Outskirts of Trillstone Way, Northern Velgrath
The door closed behind Aeron with a soft thud, muffled by the peat-thick air. Mist coiled like smoke around his boots as he stepped into the dark. The man who'd shown the half-coin walked ahead, not looking back. His gait was loose, but not drunk. Intentional, like someone who knew how to vanish in a city of alleys—and how to make himself found when he wished.
Aeron followed, hand resting on the dagger at his belt, thumb brushing the hilt in time with each silent step. His sword remained slung across his back. Drawing it here would shout panic. The dagger whispered caution.
They passed a stand of bent alder trees, their black branches clawing at the fog. Then down a slope where ancient cart ruts had filled with rainwater. The man's boots left no splash.
Finally, he stopped.
They stood beside a sunken stone marker, half-swallowed by moss. A burial cairn, perhaps, or an old milepost left to rot when the Crown's roads fell out of repair.
The man turned, lowering his hood.
He was young. No older than thirty summers. Pale as milk, hair thin and ash-blond, cut short like a soldier's. But his eyes were what stopped Aeron—one grey, one clouded over with scarring. A blade had kissed his face once and left him half blind.
"You speak for House Thorne?" Aeron asked.
The man gave a hollow smile. "I speak for what's left of it."
He held out the broken coin again.
"Who gave it to you?"
"A knight," the man replied. "Dying in a ditch east of the Ferroway. Bled out before moonrise. But not before he named you. Said the banner might rise again—if the boy returned."
Aeron stepped closer, taking the coin. He turned it over in his palm. His father's mark—an old falcon, wings broken, talons bloodied—was scorched but visible. The heat must've been intense.
"Did he say what happened to the others?" Aeron asked quietly.
"The other bearers? Dead, most likely. Hunted. Some turned. One joined the King's Justiciars, I heard."
"And you?"
"I was six when your house fell," the man said. "My father was a steward at Halden March. When the banners burned, they slit his throat and put me in the coal pits. I climbed out. Now I pass messages."
A pause stretched between them like a drawstring pulled tight.
"I'm not raising banners," Aeron said. "Not yet. I've no keep. No men."
"Yet your name still pulls ghosts from the ground."
The man crouched beside the stone marker and scraped away moss with his dagger's edge. Beneath the grime, words appeared—barely legible, but carved with care.
"For the lost. For the burned. For the buried."
Below it, ten notches had been scored into the stone. Three were freshly gouged.
"The others?" Aeron asked.
The man nodded.
"Who else knows I'm alive?"
"Fewer than know you're dead. But word spreads, even to the ash-born. The Crown may have forgotten the Thorne crest, but the woods haven't. Nor the men who bled for it."
Aeron looked at the stone again, then at the mist.
"Why now?"
"Because Velstrom rides again," the man said, voice flat. "And the king's coin is thinning. Lords are breaking oath. Some might even remember the name that was erased."
He stood.
"Next time we meet, it won't be here. And I won't come alone."
With that, he turned and vanished into the fog, footsteps silent as falling ash.
Aeron remained still for a long while. The wind had shifted. It now carried the scent of wet iron.
Back inside the hearth, Harwin watched the door like a man guarding a crypt. The boy beside him stirred.
"How long's he been gone?"
Harwin didn't answer. His hand stayed on his sword pommel.
Then, at last, the door creaked open, and Aeron stepped through.
He looked older.
Harwin stood halfway, eyes scanning behind him. "Alone?"
"For now," Aeron said.
He walked past the tables and sat down.
Harwin leaned in, voice low. "And?"
"Someone remembers," Aeron replied, setting the scorched coin on the table.
The boy stared at it, eyes wide.
Harwin grunted. "Is that good?"
Aeron didn't answer.
Because he didn't know yet.