Chapter 154 Beginnings and Departures
The morning on the river dawned slowly, almost as if the day itself knew it was a for gentler goodbyes. The mist lay pale and drifting on the surface of the river, and the docks at Avalon began to murmur quietly. Ropes strained against the wood; oarlocks scraped rhythmically. The riverboat, freshly scoured and banners furled, was not a vessel of ceremony, but of passage.
Lady Auraline stood at the very edge of the dock, her traveling cloak cinched, still smelling faintly of the gardens of Avalon. Her household staff went about their business at their accustomed distance, maids checking off items on scrolls and guards forming a discreet perimeter.
Lisette refused to be far from her.
“You will write,” Lisette declared, chin tipped up in a way that dared contradiction. “Every day.”
Auraline smiled, that softer smile she had learned since coming to Avalon. “I will write often.”
Lisette frowned. “That’s not the same thing.”
Lady Seraphine, standing just behind them, rested a hand lightly on Lisette’s shoulder. “Your father’s correspondence box will not survive daily demands,” she said gently. “We will write in moderation.”
Lisette turned slowly, fixing her mother with a look that was pure, unfiltered disappointment.
“Fine,” she said, drawing the word out. Then, with the decisiveness of youth, she pivoted and poked Caelen firmly in the side. “Then you find a better way.”
Caelen blinked, caught mid-thought. “A better way to—?”
“Write every day,” Lisette said. “Without moderation.”
Caelen opened his mouth, closed it again, and sighed in surrender. “I will… consider innovations.”
Lisette beamed. Expecting the problem to be solved now.
Nearby, Aldric and Auraline stood apart from the bustle, close enough to be together, distant enough to avoid the weight of an audience. They said nothing. There was no need. They simply looked at one another whenever the chance arose, memorizing small details—the tilt of a head, the way light caught at the edge of a smile.
It was a quieter farewell, and therefore the harder one.
The maids approached at last, led by the senior attendant who had overseen Auraline’s stay from the beginning. She hesitated, then cleared her throat.
“Milady,” she said carefully, “what of the chair?”
The chair stood nearby—polished wood and fitted leather, modified with Avalon’s careful craftsmanship. It had become so natural a presence that it seemed strange to imagine it absent.
Auraline followed the maid’s gaze, then looked to Lisette. For a moment, uncertainty flickered across her face.
“It was a gift from Avalon,” she said softly. “Perhaps… perhaps it should return to Avalon.”
Lisette’s response was immediate and fierce. “Nope!”
Everyone turned.
“It was a gift,” Lisette said, hands on her hips. “That means it’s yours. And your house’s. Besides,” she added brightly, “you don’t need to be hurt to have fun in it. It is wonderful to race down the hallways with it.”
She said this with the absolute certainty of a thirteen-year-old who had thoroughly tested the theory.
Auraline laughed—truly laughed—and the sound seemed to loosen something in her chest. “Then I suppose,” she said, “it would be rude to refuse such joy.”
The maids smiled, relief evident, and soon the chair was carefully guided aboard.
Then, the formal goodbyes took place, as all formal goodbyes must. Lady Seraphine’s hug for Auraline was warm and collected; she whispered words only for the two of them. Caelen bowed slightly, and the inclination was more than just protocol; Aldric clasped Auraline’s hand for a moment, then firmly, and released it before either of them had the chance to give something away.
Lisette hugged her fiercely, arms tight around her waist.
“You are to come back,” Lisette ordered.
“I will,” Auraline promised. “And you will write.”
“Every day,” Lisette insisted.
Auraline met her eyes. “As often as I can.”
Lisette’s eyes turned toward her brother, with an unspoken, intense demand to do something.
Caelen groaned quietly. In contrast, his mother’s gaze was filled with hazard.
At last, there was nothing left to delay.
She climbed on the ramp, was helped aboard by gentle hands, and demanded to stay on the deck. Ropes were untied. Oars were lowered. The river received the boat and very gradually took it away from them.
Auraline did not sit.
She leaned on the rail, hands resting on it, as figures disappeared along the dock, then shrank to a shape, then a color.
Along the dock, Lisette was jumping in the air, waving both hands; Seraphine was waving in a calm goodbye; and Aldric was standing as motionless and staring as an unmoving object. Until he was called away, they watched the ship until all the people onboard had softened to a blur, until shapes had lost detail, until faces had vanished in the distance.
On the Galden Vale vessel, it was only when the city’s shoreline had disappeared that they persuaded Aurline into her cabin, still casting glances over the river at where it had departed from.
