The bloodied sand reeked of death. Kael wiped his blade against his torn cloak, his breath ragged. The sorcerer still stood, robes billowing, dark energy curling from his fingers. <\/p>\n
Kael lunged. Shadows lashed out, cold as the grave. He twisted, barely avoiding their grasp, and rolled to his feet. His arm ached from a gash, but he charged again. <\/p>\n
The sorcerer raised his staff. Kael kicked the corpse of a fallen mercenary into him. It bought him a second\u2014just enough. His sword sliced through the air, severing the sorcerer\u2019s arm. The man screamed, staggering. <\/p>\n
Kael didn\u2019t hesitate. He drove his sword into the sorcerer\u2019s chest. The magic flared, then died. <\/p>\n
Breathing hard, he stumbled back. Behind him, the cave\u2019s treasure glimmered\u2014ancient gold, cursed tomes. He stared at the staff beside the dead sorcerer. Power crackled in it. <\/p>\n
He should destroy it. <\/p>\n
Instead, he reached down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He won the battle\u2014but lost to temptation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction"],"_wp_attached_file":null,"_wp_attachment_metadata":null,"_thumbnail_id":"1072","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storyisinfinite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}