Two months.
That's all it had been.
Sixty days since the avalanche.
Since the fall of Dravarn.
Since the rogue princess took a crown,
and the nobility lost its teeth.
The soldiers called it peace.
The merchants called it opportunity.
The rest?
They just tried to keep breathing.
⸻
In the hills east of Veldenhar, an old blacksmith named Maric reopened his forge for the first time in a year.
He'd once crafted swords for Dravarn's envoys.
Then shields for Veldenhar's army.
Now?
Mostly hinges. Tools. Horseshoes.
"Steel's finally for building again," he told his apprentice.
He didn't care about cults or prophecies.
He cared about iron staying hot and bread staying cheap.
⸻
In the northern barracks, Lieutenant Estra taught new recruits how to stand without flinching.
Her rank had come after the war.
Her loyalty was to Queen Saela—because the Queen bled beside them.
Estra didn't know the palace politics.
Didn't want to.
She just knew they had new uniforms.
New orders.
And, for once, no fear of dying tomorrow.
⸻
In the markets, Bakir the fruit vendor raised prices shamelessly.
"No war, no excuses. You want good pears, you pay good coin."
He still kept a loaf of bread aside every morning for that quiet boy from the inn.
Said nothing when Aether handed him exact change and a thank-you.
"Strange kid. But he tips."
He never noticed the way the wind calmed around him.
⸻
In the palace halls, Queen Saela stopped writing speeches.
She wrote laws instead.
Practical ones.
Quiet ones.
Laws about rebuilding farms.
Reestablishing border towns.
Training war orphans in crafts instead of sending them to guard posts.
Some nobles objected.
They were ignored.
⸻
In the ruined temples of the east, the cult's ashes were swept up by orphans and priests alike.
No one asked what the symbols meant.
They just needed space.
And maybe somewhere dry to sleep.
⸻
As for Aether?
He did laundry.
Fed cats.
Fixed a broken chair leg for a woman with no coin and refused to take payment.
And when people passed him in the street?
They never looked twice.
Because in Veldenhar—
the boy from the inn was just that.
A boy from the inn.
*
The estate of House Vorentin no longer held its usual splendor.
No servants bustled.
No musicians played.
Just silence.
And oil lamps burning low like old regrets.
⸻
At the end of the west wing, behind a velvet curtain once imported from the southern isles, a door opened into a hidden room lined with maps, debts, and desperation.
There, Lady Imyre Vorentin, one of the last surviving members of her once-proud house, sat in silence across from two men who didn't belong.
Their accents were wrong.
Their robes foreign.
Their allegiance not to Veldenhar.
⸻
"You were once a Queenmaker," one said softly.
"I still can be," Imyre replied, sipping bitterwine.
"Then why are you drinking like the kingdom is already lost?"
"Because it was taken. By fire, steel, and a woman who doesn't need our permission."
A pause.
"But fire burns both ways."
⸻
They unrolled a map. One of border roads.
Routes that led through ravines.
Past old mercenary paths.
Places where foreign caravans could come… without being noticed by the crown.
"We can destabilize her grip," the second envoy said.
"Militia uprisings. Displaced lords. Trade interruptions."
"And in exchange?" Imyre asked.
"A seat at the new table," they said. "Once Veldenhar fractures."
⸻
She didn't speak for a long time.
Then she looked to a portrait—dust-covered, cracked.
Her father.
A man who once hosted five kings at one banquet.
And now she couldn't even fill a dining table with allies.
"You'll have your answer in three days."
The envoys bowed.
"For now," she added, "you'll stay hidden. If Saela finds you, you'll vanish."
They left without a word.
⸻
She turned back to the map.
Eyes narrowing.
"She took the crown," she whispered.
"Let's see if she can hold it… when the kingdom starts shaking from below."
⸻
Meanwhile, across the city…
Aether watched a pigeon land on his windowsill and fight a moth.
He looked utterly fascinated.
Not because it was meaningful.
Because it was peaceful.
And peace?
Rare.
*
The letter arrived folded three times.
No seal.
No signature.
Just a plain wax-smeared page slid beneath Saela's personal study door.
She read it once.
Then twice.
Then burned it.
⸻
Vorentin is planning.
Foreign hands guide them.
They mean to fracture you from within.
⸻
She didn't cry out.
She didn't summon her council.
She simply stood, walked to the window, and watched the street outside the palace.
Merchants yelling.
Children chasing dogs.
A world that did not know how close it sat to collapse.
⸻
She returned to her desk.
Drew out a map of the inner city.
And began marking names.
Not generals.
Not warriors.
Inns.
Taverns.
Scroll-keepers.
Stableboys.
Seamstresses.
Ex-thieves now living quietly under false names.
⸻
A spy network wasn't made of blades.
It was made of ears.
