The door creaked shut behind Bishop Malden. The echo of his sandals hadn't yet faded when Thallian realized he was alone again, the chapel's hollow air wrapping around him like a cold breath.
But solitude never lingered for long.
By second bell, a parchment slipped under his chamber door — a formal summons in the angular hand of the court magister, marked with the faded sigil of House Lothwine. Once extinguished by Roman witch-hunts, the bloodline had returned like a whisper, now threading its influence as the kingdom's arcane counsel.
So it was, by the hour of dust, that Thallian stood beneath the ribbed vaults of the royal library. Once a Roman granary, it now bristled with scrolls and the dusky scent of foxglove, as though the very stones had learned to breathe secrets.
Archmagister Elcher slouched in a stone-backed chair, his cloak spilling like black ink over the steps. A thin man — brittle in frame, sharper in humor — with teeth darkened by hyssop root and a voice like parchment tearing too slow to bear.
"Your Highness," Elcher said without rising, "have the fever spirits fled you for good, or do they still suck at your marrow?"
Thallian didn't answer at once. His eyes drifted to the scrolls stacked between them — inked in High Latin, etched in Druidic rune. One bore the name "Aelius Lucanus," a Roman thaumaturge whose final work sought the elusive Fifth Imaginary Element, lost when the early Church silenced his legacy.
"I'm well," Thallian said at last. "The blood has cooled."
"Has it?" Elcher's fingers tapped a dry rhythm on the armrest. "Then let us begin with bones. Your ancestors' bones, to be precise. Tell me, Prince — what do you know of Queen Amlaide?"
Thallian paused. The name felt foreign in his mother's tongue — one she had never once spoken.
Elcher's smile curled, humorless. "She died birthing twins. Both stillborn. But not before the hounds howled, and the well water turned red."
He leaned forward, shadows pulling tight along his face.
"Tell me. In your dreams, do you hear a voice that might have been hers?"
Thallian held his gaze. Cold. Still. Silent.
And that silence said: I understand your meaning.
And also: You'll get no answer. Not yet.
__
Elcher discarded him after but one further question — a nagging and oblique one about left-handed dreams and iron smells. He waved Thallian aside like a bad draft.
The prince didn't go back to his chambers.
Rather, he ascended the twisted stairway over the library's northern wall — an area referred to by servants as "the Ghost Ledge," where salt-air breezes still wafted through from when the tower was open. No one manned it. No priest troubled.
There, hidden behind a fictitious shelf full of fiscal ledgers, Thallian discovered the family archive.
The volumes had the scent of lambskin, old vinegar, and ice. They lay unshelved, piled haphazardly like a nest, draped in linen. One had the seal wax of Queen Amlaide, whom Elcher had dubbed.
He slowly opened it.
Every page was a listing of births, weddings, and deaths — written by the ink of scribes, but signed personally by the royals. He followed down the names, counting five generations back. Amlaide's signature was present: small, neat, and followed by an unusual symbol — a triangle shape drawn using intersecting lines.
It wasn't Christian. Nor was it Druidic.
He'd seen it once. Carved into the side of the old well that servants avoided after dusk.
Below Amlaide's line: "The children stillborn. Womb temperature abnormal. Midwife reported 'light from the mouth' before death."
Thallian let
It had happened before.
Someone had been burned from the inside.
He turned the page and froze.
Tucked away in the margins was a half-torn piece of newer parchment. A hand different from the rest. Rough, angular lines written in an Eastern manner. The ink glistened dimly — nearly metallic.
"Lines of descent here have promise. This mutation is consistent with proto-Soma acceleration. Monitor further. Inform Atlasia."
His hand tightened.
Atlasia. Once Not a legend, then. Not Veon's whispers alone. The Rejected Truths, a department. Those who investigated that which was never to be.
Outdoors, a solitary bell had sounded — the Bishop's call again.
Thallian folded the note and placed it within his tunic.
He was under surveillance.
Somewhere else, under a hill beyond the kingdom, a man wearing silver-gray attire placed his hand on a glyph cut into stone.
Zepia Eltnam Atlasia grumbled: "He's reading too fast."
__
The smell of the ink clung to Thallian's sleeves as he entered the lower courtyard, stone pathways slippery from a mid-day frosting which had not yet dissolved. The folded parchment within his tunic's pocket felt like a hidden tooth that burned.
He didn't glance up when he heard barking. The kennel yard stretched ahead, lined by iron posts on which the hounds of the eastern wall had been kept tethered between drills. These animals hadn't been bred for hunting themselves, but for war, mastiff-lean and plated in boiled leather.
But they never were let loose. Nor, ever, on nobles.
Until now.
Thallian had only just stepped over the threshold between the chapel wing and the barracks when something burst from the shadows. Muscle, teeth, and abrupt impact.
The dog struck him directly between the ribs.
