Entry 76, The return home

Dear Diary,
 
Morning came far too early, dragging behind it a sense of unease I couldn’t quite shake. While we gathered for breakfast—hoping for a quiet moment before our return to Keralon—the gods of absurdity had other plans.
 
First, a strange male elf came strolling out of Gael’s room, looking entirely too pleased with himself for someone who had just been tangled up in fey enchantment the night before. And then there was Luke—my ever-dramatic brother—who sauntered in with Lumiria at his side and a smirk that all but screamed, guess what I did last night.
 
He didn’t even pretend to be subtle.
 
“I asked her to come with us to Wolf’s Rest,” he said, like it was no big deal. “She agreed.”
 
Just like that. No warning. No strategy. No concern for the tidal wave of political fallout we were surely inviting.
 
I stared at him in disbelief. “Oh, dear brother. Another crush destined to end in ruin?”
 
He just shrugged, like heartbreak was a price he was always willing to pay.
 
Apparently, Lumiria is a political prisoner here in Neverhold. But if she’s free to leave and cuddle up with strange knights, then the term seems... loosely applied. I don’t know what game she’s playing—or if she even sees it as a game—but I know enough to be suspicious of any fey who smiles that much without blinking.
 
And yes, I’m furious. At her. At Luke. At Ulther, most of all. The fey continue to twist our will, treat our choices like little amusements at the edge of their plate. What they did to Luke and Gael—whisking them away with magic and illusion—is just another in a long list of violations.
 
So yes, it’s funny. But it also makes my blood boil.
 
The others felt it too. As we talked, tension crackled. Some of us questioned the wisdom of taunting King Ulther so soon after offering our very public apology. I mean, what’s the point of making peace if we’re just going to insult him again by stealing away one of his so-called “guests”?
 
But Luke, in his usual flair, waved it all off.
 
“Consequences be damned,” he said.
 
I smirked. “Can I have that carved on your tombstone?”
 
Still, I agreed. I do agree. We’ve bent our necks enough for the fickle whims of fey kings. No more.
 
With the decision made, Liliana slipped away to find Lady Vivienne and ask her for a portal home. She returned shortly after, saying Vivienne would meet us in the castle’s income hall. I was relieved—truly. This place, beautiful as it was, had left a bitter taste in my mouth. I was ready to go.
 
But not before I had a word with Lumiria.
 
I pulled her aside, keeping my voice low and even. “If you hurt Luke, I will hurt you. That’s not a threat. That’s a fact.”
 
She blinked once, then smiled. “I would never hurt him. I’m sure you and I will be the best of friends.”
 
When she stepped in to hug me, I stepped back so fast my boot scraped the stone. Let her hug air. I am not her friend. And I will not let her soft-spoken charm wrap itself around me like ivy seeking cracks in stone.
 
She smiled again, but I saw the flicker in her eyes.
 
Maybe she’s dangerous. Maybe she’s just a girl caught in the tangle of faerie politics. But either way, I won’t trust her until I have reason to. And even then... probably not.
 
When Liliana returned with word that everything was arranged, I was ready to leave. All of us were, I think. But just as we were gathering our things, Gael insisted we formally say goodbye to King Ulther—out of courtesy, or some vague sense of diplomacy. Honestly, I doubted the king would care, but fine. Let’s try manners for once.
 
Predictably, Ulther was unavailable. Of course. Likely sulking somewhere, polishing his ego. Instead, we found Davozan.
 
He greeted us warmly, and despite the grim setting of our meeting, there was something comforting in his presence. Strange how quickly I’d come to trust him. I consider him close to a friend now—perhaps one of the few good things to come out of Neverhold.
 
He offered to open a portal for us himself, but as we’d already made arrangements through Vivienne, we thanked him and said our farewells. I meant what I said to him the night before—he is always welcome in Wolf’s Rest. I hope he remembers that.
 
Of course, we couldn’t just walk out of the palace with a fey noble in tow without raising some eyebrows. So, to avoid the inevitable questions from the guards, Luke turned Lumiria into a pink cat—yes, pink—and carried her like some pampered kitten in his arms all the way to the income hall.
 
It was as ridiculous as it sounds, and yet... strangely effective.
 
Vivienne met us there, and true to her word, opened a gate just outside Keralon, near our keep. Liliana hugged her before we left—an awkward moment, clearly not something Vivienne is used to, but she didn’t pull away. I think, in her own quiet way, she appreciated it.
 
Then we stepped through the gate and into the rain.
 
Gods, the rain. Cold, wet, real. I smiled as it soaked through my clothes and into my bones. After all the glimmering illusions and suffocating magic of the Feywild, this was a relief—a baptism back into reality.
 
