Chapter 64: Embers Beneath the Ashes

The bells echoed across Faulmont Province like they were tolling for more than just one man. The sound was empty and regal all at once — sharp iron mourning shaped into ritual. Black banners hung from every balcony. Streets were silent. Even the air seemed to carry the heaviness of a legacy too vast to fit into a coffin.


I stood in shadow beneath a marble arch, half cloaked by its cold grace, my hands tucked behind my back. In the distance, Vareon Faulmont's body was being lowered with the kind of reverence given only to the powerful or truly feared. I wondered which camp he belonged to. Perhaps both.


My family stood ahead, a monolith of quiet authority.


Alaric, unmoving, his jaw set in that carved stone way he reserved for battlefields or council halls.
Mother — Selene — was composed, but I knew that stiffness meant emotion she wouldn't display publicly.
Zephyrin and Veyron kept their distance from the whispers, each too respected or feared to invite casual conversation.
Morgana? As usual, unreadable, her eyes sharper than any sword, watching everyone as if already cataloging possible threats.
And Slyvie — silent in her black uniform, a step behind Mother — played the perfect maid. Yet I knew she wasn’t focused on flowers or tapestries. She watched the gathering like I did: with purpose.


Around us, the nobility gathered under the veneer of mourning. But their eyes were calculating. This wasn’t grief. This was observation. Positioning.


One by one, I noted the arrivals. Some familiar. Some dangerous.


Marquis Verrian, the Emerald Hawk of the Eastern Shield — disciplined, always marching three steps behind the king’s politics.
House Talbrecht— barons of Ironwood Vale. Grim-faced. Survivors. The kind that scowled through blizzards and coups alike.
Lady Elentha of Drachmere, young but radiant with soft sorcery — one who smiles while measuring your weak points.


And more. So many more.


Lords. Ladies. Mercenary nobles. Sleeping tigers awakened by the rumble of a missing pillar.


They all looked at Vareon's absence like it was a throne-shaped puzzle.


Not who could honor him — but who could replace him.


They said Faulmont’s stewards were competent. That was a lie.


Not because they lacked skill — but because they lacked certainty. In a land used to being ruled by one of the most manipulative minds in the empire, quick silence and swift commands were now replaced with hesitation, layers of approval, and second-guessing.


Everyone waited. But for what?


Behind closed doors, the vultures preened.


> “He was one of the Empire’s sharpest minds,” someone whispered behind a column, “And now we bury that with no answers?”
> “He wasn’t just killed,” another said. “He vanished in fire. No wounds. Just… erased.”


Rumors fanned like wildfire. Once again, the name returned like a ghost in the corners of conversation:


The Eclipse Order.


People didn’t say it loud, the way they once feared magic-infested cults or heretical archmages. This was subtler.


This was belief.


And yet… no one had answers. Only silence. Whispers of masked figures. Movements in Thalosridge. A funeral wrapped in smoke and questions.


And while the court murmured and the nobles postured, I remained where I was.


Watching.


It happened at twilight.


The air settled into that quiet before dusk when the world seems to momentarily hold its breath. Then came the soft grind of carriage wheels on stone — not ornate, not showy like the arrivals of every other noble. Just a single black coach, drawn by silence more than horses.


Every noble turned. A ripple passed like a null spell through the crowd.


From the shadows of the carriage emerged a child. Small, perhaps six or seven. Too young to stand where he stood.


Darein Faulmont.
Vareon’s son. His heir.


I had heard of him. Word painted him as bright, cheerful — always running from lesson to lesson, chasing birds, asking foolish questions only children dare voice.


But the boy who stepped out now?


He was still. Too still. Haunted, like he had been aged under unimaginable weight.


He walked to the grave in slow, careful steps. Nobles stepped back to let him pass — unsure if it was duty or discomfort that pushed their feet.


Even I took a half-step forward from the shadowed arch, less out of ceremony… and more out of instinct.


He stopped at the grave for a long while, staring. Then, in the softest voice — one I shouldn’t have heard from this distance, but did somehow — he whispered:


“You always said to be wary of the shadows.”
“I understand now. And I’ll find them, father.”


He didn’t flinch. Not even when the wind picked up and tugged at the corners of his black coat.


And I realized — I wasn’t watching a child grieve.


I was watching something coalesce. Something that had shed innocence like an old skin.


Later, I would hear the murmurs from the manor’s servants:


“He used to race down the hallways chasing butterflies... now he just sits by the windows staring at the sky like it’s whispering to him.”
“He asked for the casualty reports from Thalosridge, if you can believe it. The map. Mana traces. Said he wanted to know what kind of spell sigils were registered.”


One steward, shaking his head over wine, muttered:
> “He’s only six… but it’s like something broke, and what’s left… is sharper.”


I could understand that.


Not because I pitied the boy — but because I’d seen that same reshaping in myself. That edge that grief carves. I’d felt the same hollow when Lyra’s final fire flickered out in my arms.


Grief doesn't simply take things from you. It makes space.


And if you have enough clarity — if you’re dangerous enough to use it — it turns that space into something... else.


At one point, Darein turned away from the chapel. He looked up, gaze vacant yet piercing.


And across the yard of stone and roses and veils of mourning, his eyes brushed mine.


It wasn’t recognition.


It wasn’t even curiosity.


But it was connection. For the smallest second, just enough for a tether of understanding to form.


> *So grief does carve something out of a person,* I thought.
> *And when the wrong piece is taken… what’s left becomes something else entirely.*


They buried one of the Empire’s greatest manipulators that day.


But they didn’t bury his legacy.


Because in the shadow of his tomb, something new had stirred — not soft or gentle or weeping.


It had wide eyes, a child’s face...


And teeth that hadn’t grown in yet.


And as I turned away, beneath the clouds of Faulmont and the masks of noble mourning, I realized something else:


> The world took one child’s joy…
> …and left behind something far more dangerous.




To be continued