The Tyrant’s Resurgence

The shadows of the city stretched long in the fading light. Zareth moved through them, his mind sharper than ever. He had always been a warlord, a force of sheer power—but power alone had failed him in the last encounter.

For the first time since his return, he had been forced into retreat.

Not because he lacked strength, but because he had been outmaneuvered.

The Dominion had not simply thrown soldiers at him. The vice leader had predicted his movements, closing escape routes before Zareth even realized they were compromised. It hadn't been brute force—it had been calculated restraint.

Zareth had thought himself the hunter. Instead, he had been baited into a cage.

That would not happen again.

He crouched in the shadows, his thoughts unraveling the last encounter. How had the vice leader tracked him so well?

He replayed it in his mind—the way forces had been positioned, the subtle ways they had funneled him toward dead ends. It had been too precise for mere luck.

A realization settled over him like ice:

The vice leader was not simply tracking him. He was predicting him.

Anticipating. Calculating.

Zareth exhaled slowly. That meant there was a pattern the Dominion was following. A framework built around what they believed he would do next.

And therein lay the mistake.

They believed they were hunting Zareth Valgarde, the warlord of old—the conqueror, the brute force of nature.

But that man was gone.

Zareth had been stripped of his armies, his empire, his dominion over the battlefield. And in that loss, he had gained something his past self had never truly needed.

Adaptability.

A predator did not hunt with brute force alone. A predator learned.

And now, so would he.

Zareth did not flee.

Instead, he began to watch.

The Dominion's forces moved with precision, their patrols sweeping through the city, tightening the noose with every passing hour. They were confident. Too confident.

He followed their movements, staying just out of sight. He listened to their conversations, piecing together how information flowed through their ranks.

What he discovered was critical:

The vice leader was not omniscient. He relied on a system.

Information took time to reach him. Orders took time to be carried out. The Dominion's movements were fast, but not instantaneous.

And that meant there were gaps—windows of vulnerability, where the Dominion's coordination lagged behind reality.

Zareth exploited the first of these gaps with ruthless efficiency.

He chose his target: a lower-ranked Inquisitor, not some nameless soldier, but someone important enough to have knowledge of the vice leader's methods.

The ambush was swift, executed in silence. A shadow in the alley, a flicker of motion, and the Inquisitor was yanked into the darkness.

Aether flared for an instant—then sputtered out as Zareth's hand closed around the man's throat, cutting off his ability to gather strength.

No drawn-out torture. No wasted words.

Just a simple demand.

"How does your master hunt?"

The Inquisitor spat blood, defiant—until Zareth's grip tightened, his fingers digging into flesh with an unspoken promise:

Speak, or you will not speak again.

The words came in gasping breaths. The vice leader expects desperation. He believes Zareth will make reckless moves to escape.

That was all Zareth needed to know.

He did not kill the man. He left him alive, unconscious, slumped in the darkness where no one would find him until it was too late.

By then, the game would have already changed.

Zareth's first real counterattack was not a direct battle.

It was psychological warfare.

The Dominion's confidence was built on certainty—the belief that they had control, that they knew where Zareth was heading, that they understood him.

So he shattered that belief.

He tracked one of the Dominion's informants—a civilian who had been feeding them information about the city's layout.

Killing them outright would have been too obvious.

Instead, Zareth made it an accident.

A subtle push at the wrong moment, a carefully positioned tripwire in the dark. A death that looked like misfortune, not assassination.

By the time the Dominion realized what had happened, one of their own intelligence lines had gone dark—and they didn't even know if Zareth was responsible.

Zareth fed them false information.

A planted clue. A whispered rumor that reached the right ears.

The vice leader took the bait.

For the first time, Zareth saw the Dominion make an incorrect move—sending forces to the wrong location.

It wasn't a complete victory. Not yet. But it was a crack in the vice leader's control.

A single crack was all Zareth needed.

The vice leader stood over a table littered with reports, his fingers drumming against the wood.

Something had changed.

The hunt had been proceeding perfectly. The net had been closing. Every step Zareth took had been anticipated.

Until now.

An informant dead. A false lead followed. A delay where there should have been certainty.

He was not shaken.

But he was noticing.

Zareth was adjusting.

This was no longer a warrior blindly trying to escape.

This was a tactician. A predator shifting its approach.

For the first time, the vice leader wondered—had he miscalculated..?