The Valefen keep was a living, moving being – a pillar to the generations of warriors, diplomats, and legends, which seemed to throb with something more than sheer stone and mortar. Every corridor was murmuring stories, each stone contained memory and I was still learning how to listen. The great old relic set upon the cliffs above the Stormrage Sea turned and toughened by time and tempest its towers pierced on the mist as centuries before, the ancient fortress perched like a sentinel over the fast-moving raging sea.
I had heard of and even seen mansions in the capital, of which I'd walking the golden halls of nobles whose riches could buy kingdoms. Yet there was none that exuded bare, primal power which coursed through the walls of Valefen. This was not a site constructed to impress visiting dignitaries, or demonstrate opulence. This was a bastion of enemies mortal and mythic, a statement in the ability to remain in memory through the face of forces which would have wiped lesser houses from the scroll.
Mornings started before sun rise of things most people would term cacophony but which for me grew into a symphony of purpose.
The clash of training swords. The rhythmic scrubbing of floors. The far ring of the kitchen bells. The quiet whisper of servants, passing whispering reports. The wound of crumbling timbers as the keep stirred out of its rest. All sounds, like a thread in the great tapestry of House Valefen.
I had been swept away from myself during my first week, submerged in a sea of strange customs and unspoken rules. However, as weeks moved into months, months into years, and years into decades, I began to comprehend the complex hierarchy that was used to measure and elevate everything here and to make some sense of the patterns in the chaos I had grown accustomed to. There was nothing here that had no meaning or purpose. Only those who knew how to read them would be able to recognize the stories of alliances, triumphs, and heartbreaking losses that were written on the tapestry placements.
My first true instructor of the delicate, nuanced skill of observation was Bran, the buttoned-up button whose sheer presence commanded an almost complete stillness, with no shouted voices whatsoever. He paced the keep with a straight back and silver hair for a man his age, carrying the weight of centuries' rise and fall with silent confidence. His eyes, which were as sharp as a single blade and the hue of a pale blue winter sky, missed nothing.
As he led me into the west wing one foggy morning, he would exclaim, "Young master!" "A worthy leader doesn't simply see, they see with. A true leader comprehends". His rough yet steady palm gestured toward the stonework over a door that wasn't particularly noteworthy. There was a small wolf head on the keystone, where one would only notice it if they tried. It was an older, more basic symbol—a wolf with eyes that appeared to follow us as we moved—rather than the arrogant, snarling insignia that adorned our banners.
"The old mark," Bran said softly, his voice resonating with reverence. The Valefen were the guardians of these coasts before they were lords, army commanders, or members of kings' councils. The ordinary people referred to them as "the wolves of the sea" long before any monarch granted them land or title. I felt the worn edges left by the several hands that have gone before mine as I brushed my fingers over the sculpture. Why doesn't it proudly display itself here instead of hiding? Real power does not require declaration because of the youthful master. It will be discovered by those who ought to understand its meaning. "—are not yet prepared for what it reveals," he said, his lips curving into the ghost of a smile.
Our trip went on inside corridors, that crisscrossed like the labyrinthine mind of some old architect. Nothing in Valefen Keep was straight; each corridor bowed slightly; each chamber, secret chambers and secondary doors. A fortress invented by people who knew that sometimes survival took the form of retreat, regroup, return.
"Your grandfather" Bran said, stopping before a line of narrow windows looking out on the training yard, "rebuilt this wing after the Great Storm of '82". The eastern tower was totally down. Most of the lords would have hired architects in the capital, and introduced the fashionable designs. But Lord Garrett, on the other hand, was determined to do it according to the old plans.
Underneath us knights practised in groups that looked disordered to untutored vision – couples spinning apart and then coming together in lethal combination strikes. There was a flow to their motion that should have overcome the weight of their armor, a dance of death, composed with an almost mechanical exactitude.
"Why?" I asked as I watched a young squire trying to keep the elaborate footwork pattern.
" "Because", Bran's voice was now lower "the keep is more than stone". Even the build out, angles of walls, locations of doorways – not just for defense against human enemies.
I looked at him, feeling something Gethal about his pause.
The older ones, Mr. young, in this world. Enemies that sleep today but used to prowl these shores with the appetite that could never be satisfied. Your ancestors knew this. They built accordingly."
We stopped before a giant (floor to ceiling) tapestry. It was unlike the clean banners in the main hall – this was different – tattered around the edges, its threads worn but still vibrant in untold stories.
