He turned slowly, and she gasped slightly. He looked at her with such disgust. And there was something harder, colder, aged beyond his apparent years.

"There," he said flatly.

"You're seeing my face. What do you want, Grace?"

"I want—" she started, then stopped, her carefully prepared words failing her.

"I want to go home. I want to see Lukas. I want my life back. Please, son—Jorghan—please let me go home."

"No."

The word fell like a stone into still water, creating ripples of despair across her expression.

"Why?" Her voice cracked, tears beginning to stream down her face.

"Why are you doing this? Haven't you punished me enough? I've spent days in this alien world, surrounded by people I can't understand, eating food I don't recognize, terrified every moment that something is going to kill me. What more do you want from me?"

"I want you to understand," Jorghan said, his voice still flat, emotionless.

"I want you to feel what I felt. The confusion, the betrayal, the absolute helplessness of having everything ripped away by someone you trusted completely."

Grace sank back onto the bench, her legs giving out.

"I do understand. God, Jorghan, I understand. I've had days to think about nothing except what I did to you, how I justified it, and how I convinced myself it was necessary.

And I was wrong. I was so wrong."

"Words," Jorghan said dismissively.

"You're good with words, Grace. You always were. You can cry on command, make yourself seem vulnerable, and say exactly what someone needs to hear to get what you want.

But words don't mean anything without action."

"Then tell me what actions you want!" Grace's voice rose, desperation bleeding into anger.

"Tell me what I need to do to earn my freedom, to go back to my son, to have any kind of life again!"

Jorghan moved away from the window, walking slowly around the room's perimeter, never taking his eyes off her.

"You want to know what I want? I want the eighteen years you stole from me. I want the life I should have lived, the future that was taken, the chance to grow up without being murdered by my own mother. Can you give me that?"

"No," Grace whispered.

"No, I can't. No one can."

"Exactly," Jorghan said.

"So we're at an impasse. You can't give me what I actually want, and I'm not interested in anything less."

Grace was quiet for a long moment, her mind visibly working through options, through possibilities, through ways to reach the young man who'd once loved her unconditionally.

When she spoke again, her voice was softer and more calculated.

"You said you want me to understand what you felt. But keeping me prisoner here—that's not the same as what happened to you. You're not making me feel what you felt. You're just... keeping me away from people I love, the same way your father kept me prisoner in that mansion."

Jorghan's expression flickered with something that might have been anger.

"Don't compare me to him."

"Why not?" Grace pressed, sensing an opening.

"You're using the same tactics. Control through isolation. Punishment through deprivation. Making someone completely dependent on your mercy. How is what you're doing any different from what Marcus did to me?"

"Because you earned this," Jorghan shot back, his voice rising.

"You murdered your own child. You don't get to play victim and draw parallels to actual abuse."

"I'm not playing victim!" Grace stood again, moving closer despite the danger signals in his body language.

"I'm trying to make you see that what you're doing isn't justice—it's revenge. And revenge won't make you feel better. It won't bring your previous life back. It won't heal what was broken."

"Maybe not," Jorghan admitted.

"But at least it makes you face consequences. At least it ensures you don't just go back to your comfortable life and forget what you did."

Grace stopped a few feet away from him, close enough now that she could see the fine details of his expression and could read the conflict beneath the hardness.

"I could never forget. Even before you came back, even when I thought you were gone forever, I carried the guilt every single day. I still do. And I'll carry it for the rest of my life, whether you keep me here or let me go."

"Guilt isn't enough," Jorghan said quietly.

"Feeling bad about what you did doesn't make it right."

"Then what would make it right?" Grace asked, genuine desperation in her voice.

"Tell me. Please. What do you need from me to feel like justice has been served?"

Jorghan turned away again, staring at the wall. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and when he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.

They stood facing each other, the space between them charged with eighteen years of grief, guilt, anger, and broken love.

Grace wiped at her tears with shaking hands. "What do you want from me, Jorghan? Really. Strip away the anger and the hurt and the desire for revenge—what do you actually want?"

Jorghan was quiet for a long time, long enough that Grace started to think he wouldn't answer.

There was something in his mind that had popped ever since he saw her with his uncle. Maybe because of the world he was in or something else, but an idea flicked in his mind.

He didn't smile.

Didn't let the malice show on his face.

Instead, he uncrossed his arms and took a slow step forward, his voice low and steady.

"You've taken everything from me, Grace. My life back on earth. But now, I think it's time you gave something back. Something only you could provide."

Grace's eyes widened, confusion knitting her brow. "Jorghan, what do you—"

He held up a hand, silencing her. "Think about it."

Grace's fingers tightened around the edge of the bench, knuckles whitening.

"Jorghan, stop." Her voice cracked like thin ice.

"Whatever you're planning, say it plainly. I can make amends, not play riddles."

Jorghan's eyes narrowed as he looked at her.

"Amends?" A low, humorless laugh.

"You think words patch a throat you once held a knife to?"

"You want plain? Fine. You owe me a life. A whole one. And I intend to collect."

Grace stood, legs trembling.

"You're my son. Whatever darkness you're nursing, I can still—"

"Still what? Hug it away?"

He stepped closer, deliberate, until the toes of his shoes nearly touched her slippers.

"You replaced me right after you killed me. You slept with the one you conspired with."

Her breath hitched.

"He doesn't—"

Jorghan raised his hand, close to her neck.

Grace's hand flew to her throat. "You wouldn't."

"I haven't decided."

He leaned in, voice dropping to a murmur meant only for her.

"But I've pictured it. You are on your knees… More begging and more… intimate. A debt paid in the same currency you spent abandoning me."

She searched his face for the boy she'd once rocked to sleep. Found only a stranger wearing his skin.

"Jorghan, please. There are lines even vengeance shouldn't cross."

"Lines?" He smiled then—small, sharp, and terrible.

"You erased every line the night you chose Jamie's bed through my death. I'm only returning the favor."

He stepped back, the space between them suddenly vast again.

"Think about it, Mother. Think hard. When you figure out exactly what I'm asking for, you'll know where to find me."

The door clicked shut behind him.

Grace sank to the bench, the velvet cold against her palms, the echo of his footsteps counting down the seconds until her world cracked open.

Jorghan had the coldest plan to take his revenge on the people who took his life, and he wanted to make her and her family feel the humiliation.

He didn't think about what she was; it was just plain revenge for him.

-

The Sand Trenches

The deep trenches that cut through the Brownhill Dunes were nothing like the surface landscape. Where the dunes themselves were barren and windswept, the trenches were shadowed canyons carved by thousands of years of water erosion and wind. They were cool, relatively speaking, and alive in ways the surface wasn't. Ancient stones formed natural walls that rose fifty feet on either side, and the sand at the bottom was packed hard from centuries of moisture and mineral deposits.

Ski'ra led the group deeper into the trench system, his tall frame moving with practiced confidence despite his manalessness.

He didn't have the magical senses that most brown elves relied on to navigate dangerous territory, but he had something better—decades of quick perception. It had been a couple of days, and he was already the master of these trenches.

After losing his mana, he had become physically strong and adept.

"The deeper we go, the more active the beasts become," Sarhita said, her liquid gold eyes scanning the walls of the trench.

She was flanked by four members of the Nuwe'rak clan—warriors, by the look of them, though younger than Jorghan would have expected.

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