The rain had passed in the night, but its echo lingered.
The stone halls of Drakoria castle were slick with damp, and torches hissed when drops fell from the ceiling. Servants moved quickly, shoulders bent, as if the very air weighed heavier than before.
Seren noticed it first in the kitchens.
He had been sent to fetch bread, but the room was unusually tense. A tray slipped from a maid's hands. Normally, laughter would follow, a cook might scold, and the moment would pass. But not today. The maid's face went pale, her lips pressed tight, and no one spoke. The silence cracked only with the bubbling of a cauldron on the fire.
Seren drifted closer, his small hands steady, his expression calm. He sniffed the steam rising from the pot. The scent was wrong—sharp, bitter beneath the herbs, a trace of something metallic.
Elara appeared beside him, moving like a shadow. Her hand pressed firmly to his shoulder. Too firm. She leaned close.
"Not this bowl," she whispered.
She guided him away, leaving the stew for others.
---
By midday, whispers ran through the corridors. The fourteenth child of Drakoria, Vesta, had fallen ill.
Seren carried towels toward the western wing, Elara just behind him. Guards stood at the chamber door, their spears crossed, their eyes grim. Inside, voices muttered low—healers chanting, servants sobbing. The smell of vinegar and scorched herbs seeped through the crack in the door.
Seren slowed his steps, pausing at a corner. He rested his burden of towels against the wall, a child's excuse for a pause, and listened.
"…veins blackening…"
"…too late for purge…"
"…poison, or curse—what's the difference…"
"…Patriarch must not know until…"
The voices blurred as the door closed tighter. Seren picked up the towels and moved on. His face gave nothing away, but inside, a spark of cold understanding kindled.
This was not sickness. It was deliberate.
---
The library was warmer than the rest of the castle, though it smelled of smoke and old paper. Seren sat before Master Eldrin, the white-bearded keeper of knowledge, who watched him with the gaze of one who had seen too many truths buried.
"You've heard," Eldrin said.
"Yes," Seren answered.
The old man placed a book on the table. Its spine cracked as he opened it, the pages filled with ink drawings of plants—roots, stems, seeds—and notes scrawled in cramped script. The title, faded, read: Herbs of Winter and Their Ill Tempers.
"Read," Eldrin said.
Seren leaned forward, tracing the sketches with his eyes. One leaf in particular caught his attention: serrated edges, five sharp points. Below it, the description: Ashroot. Blackens blood. Smells faintly of cinders. Often mistaken for a harmless tonic leaf.
Ashroot. The same bitter tang he had smelled in the kitchen stew. The same taste that lingered in his memory.
"Why this book?" Seren asked.
"Because knowledge weighs less than suspicion," Eldrin said, his voice dry. "And because poisons are being tested like letters in an alphabet. Someone is writing sentences with them."
Seren turned another page, slower this time. He memorized every shape, every warning, every counteragent.
"Will this keep me safe?" he asked.
"No," Eldrin said simply. "But it will keep you less ignorant. And in this house, that is a kind of shield."
---
Night settled heavily on the castle. Seren returned to Elara's chamber. The wedge was already across the door, the spoon across her knees as she sat by the table.
"They're teaching you," she said without preamble, her voice a whisper sharpened to steel.
"By killing their own," Seren replied.
Her lips pressed into a thin line. "Yes."
He sat on the cot. His breathing was calm, measured. Four in. Two held. Eight out.
"They want me to break," he said.
"No," Elara corrected, her gaze fixed on the door. "They want you to bend until you forget you can stand."
Seren closed his eyes. He thought of the mirror in the hidden stair, the words burning across its cracked surface. Awakening begins with the willing.
His voice was quiet, almost lost in the silence of the room.
"Then I will learn faster. And I will not break."
Elara studied him for a long time, her fingers tightening around the spoon. At last, she nodded.
Outside, the bells tolled once, long and heavy. By dawn, the whispers became fact. Vesta Drakoria was dead.
The scribes wrote "fever." The Patriarch did not correct them.
And Seren understood: the house had grown teeth, and it meant to sharpen them on its own blood.