cautiously. "We can suspect. We can guess. But if we begin casting stones without proof, we burn everything we've built."
"I agree," Alaric replied. "Which is why I'm not asking for suspicion. I'm asking for truth."
He reached forward and placed a blood-carved totem on the table. Small. Ancient. Reverberating with power. Mira's breath caught. Lira took a half-step forward.
"The Rite of Reflection?" Mira asked quietly.
Alaric gave a single nod.
The Rite was forbidden during times of conflict for good reason. It wasn't just dangerous. It was invasive. Every council member who agreed to it would allow their surface thoughts—fears, regrets, truths—to rise to a shared mindspace for all to witness. It was a crucible of transparency. And it destroyed as often as it revealed.
"No secrets," Alaric said. "No lies. Just the truth. Or we lose everything."
Lira's gaze met his. "Then let's see who bleeds truth and who bleeds shadow."
The circle was drawn in old ash and memory-ink. The chamber dimmed until the firelight pulsed in time with the spell. Mira moved around them slowly, drawing a rune on each council member's palm, each stroke sending a cold shiver up their spine. She whispered the old tongue—not words, but concepts: vulnerability, clarity, communion. As her voice deepened, the sigils on the ground lit one by one.
When the last rune was completed, the air shimmered, and the room folded inward.
It began softly. Memories rising like steam. Kael, standing over the body of a fallen friend, too slow to save him. Nyra, clutching a child's hand in the ruins of a burning village, face streaked with ash. Mira, alone in a circle of glyphs, whispering names of those she couldn't reach in dreams. Lira, a blade pressed to her own neck years ago, eyes filled with tears she never let fall. Thorne, burying his sister in frost-covered earth with no one to mourn but the wind.
And Alaric. Seeing himself die. Seeing the rebirth. The monstrous form. The guilt of survival. The terror of not being good enough to deserve the second chance.
None of them spoke.
Then the ripple hit. Dark. Wrong.
A presence that slithered instead of flowed.
Alaric felt it the same moment the others did. Not just pain, but deception with purpose. A memory wrapped in illusions. And at its center, Verik. His mind fought against the spell reflexively, casting up barriers, illusions, false grief. But it was too late. The Rite was not gentle. It was not merciful. And it peeled back his soul like a knife through flesh.
Screams erupted—not from him, but from Mira, the one anchoring the spell. Her eyes glowed black, her voice turned jagged. She gasped. "It's him."
The spell shattered. Verik screamed and bolted.
Kael surged after him in wolf form, claws raking stone as he pursued the traitor down the corridor. Alaric moved slower, not because he doubted the outcome, but because he needed a moment to calm the storm in his chest. Verik's betrayal had not been simple. It was deliberate, calculated over months.
Kael caught him before the northern hall. He didn't strike—only held him there, pinned, breathing heavily.
They brought Verik back in chains. His face was drawn, but his eyes—his eyes were calm.
"You saw what I let you see," he said, voice ragged. "I didn't fail. I completed what I came for."
Alaric stood in front of him.
"You were one of the first I trusted," he said, softly. "You were at my side when we took back the Stone Circle. Why?"
Verik's lip twitched. A flicker of sorrow.
"Because I loved you," he whispered. "And I love what you represent. But I don't believe in it. Peace doesn't come for people like us. We are forged for war. You forget that, and you doom us all."
He lifted his chin.
"The Hollow Pact offers truth, Alaric. They know what we really are."
"They know what they made us," Alaric answered coldly. "But they do not know what we can choose to become."
Verik laughed bitterly and bit down on something in his cheek. Poison took him before anyone could react. He slumped, dead in his chains.
Lira stepped forward, placing a hand on Alaric's shoulder.
"We found one," she said.
Alaric nodded once.
"And now we find the rest. No more shadows. No more doubts."
He turned to the others.
"We burn out the rot, even if it means burning through stone. The Hollow Pact lives inside lies. Let us become their truth."
And somewhere in the corridors of Ironfang, other eyes watched. Other hearts trembled. The traitor had been unmasked, but what he had whispered—about truth, about peace, about the nature of war—had planted seeds.
And the next chapter of Alaric's journey would not be one of easy victories.
It would be a war not just against darkness—but against the very idea of destiny itself.