He looked at her now—truly looked—and the fire in his eyes did not dim. It burned steadily. Steady and knowing.
"I rejected them. And I rejected their Varnus."
He stepped deeper into the clearing, into the ash and bone of a forgotten massacre, the brittle remains whispering beneath his boots like broken prayers too late to be answered.
"There is no divine order, Mellirion. No sacred caste. Only the silence that follows, and what you choose to build in its shadow."
For the first time, she didn't see him as the father she feared.Nor the judge she had obeyed.Not the man whose voice once decided laws, lives, and legacies.
What stood before her now was someone different—A man who had lit the world on fire, not for vengeance, not even for love—But to see what truths might crawl from the ash.
She stared at him, her breath catching, her voice caught between contempt and something dangerously close to awe.
"Fuck, Father."
The words slipped out—bitter, human, honest.
Lincoln didn't flinch. Instead, he chuckled—quietly, dryly.
"Yeah," he muttered, glancing down at the bones beneath them. "I got a bit... emotional."
He turned, brushing past a thorned branch as he walked toward the tree line again, slower this time, the weight of memory still hanging on his shoulders like a wet cloak.
Then, over his shoulder, almost absently—"There was… once a hero."
The words came like a stone tossed into a still pond. Not dramatic. Not poetic.Just a shape breaking the surface.
And then he said nothing more.Only the sound of his steps fading, the forest taking him in again,as Mellirion stood alone in the grave of truth.
And behind her,The bones kept whispering.
Mellirion walked alone.
The clearing behind her—choked with ash, ghosts, and bones—was far from gone in her mind, but she left it anyway, one step at a time, her boots crunching through brittle leaves and cursed soil. The forest closed behind her with quiet indifference, swallowing the remnants of Licolin's voice and that final, casual echo: There was once a hero.
Her path back to the Greystone Valley Divide was long and winding, carved into the hills by generations of old blood and heavier secrets. Every tree she passed seemed to carry the weight of memory, as if watching her from beneath moss-laden boughs. The sun, a pale and unconvincing thing, drifted behind a curtain of high gray clouds, casting no warmth. Only light enough to reveal shadows.
She did not summon a horse.She did not call for an escort.
She walked.
Not as a noble.Not as a daughter.But as a woman caught in the dragnet of her own history—too tired to fight the tide, too proud to let it pull her under.
She passed through the lower ravines, where the water still sang in hidden creeks and thorn-bush birds croaked stories older than men. Her fingertips brushed the ancient stone markers at the forest's edge—each carved with forgotten names, warning runes, and the Greystone crest: a split mountain flanked by twin stars.
The path twisted upward. Her legs burned with the climb. Still, she walked.
And with each step, the monologue in her mind grew louder.
"He couldn't tell a noble from a slave. My father. The great Lincoln. The Black Thorn of the North. The bloodletter of the desert."
She exhaled sharply, the air cold and cruel in her lungs.
"He made war over a lie. A mistake. And buried truth beneath the bones of strangers—then lit the sky with it like it was scripture."
She paused on the ridge. Below her, the Greystone Valley unfolded in full:
A winding swath of earth framed by jagged cliffs and old fortress ruins. Winter crops clung to the terraced fields like stubborn faith. Smoke rose from hearth-chimneys in the hamlet. Bells chimed softly from the ivory tower of the Church of Pale Memory. The Divide itself—a vast stone bridge carved directly into the cliff face—stretched like a scar across the gorge, connecting the old estate to the rest of the land.
The wind tousled her hair.She stood still.
"This is what we inherited. This cold valley. This high seat. This beautiful ruin. A land that only remembers power, not peace. Legacy, not mercy."
Her boots touched the flagstone of the Divide.
The bridge groaned beneath her steps, ancient and time-cracked. Below, the mist of the valley river rose up in slow spirals, brushing the under-arches with invisible fingers.
Halfway across, she saw them.
The people.
They had gathered near the courtyard gates. Farmers, mill hands, moss weavers, and stonecutters. Most wore patchwork cloaks and rough linen. Others wore ceremonial garb—half-remembered formalwear from festivals long discontinued. And a few wore armor—not soldiers, but old knights of the land who remembered Mellirion's birth and still carried swords out of habit.
