# Chapter 13 – Beneath the Shrine
**Arthur Vaelstrom**
The stone steps spiraled down, each one colder than the last. Arthur's boots scraped softly against them, the only sound in the sealed air. The shrine's underbelly smelled of iron and ancient rock, sharp and unyielding, like a blade left too long in the dark. His torch cast jagged shadows, licking across walls carved with oaths—old words, half-forgotten, from a time when knights swore to more than crowns.
The chamber below was small, deliberate. Its walls bore the weight of promises etched in a script Arthur knew from his mother's lessons, fragments of an empire before it stitched itself together. At the far end, a chipped relief showed a knight kneeling, his armor split, sword broken, head bowed to a symbol above. Not the sun. Something sharper, older, its edges worn to ambiguity.
Beneath it sat a blackstone box, smooth as glass, untouched by time.
Arthur crouched, his breath steady. He didn't rush to open it. His fingers traced the box's edges—warm, polished, almost alive. The Codex at his chest stirred, a faint hum, like it was watching.
When he eased the lid open, the air tightened, as if the room itself held its breath.
Inside lay a shard—thin, dark, etched with lines that echoed the Codex's own. Not whole. Not dead. A piece of something left behind, maybe by a knight who'd died here, unburied, unremembered.
He touched it. The torchlight didn't dim, but something deeper did.
A flicker hit him, sharp and unasked. Not his memory, but it sank into him like heat into iron.
A man stood in this chamber, blood seeping through cracked armor, his face rough, eyes pale and steady. "I held the line," he said, voice low, final. "I buried them myself."
He placed the shard in the box, his hands steady despite the wounds. He looked up at the relief, the broken knight mirroring his own stance.
"I break my sword. But not my word."
Then it was gone.
Arthur blinked, alone again, the shard cold in his hand. It carried something—a weight, a trace, like the smell of ash after a fire. Not magic. Something heavier.
He slipped the shard into a leather pouch and stood. The Codex at his chest felt denser, as if it had claimed the memory for itself.
Outside, the cold snapped against his face as he climbed back into the fading light. The sun hung low, bleeding gold over the ridge.
Captain Arga waited below with two riders, their horses stamping in the chill. "My lord," he said, holding out a sealed scroll. "From Stormgrave. Your father's cipher. Came by hawk."
Arthur cracked the wax and scanned the words.
> You've stirred something older than dust. The capital's eyes are on you now. Some will come with smiles. Others with steel.
> I've held them off. For now.
> Trust no envoy without my seal.
> A.V.
He folded the parchment, tucking it into his sleeve, his gaze drifting to the village below. A cart creaked under a merchant's load. Children laughed by the well. Everything looked right. But it wasn't.
Whatever lay in that box, whoever left that shard—they'd buried it to keep it from the world above.
That night, Arthur sat alone on the ridge's edge, the forest below swallowed in shadow. The Codex pulsed once, then again, warm against his chest. He drew it out, its surface catching the faint moonlight. A new mark had appeared along its lower edge, faint but clear, matching the shard's etching.
It wasn't power the Codex offered. It was memory. Duty.
His fingers tightened around it.
Tomorrow, he'd start piecing together what that memory meant, what oaths it demanded.
For now, he kept watch. The trees below swayed, but not with the wind.
And somewhere, past the blackened ridge, something was watching back.