Chapter 3
Under the Bridge
Lindrao, 879 (Eighteen years ago)
Underneath the towering bulk of the bridge, where the sky was almost entirely swallowed by iron girders and rusted pipes, was a small cantina—a hidden gem in the shadows of a city that forgot it long ago. The cantina huddled against the stone support pillars, barely more than a shack with peeling paint and a crooked sign, its name half-obscured by grime and rust. The entrance was narrow, just wide enough for a man to slip inside unnoticed, the door creaking on rusted hinges.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of stale ale and cheap tobacco. The dull glow of yellow algae-lights cast their weary light over the worn wood—none of it touched Matthias as he made his way inside.
His mind was on Kyra, as it always was when he came here. She was standing behind the bar, as she always did, wiping down the counters with slow, deliberate strokes. The Cantina’s rough edges seemed to fade when she was there. She had a way of making the place feel almost welcoming.
She didn’t look up when he entered, but he knew she’d felt his presence. Kyra had a way of sensing things—quiet things that didn’t need words. That’s what he loved about her. He didn’t need to say anything, and yet, tonight, there was so much to say, and the weight of it sat heavy in his chest.
The patrons of the cantina were a mix of the forgotten and the desperate—locals from the lower districts, scavengers with pockets full of scrap. They sat in small, hushed groups, their conversations drowned out by the occasional groan of the bridge overhead as another heavy load rolled across. Now and then, the place rattled, dust shaking loose from the ceiling as the bridge above groans and shudders, but no one looks up. They’re used to it by now.
In the corner, an old jukebox, long past its prime, sputtered to life with a crackle, its tinny music barely audible. It’s a forgotten relic, like everything else in the cantina—patched together with spare parts and held together by stubbornness as much as by screws and bolts.
Matthias was tall for his age, broad-shouldered, with the beginnings of a man’s strength but still carrying the uncertainty of youth in his eyes. There was something restless about him, as if he were always leaning toward the future, aching for something just out of reach. He wanted more—more than this small world beneath the bridge, more than the familiar streets of the market where he had spent his life, more than what his hands could hold in the present moment.
Kyra was wiping the same spot on the bar over and over again, her face turned slightly away, her dark hair catching the light in strands that fell loose from the tie at the back of her neck. He loved those strands—how they framed her face, how they gave her that unpolished beauty that set her apart from the others.
“Kyra,” he said softly.
Her hand stilled, but she didn’t look up right away. For a long moment, the world seemed to hang in the balance between them. The silence stretched, and Matthias felt his throat tighten, a lump of words stuck there, unwilling to come out. He should have told her sooner, should have found a better way to say it. But there was no good way to say something like this.
At last, Kyra raised her eyes to meet his, and in them he saw everything he feared—hurt, disbelief, the faint glimmer of betrayal. She already knows. He could see it in the way she stood, her shoulders tense, her fingers gripping the rag a little too tightly.
“I’ve enlisted,” he said, the words sounding hollow, like they didn’t belong to him. “In the Lindroa army.”
“Why?” The word was simple, but it carried a thousand other questions she wasn’t asking.
Matthias opened his mouth to answer, but the words tangled in his throat. He could tell her that it was for them, for the future he wanted to build, for the life he dreamed of giving her—a life far from the cantina, far from the cracked streets of the undercity.
But the truth was larger than that. The truth was that he was scared. Scared of being ordinary. Scared of staying in the same place for the rest of his life, watching the days bleed into each other like shadows on the walls. Scared that without this, without the army, he’d never be enough. For her, or for himself.
“I want to make things better,” he said, the words rushing out. “For us. For you.”
“You think joining the army is going to fix things?” she asked, her voice sharper now, each word like a needle piercing. “Is this what you really want, Matthias? To go off and fight their war, to leave everything behind for—what?”
Kyra shook her head, stepping closer to him, her eyes searching his face for something—maybe for the boy she had known before the world had gotten its hands on him, before the dreams of Fatebonds and glory had settled into his bones like a sickness. “You think this will make you better? That it will make you worth more than you are right now? They don’t care about us, Matthias.”
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She was talking about the people who lived in the city. Up on top of the cliff. The people that cared nothing for the scavengers who scraped out a living below the bridge.
“The Verdant are winning,” Matthias said. He was getting irritated, irritated that she couldn’t see that he was doing all of this for her. “What happens when they come here? They will burn through the undercity. I have to help.”
“Let them die,” she said through gritted teeth. The pleading in her eyes took him aback.