They fell together onto the ice-covered herb bed. Thallian's ears rang out, driven clear by a burst of breath. The creature snarled — foam on its jaws. A spiked collar shone on its neck. A name was inscribed there: Cadoc.
He lifted his hand reflexively — palm against the muzzle.
Seminy
The word was never uttered by him. It existed only in his thoughts.
The instant his skin contacted Cadoc's fur, something moved. Not within the dog — within the world. A still folding. The fury dissipated from Cadoc's eyes. His teeth unfastened. Then he whimpered. Then collapsed.
The creature fell over next to him as if drugged. Heart still pumping. Eyes still open.
Breathing. Subdued — but not harmed. Simply. slowed. Softened.
Above, a voice shouted: "By Mithras' chain—THAT DOG'S NOT SUPPOSED TO MOVE!"
Thallian turned Calla, the linen girl, was standing half-way down the stairs, a half-folded tunic clutched against her, as if paused mid-step. Her eyes moved from confusion, through awe, to suspicion.
She regarded Thallian as a priest might view a talking statue.
"Prince," she explained slowly. "He's our most ill-tempered creature. He despises everyone. Even the Bishop."
Thallian brushed off the frost.
"It ceased," he replied.
Calla's eyes narrowed.
"Did it ever cease," she whispered, "or did you make it cease?"
Far away, a thin, gray-clad shape, too thin for winter, stood looking from over the back wall of the stables. Of Solomon of Sheba, or what was left of him in spirit, there was only a faint, knowing smile.
__
Calla didn't follow him.
She stood at the stairs for a moment longer, muttering to herself against "witchblooded boys," then moving back to the washing lines.
He continued walking. His chest hurt faintly where he had been hit by Cadoc. The dog was still in the garden, whimpering, as gentle as linen.
He cut through the courtyard and slipped beyond the eastern cloister arch, one place few would venture—the Queen's garden, choked by wild thyme, nettle, and rose-thorns that crawled up stone walls like ivy. A tangled sanctuary.
She was already present, sitting on her bentwood stool, sleeves rolled up past her elbows, fingers smudged with earth.
"You don't walk wounded," she replied, never looking up. "Not when you've died already this month."
"I wasn't killed."
"You changed. That matters."
He sat across from her. The scent was one of moss and vine sap.
I stopped a hound
Isalotte's fingers froze
"Stopped?" she echoed.
"It lunged, and I touched it. It fell."
She breathed through her nose. "What was it like when you did it?"
Thallian paused. ".Such as taking a breath, but inward. And releasing."
Her eyes locked on his for a long moment. Fearless. Fearless. Weary.
"I have seen a five-year-old child in Treve cure the pox using a kiss to the cheek of a brother, and the Bishop called that an act of heresy. She was drowned."
Here's
"Because there was no blessing. Because she healed outside Latin."
She stood and approached the thorns. Tugged a lone red blossom.
"Be smart, Thallian," she advised. "Even miracles spoil if they are not wrapped in words."
A crow cawed overhead. Three short, one long. A hunter's call. High above the chapel, a man shrouded in wax-covered wool observed the garden from the belfry. No one ever mentioned his name here, but within the Egyptian deserts, he was known as Tawosret's Curse.
Nagissa, the Wandering Sea's emissary, observed the youth who could warp animals with a touch.
He did not smile.
Queen Isalotte, on the other hand, spun the rose between her fingers
"Every blossom isn't safe to present. Some ooze when pierced."
Thallian gazed at her, her brow knotted
"Then I won't bleed."
"You already are," she whispered. "Only very slowly."
__
The smell of crushed rose still clung to Thallian's sleeves when he ducked under the cloister archway and strode back into the castle's lesser hall. He paced quickly, eyes cast downward. The stillness of the garden had shaken something free in him — not quite fear, but something more tenuous. Unease stretched thin as harp-wire.
He moved through the atrium of saints and turned left and into the lower chamber, which contained wax. First, he was hit by smells: boiled tallow, soot, and mildew.
"Prince?" a half-whispered voice called out. "You move like a ghost."
Eofric, bowed over a crate full of nearly depleted candles, didn't glance up initially. His fingers went through the motions, sorting by wick-size. Thin, skeletal, continually blinking as if light pained him.
"You've seen the Bishop's ring, I presume?" he asked bluntly. "The flame seal. Once it was entrance into the Roman scholarium. A dead sigil. He shouldn't be wearing it."
Thallian inclined his head. "How did you know what it meant?"
Eofric smiled shyly. "I read ancient wax scripts. Left by the archivist when he became blind. He dreamed using mirror-writing. Said the truth was reverse when gods are present."
Thallian scowled. "You mentioned seeing an individual beside the well."
Eofric gave one nod. "Last turn, last moon. Long cloak, and no light-torch. He walked like one who knows the stones too well."
