In the days that followed, the castle wept gold.
Each dawn, wagons heavy with coin creaked through the gates, their wheels grinding against stone as they bore away reparations—blood-money for the dead. What had begun as a birthday feast had become a mass mourning, and the cost of survival was counted in weighty chests and sealed ledgers.
But no sum could undo what had been witnessed.
The horror that had split the skies did not discriminate. Guests in the great hall, guards upon the battlements, servants in quiet corridors—all had been touched by it. So too had the nearby villages, and even the mountain city that nestled below Castle's heights. The presence of that formless god had rippled outward like a scream in the fabric of the world.
Arion did not know how many lives had been lost. But judging by the endless stream of coin flowing from the House treasury, he suspected the dead numbered in the thousands.
The very next morning, his father, Lord Sued, was summoned to the capital—and with him rode Duke Siegfried, grim-faced and silent. Neither had returned.
In their absence, Lady Ariana remained—a sentinel clad not in armor, but in the unyielding presence of grief and vigilance. Her eyes never left Arion. She hovered like a falcon above her only child, wings outstretched, talons hidden but ready. He could scarcely move without feeling her gaze upon him.
He asked her, once, what had happened. What the priest had meant when he spoke of bargains and demons and gods that should not be. But her only reply was a soft murmur: "There is nothing to fear, my son."
Yet Arion did fear.
Not his mother's silence, nor the priests' masks—but the thought that something else might come. That some ancient hunger might reach again from the void to claim him. The fear did not dull. Nor did the questions. They grew sharper with each passing day, cutting through the veil of comfort like a knife through silk.
So he turned to the only thing that gave him comfort.
He trained.
Day after day, he took up the sword—too large for his small hands—and swung it with all the strength his three-year-old body could muster. Commander Marius, grim and silent, oversaw his efforts with a soldier's patience. He offered no praise, only correction. And, when needed, a cuff to the ear.
He saw in the boy a desperation beyond his years—a need to act, to shape, to defy helplessness. And though Arion was still a child, Marius trained him nonetheless. Not because it would save him. But because it was the only gift he could offer: a hardened body to calm a frightened mind.
The sword would not protect him from what had already passed.
But it gave him something to hold.
The other children—noble sons and daughters fostered at the Castle or born of trusted retainers—played beneath the great arches and among the dusted courtyards. Their laughter rang like bells, untouched by the weight of what had passed. They made dolls of straw, hurled stones, and chased each other with wooden swords dulled by time and use.
Arion watched them from a distance.
They had not seen what he had. Had not heard the priest's voice twist into something inhuman, nor felt the crushing gaze of that vast presence above. To them, the feast was a frightening story—half-forgotten and softened in the telling. To him, it was a beginning. A rupture. A thing with no name.
He tried, once, to join them at his mother's request.
At that time, a boy his age thrust a stick into his hand and shouted, "You be the demon!"—laughing, wide-eyed and innocent. The others giggled, their boots kicking up snow. Arion stood there, unmoving. The boy's grin flickered, became something else. Not truly monstrous—but close enough to awaken the memory.
He dropped the stick and walked away.
Since then, they left him alone.