The picture was a navy combat that was impossible. Valefen ships of inferior size to the monstrous sea creatures they battled got into a battle that opposed natural law. Tentacles bigger than entire vessels wrapped around wood hulls, and yet the Valefen vessels fought with a fervor that would seemingly defy logic. The waves themselves appeared life, writhing with wickedness, clawing after the ships with watered hands.
"Your great-grandmother," Bran said (voice dropping to a reverent whisper) "Captain Elena Valefen. She didn't only fight sea monsters. She understood them."
I followed the silver lines revealing the figure of a solitary – a woman facing the ship's helm, her sword not pointing in the direction of the laugh-in-their-face rebellious act – but of something closer to understanding. Her face, threaded and which for some reason conveyed at once determination and sorrow, was not averted not from the creature but toward it, as if between them.
"How?" I asked in a near whisper.
Bran's lips quirked – a very rare opportunity of almost-humor. "Knowledge, young master. Our family always was convinced that the true power does not lie in that one is strong, but in that one understands but is not strong. Captain Elena has devoted years of her life to studying of the old songs of the deep. She learned their language not words, but vibrations, tones that radiate outside the human ear's range.
My fingers hardly lifted from the picture of Elena's sword, it was not simply reflecting light, it was glowing, gold and silver threads spilt out, like the tentacles of the creature.
Is this not art, isn't it? I asked, suddenly certain.
"Very good," Bran nodded and approval comforted his usually iron countenance. No, young master this is a tapestry that contains instruction. From the pattern of light to the placement of ships, the angle of the captain's blade, it all is a story for Valefen eyes only. A battle strategy, certainly, but also one of the ways of communicating with older beings than our recorded history.
I took a step back looking at the tapestry anew, not as a decoration but as ciphered knowledge, the legacy that was safe under the eye.
"Are there others?" I asked, looking along the long corridor where dozens were just like it.
Every hanging comes with a story young master. And all of them are secrets to those who wait to untangle them. He held out a finger to a smaller tapestry in the room across the hall. "That one? The account of how Lord Kellen Valefen reached peace with the mountain clans when they arrived during the Seven Year Winter. A hunting party is all that most visitors notice. Those in the know see a diplomatic rescue of thousands of avoidable starvation here."
Each of the Knights of Valefen was a narrative that was written inside of them, making them living legends. As living weapons, they moved through the keep, and their training was a holy rite that began long before the sun rose. Dawn discovered me crouched in a corner of the training yard, observing how an old elm made room for its roots to reside in a stone that had enraged armies. The knights' morning ritual began in quiet as twenty fighters formed a perfect circle with their eyes closed and their breathing in unison. There were no orders. There was no need for any. They were a single entity that moved with unrelenting fear due to decades of control.
I was watching at their morning drills when Sir Kerran, a mountain of a man with more scars to tell more stories than most libraries, caught me. His shape was something Valefen, neither gentle nor harsh. He just waited there until I saw him, in a position where other knights might yell commands or make threats. He only nodded, acknowledging without offering an opinion, when I did, recoiling somewhat at the sight of his massive figure standing next to me. With a voice remarkably soft for a man who reportedly once held a castle gate in his hands closed as his comrades escaped a siege, he murmured, "Come here, little wolf."
I came up, like the morning mist, silent.
He extended an old training dagger (with a leather sheath that was worn smooth by decades of handling). The blade proper was dull, a training tool designed to inhibit blood loss, but the quality of its manufacture was inarguable. The pommel had the same old wolf design I had seen over the entrance, eyes were alive even though this wolf was crafted in metal centuries earlier.
As soon as my fingers touched the hilt a change arose. Not magic—not exactly. But a vibration. A resonance that appeared to link me somehow to something much older than myself. The weight of the blade was comfortable as this was how my hand is designed to grip another shape of this particular weapon.
The peels of Sir Kerran's guffaw then rumbled across the courtyard as a clarion call that scares a flight of ravens. By the old gods, you are most definitely Thalric's son. This blade? It has more history than most kingdoms."
He beckoned me to follow him to a less noisy corner of the yard, outside the main training in which knights moved now in ruthlessly efficient combat forms.
"This dagger" he said, settling his weight onto a worn stone bench, "was your great-great-grandfather's Aldric the Swift's". Not as famous as some Valefens but maybe as important as many give him credit for. He wasn't the biggest warrior, and not the strongest. But his mind,- Kerran tapped his temple "—that was his real weapon".
