The letter found him in a nameless border tavern, where the air smelled of old smoke, wet leather, and the kind of silence that followed men who had seen too much.
Varian Crowfell sat alone at a corner table, cloak hooded, boots still dusted white from the road. The lamplight did not like him; it slipped from the dark weave of his coat as if repelled, leaving the angles of his face half-swallowed in shadow. Only his eyes showed clearly—cold grey, sharp, always moving.
The messenger approached with care.
"Crowfell?" the man asked, voice pitched carefully between respect and fear.
Varian's gaze lifted.
A beat of quiet.
"Yes."
"A letter. Bearing the Rosenfeld seal."
The messenger presented it with both hands, head bowed.
Varian's eyes flickered to the wax seal—the winter star over crossed blades. A memory passed through him like a blade through fog: a younger Arcturus von Rosenfeld, standing on a snow-buried ridge, blood on his gauntlets, laughter buried under exhaustion.
Without a word, Varian took the letter.
The seal broke with a soft crack.
His eyes moved as he read the neat, controlled script.
—observe my son.
—do not be seen.
—do not interfere unless necessary.
—write.
No flourish.
No wasted line.
Varian smiled, faint and humorless.
"So," he murmured under his breath. "You finally let the boy out of his cage… and now you want a hound in the dark."
He closed the letter.
Folded it once.
Firelight reflected faintly off the scar that cut diagonally across his knuckles.
"Very well, Arcturus," he whispered. "I'll watch your ghost walk."
He saw Kel von Rosenfeld for the first time at the estate's outer boundary.
Varian stood in the treeline, dark cloak blending into bark and shadow, breath controlled. Snow clung to the branches above him, heavy and silent. The Rosenfeld estate loomed in the distance, windows lit like watching eyes.
The gate opened.
A thin boy stepped through.
Kel.
Varian catalogued him in a glance.
Too pale. Too slender. But his posture was unexpectedly straight for someone the Empire whispered about as weak, cursed, half-already-dead. A simple dark coat, a travel pack slung neatly, movements economical. No wasted gestures. No nervous tics.
Two companions followed.
The girl—Reina. Slight, eyes alert beneath dark lashes, spear resting with familiarity against her shoulder. Her cloak said retainer.
Her gaze said survivor.
The boy—Landon. Broader, heavier. Moved with the solidity of a mountain, boots sinking deep but never stumbling. His hand brushed the hilt of his sword once, a habitual check, not fear.
Kel stood at the threshold a moment.
He did not look back at the estate.
Varian watched his face.
There was no visible hesitation.
Just a faint tension along his jaw.
Then Kel stepped forward.
Out.
Into winter.
Varian's mouth twitched.
"Not dragged," he murmured. "Not pushed. He chose this."
He followed.
At a distance.
At Ashtorne, the air stank of wet fur, cheap ale, and iron.
Varian took a seat on the second-floor beam of a crumbling storage house, perched in the shadows where even drunk eyes rarely strayed. Below, the border town pulsed—hunters haggling, merchants shouting, mercenaries laughing too loud to pretend it wasn't forced.
Kel moved through the chaos like someone who had grown up in a quieter world.
He did not flinch at the noise.
He did not shrink.
He simply watched.
Catalogued.
Adapted.
When he stepped toward the archery range, Varian's brows rose, just a fraction.
"A cursed boy," he murmured, "choosing the bow."
They placed a bow in Kel's hands.
He held it awkwardly at first—fingers stiff, pull uneven. He missed three times. Not wildly. Just… off.
Reina corrected his posture once.
He listened.
Landon stood nearby, arms folded, a silent wall.
Kel tried again.
Varian watched the pattern.
Every failure became an adjustment.
By dusk, the misses were fewer.
By morning, the misses were rare.
By the second day, Kel could thread arrows into the center of the rough practice target with unsettling consistency.
He did not grin.
He did not preen.
He simply nodded once, as if confirming a hypothesis.
Varian breathed out slowly.
"Fast learner," he muttered. "Too fast for someone who's supposed to have spent his life dying."
He watched Kel join a hunting party after that.
Saw him move through the snowline—breath measured, step light, bow ready but not strained. He did not overreach. He did not pretend to be more than he was.
He listened to the older hunters.
And when the time came, he shot.
His arrows did not take center stage.
They took the right stage.
An assist here.
A finishing shot there.
Enough to prove competence.
Not enough to flaunt.
"What are you hiding under that curse, boy?" Varian wondered quietly, eyes narrowed.
Kel laughed once after a clean kill—short, subdued, quickly smothered.
But Varian saw it.
And tucked the sound away in memory.
When they left Ashtorne, the road forked.
Varian watched from a stony rise as the hunting party split—most turning south, back toward safer ground.
Kel and his two companions turned northeast.
Toward harsher snow.
Toward the mountains.
Toward something else.
Varian's gloved fingers tightened on the rock.
"Not back to the estate. Not deeper into Empire lines." His gaze followed their silhouettes. "You're chasing something, aren't you?"
He descended from his vantage point and trailed them.
Distance was his craft.
He did not need to hear them to read their movements.
Kel led, but not with arrogance. His head dipped occasionally, orienting on terrain, landmarks.
Reina watched the flanks.
Landon guarded the back.
They moved like a unit that had walked together long enough to share instincts.
That alone told Varian more than any report could.
The cursed boy wasn't being carried.
He was being followed.
He scented the barbarians before he saw them.
