Chapter 66 – The Coldest Silence
There was no announcement.
No grave to mourn.
No seal upon parchment that said he had died.
Only silence.
And that silence stretched.
Longer than it should have.
First a week. Then a month. Then half a year.
Now—two full years.
And still, no one had seen Sirius von Ross.
No envoy returned with his blade.
No familiar steed galloped through the city gates.
No note arrived bearing the mark of the von Ross crest.
He was simply… gone.
And the world did not know what to do with his absence.
Not truly.
The Imperial Court had grown quiet. Not by command. Not by ceremony.
But by instinct.
Even the loudest tongues—those who had once criticized the young Pillar for his aloofness, his cold, cruel silence—now watched their words.
They did not speak of him directly.
Only around him.
"I suppose he must be training still."
"Or perhaps he was sent on a secret mission."
"Surely the Empire would never let a talent like that waste away in exile."
But none of them believed what they were saying.
Because everyone knew—
If the Empire had sent him, the Empire would have spoken of it.
If the Empire had lost him, the Empire would have buried it.
But this…
This silence wasn't official.
It was unnatural.
Brittle.
As though something larger had been removed from the world, and the balance hadn't yet recovered.
Whispers bloomed like mold in damp corners:
"He's dead."
They said it softly, fearfully. Never in court. Only at the fringes of the capital.
In servant halls. In candlelit kitchens. In the narrow alleys behind noble mansions.
"Fell into the Vale and never returned. No one walks out of that place."
"No, he left. Crossed the southern border. Disguised himself. Walked into another kingdom."
"To do what? Live among peasants?"
"To disappear."
In the west, where the old war-torn outposts still stood, soldiers told tales by firelight.
Stories they did not believe, but told anyway.
"One night the air went still. No birds. No wind. No insects. The next morning, the stone watchtower had a crack running down its spine. Not from weather. Like it had been stared at."
Farther north, along the ruined frostlands, a merchant's daughter woke screaming every night for seven days. When her mother finally coaxed words from her, she said only:
"The eyes were red. Not angry. Just… waiting."
No one spoke Sirius's name in the capital square anymore.
Not the merchants, not the street performers, not the children who used to pretend to be him.
The baker's boy who once sculpted him out of dough now made soldiers instead.
And even then, he added a tiny smear of ash near the eye—without knowing why.
The fear was not of his return.
The fear was of not knowing if he would.
At the Academy, the youngest students still remembered the day he walked through their halls. The teachers still remembered what the stones felt like beneath their feet that day. Too quiet. Too heavy.
And now, when a new prodigy rose, someone always said:
"He's brilliant. But he's not Sirius."
And the room would go still.
Because to say his name aloud was to invite him back.
And no one was ready for that.
Not the nobles who had once hoped to marry him into their bloodlines.
Not the generals who once asked why a boy was sent to end a war.
Not the Emperor himself, who had not once spoken of Sirius in two years—not even in council.
Especially not in council.
But they all felt it.
In the margins of maps.
In the gaps between reports.
In the faltering confidence of the Crown Prince's smile.
Even the throne itself seemed more rigid now, as though aware that one day the boy who did not bow might stand before it again.
And behind all the tension, behind every rumor, one question whispered louder than all the rest:
Where is he?
And what will the world look like…
…when he returns?