At that moment: stumbling footsteps, clomping and arrhythmic.
Bertran pushed the door open, smelling strongly of rotten cherries and incense from the church. A wooden mug sloshed in his hand. "God's breath! You two plan the end times in here?" He let out a belch, grinned. "You'll enjoy this—one rat is now inhabiting the chapel. It's sitting on the altar, munching on the crumbs. Stares up at you as though he forgives you."
He settled down cross-legged next to them and filled a wax mold with the rest of the wine.
"Nicknamed him the Pope. The Pope of Straw."
Eofric did not laugh. His eyes wandered over to the flame nearest him, in which a dancing shadow shimmered.
"I saw a man talk to a flame one time," he whispered. "He gave his name as Zelretch."
He froze, unsure what it was called. But the wick was bent sideways.
The flame had listened.
__
Bertran's snores filled the wax chamber when Thallian moved again.
Eofric hadn't uttered a word since the line was spoken mentioning Zelretch. He simply gazed at the flame, wordless, and after a while set about quietly replacing wick after wick.
The stairs leading downstairs to the wine cellars hadn't been cleaned for weeks. His hand followed the wall — ancient Roman brick on which lime and mold clung to everything. This section of the castle wasn't off limits, only neglected. The hall grew narrower. The torches ceased. He moved in the dark.
The cold was beneficial. His blood was too warm lately, and now still he could listen to his own heart beating, like boots travelling over frost.
Draft tugged at him. Earthy scent. Wet.
He came to the line of barrels at the back and stopped. Something was draped over one of them. Folded, too neatly — a traveler's cloak.
Wool, slate-grey, dyed. Stiff as ash and travel. The scent of wormwood and burned ink. He reached to pick it up—
And ceased.
There, a stitch embroidered into the seam inside. Three overlapping crescent moons embroidered in red thread. A design he had only ever seen one other time. It was the same design hidden within Queen Amlaide's family tree.
He stroked the hem.
He gasped. The fabric was warm. Not, precisely, body-warm. Spell-warm. A protection charm — worn, but exact.
He pressed two fingers onto it.
Reduce retention of the aura, he whispered to himself. The heat dissipated to zero.
Someone had recently been at the site. Someone experienced in their work.
A dry voice sounded behind him.
"You learn too quickly."
Thallian spun. Shadows twisted.
Nothing there
But footsteps echoed away. At the Atlas Institute's archives, which lay far from Belgica, a scribe stopped translation work on pre-Christian biothaumaturgy.
"Another pulse signature," she complained. "Same genetic codex."
Her name, as yet unrecorded, would one day come to be spoken in hushed tones as one of the fore-bearer of Cornelius Alba.
But tonight, she just touched the parchment.
__
The cloak was still draped from his hand as he walked back to the upper floors, moving slowly, thinking. His breathing fogged the corridor air, though there was no draft. The presence that clung to the fabric still clung to the walls, even after being suppressed.
Whomever was wearing it hadn't sprinted. They'd strolled. As if they belonged.
He made it to his room. A scroll, wax-sealed and unopened, lay on his bed alone.
Red wax, inscribed by flame. College sigil of pre-Christian thaumaturges. It had not been displayed openly since the purge of magi by Rome under Theodosius.
Thallian broke it. There was no signature, only one line, neat and straight, inked.
"You will appear at the chapel's lower vestibule. Dusk. No escort."
He departed.
The vestibule below was chilly as it ought to have been. Condensation-covered stone. Candles burning in brass cups, every one of them new — none lit by the servants.
Alone, Malden stood before the altar.
He spun when Thallian appeared, but didn't say anything at first.
He's waiting to see if I'll flinch, Thallian considered. Whether I'll sweat. Whether I'll lie.
The Bishop finally spoke and asked, "How many have you touched?"
Thallian remained silent.
Malden moved closer. "The dog. The bread. The rat. You're altering things. Not by prayer. By. something else."
He circled him. Slow.
"You cast no spell. You call on no saint. And you make rot into feast. Rage into peace. Poison into water. That is not divine grace. That is will-bound change."
Thallian's jaw tightened. "I don't hurt anyone."
"Yet," replied Malden.
He took off a little ring from his finger and placed it between them. A red stone, cloudy within. It gave off heat.
"You know what this is?"
Thallian didn't reply. He did, though. A fragment from the ancient Pyraxis Stone. The initial lens employed by the Vitruvian Cabal, centuries ago, which was rumored to be destroyed during a purge in Carthage.
Malden narrowed his eyes.
"Your people used to bathe themselves in fire and ingest silver for purification. I wonder—"
He touched the hand of Thallian with the stone. Thallian responded.
Not in pain. With. resonance.
The stone tugged at his blood.
And something drew back into the air.
Seeing from above, unobserved, a crowned man in tattered timecloth whispered from the Throne.
He'll never be on his knees.