It was strange, how silence could hum louder than noise.
The great dining hall of House Valeborne was built to echo glory. Massive, vaulted ceilings stretched overhead, laced with beams of luminous crystal that captured morning light and refracted it across frescoes of ancient triumph. At the far end of the long marble table, Lord Theron Valeborne sat in his silver-trimmed robes, carved cane resting against his chair, expression unreadable. To his right, Lady Iridia sipped her steeped flame-root tea, eyes never drifting from the window that overlooked the Shard Gardens. Neither had spoken in minutes.
To most, it was a tranquil morning. A perfect portrait of a noble family.
To Auren, it was suffocation in velvet.
He sat three seats from the end, where the light never quite reached. His siblings had taken their usual positions: Elandor sat close to their father, occasionally offering updates from the Watchers' last mission into Ashfall. Kaelin leaned back in his chair with arms crossed, as always sharp-eyed but silent. Lyssa, the only one who ever seemed to notice Auren's presence, sat diagonally opposite him, her face half-hidden behind a curling illusion of violet smoke. Her mood today was unreadable.
Auren cut into the warm bread on his plate, though he wasn't hungry. He chewed slowly. Swallowed the silence.
"Auren," Lord Theron said suddenly, without turning.
He straightened. "Yes, father?"
"You will not attend the Scholar's Conclave this week."
A pause. Auren blinked. "But—why? I've been studying the doctrines. I memorized the Treatise of Resonan—"
"You have no Shard," Theron said flatly. "Knowledge without resonance is mimicry. The conclave is not for mimicry."
A flush crept up Auren's neck. He felt Lyssa glance his way, but even she didn't interrupt.
"Then perhaps," Auren said, quieter, "I can attend to observe. Others have—"
"Others are not Valeborne," Theron snapped. The cane rapped once against the floor. "We do not parade our flaws in public."
It struck harder than it should have. And no one spoke for long moments.
Lady Iridia sipped her tea.
Kaelin drummed fingers on the table.
Elandor looked at his father, then said softly, "The Watchers reported signs of new Shard activity near the Shardgrave. Memory signatures, faint but strange."
Theron grunted. "Dream-sickness, perhaps. That land leaks delusion."
Auren lowered his eyes to his plate.
**
That evening, he stood alone in the eastern wing of the manor—the Library of Echoes.
This section hadn't been used in decades. Most of the tomes here were copied redundancies, theoretical scrap, or banned documents quietly kept for prestige. Dust blanketed everything, but here, at least, silence felt honest.
He brushed his fingers along a worn spine: The Unbound Hypothesis: A Danger to Doctrine.
He pulled it halfway from the shelf before a voice echoed from the corridor.
"Digging through dirt, little brother?"
Auren turned. Kaelin stood in the archway, arms folded.
"I thought you'd be off practicing with the Watchers," Auren said.
"And I thought you'd have grown past this phase by now."
Auren returned the book to its place.
Kaelin stepped in, boots clicking softly on the tiled floor. "You know why father speaks the way he does. The name Valeborne stands for truth. If we allow sentiment—"
"Then what am I?" Auren said sharply. "A mistake? A crack in the truth?"
Kaelin didn't flinch. "You are a Valeborne by blood. But blood is only the beginning."
Auren looked away. "You think I haven't tried to resonate? I sleep with Shards under my pillow. I meditate like the monks of Greyspire. I bled into a Heart Shard once. Nothing."
Kaelin sighed. "Then stop chasing ghosts. There is dignity in service, even without power."
"Not in this house," Auren whispered.
Kaelin didn't reply. After a moment, he turned and left.
**
In the days that followed, Auren withdrew even further. He wandered Lightmere's lower tiers, visiting shardless districts, places where Watchers rarely patrolled. He listened to tales told by old beggars—about how once, a beast-shaped Shard had spoken to a deaf child in dreams. He wrote them all down in a worn journal.
One afternoon, while crossing a sky-bridge toward the Scholar's Gallery, he passed Lady Alareth Mirien—daughter of House Mirien, silver-tongued and cruel. She walked with two retainers and did not miss her chance.
"Careful," she said lightly as she passed, "some of us can hear Shards crying when they're too close to the unworthy."
Her friends laughed. Auren didn't stop walking.
When he returned home that night, the stars were sharp overhead, and he sat in the garden under the whispering crystal trees. Lyssa found him there, sitting cross-legged in the shadows.
"You know," she said softly, "when I first touched my Shard, I dreamed of drowning in everyone else's memories."
He looked up. "How did you stand it?"
She shrugged. "I didn't. I still don't. But I swim now. Better than sinking."
He chuckled faintly. "I wonder what I'd dream, if a Shard ever found me."
Lyssa studied him for a long time. "I think... it wouldn't be dreams. I think it would be silence. The kind that waits."
They said nothing more that night.
But the next morning, deep in the Shard Gardens, something waited. Beneath roots of crystal birch, half-buried in ash and soil, a shard that hummed no sound and shone no light pulsed once—as if exhaling after centuries.
And somewhere in the manor, Auren woke with a start, heart pounding.
Not from a dream.
But from the sudden lack of one.
[End of Chapter Two]