The silence in the study shifted.
Where a moment ago it pressed like unsheathed steel, now it… loosened—just enough to let breath pass without tasting blood.
Duke Arcturus von Rosenfeld leaned back in his chair, the high blackwood frame catching the outline of his broad shoulders. The lamplight brushed across the ridges of his coat—deep midnight fabric tailored to unforgiving precision, the faintest embroidery of ash branches stitched at the cuffs like shackles made of thread.
His gaze did not soften.
But something behind it changed.
A thought. A verdict reconsidered.
He watched Kel standing before him, the eldest son who was supposed to wilt and disappear quietly. The boy's posture remained perfectly straight, hands relaxed at his sides, the dark fabric of his gloves absorbing the light. His face was calm, his storm-grey eyes unwavering—a lake at night, hiding the depth of its waters.
For the first time in many years, Arcturus allowed himself a small exhale that was not threaded with disappointment.
"Kel."
The boy's attention sharpened, though his gaze did not flicker.
Arcturus unfolded his arms and placed his hands on the desk, fingers spreading lightly across the polished surface. His expression remained stern, but there was a faint curve at the corner of his lips—not warmth, not quite—but an acknowledgment.
"Ask for something."
Kel blinked once. Slowly.
"...Something?"
Arcturus's voice was calm, carrying the weight of someone who was not accustomed to repeating himself.
"Today," he said, "I watched my eldest son stand before nobles who sneered at our name and silence them with action, not words."
"They have used you—your curse—as a shield for their mockery. You removed that shield."
The Duke's eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger, but in memory.
"I am… pleased."
The word hung in the air like a rare foreign coin, unfamiliar but undeniably present.
Arcturus tilted his head just slightly.
"So, Kel. As your father, and as Duke, I will indulge this moment."
"Ask for anything you want from me."
The lamplight burned a little brighter, the flame spiking before settling.
"Today, I am happy to see my eldest taking his first step into the real world," Arcturus continued, "and shutting the mouths of those nobles who mocked our family behind our backs."
His voice dropped, lower, almost amused.
"So ask, Kel. Ask for anything you desire."
The study quieted again.
Kel did not speak immediately.
His eyes lowered—a rare motion—from his father's face to the shadow that his own body cast upon the stone floor. Long, thin, stretched by the angle of the lamp, it almost looked like someone else's outline, a stranger attached to his feet.
Desire.
He had once spent lifetimes in another world chasing power, artifacts, secrets. Legendary weapons. Mythic classes. System exploits.
Items other players would kill for.
Now, standing in front of this man—this iron tower of a father—his thoughts did not move toward gold, artifacts, or land.
They went further.
Beyond the manor's walls.
Beyond the curated reports he had read.
Beyond the safe, restricted reality that nobles fed to their sheltered heirs.
His eyes lifted again, steady now. Calm. Almost peaceful.
"If you are asking me," Kel said quietly, "to request something from my father…"
He paused for a breath.
The corners of his lips moved into a faint, polite curve. Not entirely a smile. But warmer than the cool steel mask he had worn moments before.
"Then I will ask you," he continued, "to grant me permission to roam the world for two years."
The words did not echo.
They landed.
Heavy.
Final.
The Duke's fingers, which had been resting in a calm spread upon the desk, stilled entirely.
The lamplight crackled softly.
Outside, a gust of frost-touched wind brushed against the glass of the tall obsidian window, sending a shiver through the faint reflection of both father and son.
Arcturus's eyes sharpened.
Not with anger.
With focus.
"Two years," he repeated.
Kel nodded once, the motion controlled, as if even this acknowledgment had been weighed.
"Yes."
Arcturus's expression did not change at first. His gaze roamed over Kel in a slow, measuring sweep—the black suit, the precise cravat, the steady shoulders bearing invisible fatigue, the faint pallor beneath the boy's skin betraying his earlier collapse.
Two years.
A cursed heir asking not for healers, not for treasure.
But for distance.
"Why?" the Duke asked at last.
No ornament. No elaboration.
One word. Delivered like a blow meant to test if the spine would break.
