I awoke to the rustle of the curtains, swaying in rhythm with the silent draft of night. My body felt the weight of exhaustion, yet it moved on instinct, trained into discipline by endless nights of servitude.
The luxurious mattress she had slept on nights ago in Elyrion's castle felt like a dream now, fading away with the dawn. My familiar bed of straw scratched at my arms as I sat up, drawing in the first breath of what would be another day in Dravenguard.
It had been two days since they returned from the grand ball. Whispers followed her like ghosts. Murmurs of her dance with the Crown Prince of Artherion haunted the halls like secrets left to ferment. Servant girls avoided her in envy. Servant boys tried to charm her in vain. Even some of the younger knights who had for long pretended not to know she existed now circled like moths to her blue-rose flame. They would walk too close, speak too sweetly, and gaze too long. Their eyes burning with desire for her.
One had tried to brush her arm with a touch he disguised as accidental. He caressed her and met her eyes with his, and for a moment, she said nothing. But the rose tucked between my ear and head pulsed faintly. The knight stumbled back, muttering apologies.
They dared not touch the blue rose.
It had its own weight. A daunting aura. Its own warning.
Princess Vaeloria's siblings were worse. They mocked her openly now, relishing in the chance to tear her dignity apart without cause. Their eyes narrowed at the sight of her rose, yet none dared try to pluck it.
Once, a prince, a guest, and he had once stepped close enough to sneer and whisper, "You carry yourself like a queen now. Don't forget your place, broom girl." When I didn't respond, he tried to snatch at the rose, his hand stopped inches from it, suspended by a presence he couldn't explain.
He didn't try again.
That night, my chores dragged on endlessly. Polishing boots, sweeping the stone corridors, preparing Vaeloria's nightly tea, airing her chamber with lavender incense. The quiet corridors were ghostly at night. My footsteps echoed like whispers of forgotten things.
I found myself near the scriptorium as midnight approached. There was a candle burning inside, a parchment spread across the table with dark ink staining its fibers. I ignored it. Curiosity had no place in my world.
The castle of Dravenguard was tall and proud, but behind its banners of honor lay things ancient and dark. That I knew surely.
Far beyond the reach of her thoughts, in a chamber not touched by moonlight nor time, the King of Dravenguard stood in silence.
King Ashkeroth's eyes were closed, yet his mind traveled further than stars. Before him, knelt cloaked figures. Seven in number. Their robes were woven in shadow and ash. In their center stood a man with no scent, no breath, and no heartbeat.
He was cloaked in quiet, his presence like the echo of a forgotten scream.
Saevan.
He had no title but many names. To some, he was the Tongue of Ashkeroth. To others, he was the compelling force. But to the King himself, he was the Ruach, a spirit, a breath, the extension of he and his son to unsearchable realms..
He did not speak unless commanded. When he did, his voice turned tides.
Ashkeroth opened his eyes.
"You've seen their land?"
Saevan didn't nod. He didn't need to. The air shifted subtly.
"Then you know what must be done."
"I do," Saevan replied, voice like velvet dragging across iron.
King Ashkeroth turned from him and paced to the obsidian mirror. It reflected nothing of this world.
"King Elyrion is adored by kings and revered by his people. The boy Lucien is worse, he is loved. Loved! We cannot war against him openly. Not yet."
Saevan inclined his head, still silent.
Ashkeroth continued. "We will drown them in their own pride. We will whisper when they expect screams. Their foundations will be dust long before our swords ever touch their walls."
A low chuckle spread like oil through the chamber.
Saevan finally spoke.
"It has already begun."
In Elyrion's castle, several days passed in normalcy.
Guards had began to misplace keys. Their fraustration affected others. They had servant boys punished for what they were responsible for.
The knights hungered for war. During their training and sparring matches they would go overboard. The urge to battle was evident and they felt like embarking on raids and looting riches and lands.
An elder began advising the king with a slightly different edge, urging preemptive defense, encouraging him to doubt his council, to reevaluate trust.
Saevan had always believed in a single truth: to rule a kingdom, you must first whisper into its bones.
And so he whispered.
Back in Dravenguard, Mirelleth continued her daily rhythm. But her mind was fractured. Her thoughts returned to the garden under Artherion's sky, to Lucien's steady voice asking her about her dreams, her childhood, her fears. Her parents, she had told him, died when she was very small. A plague, they said, took them. She had no memory of their faces, only their absence. Lucien had listened like the stars listened to silence.
He had held her until she drifted to sleep.
Now, the warmth of his chest was gone, replaced by the cold breath of stone walls.
She passed Vaeloria's siblings in the hallway. One spat near her feet.
Saevan was in Artherion now. He moved among the court, disguised, untraceable. Sometimes a traveling scribe, other times a noble guest who spoke rarely and smiled always. He had six eyes, none of them on his face. Every servant, every chamber, every whispered insecurity, he observed.
He planted ideas like seeds.
"Is it wise to trust so few with the defenses of Elyrion?" He suggested to one of the nobles of the land, disguised as a foriegn prince.
"You know, if Lucien fell, you could rise," he said to a lesser noble. His name was Tavroth.
Saevan never lied. He only told truths to please the individual. To sway them.
And when Saevan returned to his master's dark council, he brought with him not maps or weapons, but doubt. Suspicion. Self-interest.
Ashkeroth smiled, and the stars blinked.
It's nightfall in Artherion. King Elyrion sat alone in his throne room.
Moonlight spilled in through the tall windows. His chin rested on one hand, his eyes narrowed but burning with clarity. The knight beside him stood motionless. His armor shimmered like frozen moonlight. His gaze glowed beneath his helm.
They had seen it all.
The whispers, the cracks.
For the first time in a decade, the King of Elyrion spoke to his knight.
"There will be a breaking away. The serpent breathes. "
The knight didn't move.
"And yet," Elyrion continued, his voice low, "we shall not fear its venom. For the breath of one lion silences ten thousand hisses."
The silence was holy.
Lucien however, though of her. What could she be doing? How safe was she in Dravenguard.
"Do I leave my country to go after her?" he whispered under his breath.