When she reached them, silence rippled through the crowd like wind across still water.
Then came a voice.
"Lady Greystone."
The voice came like a worn bell—soft, cracked at the edges, but unmistakably firm in its purpose.
Mellirion turned slowly, the heavy silence of the courtyard parting like silk around her.
There stood Elder Marris, wrapped in a midnight blue shawl laced with silver-thread runes that shimmered faintly beneath the torchlight. The folds of her robe dragged gently across the flagstones, collecting dust like memory. Her cane—an old branch of duskwood, carved with the seven ancestral knots—clicked with each step as she moved forward. She was ancient, even by elven standards. Her skin had the texture of creased parchment, pale and translucent, stretched thin over delicate bones. The veins beneath it pulsed faintly with mana, like old roads etched into a map.
Her eyes, nearly colorless with age, still shimmered with the weight of too much seeing. One could not meet them without feeling inspected, even judged—not out of malice, but out of the burden of long memory.
She bowed low, spine creaking like an old tree caught in a slow wind.
And behind her, the gathered residents followed suit. A quiet wave of cloaks and lowered brows. Farmers, craftsmen, and temple hands all dipped their heads in reverence, torches flickering in the dying light.
Mellirion said nothing at first.
She merely studied them.
The lined faces. The calloused hands. The shoulders bent by years beneath carts, blades, or books. And then the children—eyes too round, too open, staring up at her as if she held the keys to some forgotten heaven. She felt the pressure of their gaze not as flattery, but as a weight she wasn't sure she could hold anymore.
She cleared her throat quietly.
"I know it's the hour of your bath, Elder Marris." Her voice was cool, measured, the lilt of her court training softening the words. "So I apologize for interrupting your rituals."
The old elf smiled faintly—though with her, even smiles looked ceremonial.
"May I have a moment to speak?"
Mellirion nodded, already unsettled by the quiet gravity of the request.
"Yes, Elder. Of course."
But even as the words left her lips, her thoughts twisted.
"What could she possibly want at this hour?"
Her gaze flicked to the horizon. The sun had long since vanished behind the cliffs. Only a thin sliver of blue twilight clung to the edge of the sky, fading fast. The torchlight from the manor gates flickered orange against the granite walls. Shadows danced at the corners of the square, just out of reach.
She glanced back toward the elder, her mind churning.
"Is this about Veliranya? Another scandal? Another corpse dragged in behind her like a trailing veil?"
She scanned Marris's face again, hunting for some betrayal in her expression—but there was none. Just stillness. Just patience, as if the elder had seen this conversation from start to finish before it had even begun.
Then, with the kind of gentle motion that only elves of a certain age could perform, Elder Marris reached into the folds of her shawl. Her fingers—long, thin, and adorned with two iron rings that bore the sigils of House Greystone and the extinct Temple of Pale Memory—moved with care.
From within the shawl's hidden pocket, she produced a sealed letter, wrapped in parchment that looked like it had been dried with crushed sage leaves and lavender oil. A single wax seal, black and imprinted with an unfamiliar sigil—a crescent biting into a sun—marked the back.
She extended it with both hands, the gesture formal, almost sacred.
"Take this, Lady Greystone," she said quietly, her voice like the first crack of frost over a winter pond. "And deliver it to Lord Licolin. Immediately."
Mellirion's brow furrowed. Her fingers closed around the letter with a strange reluctance, as if it were warm to the touch.
The parchment was heavier than it should have been. Not in weight—but in intent.
She felt the eyes of the gathered villagers still on her. Watching. Waiting.
She nodded slowly.
"I'll see that he receives it."
Marris gave no further explanation. No elaboration. She simply bowed again—lower this time, slower—and turned to vanish into the crowd like a spirit slipping between breaths.
Mellirion remained rooted in place, the letter in her palm pulsing with quiet presence, as if the seal itself whispered.
Above her, the stars were beginning to appear—one by one, cold and distant.
And in her mind, the question bloomed, inevitable and dark:
"What have you done now, Veliranya?"