The path to the keep was short, and before we even reached the gates, Dynia came bounding out. She practically threw herself into Gael’s arms. I rolled my eyes. “Just kiss already,” I muttered.
 
Both of them turned the color of fresh apples, but to their credit, Dynia took Gael’s hand and didn’t let go.
 
That small moment of amusement died quickly.
 
Another figure emerged from the keep—a young woman in a fine blue dress, with long dark hair and a smile that felt too familiar. Luke froze, then quietly said her name: Anna.
 
It took me a second to place her. The girl from Rosebloom. Gods, had it really been nearly six years?
 
She approached and handed Luke a letter—from her grandfather Hector. Apparently, Luke had been sending her books all these years, and now she was ready to apprentice with a wizard. Naturally, Luke agreed on the spot.
And naturally, Lumiria didn’t like that.
 
Still in her cat form, she suddenly lashed out—scratching Luke across the arm. A petty, jealous move, and a painful one. He winced and staggered back.
 
I didn’t hesitate.
 
My magic reacted before my thoughts did—surging out in a focused wave of psychic energy. It struck Lumiria hard, tearing through the illusion and knocking her clean out of her feline form. She hit the ground with a grunt, fey once more and stunned.
I stepped between them.
 
“I warned you,” I said coldly, my voice low and steady. “You hurt my brother, I hurt you.”
 
Let that be the end of it. Or the beginning. That’s her choice.
 
While Luke tried—and failed—to juggle his two new love interests without causing a diplomatic incident, the rest of us turned our attention to matters of actual importance. Word had reached the keep in our absence: the temple had sent messages, specifically for Alistan, urging him to return as soon as possible. What was odd—conspicuously so—was the silence from Elsa. Not a single word. No letter. No mention. Just a blank space where her voice should have been. It left a knot in my gut that no amount of rationalizing could untangle.
 
After settling in, washing off the stink of the Feywild, and ensuring everyone had at least one meal that didn’t sparkle or sing, we set off for Keralon. Our destination: the temple, and Elsa… and Rachnar, of course.
The city had changed.
 
I noticed it as soon as the walls of Keralon crept into view. Nature had gone a little wild while we were away. Trees curled up over ramparts, their roots breaking through stone as if reclaiming lost ground. Vines wrapped around the buildings like living sentinels, thicker and greener than I remembered. There was an eerie beauty to it all, but also something else—a sense of nature taking back what civilization had borrowed.
 
We went straight to the temple, where Father Tolan met us at the gates, looking as though he’d aged ten years in our absence. His shoulders sagged with relief when he saw us. Apparently, Galienne’s condition hadn’t changed—not worse, but certainly not better.
 
Then came the news.
 
All the parties we’d asked to investigate the Challenge of the Final Tournament had finally made progress. And that progress was… unsettling, to put it mildly.
 
It turns out the first king of Keralon, that noble founder and shining beacon of righteousness, had struck three separate bargains: one with a fey, one with a fiend, and one with the undead. All for power. For prosperity. For the good of his people, of course. The cost? His soul—and not just his. The souls of his entire lineage. Signed away three times over like some drunken noble pawning the same heirloom to three different collectors.
 
What kind of man thinks he has the right to sell the souls of his descendants?
 
But since he'd made deals with all three—without bothering to tell them about each other—there was no clear winner. So upon his death, the three entities created the Challenge of the Final Tournament: a brutal contest of champions, where the victor would claim the king’s soul… and, presumably, the rest of his cursed bloodline as well.
 
We had believed the king must still be alive, since the tournament hadn’t taken place yet. We were wrong. But I’ll get to that.
 
Father Tolan shared what else he’d learned. The Green Knight, the fey’s champion, is named Akhar and makes his home in Fellburrow. The Red Knight, the fiend’s contender, dwells in Red Hill Manor—his name remains a mystery. The Black Knight, champion of undeath, lurks in Zwartkeep. Each is gathering strength, feeding off the curse, growing into the most powerful version of themselves they can become.
 
This isn’t just some ancient ritual. It’s an arms race. And the prize isn’t gold or land.
 
It’s souls.
 
When we asked Father Tolan about the tomb of the first king, he gave us a tired sigh and a vague gesture toward the unknown. No one knew exactly where it was—because of course they didn’t. But they had narrowed it down, at least. The entrance, supposedly, lay somewhere within the Mausoleum of the Gods. A fitting place, I suppose, for a king who thought himself divine enough to gamble with the souls of generations.
 
There were other bits of news as well—less ancient, but no less troubling.
 