For three of them, still dockside, it was a bittersweet leaving—but not an ending.
Some departures, after all, were only the first step toward returning.
…
Caelen was back in the Citadel, the river mist still damp and clinging to his cloak and the ghost of oars, pulling away, humming in his ears. He had to admit he was surprised by how the family had managed Lady Auraline’s parting: it had been done with such gentleness, such sure finality, but it was clearly not final at all, yet there had been a burden in it too. He had changed cloaks, washed the dust from his hands, and received the hushed greetings of his home.
None of it had really settled him yet.
When a heat that should not have belonged in this long, cold corridor met him mid-way, he followed it without thought.
The chamber lay deep within the Citadel, one of the older planning rooms once used for councils and later abandoned to ledgers and silence. Tonight, it lived again. The door stood open, and voices spilled out—focused, overlapping, sharpened by craft rather than politics.
Inside, the room had been claimed by intention.
A long table held the center of the room, under mounds of parchment and paperweights of inkstones. The drawings were a chaotic pile of carefully arranged detail: elevations, cross-sections, flues, heat-mass diagrams. Samples of tiles were mixed in with the other detritus – soft greens, pale creams, subtle stone colors, glossy with glaze. A kettle gave off a quiet steam by the wall; it was a matter of comfort rather than need.
Three people were around the table.
Mirelle, his architect, the woman, wiry, her eyes sharp and quick. Her hands gripped the charcoal stick like a thin-bladed knife. Her hair was pulled back into a no-nonsense knot, sleeves pushed up to the elbow, and there was a dusting of black on one of her cheekbones. She seemed as if she had been awake for many hours and would willingly stay up all night, if only this design would just come together properly.
Bralda Stonevein, the dwarf builder, was broad and solid as any wall, her dark hair twisted back into a plait, threaded with copper rings that chimed softly as she shifted her weight from one booted foot to another. She had strong, scarred hands and was absolutely uninterested in anything that wasn’t going to survive the winter or a foolish owner.
Between them, seated with composed ease, was Lady Anastara.
She held a cup of tea that should have gone cold long ago. It hadn’t.
“I’m telling you,” Mirelle was saying, tapping a tall, elegant drawing of a hearth that rose nearly to the ceiling, “if the tile mass is built to this height and sealed correctly, the heat will hold for hours after the fire burns down. This isn’t about flame—it’s about patience.”
Bralda crossed her arms. “And I’m telling you that if the flue path gets too clever, some lordling will stuff it with damp wood and curse my name when smoke fills the room.”
“Fire should be educated,” Mirelle shot back.
“Fire should be respected,” Bralda replied. “Education’s for children.”
Lady Anastara smiled faintly. “You’re both impossible.”
Caelen stepped fully into the room.
“I see I’ve returned at an excellent moment,” he said. “I’m interrupting! Before this becomes a duel or a courtship?”
It was Mirelle who looked up first, an expression of sheer relief on her face. “Caelen. Good. Tell her I am correct.”
Bralda’s gaze slid to him, assessing. “Tell her fire doesn’t care about drawings.”
Enticed, Caelen approached with a smile. The eye immediately fell upon the hearth with the soaring masonry heater covered in glazed tile. An object of simple elegance and subtle beauty, “It is a sound design,” he breathed. “Capable enough to store the heat rather than chase it; elegant enough for your ladyship,” as his eyes fell on Lady Anastara.
Mirelle brightened. “Exactly. Burn hot and fast, seal it, let the mass do the work. Even heat. No smoke. No constant tending.”
“And far less fuel wasted,” Bralda added. “If it’s built right.”
Caelen traced the edge of the drawing with one finger. “And this is for Hollow March.”
Lady Anastara met his gaze, something softer beneath her usual composure. “Yes, your gift for my home,” she said.
The word settled comfortably in the room. This was no secret.
Caelen inclined his head. “Then it should be worthy of you.”
He studied the plans more closely now, eyes narrowing in thought. “If you’ll indulge me,” he said, “I have two recommendations.”
Both Mirelle and Bralda stilled at once. That alone was impressive, and normally nothing could stop these two from bickering.
“To start with,” Caelen began, tracing along the exterior wall with his finger on the sketch, “put the masonry heater there, against the external wall. Use it to anchor the room both thermally and structurally.”
Mirelle nodded and cocked her head. “But that alters the draw.”