The smell of tanned hides, animal fat, smoked meat, and something wild that refused to be washed out by snow. Voices carried on the wind—harsh consonants, barked laughter, the metallic beat of blades meeting for spar.
Varian dropped lower, body flattening along a ridge as he observed.
Kel and his companions had crossed paths with a barbarian hunting party.
No blades were drawn.
The chief—a young woman with white hair like bone under moonlight—spoke to them. Gestures. Tilt of the head. Testing.
Kel replied.
Varian could not hear the words.
But he saw the exchange of stances.
Not begging.
Not arrogance.
Mutual appraisal.
Then—against any rule that made sense in Empire military logic—the barbarians accepted them.
The group turned as one.
Headed deeper into barbarian lands.
Varian's jaw clenched.
"Damn it," he murmured.
This was beyond the original scope.
Beyond safe parameters.
He was good at not being seen.
He was not arrogant enough to believe himself untouchable within a barbarian encampment.
Still.
He followed.
The barbarian camp lay in a shallow basin sheltered by jagged stone teeth. Tents of leather and fur hunched close to firepits. Smoke rose in thin streams, caught by the mountain wind and dragged sideways. The smell of meat, sweat, blood, and snow fused into something that settled in the lungs and refused to leave.
Varian lay prone on a high ledge overlooking the camp.
He had tracked them for hours.
He'd seen Kel walk between tents, indistinguishable from any guest at first glance—cloak dusted in frost, hair catching stray embers of firelight. Sera moved with familiarity through her people. Reina and Landon kept near the boy, eyes never truly relaxed.
Varian's breathing slowed.
He studied guard rotations.
Weak points.
Paths between tents.
Listen.
Count.
He could do this.
Infiltration was not impossible.
Only…
Unforgiving.
He waited until night wrapped the encampment in deeper shadow.
Then he moved.
Silently.
Like fog slipping between rocks.
He descended the ridge, each boot finding stone rather than loose scree. Cloak drawn tight, color blending into starless night. He skirted the first ring of tents, listening to snores, muttered conversations, the crackle of fire.
He almost made it to the camp's heart.
Almost.
A dog—half-wolf, half-nightmare—lifted its head near one of the posts.
Yellow eyes.
A quiet growl.
Varian's jaw tightened.
The beast lunged.
He flicked his wrist, striking a nerve cluster just behind its jaw. The animal collapsed without a sound.
But the ripple had begun.
He heard it then.
Spearpoints shifting.
Boots scraping.
A call in barbarian tongue.
Light speared the dark as a torch was lifted.
"Someone's there—!"
Varian hissed in his skull and moved.
A spear slashed where he'd been crouched a heartbeat before.
He ducked, rolled, felt the wind of an axe pass overhead. His body reacted on instinct honed over years—parry without fully engaging, slip into blind spots, let opponents cut the air instead of flesh.
He could have killed his way through the outer ring.
He chose not to.
This wasn't a raid.
This was survival.
One spear got too close.
It grazed his arm, opening a shallow line through leather and skin.
He grimaced.
Then vanished into the dark beyond the camp's radius.
Shouts followed.
But only briefly.
Barbarians did not waste long on ghosts that did not bleed heavily in their snow.
Varian did not stop until his lungs burned and his shoulder throbbed.
He set his tent where neither Empire scouts nor barbarian patrols would think to look—on a narrow outcropping overlooking the basin, accessible only by a cramped, broken path.
He wrapped his cloak tighter.
Sat.
And for the first time in a long while, allowed himself to feel frustration.
"I failed you this part, Arcturus," he muttered, flexing his injured arm. "Inside the camp, your boy walks beyond my sight."
He wrote the letter by lamplight.
The flame flickered in the small brass cup, wind sneaking under the tent edges. Snow scratched faintly against the canvas like old fingers.
His handwriting was neat but unpretentious.
My friend Arcturus, I am sorry…
He described Ashtorne.
Kel's archery.
The hunts.
The barbarian contact.
His failed infiltration.
His current post—watching from a distance.
He signed it.
Folded it.
Sealed it with his own modest mark.
No house.
Just a single crow in flight.
When the courier hawk took wing the next morning, bearing the message south toward Rosenfeld, Varian watched it until it vanished into snow.
Then he was alone again.
With his wound.
His thoughts.
And a barbarian camp below, harboring the man he was meant to guard from afar.
He almost missed it.
The shift.
It came three nights later, as he sat outside his tent, cloak hood pulled forward, eyes half-closed against the constant white.
The air… thickened.
Not physically.
Not with weather.
With weight.
Like the world drew a slow, deep breath and held it.
The hairs along the back of his neck rose.
He straightened, eyes sharpening.
The camp fires below burned as usual.
Voices drifted faintly upward.
But somewhere beyond the basin, deeper in the mountains—
something stirred.
He felt it in his bones more than in his ears—distant, muffled, but immense. A pulse, like a stone dropped into an impossibly vast lake.
Varian's fingers tightened around the edge of his cloak.
"Well," he murmured to the night. "Whatever you're doing out there, boy… the world noticed."
He could not see Kel.
But he suspected the cursed heir had walked into something old.
Something dangerous.
Something that would not leave him unchanged.
Varian smiled faintly to himself, the expression barely there.
"Try not to die," he said, voice low. "It would be troublesome to write that report."
Snow drifted around him, settling on his shoulders like the touch of quiet hands.
He closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the wind.
Waiting.
Watching.
The shadow at the edge of winter.
The only witness, for now, to the path of a boy who had stepped out of a fortress as a fragile curse—
and was walking toward becoming something the Empire had no word for yet.