[ARC I: The Awakening of Thallian]
The stone beneath his spine radiated warmth.
At first, Thallian thought he might be dead. But the warmth—steady, pulsing—wasn't the kind the priests preached of. It throbbed through the hay-stuffed cot, into his skin, into his ribs. When his eyes opened, dawnlight knifed through the arrow-slit window, grazing his brow.
He stayed still.
Not from fear—but from knowing.
Something was different.
The air hung heavy with the scent of sweat, yet his skin was dry. His breath came slow, deliberate. The birds outside didn't just sing—they echoed in his chest. When he blinked, he could make out the mortar's cracks. Counted the grains in the blood-stained cloth beside him. His own blood, from the fever. He remembered.
The stain on the floor near his heel was older than it should be. Already rusted dry. Time had shifted.
His mouth tasted of iron. His stomach clawed itself. He clenched his fists—once, then again.
No tremor. Too steady.
"Mother?" he whispered.
The word echoed through the infirmary like someone else had spoken it. Like a prayer lost in stone.
---
The door creaked once.
Her scent reached him before her voice—rosemary, oil, and ash. A noblewoman's fragrance laced over the charred breath of burnt prayer scrolls. She entered with a grace that made silence seem reverent.
"My boy," she murmured.
Despite the ache under his ribs, Thallian sat up. She crossed to him and cupped his face in both hands—her thumbs brushing gently over his temples. Her eyes read his features: his breath, his pulse, the state of him.
"You breathe like a soldier," she said.
He opened his mouth, but no words came. Her touch grounded him—there was no sorcery in it, just a mother's strength. He looked away. Her fingers found the blood dried in the cot's fabric and paused.
"You bled more than we thought," she whispered. "Three days gone. The priests nearly buried you."
"I dreamed," Thallian said, swallowing.
She froze, but only for a breath. "Of what?"
He hesitated. The truth scraped against his throat. "A gate. A hill of iron bones. And something watching me from behind the sun."
She caught her breath—just a hitch—and brushed a lock of hair from his brow.
"Then you returned with something new inside you."
He blinked.
She kissed his forehead. "Sleep no more, Thallian. The magister will want words with you."
---
She left with a kiss and a whisper, and before the heavy stone door closed behind her, Thallian was already on his feet.
He shouldn't have moved. His body ached from stillness. But there was a tightness in his chest, something coiled behind his ribs. The infirmary walls pressed in. He needed open space. Stone. Air.
No one stopped him as he slipped down the servants' stair. They thought him too weak still. Just a fevered child finding his legs. But his footsteps made no sound.
The kitchen halls were cool. Hearths still cold before second bell. In the granary annex, sacks of oats leaned against stone bins of crusted bread. He reached into one, fingers curling around a dried, grey soldier's heel. It crumbled like ash.
He stared at it.
Then, without meaning to, whispered:
"Better."
The word barely left his lips.
A pulse moved through his palm. The crust darkened, thickened. It warmed—softened. The scent changed. Not just fresh, but comforting. Like feast-day bread in his mother's hearth.
He broke a piece. Steam rose.
He stared.
Then a voice behind him:
"Well now," said Bertran the pot-boy. "Either I'm dreaming, or you just fed a ghost."
---
Thallian didn't drop the bread. He held it carefully, like it might dissolve.
Bertran stood in the granary doorway, wrapped in his sleep shawl, hair wild with straw. Bare feet against stone. He blinked slowly, as if waking still.
"That smell ain't from last week's leavings," he said, nodding at the loaf. "You didn't steal that from Cook?"
Thallian opened his mouth, then shut it.
Bertran stepped closer. "You made that. Didn't you?"
Silence.
"By the saints," Bertran whispered. "Did you pray it hot?"
"I just said a word."
Bertran circled the bin. Eyes wide. "You've got secrets in you now, Prince. I saw it. That bread was dead. Now it's festival brown. That's not luck—that's..." He sniffed, then grinned. "...magic."
Thallian looked at his hand. Still warm.
Bertran leaned in, voice low. "Don't tell the Bishop. He'll drown you in the font and call it justice."
"I didn't mean to," Thallian whispered.
"I know. But you did." Bertran crossed himself with two fingers. "My lips are sealed like Mam's pickled jars."
He smirked. "Think you could do that to porridge?"