She turned, the wax-sealed letter still unbroken in her palm, its weight now heavier than it had any right to be.
Behind her, the villagers began to disperse into the quiet hush of evening. Cloaks drawn tight. Heads low. No idle chatter, no farewells—just the quiet rustle of footsteps fading into gravel and grass. The flames of the courtyard torches flickered in the growing wind, which now carried with it the faint, unmistakable scent of smoke.
Not hearth smoke. Not incense.
Wild smoke. Distant and dry. The kind that came before bad things.
Mellirion pulled her shawl tighter and walked.
The path back to the Greystone Manor wound along the ridge of the valley, flanked on one side by jagged cliffs and on the other by the rolling expanse of the old grave orchards—long-dead trees, their twisted branches reaching skyward like skeletal hands still begging for spring. Stone lanterns dotted the trail, most of them unlit, their glass shattered or fogged over with age.
The manor loomed above, cut into the rock like a fortress half-swallowed by the land. Its windows burned with the orange glow of torchlight, but no warmth reached from them. The great spire rose above all, impaling the clouds—the needle of the Greystone line, where ancestors were entombed vertically, each level older, colder, and more forgotten than the one below.
As she walked, her thoughts came unbidden.
"There was a time... a long time ago... when the Greystones ruled the the Elven Empire."
Her boots thudded softly against the stone, echoing faintly in the dusk.
"Our blood ran through the courts of Green and Red. Grandmothers with voices like music. Grandfathers who commanded the tides with a flick of their ring-bearing hands. We were born into power, draped in silk spun from dusklight and named before the stars themselves."
She paused at the old milestone near the withered prayer tree, running her hand across the faded inscription—her ancestor's name, etched in High Elvish runes:
Yohan Greystone The Dragon Slayer.
She had worn her crown to battle. Bled into the soil of three continents. Built the Greystone name atop a mountain of ash.
But time ate queens like rot through silk.
"And then came Quoazo the Obsessed."
Mellirion's voice was barely a whisper now.
"The Mad prophet, dream-split, devourer of stars. He came with visions of no absolute ceartainity. Came in smoke. Took my mother's sister from her chamber in the middle of a moonless night and left behind only a broken mirror and bloodied feathers."
She remembered her mother screaming in the rain, white robes soaked through, hair plastered to her face, eyes hollow.
"She went after her. Of course she did. Sailed into the storm like a fool with too much heart and too little sense. They say her Air carriage was swallowed by the sky. Some say she became one of Quoazo's concubine, chained by dream-bindings and fed poems until her tongue fell out."
She exhaled, long and slow.
"I don't believe any of them. I just think she fell. Like the rest of us."
The wind picked up. The smoke was closer now. Sharp. Bitter.
She passed the weeping bridge—named not for the architecture, but for the way it caught wind through its iron mouth, creating a constant low whistle like the sound of mourning.
And then came the gatehouse. Two guards stood posted, halberds in hand, but they didn't salute. They simply nodded, as if afraid to speak. As if her presence alone might turn something in the air colder than it already was.
She gave them no words.
As Mellirion crossed into the courtyard, her eyes lifted to the south wing—the servant quarters, the watchtowers, and beyond that… the spire where Veliranya had once danced on the ledge at midnight, daring death and decorum alike.
She could still hear her laughter echoing there, years ago. Barefoot. Drunk. Wearing only a red sash and someone else's tunic.
"Veliranya. The chimney of the town."
She hated thinking it that way, but the words had already grown roots in her mind.
"She's opened her legs to every stray that wanders through the valley. Dwarves, sellswords, priests, servants—she collects them like charms, wears their shame like perfume. It's not even rebellion anymore. It's just hunger."
Mellirion walked past the old stables. The scent of old hay, dried blood, and rust hit her hard. The place where Veliranya once seduced a Winterhorn knight on the same night the granary caught fire.
"And Father... he stopped caring long ago."
She reached the central hall, the large double doors carved with the family sigil—the split mountain, crumbling on one side.
The torches were lit inside, but the warmth did not welcome.
"He stopped punishing her. Stopped speaking to her as if she mattered. He talks around her now. Lets her burn herself out like a candle no one wants to snuff."
