Ten Years of Silence

The first few weeks under the Treaty of Shared Sovereignty were a relentless cycle of cold, cramped survival. The Exiles had granted the Queen the minimal allowances stipulated by their honor: access to their small, primitive healer, fresh water delivered twice daily, and enough rations to sustain four adults and two children. Everything else was denied.
The High Cave remained their prison.
For Jerrick, the physical reality was agonizing. The Seal of Submission felt like a cuff of frozen metal perpetually clamped around his left forearm. It didn't just suppress the Elder God; it acted as a psychic dampener, creating a hollow, echoing silence in the place where his power had always hummed.
The loss was more than tactical; it was sensory. Jerrick had always felt the world through the Elder God's peripheral awareness—the minute drop in temperature signaling a hidden passage, the subtle spike in adrenaline indicating immediate danger. Now, he was blind. He had to rely solely on his eyes, his ears, and his decades of training, making every shift in the Exile guards' weight a conscious, agonizing calculation.

The Burden of Invisibility

The true psychological toll came from the way the Exiles now treated him. Jerrick had become, by design, invisible.
When Theron or Saga visited, their eyes passed right over him, lingering only on the Queen or occasionally shifting to Kael. Jerrick was merely the secured guarantee—the neutralized, shamed asset that made the Treaty possible. His silence, once a sign of controlled lethality, was now interpreted as defeat.
This invisibility was the Queen's shield, but it was a fire Jerrick had to endure. He had been the absolute center of her defense, and now his primary function was to sit still, appear harmless, and constantly monitor the failing integrity of his own control.
He spent hours every day in meditative stillness, not to cultivate strength, but to maintain the rigid internal architecture that kept the Elder God contained. With the Seal actively nullifying his power, Jerrick had to rely on sheer willpower to prevent the raw, destabilized energy from surging outward and either triggering the Red Protocol or exposing the Queen’s poisoned shackle.
He was exhausting himself holding back something that wasn't even there.

Kael's Silent Watch

Kael adapted quickly to his new role as the sole operational shield. He was functional, but haunted. His grief for Lyra was transmuted into a relentless, icy vigilance. Kael slept in short, aggressive bursts, always positioned between the children and the cave entrance.
He kept a physical distance from Jerrick, a difficult but necessary consequence of the Seal. Kael, as the last fully powered guard, needed to remain untainted by the dampening effect radiating from Jerrick's arm.
One evening, after the guards had changed shifts and the cave was at its stillest, Kael broke the silence, his voice barely a rasp.
“Captain,” Kael murmured. “I hear them talking, the new guards. They say the Seal will not just bind your power; they say it will cleanse it. That in ten years, you will be nothing more than a man with a good sword arm.”
Jerrick opened his eyes, feeling the cold weight of the Exile prediction. They believed the poisoned shackle was a cure.
“Let them believe it, Kael,” Jerrick replied, his voice rough from disuse. “The Seal dulls the senses, but it does not remove the training. A man with a good sword arm, ten years older, is still a Shadow Guard. And I still remember every weakness of Theron’s lineage.”
Jerrick knew, however, that the cleansing was the ultimate fear. The Elder God was his burden, but also his essence. If the Seal truly purged his power, he would be a guard with nothing left to guard.

The Anchor and the Cost

The only reprieve from the crushing isolation was the Queen. Whenever the guards allowed a momentary lapse in attention, she would reach out, her fingers finding his bound arm.
The contact wasn't magical; it was deeply human. It was a transfer of shared life and unrelenting determination.
"You are doing well, Jerrick," she whispered one night, her hand closing over the Seal. "The Council is entirely focused on the maps. They argue over which Shadow-Vein to mine first. They are trapped in their greed."
"They are safe for now," Jerrick agreed. "But ten years is a lifetime in the Wastes, my Queen. When we leave, Theron will demand the suppression rites. He will use them on his mages, and they will fail. The Exiles will understand the betrayal then."
The Queen pulled her hand away, resting it on his chest. "By then, it won't matter. The betrayal will mean war, but we will have had ten years to rebuild our scattered defenses. And you, Jerrick, will have had ten years to master the quiet control of your power, divorced from reliance on the Elder God's shield."
She had not just sacrificed his pride; she was forcing him into a rigorous, painful discipline. She was ensuring that when the Seal finally broke—whether by time or by force—Jerrick would emerge not as a volatile weapon, but as a master of both his magic and his mind.
But as Jerrick sat there, watching the lantern flicker, feeling the cold, persistent weight of the Seal, ten years felt like an impossible, frozen eternity—a price paid in slow, deliberate increments of his own soul.