He started to tell me the dagger's tale – how it followed blindly down the line of Valefen warriors three generations deep, how it had saved lives and finished fights with du Nord accuracy. The way Aldric had stopped a war with the Eastern Provinces not in battle, but by locating the actual puppeteer behind a diabolical assassination plan, through the use of this exact dagger to fasten proof to a table during negotiations.
Every word was a school, every narrative a string in the heavy tapestry of my family's history. The dagger was not just a weapon, but a Valefen value —precision instead of plain force, comprehending the other, not blindly attacking.
Most noble houses teach their sons to swing swords," Kerran said, observing me trying the balance of the dagger. Valefen teaches its children they should think before the blade is drawn. That's why we don't follow others to their deaths".
So why does the training appear to be different? I inquired, gesturing to the knights who did now couple up in combat shapes foreign to me in the capital.
Kerran's scarred face broke into grin that altered his terrible face. "Noticed that, did you? Good eyes." He stood, and taking back the dagger briefly, he demonstrated. The standard combat training prepares you for how to defeat human opponents. Valefen training makes you ready for anything".
He shifted like using the dagger was a reflex, the thing flashing patterns of motion that defied logic, lashing blows that would miss any normal opponent. This, he stated while moving, is for creatures with more than one limb that come at you from weird angles. Another pattern, this one defensive, of blade, held at a particular angle, in front of the body. This attitude diverts acid spray or venom.
I watched, dumbfounded, as he illustrated forms that were to fight against threats I had only read about – in olden fairy tales – forms, which has been kept for generations, against foes that most people now feel only carry an imaginary bite.
We remember, Kerran said in a simple statement, returning the dagger to me. When people forget, when they construct pretty palaces with not a thought about defense from the older threats, we remember. That's the real power of House Valefen".
He looked to the keep where a servant had opened the entryway, and motioned in a subtle way toward us. "Ah, you're summoned. Lady Ysolde doesn't wait for a man, not even for her son. His huge hand rested momentarily on my shoulder which exuded both expectation and confidence. "Keep the dagger. Learn its balance. So that your hand could remember what your mind could forget".
With such cryptic instruction, he then went back to the training session leaving me cuddling a slice of history while wondering what sort of call up would be waiting for me.
My mother Lady Ysolde was a storm of her own. So elegant past imagining, but with the mind that could cut through political intrigue like a blade of razor. Where Lord Thalric ordered by being there, Lady Ysolde controlled by checkmate. The servants mutter she had eyes everywhere in the great households and ears in all the royal courts. I believed it. She noticed everything in particular within the walls of her own keep.
Her private study was a Noble's sanctuary, actually a War room. Walls and tables and bookshelves and closet doors and floors and counters were all covered with maps — not attractive things, but alive, moving documents pierced by pins and notes and arrows to show entire economic and political environments. The center of the room was taken up by a huge desk of ironwood, upon which correspondence lay covered with seals of houses great and small. The room reeked of ink, old parchment, and faint citrus that always surrounded my mother.
I knocked, sure she was already in the know that I was on my way, long before I arrived at her door.
"Enter," was her voice, clear as a blade of a surgeon.
I saw her in front of the biggest map – a detailed overview of the known kingdoms, areas, and too often the disputed lands. This was not a picture map for them to sell, or hang on the wall of their houses, this was a working document. Different colors highlighted territory borders to signify their stability or contestation, trade routes were drawn in proportional thicknesses, tiny symbols marked all the way from mineral deposits to reported locations of monster lairs.
Come," she ordered one afternoon, without once looking up from a rather involved map of southern trade flows.
I sat, sure that this was simply more than a casual request. With my mother every moment was a lesson.
"What do you see?" she asked whilst putting a detailed map of the southern territories.
I studied it carefully. The placement of trade routes. The nuance of noble houses placement. An economic sky about to burst with an incoming storm. The fact that some shipping lanes had been marked in new ink, off the beaten tide paths.
"Trouble," I said quietly. "House Merrow is building an economic squeeze on smaller maritime families. "
Her eyebrow went up – not a good thing, a sure indication of real interest.
"Explain."
And so I did. Mapping of trade routes, observation of vital strategic positioning of vessels, location of probable economic pressure points – most would fail to see. The sequence was soft but definitive – the merchant fleet of House Merrow had strategically placed itself to dominate entrance into three of the most important harbours, setting prices ever higher, or risking bankruptcy on the smaller houses.
"And their purpose?" she poked to see if I had seen the entirety of strategy.Looking again at a map, I noted how close these controlled harbors are to the capital. They aren't after trade dominance, I realized out loud. They're creating leverage from the crown. If they dominate these shipping lanes fully then they can blackmail by stopping supply to the capital during winter months".