She touched the cold brass of the door handle and looked up once more at the manor. Her childhood. Her inheritance. Her cage.
And me? I've stayed. Tried to wear a face, hold the name, and carry the corpse of this house on my shoulders."
"But the bones underneath are shifting. The wind smells of smoke. The stars are wrong. And whatever this letter holds..."
Her fingers clenched tighter around the sealed parchment.
"I am getting a bad feeling about this"
She stepped inside.
And the door closed behind her with a final, echoing thud—like the lid of a tomb sealing itself shut.
The air inside the manor hit her immediately.
Heat.
Not the gentle warmth of hearths or torches, but a dry, suffocating heat that clung to her skin like smoke-drenched cloth. The corridor's air shimmered faintly, distorting the edges of the stone walls. The candles on the wall sconces had burned low, wax pooling down like bleeding fingers, but none had been replaced. The shadows swayed unnaturally, longer than they should have been—as if the walls were leaning in.
And then—
"Yes?"
The voice came from the hall just ahead. Deep. Measured. Present.It carried that familiar Greystone stillness—as if every syllable had been weighed and forged before being spoken.
Mellirion turned the corner and saw him.
Lincoln Greystone.
He stood in the center of the room—a high-ceilinged meditation chamber lined with smooth obsidian stone, etched with faint mantra glyphs that pulsed no longer. A room once filled with sacred energy and sound was now quiet. Deadened.
The glyphs on the walls were dim, barely flickering like dying embers.
The mantra was gone. Drained. Burned.
Lincoln stood shirtless, wearing only the lower wrap of his ceremonial robe, the dark fabric cinched tight with an obsidian sash. His chest rose and fell with deep, deliberate breaths. His skin—usually pale, porcelain-smooth—was now slick with sweat, glistening under the amber lanterns like polished bronze. Steam curled faintly from his shoulders. Strands of his golden-brown and magenta-streaked hair clung to his brow and temples, matted with exertion.
A single silver line of sweat trickled down the deep channel of his spine, vanishing beneath the belt's fold.
His arms were folded behind his back, but she could see the tension—tight muscle, wound like ropes, every inch of him braced not for action, but control. The faint burns across his forearms—marks of fire mantra meditation—were still red. Raw. Ritual scars not yet fully closed.
The air in the room felt almost sacred—dense, intimate, almost wrong to breathe.
There was no incense. No chants. No sound but their breath and the low hum of distant stone cooling.
Mellirion's boots clicked against the stone as she entered fully.
She swallowed once, then raised the letter.
"This was given to me," she said, her voice measured, formal, the old court tone returning by instinct. "By Elder Marris. She said it was for you. Immediately."
Lincoln turned toward her slowly. Not surprised. Not confused.
Just ready.
He reached out, and for a moment she saw it—a flicker of something in his eyes. A twinge of recognition. Anticipation? Fear? No. It was subtler. Older.
Resignation.
His hand, calloused and still bearing the thin blue ink marks of recent glyphwork, closed around the parchment.
He held it for a moment. Not opening it. Just feeling its weight.
"Black wax," he muttered, more to himself than to her. "Crescent-sun seal."
A long breath. The kind you take before a fall.
He glanced up at her.
"You should sit, Mellirion. This may not be... brief."
His voice had lost none of its calm, but in that stillness was something tight. Wound like thread through the eye of a needle just before the pull.
Mellirion moved toward the low stone bench near the wall. The cushion was thin, the embroidery faded—an ancient spiral of the Greystone crest, long worn to threadbare fray. She sat with grace, but not comfort. Her fingers still tingled faintly from holding the letter too long.
Lincoln, meanwhile, turned toward the obsidian reading table at the center of the chamber.
The surface shimmered with thin carvings—etched mantra lines spiraling from each corner like black veins on glass. At its center, a basin of mantra sat beside a melted candle, its wax pooled and hardened into strange, claw-like shapes. The scent of burned herbs lingered—sage, searroot, and something older, sharper. Iron-like. Almost bloody.
With slow, practiced fingers, Lincoln swept the basin and candle aside and laid the letter down flat.
