The king's gamble felt heavier with every step the horses took up the winding goat paths of the Agri range. The air did not just thin; it grew charged. It was the feeling that precedes a thunderstorm, a pressing static that raised the hairs on our arms and made the horses snort and skitter. It was ancient power, sleeping but restless. Duke Michael rode at the very front, his own immense power not pushing against it, but rather… navigating it, like a pilot steering a ship through a reef by feel alone. His silver hair seemed to glow in the strange, filtered light.
Then, we passed through the great stone archway, carved with runes so old their meaning was known only to the kings and the high priests.
And everything changed.
The pressure vanished. The thin, sharp air became still, cool, and effortless to breathe. We were not in a cave at the mountain's peak, but in a vast, open cavern that felt like the heart of the world. Light came from no visible source, soft and grey like a perpetual dawn. In the center stood a structure of black stone, seamless and simple—the Tomb of the First King. It was not grand in a decorative way. It was grand in the way a mountain is grand. It simply was, and its presence commanded a silence so profound it felt like a third entity among us.
The priests fell to their knees, chanting in low tones. The knights, even Michael's hardened men, knelt on one knee, heads bowed. Only the king, the prince, and I remained standing. My role as Hand granted me the privilege to witness, but not to proceed further.
King Reynard dismounted, then lifted Leo down from his saddle. The boy's golden hair was the brightest thing in that grey-lit space. He was wide-eyed, not with fear, but with a solemn curiosity that made him seem older than his five years.
The king knelt before his son, his hands on the boy's small shoulders. He spoke, and his voice, usually so strong and sure, was a hushed, raw thing in the holy silence.
"Leo," he said. "See that door?" He pointed to the only feature on the black stone face: a simple, dark opening. "Only those of our blood may walk that path. Your grandfather took me there when I was not much older than you. Today, I take you."
He paused, his thumbs brushing over Leo's shoulders. "What happens inside… it is between us, the First King, and the gods. But know this, my son." His gaze was fierce, love and fear warring in its depths. "It is not just about you or me. What is decided here, what is revealed here, will change the path of our entire kingdom. Do you understand?"
Leo looked from his father's grave face to the dark doorway, then back. He gave a small, serious nod. "I will be good, Father."
A flicker of pain crossed the king's face. "No," he whispered, pulling his son into a brief, tight embrace. "Do not try to be 'good'. Do not try to be what you think a prince should be. In there, you must simply be Leo. Nothing more. Nothing less. That is all that can be asked. That is all that will be heard."
He stood, taking the boy's small hand in his own large, calloused one. He glanced back at me, and I saw the full weight of the crown, the dynasty, and a father's hope in that look. Then he turned and faced the Tomb.
Together, the King of Collapsus and his golden-haired heir walked toward the dark doorway. The grey light seemed to shy away from the entrance, making it a maw of pure shadow. For a moment, their silhouettes were etched against it—the broad, strong form of the father, the small, straight-backed form of the son.
Then, they crossed the threshold.
The darkness swallowed them whole.
The silence in the cavern deepened, becoming a physical thing. The chanting had stopped. No one moved. No one breathed too loudly. We were statues in the heart of the mountain, waiting for an echo from a conversation happening in a realm we could not perceive.
Duke Michael stood like a sentinel carved from marble, his violet eyes fixed on the doorway, his power a tightly coiled spring. I simply stood, my parchment and ink useless here, my political calculations meaningless. This was beyond strategy. This was archaeology of the soul, digging at the very bedrock of our kingdom's myth.
What was happening in the dark? Was a sleeping spirit stirring? Was a divine verdict being passed? Or was there only silence, the most devastating answer of all?
The kingdom's future had entered the Tomb. And we, its protectors and servants, could only wait in the terrible, holy quiet for it to return.
Fifteen hours.
Fifteen hours of standing, sitting on cold stone, and waiting in that unnatural, grey-lit silence. The knights had shifted into a watch rotation, but their eyes never left the black doorway. The priests had exhausted their chants and now sat in meditative circles, their faces pale with fatigue and awe. Duke Michael had not moved from his vigil, a statue of focused intensity. The only sound was the occasional rustle of a cloak, the soft clink of a harness.
And in the long, empty stretches of time, my mind, trained to analyze and decipher, turned over the king's decision with a growing sense of dissonance.
This was not like Reynard. Not the Reynard I knew.
I had served him through blights and invasions, through noble revolts and diplomatic snares. External pressure was like water on stone to him—it might wear him down over eons, but it did not crack him suddenly. His decisions were always a blend of firmness and a deep, pragmatic compassion. He used his power not to look down upon others, but to stand with them. I had seen him ignore a dozen direct threats from the clans, not out of weakness, but from a profound understanding of balance.
"Wipe out the Thornwoods, Alistair?" he'd once said to me, after a particularly brazen provocation. "Michael could do it before supper. But then who checks the maritime guilds' ambition? Who provides a counterweight to the western horse-lords? A kingdom is an ecosystem. You remove a predator, and suddenly the grazers destroy the fields. No. Let them snarl. I control the food they eat."
He saw threats as parts of a moving machine to be managed, not as demons to be exorcised in a frantic, holy ritual.
So why this? Why now?
The clans' whispering about Leo's lack of magic was a pressure, yes. But it was a slow, political pressure. The kind Reynard was a master at redirecting or absorbing. He could have launched a military campaign to unite them against an external foe. He could have deepened trade alliances, making economic stability more important than magical pedigree. He could have simply waited, as many late-blooming mages in the bloodline had done, trusting time to solve the issue.
Instead, he had chosen the most dramatic, the most religious solution possible. He had brought the issue to the very feet of divinity, making it a matter of cosmic judgment rather than courtly gossip. He had taken a private anxiety and made it a public spectacle of faith.
As the sixteenth hour approached, a cold realization began to dawn on me, cutting through the fatigue.
This wasn't about the clans. This wasn't even about politics.
This was about him. King Reynard, the man who rejected the remote divinity of his office.
He could withstand any external threat. He could manage any scheming duke. But he could not withstand the quiet, growing doubt in his own heart—the doubt that perhaps, in marrying for something as human as desire, in siring a son with a woman chosen by his heart and not his bloodline, he had broken the sacred covenant. That his very humanity, the quality he cherished most, was the flaw that had diluted the divine gift.
He wasn't here to prove Leo's magic to the kingdom.
He was here to beg for a sign for himself.
The pilgrimage was an act of desperation not from a king to his subjects, but from a father to his ancestors. He needed the First King—the original God-Slayer—to look upon his golden-haired boy and give him, Reynard, permission. Permission to have been different. Permission for his love for Emilia to be valid. Permission for his son to be worthy, magic or not.
He had brought the kingdom's future into the Tomb to quiet the storm in his own soul.
The realization filled me with a profound pity. The strongest man I knew was brought low not by swords, but by a silence where magic should have been.
Just as this thought solidified in my mind, Duke Michael stiffened. His head tilted, as if listening to a sound far below the threshold of human hearing. His violet eyes widened a fraction.
A change stirred in the cavern. The soft, sourceless grey light began to pulse, faintly at first, then with a slow, rhythmic beat.
Thump… Thump…
It was not a sound. It was a vibration felt in the bones, in the stone beneath our feet.
Thump… Thump…
Like the heartbeat of the mountain itself.
The priests scrambled to their feet. The knights reached for their swords, though no enemy was visible. The black doorway of the Tomb remained dark.
But the heartbeat grew stronger, resonating through the air, through our very chests. It was ancient. It was alive.
And it was coming from inside the Tomb.