The wind was quieter that morning, but the silence inside the Baron's Hall was heavier.
Caelan woke in the old bedframe that creaked at every shift of his weight. The fire had long gone out. Frost clung to the windows and crept across the stone floor like a whisper of the wild seeping in. His breath fogged the cold air. He sat up slowly, staring at the wooden beams overhead, thinking of what it meant to be truly alone. He was no longer Caelan Virelandt. He was Caelan Gravenhart of Gravenreach, disowned and redrawn.
He dressed simply and moved through the silent corridors. The manor, though large, felt like a mausoleum—its emptiness amplifying every footfall. Gone was Garric, the knight-escort. Gone too was the imperial scribe. The last thread tying him to his old life had vanished with their hoofbeats.
Outside, Gravenreach still slept under a blanket of fresh snow. Caelan walked the winding path down to Velmire. The villagers, rugged and unsmiling, offered wary glances. A few nodded. One woman—a healer with sharp eyes and hair like spun ash—met his gaze without flinching.
"You walk like a man haunted," she said.
"Only by the future," Caelan replied.
She smiled, just faintly. "Then you'll fit in."
He passed broken fences, shuttered windows, and a collapsed granary. The blacksmith's forge was little more than a cold shell, its tools rusting and the anvil cracked. The mill sat dead by the frozen creek, its wheel seized by ice. Gravenreach had bones, but no blood.
Back in the manor, Caelan began exploring in earnest. With no staff beyond a silent caretaker who said little and a young boy who handled firewood, he was left to his own devices. The west wing was entirely collapsed, but the east remained accessible.
There, behind a rotted tapestry and a warped bookcase, he found a sealed stairwell—just where he vaguely remembered it would be from the novel he had once read. In that story, the protagonist had stumbled upon an ancient relic hidden beneath a forgotten northern hold, guarded by a sigil warded against time.
The door before him was ironbound and bore that same ancient sigil, twisted and unfamiliar, but unmistakable to his memory. It sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the cold. A few hours with an old crowbar and a stubborn torch later, he pried it open, the rusted metal groaning like the manor itself waking from slumber.
The steps beneath led to a vaulted chamber of stone, its air thick with dust and memory. The chamber had once been a library—or something like it. Shelves lined the walls, many crumbled, their contents moldering. Amidst the rot, he found something intact: a scrollcase sealed in wax. Inside was a faded map of the region—not just the village and manor, but tunnels beneath. Old sigils marked locations no longer mentioned in modern records.
In one corner of the map, near the base of the manor, was a mark—Rune Vault.
And in the center, a faded name: Veritas.
Caelan's breath caught. The name sparked something deep in his mind. The Runestone of Veritas—the artifact that revealed lies with its presence, mentioned briefly in the novel he'd once read in his past life. This place, this ruin of a manor, had once guarded it.
Driven by instinct, Caelan returned above and began searching the manor's lower levels. In the main hall's ruined side chamber, beneath an old carpet, he uncovered another stair, this one leading even deeper. With only a torch in hand, he descended.
The air turned colder, heavier. He followed a corridor carved from rough stone, until it opened into a subterranean vault—pillared and domed, walls etched with murals worn by time.
One depicted a stag surrounded by a halo of runes. Another, a broken crown above a mountain. At the far end, half-obscured by moss and lichen, he saw it—a statue of a man with no hands, its arms raised as if once cradling something precious. Hovering just above where the statue's hands should have been was a stone, suspended in the air as though defying time and gravity. It pulsed faintly with etched runes, casting flickering shadows across the chamber. The figure had no face, only a smooth surface, as if identity had been scraped away by wind or intention.
Beneath it, inscribed in old script: "Only that which endures may weigh this power."
The Runestone of Veritas.
He stepped back, heart hammering. The ruin beneath the ruin. The past speaking to the future. And perhaps, the key to everything he would need. He approached the statue slowly, eyes fixed on the Runestone of Veritas that hovered above the statue's outstretched, handless arms. The glow from the stone illuminated the vaulted chamber with a pulsing azure light, casting eerie shadows on the moss-cloaked walls.
Carefully, reverently, Caelan reached out. The stone quivered in place, then settled into his palm as if it had been waiting for him all along. Warmth seeped into his skin—a deep, ancient hum that resonated with something primal in his core. He tucked the Runestone into the folds of his coat, wrapping it in cloth, and slipped it into a hidden panel in his chamber floor later that night.
In the days that followed, Caelan began recording everything in an old ledger he'd found in the study. He outlined what Gravenreach lacked—defense, food, skilled labor—and drafted notes on where to begin. A wall of sharpened logs. A rebuilt forge. A hunting party trained to avoid wild magic zones.
Each page he filled in ink steadied his mind. Strategy, he reminded himself, was survival. Not just of land, but of identity. Loyalty must be earned. Power must be built.
One evening, he stood in the frozen courtyard beside the old well. Snow fell in slow, drifting flakes, catching the torchlight like ash.
He found himself whispering the names:
"Gravenhart. Gravenreach. Veritas."
His body held no core, no flicker of the power that ruled this world. He had not tried to use magic—not because he feared the truth, but because he already knew it. He had no mana spark flickering within him, no sword-aura, no inherited blessing. In this world, that meant powerlessness. A verdict already passed. But he still had something—knowledge. And foresight, however fragmented, granted by the novel he'd once read. That was power of another kind.
And perhaps most important detail in it—he remembered that even the protagonist of that novel, blessed with sword and spell, had never found a way to unlock the Runestone's true potential. He had left it behind, buried and forgotten, unable to use it.
But Caelan had not left it. Unlike the novel's protagonist—who, despite his gifts, had been unable to unravel the relic's potential and left it buried—Caelan remembered a side story, a brief yet vivid recollection from the very novel he had read in his past life. In it, the High Sovereign himself had described the method to awaken the Runestone of Veritas: obscure alchemical components, a rare conjunction of moonlight, and a ritual drawn from forgotten rites.
He would need ingredients, components, knowledge—things difficult to come by in this frozen corner of the world. But he knew the process. And for now, secrecy was survival. No one could know—neither today nor in the future
He stared down into a second sealed stair, half-buried near the courtyard wall, its stone cold and quiet.
Some powers, he thought, are not revealed. They are claimed.
That night, he wrote the first line of a new ledger:
Gravenreach Ledger – Year One.
The ember in the hearth glowed low.
The snow whispered against the windowpanes.
And Caelan Gravenhart, alone in a ruin carved by frost and fate, began.