“Precisely,” said Caelen. He traced an imaginary line with his finger: “run the flue horizontally from the firebox and underneath a bay window before going vertically. It can retain temperature under there. The bay lounge would then be the warmest spot in the room without being directly exposed to flames.”
Bralda’s eyes narrowed—not in skepticism, but interest. “Stone-lined and clay-sealed flue beneath a bay… Aye. That could work.”
Mirelle was already adjusting lines on the page. “It would soften the draw and extend the release.”
“Secondly,” said Caelen, pointing to a small square box that sat at the hearth, “put a warming box at the hearth. Not a stove. A sealed box, attached to the heating. Its use would be of the practical comfort: teacups, china plates, gloves, slippers, and blankets”.
Bralda grinned. “Now that is sensible.”
Lady Anastara regarded the drawings, then Caelen, with something like quiet gratitude. “You’ve thought about how it will be to live in it.”
“I wanted it to feel like a home,” Caelen said simply. “Not a statement.”
Lady Seraphine entered. The mood of the room shifted then—not sharply, but unmistakably.
She stopped on the threshold, and her eyes ranged over it all: the heat radiating from the room, the tiles arranged like an artist’s palette, the easy untidiness of drawings designed for use and not for show.
“So,” Seraphine said lightly, “this is where everyone has vanished to.”
Lady Anastara looked up with composed innocence. “We weren’t hiding.”
Seraphine stepped farther in, her fingers brushing a tile sample. “Beautiful tile,” she said softly. Her eyes followed the drawings, then stopped at the rough sketch of the bay window and flue path beneath it. “Tall windows, Plastered walls. Decorated ceilings that don’t punish you for sitting still.”
“Oh,” she said, with interest sharpening her tone. “That’s new!”
Caelen glanced at her. “The bay window?”
“Yes,” Seraphine said immediately. “I want that, too.”
Bralda laughed under her breath.
Seraphine continued, warming to the idea. “And when you build mine—and you will—I want white tiles—glazed white and blue. Clean. Bright. None of this graceful restraint.”
Mirelle’s eyes flickered, then a small smile played on her lips. “White will reflect the heat so nicely”. Lady Anastara’s brow rose slightly. “Already, renovations?” Seraphine’s smile was a thin mixture of polite and mocking. “I am planning my mutually advantageous arrangement.”
Bralda came close to Caelen and whispered, “Do all humans mark their territory by warmth?” Caelen stifled a laugh, stepping away from the table. “Let’s finish one gift at a time,” he said
Lady Anastara’s smile sharpened just enough to be noticed.
Seraphine met it without flinching.
And Bralda Stonevein laughed, loud and delighted, the copper rings in her hair chiming softly as the Citadel—old stone and new warmth alike—held their voices and, for once, seemed content to do so.
…
Two days later, Tiberan arrived at the Citadel.
He came without ceremony, as he always did—no banners, no retinue worth remarking upon, only the quiet certainty of a man who had been summoned because something difficult needed doing. The gates admitted him at once. Word had traveled ahead of him, and by the time he dismounted, an officer of the guard was already waiting.
“You are to select twenty-five,” the officer said. “From the White Company. Your choosing.”
Tiberan nodded once. No questions. No objections. The White Company would understand what that meant. Selection was not an honor alone—it was risk.
By midafternoon, the men were selected. By evening, Tiberan was ushered into a chamber that had been cleared of servants, guards dismissed to the far doors. A fire burned low. Maps lay open on the table, weighed down by daggers and stones.
It was a small chamber, and waiting for him were Caelen Aldric, Mirelle, and Lord Malric.
The door swung closed.
And what was discussed within stayed there alone.
But Tiberan heard, like a soldier hears a plan when matters of import are involved. Some paths still had to be walked. Words said in low tones. Tasks outlined without elaboration. This was not a journey where instinct ruled, where the decisions could be postponed to the present; this was a journey for which the mind had to prepare itself in advance.
It was made clear what was expected of him.
It was made equally clear that he would depart at dawn.
When Tiberan finally stood, he met each of them in turn—Caelen first, then Aldric, then Mirelle, then Lord of Isenford. No assurances were spoken. None were needed.
Tomorrow’s departures, it was understood, would matter.
Not symbolically. But practically.
…
Morning came early, and with it, noise.
The river below the Citadel had awakened before the sun fully cleared the eastern rise. Barges crowded the banks. Riverboats bumped gently against one another, their crews calling out, laughing, swearing as ropes were cast and recast. Crates were being lowered by block and tackle. Wagons rolled down toward the docks in steady lines, wheels creaking beneath loads heavy enough to demand care.
