Kaelor looks exactly like what Varkhazar worships.

Tall and severe. Built like a weapon rather than a man.

That was his father’s doing.

The king had raised him that way. No softness allowed. No mistakes tolerated. Kaelor learned that young.

He learned it the day his mother died.

A scandal, the kingdom called it.

An affair. Betrayal. Dishonor.

Kaelor remembered the truth of it better than anyone. His mother had simply grown tired. Tired of cold hands around her throat disguised as marriage. Tired of living like a prized possession instead of a woman. So she sought comfort elsewhere, and in Varkhazar, love outside a marriage was treated like treason.

The execution was public.

Varkhazar loved spectacles almost as much as it loved violence.

Thousands packed the arena that day. Kaelor still remembered the silence most clearly. Not grief. Not horror. Expectation. Like the crowd had gathered for theater.

He had stood beside his father the entire time.

When the moment came, Kaelor tried to look away. He’d been young enough to still believe children should be spared certain things. His father disagreed.

A hand had clamped around the back of his neck, fingers tight.

“Watch,” the king ordered.

So Kaelor watched.

Watched the blade fall. Watched his mother’s body hit the floor. Watched the crowd stare without flinching.

Afterward, his father had crouched beside him while servants cleaned blood from the arena stones.

“Remember this,” the king told him. “Love makes fools of rulers.”

Kaelor never forgot it.

Not because he stopped loving his mother. That would have been easier. No, the lesson rooted itself somewhere deeper. Love did not protect people. It did not save them. His mother had loved, and it killed her anyway.

So Kaelor adapted.

He trained until his muscles burned and then trained harder. He buried himself in discipline because it could not betray him. The army respected him. Soldiers followed him without hesitation. The kingdom looked at him and saw certainty carved into flesh.

That image mattered.

In Varkhazar, weakness spread like rot through wood. One crack and people started questioning everything.

Which was exactly why the Rover irritated him so badly.

When you arrived in Pyrothos, his people admired you too quickly. Trusted you too easily. And Kaelor hated how naturally you carried power without needing to force it.

Worse, he noticed you constantly.

He noticed when you entered a room before he even looked up. Noticed your voice cutting through council chambers. Noticed your laugh lingering in his head.

He tried to reason through it the way he approached everything else. Maybe it was respect. Strength recognized strength. Maybe it was because you spoke to him like he was a man instead of a title. Maybe it was because you never lowered your eyes around him, never softened yourself to make him comfortable.

Whatever it was, he despised it. The whole thing felt painfully cliché.

His father would have called it pathetic.

So Kaelor made a decision. You would leave Pyrothos.

Then came the council meeting. Another argument. Another hour spent with you challenging him in front of ministers. By the end of it, irritation sat under his skin like a splinter he couldn’t dig out.

He cornered you afterward on one of the palace balconies overlooking the molten rivers below. Lava glowed through the city, painting the night in deep orange light.

“You are becoming inconvenient,” he said bluntly.

Kaelor kept his eyes on the city below because looking at you for too long lately had become dangerous in ways battle never was. Battle he understood. This he did not.

“I have spent years removing weakness from myself.” His jaw tightened. “Yet somehow you keep finding ways to insert yourself into my thoughts.”

Gods, even admitting it irritated him.

The frustration in his voice was real. Not anger. Anger was easy for him.This felt different.

He finally looked at you then. Fully.

“You should leave Pyrothos soon, Rover.” His voice lowered. “Before I forget how to remain unaffected by you.”