A necromancer named Mortimer had taken up residence at the Academy. According to Father Tolan, he might know something about the curse plaguing the kingdom. Naturally, Tolan didn’t trust him—“necromancer” tends to have that effect on the faithful—but desperate times, as they say. And frankly, I’d trust a corpse-raiser over another lying noble at this point.
 
As if that weren’t enough, a swarm of rats had begun plaguing the city. Not metaphorical ones—though I’m sure the palace halls still wriggled with those too—but actual rats. Real, gnawing, disease-bearing vermin. There’d also been a spike in petty thefts. Taken alone, they might be nuisances. Together? They spelled rot. Something festering beneath the surface of Keralon, waiting to burst.
 
But none of that compared to the final piece of news.
 
Sir Donovan was dead.
In his sleep, they said. Peaceful. Serene. Too convenient.
It reeked of foul play.
 
So I reached out to Spade, God of Death. Magic laced with quiet reverence, questions formed in my mind, cold and careful. And Spade—always blunt, never cruel—confirmed what I already knew in my gut. Sir Donovan had been assassinated.
By the secret council of nobles.
 
Their fear of change, of us, had finally pushed them to murder. Cowards hiding behind silk masks and silver goblets, striking from the shadows. If they thought that would slow us down, they’d sorely miscalculated.
 
We made our way to the palace to report in. There we met Donovan’s replacement—Sir Thalian. Young. Polished. Not the kind to lead a charge into battle, but by the gods, his paperwork must be immaculate. He wasn’t a warrior, but he was an administrator, and frankly that’s what the kingdom needed. Swords might win wars, but pens ruled empires.
 
He offered Alistan a post, clearly hoping to snag another competent mind for the court. Alistan, of course, refused. That man would sooner wrestle a dragon than sit behind a desk. Sensible, really.
 
Thalian also extended an invitation to dinner at his estate, though I politely deferred until the following night. We had just returned from the Feywild, after all—I still smelled faintly of starlight and stress.
 
Then came the topic of Elsa.
 
When we asked after her, Thalian smiled—that soft, secretive kind of smile that tells you more than it should—and led us through the palace corridors to her office. And that’s when things got interesting.
He didn’t knock.
He just walked right in, and what we saw next was something straight out of a badly written romance scroll. Elsa greeted him with a look that was unmistakable—warmth, longing, something deeper. For a moment, the world shrank to just the two of them. Lovers, or nearly so. The air between them practically crackled.
She barely noticed us at first.
 
When she did, she straightened so fast it was almost comical. For a heartbeat, I caught a flicker of something else in her eyes—something cold. Not anger. Not irritation.
 
Fear.
 
What, I wonder, was she afraid we might learn?
 
We didn’t press her—not then. Elsa launched into the tale of her past few months, her voice carefully composed, too smooth, like she’d rehearsed it all in front of a mirror. She spoke of how she’d met Thalian, how quickly things had blossomed between them. Love, she said, real and true. They were engaged now.
 
Thalian’s family, it turns out, are rich new nobility. Up-jumped merchants turned lords, which makes sense—coin is the fastest path to power in this broken system. They’d paid off Elsa’s debt in full. That alone should’ve sounded alarms, but what really caught my attention was the timing.
 
The day their engagement was announced… was the same day Sir Donovan died in his sleep.
 
Right.
 
Because that’s a total coincidence.
 
I didn’t say anything—yet—but my mind was racing. This wasn’t just love. It was politics. And someone had killed Donovan to clear the path for whatever game Thalian’s family was playing.
 
When our turn came, we shared a summary of our own recent adventures. Naturally, I left out the bloodier bits. And when I casually mentioned that Luke had brought back a new girlfriend from the Feywild, I saw something flicker across Elsa’s face.
 
Disappointment. Followed, almost instantly, by relief.
 
Interesting.
 
It told me more than any words ever could. She still cared for him—perhaps more than she wanted to admit. But some part of her was also glad to be free of whatever mess his heart would’ve dragged her into.
 
We didn’t linger much longer. There would be time to recount everything properly at dinner the next night, and besides, I had no interest in watching her pretend she wasn’t breaking a little inside.
 
As we were leaving, Thalian touched my arm—barely a graze—and leaned in close. His voice was quiet, but sharp.
 
“I’ve heard… troubling things about your brother. At the academy. They say he’s dangerous. Unstable.”
 
The words slipped out like a threat dressed as concern.
 
I gave him a polite nod. Thanked him for the warning. But inside, I was already weighing his words.
 
Luke, dangerous? Certainly. But only to those who deserved it.
 
And if the academy—or anyone else—was plotting something against him, they’d learn very quickly just how dangerous the rest of us could be too.
 
Let them scheme.
 
We’d survived the Feywild.
We could handle whatever came next.