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The Ashes of Oakhaven: Rise of the Sunbound Heir / Chapter 7 / 10

Chapter 7 - The Siege of the Lower District

The cobblestones of Oakhaven’s Lower District were slick with soot and ash. The Inquisitor, Malakor—a sadistic zealot with skin scarred by self-flagellation and eyes burning with fanatical devotion to King Vane—had marched a battalion of heavily armed templars straight into the district’s central courtyard.

At the center of the courtyard stood the humble wooden orphanage where Lyra and Joran lived. Its front doors had been splintered into matchwood.

Malakor stood in the doorway, holding a heavy iron chain, while two terrified nuns were forced to their knees in the mud. Lyra and Joran were cornered against the stone wall of the courtyard, holding hands tightly, shivering in the freezing night air.

"Where is the traitor's spawn?" Malakor snarled, pressing the flat of his hot branding iron against the cheek of the older nun, who gasped in suppressed pain. "Tell me where he hid the boy!"

"We don't know anything! Please, leave the children alone!" the nun cried out.

Malakor sneered, raising his heavy iron gauntlet to strike Lyra. "Insolent wretch. You harbor monsters, you share their fate."

"STOP!"

The voice did not come from the street. It crashed down from the heavens like a bolt of divine lightning.

Before Malakor’s fist could connect, a deafening explosion shattered the cobblestones five paces away from him. A crater of white-hot fire erupted, throwing the front rank of templars backward into burning heaps.

The sky above darkened as the massive silhouette of the wyvern blocked out the stars. Kaelen dropped from the beast’s back before it even touched the ground, landing squarely between the Inquisitor and the children.

The ground around Kaelen radiated a searing, golden aura that melted the snow and dried the mud in a ten-foot radius. His eyes were twin suns of absolute wrath.

"Malakor," Kaelen whispered, his voice vibrating with lethal calmness. "You picked the wrong day to touch my people."

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Malakor’s face twisted in fanatic rage. He drew a massive, jagged greatsword etched with anti-magic runes. "Foul demon! I am the hand of the righteous! I will send your soul back to the abyss!"

The Inquisitor charged, swinging his rune-carved blade with monstrous strength, aiming to cleave Kaelen in two.

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Chapter 8 - The Fall of the Inquisitor
Chapter 9 - The Siege of the Obsidian Throne
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