The banners were flying more than had been the case for some time. House colors. Merchant sigils. A couple of newly painted guild insignias. The horns sounded-not an alarm, but a signal. The bells in the tower had struck the hour, which was met by whistles from the river crews.
This was noisier than a spring flood.
It was noisier than harvest.
This was an activity with a purpose. The steward and treasurer were there, with severe, concentrated faces, watching the goods of the levy be gathered. Items were being checked and rechecked. Seales pressed into wax. Scribes worked in tandem, one reading, the other writing confirmation. Nothing was hurried; nothing was left waiting.
The realm was adjusting to a new pace. The people going first were grouped at the lower gate: Lord Eldric in his armor, but without helm; the Lord of Isenford, dignified, his expression shuttered; Tiberan already with the gaze of a man already departed; Mirelle observing everything with still eyes; and several other ministers, unable to hide a certain disquiet at this new furture that forced them to leave the Citadel in the circumstances.
There were no speeches.
Eldric clasped forearms with Malric. Tiberan exchanged a brief word with Caelen—too quiet to be overheard. Aldric stood nearby, silent, eyes sharp, already measuring the road ahead.
When they departed, it was swift.
Horses moved out through the gate, banners lowered, escorts falling into disciplined formation. The crowd watched, murmuring, then turned back to the river as if understanding that this was only one thread in a larger weaving.
Farther along the quay, another farewell unfolded—quieter, but no less significant.
Lady Anastara stood ready to depart for Hollowmarch, her carriage already secured aboard a riverboat fitted for comfort rather than speed. Crates of tile samples and rolled plans were stowed carefully under watchful eyes. Bralda Stonevein, the dwarf builder, supervised personally, her voice cutting through the noise with authority born of certainty.
Caelen and Lady Seraphine stood with Anastara at the edge of the dock.
There were no crowds here. No banners raised. Only the steady rush of water and the creak of ropes under tension.
“This is what I can do for Hollow March for now,” Caelen said quietly.
Anastara inclined her head. “I will look forward to your coming.”
Seraphine studied the river for a moment before speaking. “Write,” she said simply. “Not only about the house.”
Anastara smiled faintly. “I know.”
When the moment came, there were embraces—measured, proper, sincere. Caelen offered his hand. Anastara took it, then surprised him by squeezing once, firmly, before letting go.
The gangplank was drawn back. The boat eased away from the dock.
Anastara stood until distance forced stillness, Bralda beside her, copper rings in her hair catching the morning light as she surveyed the work already ahead.
Caelen and Seraphine remained at the river’s edge, watching until the current carried the vessel beyond easy sight.
Around them, the river roared with life.
Wagons continued to arrive. Barges pushed off. Orders were shouted, answered, repeated. The levy was assembling. The realm was moving. It moved with intent rather than habit.
…
The southern road
The southern river was wide and slow that afternoon, drawn thin by the week of dredging. The banks lay scraped and bare; the earth of them showing its ribs, where the shovels and scrapers had torn away its covering, exposing it. Survey stakes stood in orderly lines on each bank, their white heads numbering the planned route of the new road. Straight and determined, it would make no concessions. Avalon would offer no detours.
Marcus Pell and Isembard Thane crossed the southern river using a flimsy trestle of plank and rope that groaned under the pressure of their feet. The transit was supposed to be of limited duration. Measure the gradient. Score the stone. Retreat before dark.
It was the land itself that interrupted the plan.
On the far bank, a notch cut into the slope caught Marcus’s eye. Too clean. Too narrow. A bite taken from the earth with intent rather than chance. The gorge was short—no more than twenty paces across—but its walls rose sheer and smooth, worn not by water’s chaos, but by patient time.
“See the cut?” Marcus said, tapping his measuring rod against the stone. The sound rang flat, wrong. “That isn’t erosion. That’s work.”
Isembard knit his brow. He was more massive in the shoulders, and his beard was streaked with grey from years outdoors, and he had long learned that not every old thing was meant to be cataloged and named. “It’s all old, south of here,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it wants company.”
Nevertheless, they descended.
The gully grew tighter as they descended into the earth, and the light shrank above to a narrow band of gray sky. The air grew cold and damp, and was still and carried the scent of minerals that had not been breathed upon for a great deal of time. At the very back of the gully, choked with rubble and brambles, they located the alcove.
A black hollow in the cliff face.