The seal—a black wax crescent biting into a sun—seemed to resist the touch, like a spider guarding its web. But Lincoln didn't hesitate. He broke it cleanly, opened the parchment, and began to read in silence.
The seconds stretched.
No sound but the soft crackle of the cooling mantra-stones embedded in the walls.
Then Lincoln exhaled—a single, slow breath, not of surprise, but confirmation.
He looked up.
"Prince Luthor has seized the Hanging Garden of Ghal Miriel."
Mellirion blinked. Her spine straightened.
"That's... impossible."
"Not anymore," Lincoln replied. His voice was level, but his gaze had darkened.
He stepped away from the table, pacing now. His sweat-slicked chest caught the flickering candlelight, revealing faint scars beneath the surface—glyph-burns from mantra rites long past, now turned pale and ridged like cracks in marble.
"He took it from Khan Vokya," he continued. "Of the Kalasars. The barbarians ruled Ghal Miriel for three generations—held it like a relic stolen from a god's pocket."
He stopped pacing, eyes fixed on a single point in the stone floor.
"But now, it's ours."
Mellirion's brow furrowed. She looked at her father, waiting for the smile. The pride. The strategic elation.
It didn't come.
"Is that a good thing?" she asked.
Lincoln finally met her gaze.
"No."
A pause. A beat that sat between them like a blade waiting to fall.
"Why, Father?"
He turned from her, walking slowly to the arched window that looked out over the eastern valley. The glass panes were fogged from the heat, but beyond them, the horizon was barely visible—soft hills dissolving into the haze of dusk.
"Because we hold the east," he said. "We are the only eastern stronghold of consequence left in the realm."
His voice was quiet now. Grave.
"The north is held by the dwarves of the Ironspine—fortresses carved into the mountains, impossible to breach from above."He raised one hand, tracing the directions in the air like sketching a battlefield across the sky.
"The south now falls under Prince Luthor's banner. Ghal Miriel was their last foothold. And the west... the west is the Aerion Forest."
His eyes narrowed.
"Guarded by the great Garm. Wild. Unfathomable by man. No kingdom has ever held it. And none ever will."
Then he turned fully, facing her with the full weight of what he had known all along.
"That leaves only us."
A silence unfurled between them. Not empty—but pregnant. With implication. With dread.
"If Luthor expands," Mellirion said slowly, already hearing her own voice shift into the tone of council chambers and war tables, "we are the final piece. The last gate before full dominion."
Lincoln nodded.
"And when he knocks on this door... it will not be with diplomacy."
Outside, the wind howled softly through the stone arches of the manor, and somewhere far in the valley, a bell rang once—high and clear.
Not for prayer.Not for death.Just warning.
Meanwhile, in a Tavern not far away…
The tavern was thick with smoke and heat—the air rank with sweat, pipe-ash, and spilled mead, clinging to every wooden beam and every breath exhaled. The Rotten Ribbon was the kind of place built too close to a trade road and too far from law. Its floorboards creaked with age and neglect, warped from spilled ale and older blood. Above, faded red banners hung like torn sails, and a crude sigil of a weeping eye had been etched into the back wall—its meaning forgotten, but its presence ominous.
And in the center of it all, sitting atop a scarred gambling table surrounded by jeering patrons and half-lidded mercenaries, was Veliranya Greystone.
Her red silks clung to her body in slashed drapes, the sleeves long gone, one breast practically spilling from the fold of her bodice, a thigh fully bare where the skirt had ridden up in her latest fit of laughter. Her dusky elven skin shimmered with sweat and wine, her golden-brown hair wild and disheveled, the streak of silver slicing through it like a deliberate scar of rebellion.
The game had been Drent—a fast-paced, blood-wager game played with carved bone dice and painted sigils. The rules made sense only to the drunk or the desperate.
And she had just lost.
Spectacularly.
The tavern roared around them like a half-drunk beast—chaos in every corner, dice clattering on tables, mugs slamming, voices rising in layers of laughter and lewd encouragement. The air was hot and thick, heavy with the scent of spilled mead, sweat, pipe smoke, and sex not yet consummated but already promised in every glance and grin.
Veliranya didn't care. She never had.