Matthias swallowed hard, his hands flexing at his sides. He wanted to reach out to her, to pull her close and hold her until the world made sense again. But he couldn’t. He was too far gone now, too deep into this dream he had built for himself—a dream of becoming something bigger, something better.
And for the briefest moment, standing there with her so close and yet so far, he realised that maybe the thing he was chasing was an illusion. Maybe what he really needed was already standing in front of him.
“I have to go, Kyra,” he said, though the words tasted bitter in his mouth. “I have to try.”
She looked at him then, really looked at him, her eyes filled with something he couldn’t name. It wasn’t anger, or even sadness. It was something deeper. A kind of sorrow that came from understanding the inevitable. She reached out, her fingers brushing against his for just a moment, and in that touch, he felt everything they could have been, everything they might have lost already.
“Don’t expect me to wait forever,” she said, sharply pulling her hand back.
She had waited.
“I’ll come back,” he promised, though he’d only brought more pain home with him.
Kyra stepped back, turning away from him, her hands returning to the bar, wiping down the same spot she had been wiping before, as if nothing had changed. But everything had changed.
Matthias stood there for a moment longer, watching her, wanting to say more but knowing it wouldn’t matter. The choice had been made. The path had been set. And now, all he could do was walk it.
He stepped out of the cantina and into the street, the warmth of the setting sun brushing against his skin. The golden light poured over the undercity, turning everything— even the cracked, tired streets—into something almost beautiful.
Above him, the underside of the great bridge gleamed, its iron girders catching the light in a way that made them seem alive, like the veins of some vast, slumbering creature.
The bridge was a massive expanse of steel and stone, stretched across the enormous gorge, connecting two halves of a world he would never truly belong to. On either side, cliffs bare red rock rose high and unforgiving. The people who lived here, beneath the bridge, were the forgotten ones—the ones who were simply too poor to rise above, to live in the city that loomed like a dream overhead.
Matthias had always known this place. He had grown up here, in the shadow of the gorge, in a world where the sun burned too hot and the rain never came. His parents had told him stories, though. Stories of a time when this vast, empty gorge had been filled with water—when a great river had carved its way through the land, bringing life and abundance to everything it touched. But that was a long time ago, before the earth had begun to wither, before the rivers had run dry, leaving behind only dust and memories.
The land was dying.
Everyone knew it. You could see it in the way the trees twisted, their branches crooked and brittle, their roots stretching deep into the earth, searching for water that no longer existed. You could see it in the dust that clung to everything, in the way the sky seemed too pale, too thin, as if it were a canvas stretched too tightly over a world that could no longer breathe.
People blamed the Verdant for what was happening. It was easier that way, to pin the blame on the invaders from another world, to make them the cause of all the suffering, all the loss.
The Verdant had come with their strange ships, their alien ways, and suddenly the world had started to die. The seas, once vast and full of life, began to still, shrinking until they were little more than memories of the water that had once kissed the shore.
The sandstorms, relentless and unforgiving, came more often, their winds carrying not just dust but the screams of a dying land. And the heat—gods, the heat—it rose each year, burning the earth, scorching the sky until it seemed the world itself was trying to burn away what little life remained.
Matthias believed it too, like everyone else.
The Verdant were to blame. How could they not be? They were outsiders, invaders, with powers they didn’t understand. It made sense, didn’t it? The invaders were the ones draining the planet dry, sucking the life from the very bones of the earth?
He was young then, barely old enough to be called a man, still full of the kind of certainty that only youth can carry. In his mind, the world was simple, and the enemy was clear. The Verdant had to be the reason for all of it—for the empty rivers, for the cracked soil, for the way life seemed to be fading away, day by day.
But he had been wrong. They had all been wrong.
Young Matthias had believed that it was his destiny to restore the world. He carried that belief with him like a talisman, something he could clutch tightly in the darkest moments that lay before him. There was a fire in him then, a burning conviction that he would be Chosen—not just by circumstance, but by the Archons themselves. Gifted great power, with a great purpose.
A Fatebond.
In those dreams, he saw himself standing tall, driving back the armies of the Verdant to where they came. To be the one to heal the land, to reverse the dying of the rivers and the withering of the trees, to breathe life back into the bones of a world that had grown too tired to sustain itself.
It was a beautiful dream. But it was just that—a dream, spun from the arrogance of his youth, from the belief that the universe owed him something more. The truth, though, was far more complicated, far more cruel.
Matthias, in his youthful hope, had not yet understood that destiny was not something given, but something taken, and the price for such power was often far greater than anyone could imagine.