Chapter 47 – A Homecoming That Was Not a Homecoming
The war was over.
Two years had passed since the Empire sent him alone to the western front—two years since the name Sirius Farah Von Ross became a storm whispered across borders. The youngest of the Ten Pillars. The only 9th Class Magician. A Grand Swordmaster crowned in silence and slaughter.
Now, the storm had come home.
The estate was pristine. Immaculate. The marble shone, the lanterns burned low and golden, and the great banners of House Ross swayed solemnly in the spring wind. Servants lined the halls in hushed rows, heads bowed as if in mourning, not celebration.
At the top of the grand stairwell, the Grand Duchess stood in formal dress. Pale silver and navy silk. Jewels cold against her skin.
The Grand Duke stood beside her, still as stone.
And then he arrived.
Sirius stepped through the arched doors alone. No entourage. No fanfare. Only the echo of his boots on the polished floor and the dull weight of a presence too vast for the entryway to hold.
He looked older. Taller. Sharper.
Not in the way of age—but in the way of blades left in frost too long.
His cloak moved like smoke. His uniform was black, unadorned, save for the silver insignia of the Ten Pillars at his shoulder. He wore no medals, though they'd tried to give him hundreds. He carried no sword, though everyone knew he didn't need one.
His hair had grown longer, shadowing his eyes. And his expression—flat, unreadable—made it hard to tell if he was tired or simply detached.
But even in silence, he was devastating.
The maids couldn't look directly at him. Some didn't breathe until he passed.
"Welcome home," the Grand Duchess said, her voice carefully measured.
He raised his eyes. Looked at her.
A pause.
"Is it?" he replied.
The Grand Duke narrowed his gaze, but said nothing.
Sirius moved past them.
No bow. No embrace. Not even a glance at the portrait of his family that hung over the hearth—one painted when he was ten, smiling between his parents like a boy who believed in forever.
He ascended the stairs without a word.
His footsteps echoed all the way to the western wing.
And then they stopped.
The door to his chambers stood untouched. Same dark wood. Same cold handle. Same invisible pressure that had kept even the boldest away.
He opened it.
Stepped in.
And shut it again.
The rest of the estate exhaled.
Inside, the moonlight waited.
The room was as he left it.
A place outside time. A sanctum untouched by war or history. The scent of jasmine still lingered. The soft hush of silk brushing stone. The air—cool and reverent, as if the space itself recognized its master had returned.
Sirius removed his cloak.
He did not sit.
Not yet.
Instead, he walked slowly toward the far wall where a new canvas waited, blank and wide, already primed.
He stood before it for a long time.
His hands were clean. His magic was quiet. But his heart—
It stirred.
Because in this room, the war had never touched him.
In this room, he was not a pillar of the Empire.
He was a man in mourning.
He reached for a brush.
Later that evening, the Grand Duchess stood outside his door.
She had not come alone.
The Grand Duke remained a step behind her, silent as always.
She raised her hand to knock—but did not.
Something stopped her.
A sound from within.
Not words.
Not footsteps.
But the sound of brushstrokes.
Long. Careful. Intimate.
She stood there, staring at the door that had shut her out for six years.
And on the other side, her son—her son who had just returned from war, whose name the world now worshipped—was painting again.
Not weapons.
Not fire.
But her.
The same silver-haired woman.
Always her.