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His flaws? Asad still didn’t understand. This was all too much. Far, far too much. He wanted to sleep. Or was he already sleeping? Was that not what was meant by resting?

Agh. He’d never felt so tired.

“Oh no. I fear I am failing to restore your strength and instead merely sapping it away. Damn my weakness. Even now, my failures continue to grow.”

Huh?

“This cannot happen. I will not allow it. Come along, Young Lion. You are not ready for where I am about to take you, but I do not see a better option. Clearly, you cannot stay with me, nor can I return you in your current state.”

Ugh, so many new questions were bubbling rebelliously into his exhausted mind. They were going somewhere new? Why? In fact, where were they now? What was wrong with this place?

“We will go to a place that I have found along the path of my great search. I do not know if things will be better or worse for you there, but I promise that I will do my utmost to protect you.”

Protect? From...? Hmm...

The voice sighed. “Alas, our ever-beleaguered kin. I fear you must abide these trials for some time yet.”

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The blazing heat of the Undercrust was unfamiliar to him. He’d heard the stories from his cousins about this place, but actually being here for the first time was something else.

If only it had been under better circumstances.

He’d always intended to visit this place eventually, but never had he thought that the first time would be as a result of fleeing for his life.

From the mayhem at the Golden Fort.

Even now, all these weeks later, he still couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. Tensions had been building between Sair and Calthos for a while, but it had been so slow. Nothing ever really happened. At least, that was what it had felt like. It was just something that all the adults had been talking about ad nauseum, an ever-present fear that he and the other young Sandlords had grown accustomed to.

Grown to ignore, perhaps.

And then everything went to hell.

The seat of his people’s power, the Golden Fortress of Kuros, came under attack by the forces of Calthos and Abolish. By the fabled Mad Demon himself.

In his entire life, Taj Dagher had never been so terrified as he had on that day.