---
Bertran left with a grin and a half-eaten crust in his tunic. Thallian wandered the corridor like someone not yet fully awake. Bells rang—third hour. Late.
The courtyard rang with the clack of practice blades. He entered quiet.
Ser Veon stood at the edge of the circle, one arm folded across the stump of the other. His gaze scanned the sparring boys before settling on Thallian, unsurprised.
"You live," Veon said. "Then you fight."
Thallian nodded.
A practice sword flew his way. Ashwood, dulled. He caught it and dropped into stance—low, centered, just as Veon had taught.
Garic stood opposite him. A stablehand. Broader. Stronger.
The clash came fast.
Thallian struck—once, twice. Garic blocked. Again, Thallian pressed forward.
On the third blow, the sound changed.
Wood on wood shifted to something deeper. Garic faltered. His sword cracked down the middle.
Silence spread.
Veon stepped forward, not fearful—just focused.
"You're not holding back," he said.
Thallian dropped the sword. It clanged like steel.
He said nothing.
Veon did not push. Not yet.
---
The broken sword lay at his feet when the bell rang again. Thallian didn't wait. Veon didn't stop him—just watched, unreadable.
Veon had once been a Roman legionnaire, long before the Empire crumbled and crawled west. He'd marched under the purple eagle, burned shrines he didn't believe in. Now he trained princes. With one arm. With no gods.
Thallian walked the inner hall alone. His steps vanished into old stone. Above him hung banners: new ones bearing the Cross, and older ones—faded, tribal, half-forgotten. His grandfather had died in that struggle. A king beheaded for honoring spirits the Church now named demons.
The chapel doors creaked open.
Empty. No priests. Just silence, candles, dust.
He knelt.
The altar bore no image. The court hadn't chosen—between the Lamb and the Horned Oak, between Rome and root.
This was Belgica. Faith bled slow here.
"I won't lose to it," Thallian whispered.
He touched his chest.
"I won't let it control me."
He meant the fire. The hunger behind his ribs. The way he'd looked at that girl in the courtyard, the one who smirked with her collar open and hair undone. The way that glance had stayed.
"I bind myself," he breathed.
"No woman. Not till the one meant for me. Not servant, not noble, not guest. Not even in thought."
A cough from behind.
He turned. Bertran again—leaning on a pillar like a gargoyle.
"You pray loud for a quiet prince," he muttered. "Figured I'd find you brooding with skulls."
Thallian blinked.
Bertran tossed him a pouch. "Cook says eat before you faint. You look like you wrestled a saint and lost."
Thallian took it, opened it—dried apricots.
Someone else watched, though. Just outside the cracked chapel door. A man in cleric's black, ringed in red stone.
The Bishop of Treve. Malden.
Watching.
Judging.
Curious.
---
Bertran had long since gone, muttering about holy figs and divine gas. Thallian stayed.
Cross-legged, chewing slowly in the candlelight, he sat alone. The vow still hung in the air. No voice answered, no sign from above.
But silence—when deep enough—almost speaks.
A rustle broke it.
In the corner, near the cracked offering bowl and a nest of straw, something moved.
A rat.
Thin, sick. Its ribs moved shallowly. Its eyes glassy. It lapped at a puddle—sacrificial water, mixed with aconite, meant to poison.
Thallian knew it would die. Soon.
But something inside twisted.
He crawled forward, breath soft. A whisper:
"Live."
His fingers brushed the bowl.
The rat stilled. Shivered.
Then—drank again. Its shaking ceased. It sat upright, steady. Alive.
Thallian's chest thudded. Once. Then slower.
Behind him, a voice: quiet. Wry.
"You don't call on God. Not even a pagan's plea. And still, you twist life. That's dangerous."
He turned.
The Bishop had entered fully now. Malden. Black robes like smoke trailing behind him. He moved too softly for a man his age.
Malden looked at the rat. Then at Thallian.
"Your Highness," he said, voice testing. "Perhaps you've been blessed. Or perhaps you are a wound in the world."
Thallian said nothing.
Malden studied the rat again. "This is not saintly miracle. This is something else."
And far behind, in the shadows just beyond the door, another figure lingered. Hooded. Muttering a rosary of black stone.
A whisper:
"...reminds me of Canaan. Hm. Flesh-shaped miracles..."
And then he vanished.
Zepia Eltnam Atlasia.
But Thallian did not know that name.