When I was done she said nothing for a long time. Then—a laugh. Not mocking. Genuinely impressed.
"Your father's strategic mind" she murmured. "My capacity for observation. Interesting combination."
She had moved to a mother-of-pearl inlaid marine cabinet and extracted a slender volume wrapped in blue leather. "This," she said, and laid it on the table before me, "is a shipping manifest out of House Merrow's flagship, the Siren's Call. Achieved at great cost via means I won't discuss.
I opened it with caution, following a row of cargo entries, ports of call, taxes.
"Third page," she directed. "The entry for Blackwater Harbor."
There in among legal freight documents, there was a contradiction – weapons. No the usual shipment one would expect for trade or defence, but siege equipment components, most of which appear as agricultural machines.
"They're getting ready for war," I whispered.
"Indeed." One of my mother's fingers tapped a particular notation. "And now they seek allies. This consignment was not sent to their own estates, but to the fortress of Lord Caldwell – a man whose attitude to the crown has always been… flexible".
She closed the book and trained upon me a gaze that was supposed to reduce hardened diplomats to confessions of schemes they never did plan. This information is opportunity and threat. What would you do with it, the question was?
I pondered seriously with this being not theoretical. Send warning out to our vassals along the eastern shore to move up their naval patrols. Silently draw near vulnerable houses to Merrow's economic pressure, and present other trading relationships. And..."
I paused, the audacity of my next thought stopping me.
"Speak," she commanded.
Order to move our own ships into a cut off position to prevent the next weapons shipment. Not to take it – that would be an act of aggression- but to escort it – allegedly to protect it from pirates. So we let them know we understand what they're up to, without accusing them directly.
A smile that was as rare as winter roses was on my mother's features. "A delicate touch. Not the naked confrontation nor passive acceptance".
Your grandfather would approve." She went back to the map and made a little marking with a quill having a silver tip. I've already sent Captain Lyra with three ships in order to do that very thing.
She pointed to a chair near her desk. Now we talk about the northern territories. It bothers me .. Baron Krell's sudden interest in our boundary disputes…"
What was supposed to be a trial somehow became an actual strategy session. Over the following two hours Lady Ysolde passed intelligence reports, economic projections and political analyses that would have been fortunes for competing houses. She did not speak as mother to child, but one veteran strategist to another, demanding — expecting insights befitting the Valefen name.
When our meeting ended, the sun had started its gradual retreat into the western mountains when it imparted a tiger-yellow glow to the study glowing the maps from inside, as if these were lit up.
You will come here to me each afternoon, "she said and it was a decree rather than a request," she said. "A great deal you have to learn.
I bent as I looked at her, knowing both the glory and the weight of her gaze. "Yes, my lady."
Before I turned to exit, her voice arrested me and softer now. "Asher." My name in not formal as she used in her official work but almost like tenderness. "Your arrival here was... unexpected. But not unwelcome. Remember that."
It was as much maternal warmth as Lady Ysolde would allow herself between those walls. I nodded, and the sudden constriction in my throat closed up on the emotion I couldn't risk showing.
My father Lord Thalric, was a force of nature, largely rejected by the confines of nobility. Lord Thalric's style of leadership was straightforward, instinctive, bludgeoning, and no less functional for seeming evident. Where Lady Ysolde managed with tact and devious gambit, Lord Thalric was open, overt, and just as effective for it.
In the evenings, during training, I would lurk in the shadows, watching no not only his movements, but how he made the ones watching him over into someone else. He physically challenged every knight, tested all but one squire, knew the strengths and weaknesses of each of those under his command not from reports, but his own hand to hand combat.
When other knights practiced they were good. They were legendary when Lord Thalric was there.
Training yard was changing at dusk. Torches lit up the area casting long angulated shadows which were twinkling like spirits over the relic stones. Knights who had done their ritual already came back spontaneously, starved for Lord Thalric's teaching. Servants even had excuses to stand around the yard, to watch a piece of spectacle that became famous in the entire kingdom.
Lord Thalric was one against two blades, which is unusual for noblemen, who prefer to wield greatswords, or simply a sword and shield. His weapons were not ornate. No ceremnonial engravings, and no gold inlay. Simply two perfectly balanced steel extensions of his will kept there with obsessive care.
"Power," he bayed from across the yard, which did not seem to shout, "power is worthless without precision."
He proved doing it by fighting three knights at once. When they came at him with the brute force to crush them to the ground, he failed to stop them and parried, evaded, diverted their tides against themselves. Not ever did he resort to brute force. The each movement was effective, the each strike calculated.
