Chapter 29: Blood Crown

When Ash stumbled back to camp, Mira and Haru were there.

They stared at him—bruised, bleeding, staggering—and then rushed to hold him up.

“You came back,” Mira whispered.

Ash chuckled weakly. “Didn’t have much choice. That thing almost sent me home in a box.”

But something had changed.

The villagers’ whispers. The knights’ fear. The slavers’ obsession.

His name was spreading. Not Ash. Not Kairo Hayes. Not even “slave.”

“The Scarlet Brand.”

He didn’t wear a crown. But in blood, he’d carved one for himself.

And now? Now the world couldn’t ignore him.