⸻
"Wake the black net," she told her steward.
"No uniforms. No orders.
Only quiet minds and patient hands."
"And if House Vorentin moves?" he asked.
She looked up.
Eyes like flint.
"Then we'll move before they finish their first breath."
⸻
Meanwhile, across the city…
At the Dustpetal Inn, Aether folded bedsheets in perfect quarters.
No wrinkles. No stray threads.
The innkeeper chuckled.
"You're the only boy I know who folds a sheet like it's being sent to royalty."
"It might be," Aether replied calmly.
Then he paused.
Tilted his head.
The wind brushed in from the south.
Colder than usual.
"It's going to be a tense winter," he murmured.
"What was that?"
"Nothing."
He tucked the final sheet onto the shelf and went back to boiling water for tea.
*
Rain glazed the rooftops of Veldenhar as quietly as a secret.
But below them—
nothing was still.
⸻
Saela's agents were in motion.
No uniforms. No heraldry.
Just scribes who carried too little parchment.
Stablehands who listened too well.
Merchants who overpaid for silence, then sold it higher.
And they watched the Vorentin estate.
Not the gates.
The messengers.
⸻
A woman in green velvet brought spices twice in one week—without stopping at the kitchens.
A man with no name left through the garden wall with foreign coin sewn into his hem.
A servant entered on foot and left on horseback.
All marked.
All noted.
⸻
By week's end, Saela had a list.
And it was growing.
⸻
She didn't strike.
Not yet.
She wanted it riper.
Because when power falls, she wants it to fall loudly.
⸻
Meanwhile, across the city…
Aether walked through the central market, fingers tucked into his sleeves, half-listening to a vendor explain why honey dates were better than truth.
"They never disappoint you," the man said.
"I think you're eating them wrong," Aether replied.
They both laughed.
And that's when he saw it:
A child, no older than eight, handing a strange bronze coin to a cloth vendor in exchange for a stitched scarf.
Old.
Tarnished.
Etched with a circle, a scale, and an eye above both.
His sigil.
Worn with age. But unmistakable.
⸻
He froze only for a breath.
Just enough to notice where it came from:
A traveling relic-peddler.
Cart marked with a chalk sign:
"Artifacts From the Southern Cradle. No Questions Asked."
⸻
He approached slowly.
The merchant grinned, missing three teeth.
"You look like a boy with an eye for old things."
"Where did you get the coins?"
"Burial sites outside Ralven Ridge. Got a few more, if you've got silver."
He pulled out a pouch.
More coins.
Some marked with unfamiliar runes.
Some… blank.
But four bore the exact same symbol.
One of them was broken clean in half.
⸻
Aether held it in his hand for a long time.
Then gave it back.
"Not today."
"You sure?"
"I've already seen what it buys."
⸻
He walked away.
Face unreadable.
Eyes unreadable.
But inside?
A memory stirred.
Not of this world.
Not of this version of time.
A battlefield. A judgment passed.
A coin dropped beside a god's dying breath.
And now?
It was in a child's pocket.
*
The man arrived in the city beneath a crimson-dyed canopy.
Covered cart.
Papers stamped with three different universities—
All forged.
He called himself Archivist Velrin.
Said he came to study war memorials.
But his questions didn't line up.
⸻
"Where was the avalanche's epicenter, precisely?"
"Have any shards been recovered with unusual etchings?"
"Has anyone reported dreams of fire and balance?"
He asked old farmers.
Tavern drunks.
Even a monk in the broken chapel near the east wall.
No one gave him answers.
Most waved him off as another southern scholar trying to turn Veldenhar's war into a thesis.
But one of Saela's shadow agents heard the name.
Saw the inquiries.
Reported it.
⸻
Saela read the report during a midnight candle session.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't speak.
She just underlined the name once.
"Velrin. Watching. Do not engage yet."
⸻
Elsewhere, in the market square, Aether saw him.
Didn't know the name.
Didn't care for the robes.
But the way the man stood?
Too carefully.
Like someone wearing skin instead of clothes.
And the mask—a subtle ceramic cheek plate, cracked across the side.
That crack.
That specific pattern.
Aether's breath caught for the briefest second.
⸻
Not because of fear.
Because of memory.
⸻
A battlefield.
Ten thousand dead.
Three gods bound in chains of sound and justice.
And one man.
A false priest with a cracked mask.
Who said:
"You cannot silence judgment if you do not speak its name."
And died before he could reveal who gave it to him.
⸻
Now—
That mask stood on a mortal again.
But the man behind it?
Was not the same.
⸻
Aether walked on.
Didn't pause.
Didn't speak.
But as he turned the corner, the wind bent around him.
And the masked man looked up sharply, eyes wide—
Like something had touched the edge of his mind.
⸻
He whispered,
"It's here."
*