"Hold still, champion," she said to the half-orc, her voice thick with wine and mockery, eyes alight with mischief. "Or I'll start charging extra."
She mounted him right there atop the gaming table—straddling his lap, facing him, silk skirts hiked around her thighs like a queen riding into battle. Her body moved with the confidence of someone who had never known shame—or had killed it long ago and fed it to dogs.
The crowd howled. Someone started pounding on the table in rhythm. Another began chanting her name.
Veliranya leaned back slightly, her hands braced on the half-orc's shoulders, her hips rolling in slow, serpentine waves, silk fluttering like banners in the wind. The tavern's firelight caught the sheen of sweat on her neck, and for a moment, all sound dimmed around her. Only the motion, the pulse, the play.
She moaned theatrically, loud and deliberate, tossing her hair back in a cascade of golden-brown and silver-streaked wildness. She wasn't just putting on a show—she was the show.
"Gods," she purred, "is this the part where I pledge fealty to the new king of Drent? Or should I just bite your ear off and take the throne for myself?"
The half-orc was frozen—somewhere between overwhelmed and enthralled, hands hovering just off her hips, unsure whether to hold her or pray to her.
Veliranya reached down, took his wrists, and placed them firmly at her waist.
"You won," she whispered, close enough for only him to hear. "Act like it."
Her body pressed close, breasts against his chest, mouths almost meeting—but she didn't kiss him. She hovered—hot breath, parted lips, a heartbeat away.
Then she ground her hips forward, deliberately, slowly, her thighs tightening around his waist. The motion pulled a gasp from his throat and a guttural noise from the back of hers. It was raw. Friction. Rhythm. Hunger.
The tavern cheered. Someone threw a coin into the air.
Veliranya threw her head back again, eyes fluttering half-shut, hands tangled in his hair now. She laughed—wild and full, not like a noble, not like a woman of blood and title, but like a goddess drunk on chaos.
"Now this is diplomacy!" she declared. "Better than half the treaties I've signed with my legs closed!"
The crowd went berserk—a churning tide of flesh, ale, and crude laughter. Boots stomped against warped floorboards. Tankards clanged together in drunken tribute. Dice hit the floor. Someone sang a chant in broken Orcish while others pounded out a rhythm with fists and feet.
But in the farthest corner of the tavern—beyond the reach of firelight and noise—a figure stood utterly still.
Motionless.Cloaked.Unmoved.
He was wrapped in Black compression shirt, a waist cape--crimson colored around his waist, strapped black pants & jeans, his aura shimmered faintly, not with embroidery or spell-thread, but something older—wrong—like the shimmer of oil on still water, or a mirage that refused to flicker. His frame was massive, towering. Broad-shouldered. Nearly eight feet tall, his head just beneath the rotted beams of the ceiling, unmoving even as people passed through the haze of noise and smoke.
No one noticed him.Or perhaps no one could.
For in that strange way of certain things—certain beings—he did not exist where attention could find him. His presence slid across the mind like cold iron through silk. You saw him, and then forgot. You felt him, and then dismissed the weight. He was there. Or not.
And his eyes…
Red.Not glowing. Not aflame.Just red—flat and quiet, like coals that had burned so long they had forgotten how to smoke.
His hair was silver, slicked back yet messy & symmetrical, some strand out of place—Due to the the heat, despite the crowd, despite the madness in the room. His skin was a deep, olive-burnished tan, stretched over sharp cheekbones and a face that seemed carved rather than born. Expressionless. Cold. Not angry.
Disappointed.
Veliranya saw him.
Only her.
Mid-thrust, mid-laughter, mid-sin.
She froze—only for half a breath—as her eyes locked onto that impossible face.
And then—
"Get ahold of yourself."
The voice didn't echo. It happened inside her bones. Quiet. Low. Like wind beneath a coffin lid.
Her eyes widened—but no one else reacted. The crowd still screamed. The half-orc beneath her was gasping, hands trembling against her hips. Someone threw another coin. Another shouted, "Ride it like it's a war-beast!"
But she didn't hear them.
She only saw him.
The stranger—no, not a man, something worse—stood exactly where he had been, arms folded beneath the cloak, watching her like one might watch a dog chewing a sacred scroll.