"And precision," he continued, disarming the first knight with a flick of his wrist that seemed almost casual, "is worthless without purpose."
The remaining two knights coordinated their attack, one high, one low—a maneuver that should have divided his attention fatally. Instead, Lord Thalric leapt, twisting between their blades in a display of agility that defied his armored bulk, landing with perfect balance before sweeping both men's legs from under them.
As they hit the ground, his blades rested at their throats, not pressing, merely present—a reminder of mortality delivered without words.
"Purpose," he said, helping both men to their feet with genuine respect, "comes from knowing what you protect. Why you fight. Without that knowledge, you are merely a weapon waiting to be wielded by another's hand."
One evening, he caught me watching. No words were exchanged. Just a slight nod. But in that moment, I felt seen. Truly seen. Acknowledged not as a child to be sheltered, but as a potential successor to his legacy.
The following evening, I found a set of training clothes laid out in my chamber—simple, practical garments bearing the Valefen wolf.
A message without words. An invitation.
I arrived at the training yard earlier than usual, my heart hammering against my ribs. The knights were already assembled, forming a circle that parted silently at my approach. At the center stood Lord Thalric, his twin blades sheathed at his hips, his expression unreadable.
"You come to learn?" he asked, words carrying to every corner of the suddenly silent yard.
"I come to serve," I answered, the formal response coming from some ancestral memory I hadn't known I possessed.
He nodded once, then gestured to a weapons rack where training blades of various styles were displayed. "Choose."
I hesitated only briefly before selecting a single short sword, similar to the dagger Sir Kerran had given me but with greater reach. Not the most impressive weapon, nor the most powerful, but one that felt right in my grip.
A murmur ran through the assembled knights—approval or skepticism, I could not tell.
"Begin," Lord Thalric commanded, and a young squire stepped forward.
What followed was not a duel in any conventional sense. The squire—Tomas, I would later learn—was not trying to defeat me but to assess me. His attacks tested not my strength but my adaptability, not my aggression but my control.
I matched him as best I could, drawing on fragmented lessons from tutors in the capital, on observations of Valefen training, on instinct that seemed to flow from the weapon itself into my arm. I was not skilled—not truly—but I was observant. Where Tomas created patterns, I recognized them. Where he left deliberate openings, I identified but did not always exploit them, sometimes choosing defense over opportunism.
After what felt like hours but could only have been minutes, Lord Thalric raised his hand. "Enough."
Tomas stepped back, offering a respectful bow that I returned, my breathing ragged while his remained composed.
Lord Thalric approached, students parting before him like sea before the prow of a warship. He circled me once, assessing.
"You fight with your mind," he said finally. "Good. The body can be trained. The mind must be willing." He gestured to Sir Kerran, who stepped forward holding a leather-bound tome. "You will study this manual before our next session. Its forms are the foundation upon which Valefen combat is built."
He turned to leave, then paused. "You favor your right side when defensive. Correct this."
That was all. No flowery encouragement, no paternal pride. Just acknowledgment and instruction. Yet as he walked away, I noticed the knights regarding me differently—with curiosity rather than skepticism, with consideration rather than dismissal.
That night, by candlelight, I opened the manual he had provided. Its pages contained not just combat forms but philosophy, strategy, understanding of how the body and mind work in concert, how terrain and weather affect combat, how different weapons require different approaches. Diagrams showed pressure points, joint locks, footwork patterns optimized for various terrains.
This was not the simplified swordplay taught to noble sons in the capital. This was systematic knowledge accumulated over generations of warfare, preserved and refined by a family that understood survival required more than valor—it required intelligence.
As the sun set over the Valefen keep, painting the stone walls in hues of gold and crimson, I realized something profound.
This was more than a house.
This was a legacy.
And I was becoming a part of it.
The thought should have been intimidating. Instead, it filled me with a determination that burned away uncertainty. If the Valefen expected greatness, then greatness they would have—not through birthright, but through the same qualities that had established their name: observation, understanding, purpose.
I placed Sir Kerran's dagger beside the manual, the ancient wolf eyes on its pommel catching the candlelight. Then I began to read, committing each diagram to memory, each principle to heart. Tomorrow would bring new lessons, new challenges.
Tonight, I prepared.
Outside my window, the Stormrage Sea crashed against the cliffs, a constant reminder of forces greater than any mortal power. Yet the keep stood firm, as it had for centuries, a monument to human determination against powers both seen and unseen.
Within these walls, I would either find my place or forge one.