POV: Sera Vanhart
It was easier to break bones than to speak.
I didn't expect to feel that way. I thought I had grown used to silence, to swallowing memory like cold iron. Yet when Kel looked at me across that dim table, eyes calm and ancient like snow that had never melted, I felt unprepared.
Not to tell them my story.
But to hear it aloud myself.
The inn was warm enough by everyone else's standard, but for me the air felt thin. I remember sitting there, fingers twisted together under the cloak, pressing so hard into my palm that my nails marked skin. Not to keep steady.
To stop shaking.
Kel's voice was calm, his body language relaxed, his presence contained—as if the world itself, rather than his limbs, obeyed his rhythm.
"Now then… if you don't mind, can you tell us your long story?"
His words weren't sharp. They didn't probe. They simply made space.
That was worse.
It made the silence that followed feel like it belonged to me.
Reina's eyes shifted toward me—soft but steady. Landon moved just slightly, anchoring his weight as if to remind me I would not fall through the floor if I spoke.
They didn't pity me.
That's what kept me from looking away.
They were simply listening.
I drew breath.
I started speaking.
I thought I had buried the past deep.
But words are like digging in permafrost.
Once you break the surface—
Blood never quite stays buried.
"I am the only daughter of Count Vanhart…"
The sentence echoed too loudly in my ears. My voice didn't crack—but something in me did.
I described the match proposal—the innocent idea between friends. I saw myself at nine, laughing with the viscount's daughter, not knowing how much of my life would stop moving after that morning.
I spoke of my uncle.
His stern voice. The way he looked at me when I finished sparring, his eyes too bright, too sharp. How he praised me with words that sounded like measurements.
Every training day, every last drill…
Every time, the potion.
He said it would help.
That a future leader should learn not to fear strength.
I was proud.
I drank it.
Repeatedly.
I was nine.
"When the match happened… I broke her legs."
Reina's hands went still.
Landon did not move.
Kel's expression didn't change.
But something in the air did.
It wasn't shock.
Not disgust.
It was acceptance.
Reality acknowledged.
That somehow meant more than any comfort would have.
I continued.
The panic. The guards. Instinct took over. The potion burning through me like a second heartbeat. My body moving as if it wanted to survive something I had not yet begun to understand.
I broke them too.
Not because I wanted to.
Because I didn't know how much strength was too much anymore.
Then the running.
Through halls I once played in.
Past faces that stared as though seeing a stranger.
Snow swallowing me when I passed through the gates.
My father's voice following.
That memory—
That memory hurt.
"He called my name again and again… as a plea to return."
There it was.
The part I never said before.
The one that made it hardest to run.
He didn't shout like a noble or command like a lord.
He called like a father.
At the moment I spoke that in the inn, I felt my breath catch.
I barely showed it.
But Kel noticed.
I know he did.
Something in his eyes flickered—briefly—as if recognizing something familiar.
Something he too had once lost.
Or chosen.
"I didn't listen."
Saying that aloud felt heavier than any confession before.
I felt pressure in my chest.
Years ago I ran so he wouldn't be forced to pay the price for what I'd become. Today I couldn't tell if that was bravery or betrayal.
"Because if I returned… my father would have taken the blame onto himself."
My voice was calm.
Too calm.
"If I ran, it would fall only on me. Not him. Not the house."
Those words—I had told myself often. Like prayer. Or curse.
Saying them to others was different.
It felt like carving flesh instead of rebuilding armor.
The silence after that statement felt long.
But it wasn't.
Kel leaned forward slightly.
Not aggressively.
Not reassuringly.
"Nothing much," he repeated after I downplayed my story.
Then:
"You call that 'nothing much'?"
Those words… struck deeper than any blow I've taken.
Because they were not praise.
Not pity.
They were simply truth.
Cold.
Clear.
Like lake water.
Like Sairen.
I realized something then:
Kel doesn't care for heroic narratives.
He reads lives the same way he reads battlefield wind.
Not for tragedy.
For trajectory.
For what it makes someone capable of.
Reina's eyes softened—just briefly. I noticed she'd stopped breathing normally while I spoke. Landon's fists had loosened. He said nothing, but I could tell he was recalibrating how he perceived me.
Not as chieftain.
Not as noble.
But as someone shaped badly by hands she trusted.
Kel's final words confirmed it.
"You judged the future with the mind of a child forced to act as an adult."
There it was.
My truth.
Unmade.
And remade.
He didn't say I was wrong.
He didn't call me right.
He acknowledged what I did and why.
That is more than absolution.
It is permission.
To walk forward rather than retreat into my history.
At that table…
something shifted.
I didn't realize until later.
But I felt less alone when I finished speaking.
Not because they promised anything.
But because they heard it.
And didn't look away.
I left part of that burden behind today.
Not in a lake.
Not in mist.
But over stew in a dim inn with people who allowed it.
We walked the next morning without speaking much.
The air was clearer.
The weight on my chest—lighter.
As if breathing finally cost less.
When Kel shifted away from us suddenly to confront the shadow following us—
I did not call out.
Something in his eyes, before he moved, told me to trust.
When he returned—
snow clung to his coat like a mantle rather than a burden.
And I realized:
He is also someone forged wrong.
But unlike me…
He chose to reforge himself.
Tomorrow…
We reach Vanhart lands.
I don't know how Father will look at me.
I don't know if I am ready.
But I know this:
I will not face him as someone who escaped.
I will face him as someone who returned—
by choice.
And Kel…
He looked at me differently today.
Not as a burden.
Not as ally.
As someone who decided her next step without waiting to be saved.
That quiet recognition…
was worth more than forgiveness.
I do not sleep easily.
But tonight…
I find it less difficult.
There is snow outside.
Silence inside.
But for the first time…
my thoughts quiet before the cold does.
And in the faintest ripple of still water, caught somewhere near my pulse, I almost think—
The world is still watching.
But so am I.