She ground her hips harder.
Faster.
Deliberate now. Not for pleasure. Not for show. Not even for dominance.
For defiance.
She began to move faster, bouncing against the half-orc's lap with reckless abandon, moaning louder, filthier, her voice climbing in mock ecstasy:
"Ohh—look at me now, gods! Riding ruin into royalty!"
More laughter. More shouting. Someone whistled. Someone slapped the table.
But her eyes never left him.
The figure did not move. Did not blink. His gaze did not follow the motion of her body. It pinned her through the performance, as if measuring the precise weight of her degradation and finding it boring.
And that—that—burned more than shame.
It was dismissal.
She was desecrating herself for a reaction… and he still looked bored.
That face—still.That voice—echoing again, though his mouth never moved.
"There are moments you won't fuck your way out of"
She moaned louder, grinding down hard, her fingers tightening against the half-orc's shoulders, nails dragging over flesh, but her breath now came faster not from lust, but from something else entirely:
Rage.And fear.
The stranger didn't flinch.
The candle near him flickered violently—and snuffed out.
And then—
He was gone.
Gone.
As if he had never been there at all.
And Veliranya climaxed with a shuddering gasp—though her eyes remained open, staring into the corner that was now empty.
The crowd cheered. Someone shouted for another round. The half-orc slumped back, dazed and grinning.
But she wasn't smiling.
Her body was still trembling—not from afterglow, but from the echo of something that didn't belong in this world.
She slid off the table in silence, adjusting her silks, ignoring the offers for drink, the claps on the back, the lewd congratulations.
The laughter kept going.
Inside the Tavern, the noise spilled through the door like steam from a boiling pot—drunken shouts, the crash of mugs, the wet clatter of bodies collapsing onto splintered tables. It echoed through the narrow alleyways outside, clinging to the cobblestone like smoke from too many fires.
But Veliranya's smile had vanished.
She stepped out into the night air—skin still damp with sweat, silk clinging in places that had forgotten how to breathe. The tavern door slammed shut behind her, and with it, the sound of the revelry dulled like a fading heartbeat. All that remained was the distant hum of torches and the heavy throb of her pulse in her ears.
Her boots struck the uneven stones of the back lane, her breath fogging in the cold, her hands still twitching as if they couldn't decide whether to slap or caress. Her steps were uneven—not from drink, but from something deeper, more shaken.
That thing.Those red eyes.That voice that hadn't used a mouth.
She shook her head, muttering something crude to herself, brushing strands of hair from her face.
And then—
She bumped into something.
Solid. Cloaked. Low to the ground.
Someone.
She staggered a half-step back instinctively, hand already halfway to the dagger hidden in her garter—before she stopped.
Small. Slouched. Sloppy.
The figure looked up at her with a crooked grin beneath a cascade of long, snow-white hair, braided unevenly in sections, with tiny wooden charms and half-rusted runic rings hanging from the strands like forgotten prayers. His ears, unmistakably elven, drooped downward with age—creased and slightly asymmetrical, with gold hoops and jade pins laced through the cartilage.
His beard was a wild nest, more salt than snow, reaching his chest, braided in three uneven sections that danced slightly as he chuckled. His cloak was patchwork—stolen colors and textures from half a dozen regions, including a moth-eaten fur trim and a hem stained with something old and reddish-brown.
His skin was a deep dusk tone, wrinkled like bark that had seen too many winters. His eyes—though surrounded by crow's feet and one half-closed with what may have been a centuries-old scar—gleamed. Amber and knowing. The kind of gleam only the deeply ancient or deeply mad could carry.
Halasar the Old.
The Elven Guru.
He leaned slightly on a twisted staff—its wood alive with whisper-thin glyphs that flickered faintly with breathlight.
"Fufufu..."The laugh was soft, dry, and infuriatingly knowing."Oh, Lady Greystone," he said, voice like warm dust in an ancient library, "I must say... of all your entrances into legend, I did not expect this one to begin on a stranger's lap in a back-alley tavern."
Veliranya froze.
For the first time in hours, maybe longer, she had nothing to say.