Kel did not flinch.
His face remained calm, his body steady. Only his fingers tightened within his gloves before relaxing again—a fleeting spasm of tension, quickly strangled.
"Because," he said, voice still soft but bearing an unusual clarity, "I do not know how long I am going to live."
The Duke's eyes narrowed a fraction.
Kel continued, not looking away.
"The physicians do not say it, but I can feel it," he said. "My body is… limited."
"Every breath I take under this curse feels borrowed."
He spoke without drama.
Without self-pity.
Only as one stating a known fact.
"So before that borrowed time ends," Kel went on, "I want to see and experience the world outside our family estate."
His eyes shifted—not away from Arcturus, but as if looking through him, past him.
Beyond the walls.
"Not through reports on your desk. Not through books written by men who never stood at the edge themselves."
"I want to see how people live under the Empire's shadow. How they bow, how they resist. How they break. How they continue."
The faint light in his gaze darkened, turning deep.
"If I must struggle to live," Kel finished, "then I want to understand what I am living in."
Silence answered him.
The lamplight dimmed a little, as if the flame itself bowed in thought.
Duke Arcturus watched his son.
His expression was still stern, but his eyes had gained a depth that hinted at calculation and something more… nameless.
This was the moment where another father—a softer man—might have said, "No. It is too dangerous. Stay where I can protect you."
Arcturus Rosenfeld was not that man.
He rested his elbows on the armrests, his fingers folding together before his chest in a slow, deliberate motion.
"You want to leave the estate," he said. "To discard the safety you have within these walls."
Kel's lips twitched faintly.
"Safety," he echoed. "I am cursed, a subject of mockery, and a convenient target for political games."
"I am not sure 'safety' is the right word, Father."
The Duke's eyes glinted.
There was something like… approval in that small defiance.
"The world beyond these lands," Arcturus said quietly, "is not a story, Kel."
"Bandits, corrupted beasts, plague-stricken towns, nobles clawing at each other, cults gnawing at the seams of the Empire. The roads are not gentle to the weak."
Kel's expression did not change.
"Neither is fate," he replied.
A thin line appeared between Arcturus's brows—the smallest crease.
"Do you imagine," the Duke asked, voice hardening slightly, "that traveling will cure your curse? That some wandering sage or outlawed sect will hand you salvation because you wish it?"
Kel calmly met his skepticism.
"No," he said simply. "If a cure was easy to find, you would have already torn it from someone's throat and brought it to me."
For a flicker of a second, Arcturus looked… almost amused.
Kel continued, his tone steady.
"But I do know this: if I stay here, doing nothing but training in secret and waiting, I will simply grow older enough to die… with imagination instead of memory."
He took a slow breath.
"If my life will be brief, I want to make it dense."
The word hung in the air, strange and heavy.
Arcturus sat in silence.
His eyes lowered, just for a heartbeat, as if recalling something distant—an old memory buried under years of command and blood. When they rose again, the air around him felt colder.
"You believe you can withstand what the world will show you," he said.
Kel did not say yes.
He did not say no.
He simply answered:
"I believe I would rather face it than wait for it to come here."
The Duke's gaze locked onto his son's.
"You ask for two years," Arcturus said. "An heir asking to disappear from the estate's protection. From my sight."
His tone was neutral, but the implications curled beneath like coiled serpents.
If Kel left, enemies might move.
If Kel left, some would be relieved.
If Kel left, some might try to ensure he never returned.
Kel's expression did not waver.
"Yes," he repeated. "Two years."
Arcturus tapped the desk once with his finger.
A dull, quiet sound.
"And if you die in those two years?" he asked.
Kel's answer came without pause.
"Then I will have died on a road I chose," he said. "Not in a bed others prepared for me."
The Duke stared.
The flame in the lantern crackled again, shrinking, then flaring with a sudden sharp brightness.
Outside, the wind struck harder against the window, a faint whine echoing through the cracks in the ancient stone.
For a long time, no one spoke.
Finally, Arcturus inhaled slowly.
When he spoke, his voice was lower, the edges less sharp, but the weight behind it greater.
