Chapter 4: The Shadow's First Step
The air in Nightholm smelled of rotted despair.
To the black-haired young man who had just stepped through the city's cracked gates, the scent was deeply familiar. A bitter déjà vu. He had smelled its likeness in dozens of other cities on the brink of collapse, in other timelines long turned to ash. He pulled the hood of his traveler's cloak lower, his dark eyes scanning everything with a calmness that belied his age.
The grand, pale stone buildings now looked like giant tombstones. Moss crept through their cracks, and the tattered banners of the Vaelmont lion hung limp like a broken bird's wings. On the streets, the common folk walked with their heads down, their shoulders slumped beneath an unseen weight.
He had seen this world die many times. Each time, Vaelmont fell in a different way, but it always fell. A chess piece fated to be the first to topple.
His first step in this capital city was not toward the castle. That was the move of an amateur. A hunter's first step is to understand his battlefield. And the best battlefield for understanding the pulse of a dying city is in its filthiest belly.
He headed for "The Yawning Lion Tavern."
Inside, the air was thick with the smell of cheap ale, sweat, and smoke from tobacco pipes. He chose a table in the darkest corner, ordered a bowl of bland stew, and melted into the shadows. He did nothing but listen.
And amidst the din, he began to sort through the threads of information.
"...they say the Prince hasn't even left his chambers in three days," a grain merchant complained to his friend. "Meanwhile, prices in the market are getting insane. Maksim Yakubets and his cronies are strangling us all. Yesterday, they seized two of my carts for some 'emergency tax' I've never even heard of."
"Shh! Keep your voice down!" his friend shot back, glancing around nervously. "You want Duke Morcant's Private Guard to hear you? They're everywhere now."
At another table, two off-duty Royal Guards were gambling with dice. "I hear Commander Gregor is at his wits' end," one said, his voice low. "He's trying to train the new recruits, but they're more like farmers holding pitchforks than soldiers. The new swords we got are terrible quality. More like crowbars than blades."
"At least we're not being sent to the border," the other replied, rolling the dice.
He heard of a crippling salt shortage. He heard of the declining quality of the Guard's arms. He heard of the growing fear of Duke Morcant's ever-expanding power.
He also heard the expected nicknames: "the Trash Prince," "the coward hiding in his room," "his father's shadow." It all matched the rumors he had heard before.
All of it was a familiar pattern, the prelude to a collapse he had witnessed in countless variations.
But then, he heard a new rumor. A strange one.
"...the order's insane, I tell you," a portly merchant grumbled to his companion. "Burning the northern Echo Bridge! Our own bridge! Has his brain melted?"
"Hush, watch your mouth," his friend replied, looking around anxiously. "But you're right. Makes no sense. I heard Captain Hanssen is mustering his men at the barracks right now. They're to set out before dawn. Said it was a direct order from the Prince."
The second soldier at the nearby table let out a loud laugh, dry and humorless. "That Trash Prince? He can't even order his own breakfast correctly. Someone must've misheard."
The young man's thoughts came to a halt. All other noise in the tavern vanished.
The northern Echo Bridge.
He knew that bridge. An insignificant old wooden structure over the Shadow Gorge. It held no strategic value in the grand scheme of things... except as a minor smuggling route.
The order was indeed insane. An illogical, self-destructive act. It fit the profile of the "Trash Prince" perfectly.
But...
A memory struck him, not as an image, but as a sensation. A ritual fire burning in the night. Screams. A horrifying symbol carved into the ground. The pain of a mortal wound in his own body. And then... the impossibility.
In the midst of cosmic chaos, Prince Eldrin Vaelmont—the man who should have been paralyzed by fear—did something. Something impulsive, strange, and nonsensical. Something that unexpectedly disrupted the ritual's harmony and repelled the manifestation of an outer entity. An act that should have been impossible.
It was the last thing he saw before darkness took him and the painful cycle began anew.
And now, that same prince was issuing another strange, nonsensical order.
Was this... another impossibility?
He stared into his cold bowl of stew. He had come to Vaelmont not out of hope. Hope was a luxury he had long since discarded. He came out of necessity. The necessity of a strategist to understand a variable that did not exist in his calculations.
Over countless lifetimes, he had tried everything. He had allied with kings, fought alongside heroes, even bargained with devils. It all failed. The world always ended in fire and darkness.
But he had never seen a variable like this one. A variable whose actions were unpredictable, whose results violated all known logic.
He had to know. He had to understand. What had happened to Prince Eldrin Vaelmont between that end and this beginning?
His plan had been simple: infiltrate the Royal Guard. They were desperate for soldiers, and with his skills, he could easily secure a position close to the prince. From there, he could observe, analyze, and solve this puzzle.
But this order concerning the bridge changed everything. This was an opportunity. A chance to observe the effects of the prince's actions firsthand, on the ground. A chance to see if this "madness" was pure folly, or something else entirely.
He placed a few copper coins on the table, enough to pay for the stew and the silence he had purchased. Without a word, he rose and strode out of the tavern.
He did not head for the Royal Guard barracks. Not yet.
He melted into the dark alleys of Nightholm, his cloak billowing behind him like a raven's wing. He moved with an unnatural speed and efficiency, every step silent, every turn calculated.
He was heading west. Toward the border. Toward the northern Echo Bridge.
He would be a ghost there. An observer in the shadows. He would witness for himself whether the Prince's order would lead Vaelmont one step closer to ruin... or toward an unexpected miracle.
Whatever the outcome, he had to be there to see it. Because this variable, this dangerous and confounding variable, was now the only thing in all of Aethel that felt new.