Marcus brushed moss aside with his gloved hand.
Stone.
Dressed stone.
Edges emerged beneath the green—straight lines, fitted joins. A seam. Then another.
A door.
It was enormous, its surface scarred by centuries of weather but not broken by them. No sigils. No writing. No ornament at all. Just mass. Purpose. As if it had been set there not to be admired, but to remain.
Neither man spoke.
Curiosity finished the work.
It took both of them to shift it. The door did not shriek or grind when it moved. It slid with a deep, patient sound—stone answering stone—as though it had been waiting for pressure again.
Darkness breathed out.
Inside lay a passage, stone-lined and straight. The floor was worn smooth by long-gone traffic, its center hollowed slightly by countless feet. Iron brackets lined the walls in even spacing.
Marcus’s torchlight caught their shape. “Racks,” he said quietly. “Spear racks.”
Empty now. Rust flaked away in soft curls, whispering when it fell.
“Guard posts,” Isembard murmured as they reached the first chamber. “Front rooms.”
Two of them. Crouching. Narrow. A place of looking, not for dwelling. Nothing decorative. Nothing comforting.
But it wasn’t a tomb either.
They moved further on.
The air grew colder, more substantial. The acoustics altered - footfalls were eaten too quickly, voices faltered before they finished. The walls had tool marks Marcus had not seen before; they were small and repetitive, the cutting so economical that they were brutal. Whoever had cut this place had wasted nothing. It was work so clean that only the effort was visible. Was it a man, a dwarf, or something else?
It did not matter.
The intent was unmistakable.
Defense.
Containment.
They were halfway down the second passage when the sound reached them.
Not a roar. Not a breath.
Something grinding against stone.
A dry cadence. Step. Pause. Drag. Step.
Marcus turned, his chest slamming hard enough to hurt. “That’s not—”
It came out of the darkness without haste.
A figure. Once human-shaped, perhaps. Now stripped of all rightness. Its flesh had dried and pulled away in strips, clinging like old cloth. Bone showed through—yellowed, cracked, incomplete. Yet it stood.
It moved.
Not with the fluid logic of muscle and balance.
Its joints bent wrong. Each step came in stages, as if negotiated piece by piece. Something unseen held it upright, forcing continuation where collapse should have come long ago. It was not driven by will.
It was being carried.
The wrongness pressed against Marcus’s chest, squeezing the breath from him.
“No,” Isembard whispered. “By the spirits not here. Not this!”
Marcus acted without thought. He drove his spear forward, iron biting into the thing’s center mass. The haft shuddered as the point burst out its back.
Dust exploded. Bone fragments were scattered across the floor. The cavity where organs should have been simply collapsed inward.
The thing did not fall.
It kept coming.
The spear was torn from Marcus’s hands as the figure lurched forward, broken ribs grinding against the blade with a sound like gravel poured from a sack.
“Remnant!” Isembard breathed.
The word landed heavily.
Marcus’s head snapped toward him—and in the same breath, Isembard added, sharp and certain: “This is not the Reach, dam it!”
Not a ghost.Not a spirit.Not a Veil-touched thing.
A failure.
The Remnant swung an arm—not in anger, not in hunger, but because motion demanded continuation. The blow struck Marcus across the shoulder. There was a crack, sharp and absolute. Pain exploded, overwhelming and hot, stealing his voice. He went down hard, breath tearing from him in a broken scream.
Isembard hauled him up by his good arm. “Move!” he roared, fear finally breaking discipline. “It won’t stop—it can’t!”
They ran.
Behind them, more sounds answered the first. More grinding. More wrong steps, echoing through the stone.
Shapes moved in the dark. Not fast. Never fast.
But unrelenting.
Marcus stumbled, vision blurring, his shattered arm hanging uselessly. Each breath burned. The passage stretched impossibly long, the doorway a distant slice of pale light.
The Remnants did not chase.
They followed.
They fell into the daylight with gasping lungs. Isembard swung about and slammed his shoulder into the door. Marcus put his weight in too, crying through the pain as they shoved again.
The stone was like something immovable.
But with a sound like the turning of some enormous book, it finally clicked shut.
Silence.
They fell again in the dirt, trembling but alive.
Somewhere beyond the now-closed stone, something stirred.
Not in rage.
Not with hunger.
Just as something that hadn’t been allowed to end.
And Marcus, with eyes fixed on the seamless door with a certainty born of terror and realization, knew.
The building wasn’t designed to keep anything out.
It was built to keep anything undone in.