Lir stood before the Lord, frozen in the center of the most opulent chamber he had ever seen. The carpets beneath his feet were so lush and exquisite that he trembled, feeling as though his mud-caked boots were a sacrilege against such sanctity. He was paralyzed by a visceral conflict: should he succumb to the ancestral fear ingrained in his bones and kneel, or should he leap from the balcony in a desperate bid for life? But he remained rooted to the spot. Behind the permafrost of Viktor's gaze, he glimpsed something no one else ever saw—a harrowing loneliness festering in the depths of absolute power.
"You..." Viktor's voice was as sharp as a blade, yet it carried a perceptible tremor of shock. He took several steps forward, the amber glow of the fire softening the rigid mask of his face. "You are the boy from the mud-slicked street. The only soul who dared to look me in the eye."
With trembling, calloused fingers, Lir pulled the stained silk and the silver key—cold as a fragment of a glacier—from beneath his tunic. Despite the grime, the handkerchief shimmered under the lamplight as if yearning to return to its master's hand. Lir felt less like a trespasser and more like a mystical herald arriving after centuries of anticipation.
"You dropped this, Your Excellency," Lir said, his voice echoing against the vaulted ceiling. "I came to return it to its rightful owner. This silk, this silver... they belong to your world. Our streets of mire cannot carry the weight of such heavy secrets."
Viktor approached slowly, his gaze fixed not on the wealth in Lir's hand, but on the boy's eyes. In the eyes of a thousand courtiers, there was only blind obedience; in the eyes of the nobles, only greed. But in this wretched youth's eyes burned life and raw truth, like embers in an ancient myth.
"I did not drop it by chance," Viktor said at last, his fingers brushing against Lir's rough, weather-beaten skin as he took the silk. The contact felt like a collision of two divergent galaxies. "I waited for someone to find it—someone from the freedom of the fields, far from these spying walls, to break the chain. But by bringing it back, you have signed your own death warrant."
With a swift, decisive motion, Viktor locked the massive oak doors. The "click" of the bolt sounded in Lir's ears like the tightening of a noose.
"Now, you cannot leave," Viktor whispered, his voice low and haunted. "For the moment you realized which blood-stained door this key opens, you became a prisoner of this golden cage—just like me."
Lir recoiled in terror, his back pressing against an ancient tapestry on the wall. Suddenly, the rhythmic "thud-thud" of armored boots striking marble erupted from the hallway. The head servant's voice, cold and serpentine, hissed through the door:
"Your Excellency? We detect the acrid scent of smoke from your chambers. Is all well? Open the door, My Lord; we are responsible for your safety!"
Viktor's face instantly reverted to the frozen mask of the High Lord. He seized Lir's shoulder with a bruising grip and pointed toward a towering, ancient bookshelf in the corner:
"Behind the cabinet! Now! If they find you, it won't just be your blood—the entire valley will burn! Move!"
Lir threw himself into the shadows behind the massive shelf just as Viktor straightened his mantle, hid the silk in the dying embers of the hearth, and strode toward the door.