Cairon took the guise of Lord Kael Viremont, a masked sellsword noble from beyond the Redreach Mountains. A foreign name. Exotic. Unplaceable. That was the point. In truth, it had no meaning. Just a sound carved from smoke and mirror, dressed in silk and polished steel.
But it served.
It was enough to get him through the gates of castles that would have turned away the bastard son of a minor nobleman with a sneer. Enough to get him seated at the long tables of earls and warlords, where wine flowed and secrets spilled like blood.
More than four years had passed since he had stood shirtless in the snow, lashes striping his back, while Isolde watched from her balcony with a satisfied smile.
The world had forgotten Cairon Blackthorn.
But Cairon had not forgotten the world.
"Your accent is strange, my lord," said the noblewoman beside him, fingers dancing along the rim of her goblet. Her dress clung like a lover, crimson and silk. "Not quite western. Not quite northern either. Where did you say you were from?"
Kael's voice was quiet, velvet over stone. His lower face was wrapped in black silk, leaving only his eyes exposed: cold, like river ice in winter.
"I was raised in exile," he said. "Too many borders to count. None that mattered."
A lie, smooth and practiced. She smiled at the mystery, not realizing she had already fallen under his spell.
"And your blade?" she asked, eyes drifting to the sword at his hip. "I've never seen one like it."
Kael sipped from his goblet. His answer came with a glance. "I found it in a ruin where gods once bled."
She shivered. The room was warm, but something in his voice had teeth.
He had found that answers mattered less than confidence. And most of the time, he did not need to use the serpent's tongue. Mortals were eager to be fooled. They saw coin, strength, foreign cloth stitched with serpent-thread, and heard tales of victories in the border wars. That was enough. His name spread faster than his sword.
Lord Kael Viremont. The masked lord. The serpent knight. The commander who never lost.
He had started with nothing. A name, a sword, a cloak, and a will that would not break. He sold his sword to minor lords and desperate barons. He fought in fields choked with smoke and shallow graves. He won, again and again. Because he could see fear before it bloomed. Because men followed him without knowing why.
They whispered that he could smell betrayal. That his voice made cowards charge and hardened knights kneel.
He paid no mind to what they believed. As long as they obeyed.
Within two years, he commanded a company of hardened veterans. They called themselves the Blackcoils. To some, they were mercenaries. To others, cultists.
He let them believe what they wished. He paid his men in silver. Fought beside them in the rain. Once, he burned a rival commander alive with a word and a touch, and watched as the man's screams rose higher than the flames.
It had cost him blood. But it was worth the pain. Power always was.
He bribed bishops and watched them bow. He blackmailed counts and smiled as they groveled. A merchant syndicate tried to poison him once. He destroyed it in a week, replaced its leaders with loyal shadows, and left their bodies in wine barrels.
Power came easily. Almost too easily.
One evening, beside the fire in his tent, his second-in-command, a former knight named Garran, asked him, "Why the mask, my lord?"
Cairon turned, slow and calm. "Because I want them to wonder."
There were a hundred rumors about him. Some said Kael Viremont was horrifically scarred, that his face was burned off by his own brother. Others claimed he had taken a holy vow to hide his face until the Blightlands were reclaimed. Some whispered he was the prince of a distant kingdom.
Garran frowned. "Do you ever plan to take it off?"
Cairon stared into the flames. "When the time is right."
The time came in autumn, beneath a sky the color of rust.
Cairon sat atop his horse, overlooking the northern pass. Blackstone Keep waited on the horizon, distant and shrouded in mist. He could just make out its towers, still cracked and weathered, just as he remembered.
"Does this place mean something to you, my lord?" Garran asked beside him.
Cairon shrugged. "Not at all."
He watched the gates. Soldiers moved along the walls. New banners flew, but the bones of the place had not changed. The wind carried with it the scent of pine, stone, and something older. Memory.
Isolde was there. So was his father, if he still lived. Perhaps his half-brothers now ruled in his place. Perhaps they had forgotten him.
No.
They had buried him.
Let them believe Cairon Blackthorn had died in the Blightlands. Let them believe Lord Edran Vael's mistake had rotted with the rest of the condemned.
That belief had kept them comfortable.
He would take that comfort away.
That night, he stood before a mirror in his tent. The black scarf lay folded beside him. He looked at his reflection. Hard lines. Cold eyes. A face carved by fire and fury. His back still bore the scars of the flogging. Faint, but there. A map of pain.
The seventeen-year-old bastard boy was dead.
He was twenty-one now. A man made by pain. A killer shaped by purpose.
He donned the serpent-cloak, black as midnight, trimmed in gold thread. He fastened the ring the Suthari had given him to his finger. His hand trembled once, briefly, as he remembered the past. Then steadied.
He would walk through those gates.
Not as Cairon Blackthorn. Not as a bastard.
He would return as Lord Kael Viremont.
He would be welcomed.
Feared.
Obeyed.
And then, when the hour was right… the mask would come off.
Let Isolde see the face of the boy she broke.
Let her see what crawled out of the pit she thought would bury him.
Let her see the man she made.