"Your request," he said, "is not small, Kel."
Kel inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment.
"I know."
The Duke leaned forward slightly, his posture shifting—not as a judge, but as a man drawing closer to a map to inspect the parts others missed.
"You have only recently stepped into the eyes of the nobles," Arcturus went on. "The Empire has just begun to whisper your name again, not as a curse but as a question."
"And at this key moment… you wish to vanish from the stage."
Kel's lips curved faintly.
"Actors who appear too early are forgotten by the time the real play begins," he said. "I have no desire to stand in the center before I am ready."
He allowed the softness of a smile to tilt his expression.
"Let them whisper," he added. "By the time I return, I want those whispers to sound… different."
Arcturus watched him.
The corners of his eyes tightened slightly, as if holding back a more obvious reaction.
"You speak as if you are certain you will return," he said.
Kel held his gaze, unflinching.
"If I do not hold that certainty," he replied, "then the road will kill me before anything else does."
A slow silence slid between them, weighted, dense.
Then at last—
Duke Arcturus von Rosenfeld exhaled.
He closed his eyes briefly, just for a heartbeat, then opened them again, colder and clearer.
"You are my son," he said. "My heir, whether the world chooses to acknowledge it or not."
He straightened fully.
"If you walk into the world, you do not walk as a wandering beggar with a death wish," Arcturus continued, voice firm. "You walk bearing the name Rosenfeld. That name will be both shield and target."
Kel did not contradict him.
The Duke's gaze grew sharper.
"I will not chain you to this estate," he said slowly. "A bird forced to sit in a gilded cage learns nothing of storms."
Kel's fingers tightened faintly, hope flashing through his eyes before he stilled it.
"But," Arcturus added, the word dropping like a stone into water, "I also will not send a half-formed blade into a war expecting it to cut iron."
He raised a hand slightly, not in threat, but in decree.
"You will have your two years," he said at last.
The world seemed to pause.
Kel's breath caught for half a second before returning to its calm rhythm.
But the Duke wasn't finished.
"On conditions."
Of course.
Kel nodded once.
"State them."
Arcturus's lips curved faintly—this time, a touch more visible.
"First," he said, "you will remain here for a short time longer. Your body is still brittle. You will undergo proper training—not in secret. Under instructors I choose."
Kel's eyes sharpened, but he did not protest.
"Second," the Duke continued, "you will not roam as a nameless traveler. You will register under a suitable cover, travel with at least one retainer, and maintain regular reports."
His gaze hardened.
"If you die, I will know how and where."
Kel's calm smile returned—slim, resolved.
"Acceptable."
"Third," Arcturus said quietly, "you will return before the star awakening ceremony, regardless of what you find or fail to find. You will not miss that point in your life."
Kel's gaze flickered.
Awakening.
The moment the system of this world liked to pretend destiny began.
He bowed his head very slightly.
"I understand."
The Duke watched him for another long moment.
Then he nodded.
Once.
Final.
"Then, Kel," he said, "prepare yourself."
His eyes glinted like cold steel catching first light.
"You wished for the world."
He leaned back, the weight in his words falling over the boy like an invisible mantle.
"From this day forward, the world will no longer be something you observe from written pages."
"It will be something that bleeds when you touch it."
Kel's fingers curled slowly into fists at his sides.
Not in fear.
In anticipation.
In acceptance.
He raised his head, eyes gleaming faintly beneath the lamplight's tired glow.
"Then I will make sure," he said softly, "that it remembers being touched."
The Duke's lips twitched—almost, almost into a true smile.
"Dismissed," he said.
Kel bowed.
Not deeply. Not like a subordinate.
Just enough.
Then he turned, coat hem whispering against the stone floor, and walked toward the door—the air at his back feeling heavier than when he had entered.
The guards outside straightened as the door opened.
Kel stepped out.
The corridor greeted him with its familiar cold, the ancient stone, the shadows clinging along the ceiling like sleeping shades.
But something was different.
The road had not yet appeared beneath his feet.
Yet somehow—
It had already begun.