He tilted his head, the beads in his beard clicking softly. His eyes didn't leer. Didn't judge.
They just watched. Like he had already read the story's last page.
"Though I suppose," Halasar continued, lifting his crooked staff slightly, "every great flame needs a bit of smoke and scandal to make it burn bright enough to be remembered."
Veliranya opened her mouth. Closed it again. Her tongue felt dry. Her confidence—so loud and sure hours ago—had evaporated in the wake of red eyes, judgment, and now this old fossil who looked like he'd slept through entire centuries of royal decline.
"You're supposed to be dead," she finally said, voice hoarse.
"I am," Halasar replied cheerfully. "On Mondays. Today I'm lucid."
He stepped around her slowly, the staff tapping a gentle rhythm against the stone.
"Come now," he said, "walk with me, chimney of Greystone. We have things to discuss."
"Why me?"
He stopped. Looked over his shoulder.
"Because the stars are shifting. The bones are singing. And you," he smiled wider, more teeth now, too many teeth, "are the spark no one wanted to light—but everyone will burn for."
And with that, Halasar the Old began to walk.
And Veliranya—tired, shaken, half-naked and ashamed—followed. Not because she believed him.
They walked beneath a sky stitched with clouds, the moons only occasionally peeking through like pale, watchful eyes. The stone path beneath their boots cracked with age, vines crawling up through the fractures like time itself trying to reclaim the road.
Veliranya's silks, though disheveled and clinging in the chill night air, still moved like they were spun from mischief and sin, brushing her thighs as she strolled beside Halasar. The old elf's crooked frame swayed with each step, his staff tapping rhythmically, his beard twisting slightly in the wind.
Silence hovered for a while—thick, uncomfortable, charged.
She broke it, of course.
"So," she purred, tilting her head and letting her voice drip with exaggerated seduction, "is this one of those ancient mentor moments where the wise old sage 'guides' the naughty young noble… into enlightenment?"
She leaned closer, the tip of her shoulder brushing his arm, her grin unapologetically wicked.
"Because I've done my share of spiritual awakenings."Her hand waved suggestively through the air, then rested lightly on the hilt of a dagger strapped to her thigh. "Usually around the hips."
Halasar didn't even blink.
He walked on.
"Fufufu..." The laugh came again, soft and airy, like it fluttered straight from the folds of some forgotten scroll. "Oh dear girl, I've buried demons with better pickup lines."
Veliranya narrowed her eyes but smiled wider, pressing in a bit closer.
"Come on, Halasar," she said, half-goading, half-amused. "You're out here dragging me into cosmic metaphors and fate-tinged walkabouts under the moons. At your age, that's either a prophecy… or foreplay."
She paused, pouting. "Don't tell me all that long hair's just for show."
The old elf stopped suddenly, the butt of his staff tapping twice in place before he turned to look up at her—his half-closed eyes glimmering with dry amusement.
"Ah," he said, "you assume the universe needs to be wooed in the same way you do your victims."He leaned in slightly, his crooked grin growing just a touch more fanged."But, sweet chimney, I haven't had the urge to rut since your grandmother was still losing teeth to lovers, not to time."
Veliranya choked on a laugh.
"Gods, you're disgusting."
"Realization often is," Halasar replied with a shrug, resuming his slow pace. "And besides, if I truly needed warmth at night, I'd sooner stuff my trousers with live embers than risk waking up beside you and finding a dagger between my ribs and a poem carved into my spine."
She rolled her eyes, but there was a genuine chuckle beneath it. "You're lucky I have a weakness for cryptic lunatics."
"And you're lucky I've already seen how this ends," he replied, smiling without mirth. "Otherwise I might've been tempted."
Another silence followed—but it wasn't awkward this time. It pulsed with something else.
Respect, perhaps.Or recognition.
Because for all her bravado and for all his riddles, they both knew how lonely it was to walk ahead of the world—he, because he had already walked through too much of it, and she, because she kept setting it on fire just to feel seen.
And somewhere behind them, far back at the tavern where the laughter had now faded into the walls, shadows began to stir.
Because when desire fails, destiny often waits.And neither of them were walking away from that.