Early Morning – Vaeloria
The first light of dawn crept through the high arched windows of Vaeloria, casting a pale, cold glow across the sleeping castle. The maids, as was their daily custom, moved silently through the corridors, tending to their duties before the lords and ladies awoke.
It was when they reached the chambers of the young princes that the stillness shattered.
The chamber pots were untouched. The beds — stripped of warmth, sheets tangled and thrown aside. The window shutters, often locked tight against the chill, hung ajar, letting in the icy morning wind.
And most damning of all — the room was empty.
No trace of Prince Kaleon or Theo Leveros.
The maids gasped, dropping their linen bundles, and fled in panic to the upper halls.
Within moments, the quiet of the morning was torn apart by a rising commotion — shouting, pounding footsteps, the clanging of armor as guards were roused from their barracks.
Lady Evelyne was the first to be summoned, rushed from her chambers by frantic servants, her hair unbound, her cloak hastily thrown over her nightgown.
Her heart slammed against her ribs as she heard the words — missing. Gone. Vanished in the night.
By the time she reached the great hall, barefoot and wild-eyed, the alarm had spread like wildfire. Darion had been roused. The Skarn siblings gathered in confusion and fear. The house of Vaeloria was stirring — not to the herald of a new day, but to the dread of an empty home.
And in that moment, as Evelyne stood at the center of it all, something within her knew:
The family she had fought so hard to hold together was already beginning to tear apart.
Council was summoned
The great hall of Vaeloria was cloaked in a suffocating silence, broken only by the furious footsteps of Lady Evelyne as she stormed across the stone floor. Her gown, once so immaculate, was wrinkled and torn at the hem from her frantic search through the castle corridors.
Her face was pale with fury, her eyes red from the tears she refused to shed.
"They're gone," she whispered hoarsely, her voice cracking the silence. "Gone."
Lysera stood near the hearth, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, trembling not from cold but rage.
"This is your doing, Father," she snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. "You drove them away!"
Darion Skarn, towering, rigid, turned on her with a glare that could have frozen blood. But there was no denying it — a flicker of guilt darkened his eyes.
"They were children!" Lysera continued, stepping closer, unafraid. "You treated them like traitors! Like strangers!"
Across the hall, Malric and Elryn sat huddled together on a bench, confused and silent. Elryn clutched a small doll to her chest, while Malric stared blankly at the floor, his small fists clenched at his sides. They were too young to understand the full weight of what had happened — only that their brother and his dearest friend were gone, and the house felt colder for it.
Evelyne's hands gripped the edge of the long table so tightly her knuckles whitened.
She had fought, pleaded, begged for Darion to see reason these past weeks. To loosen the chains he kept around Kaleon's neck. But he had not listened — and now, the result was carved into the empty chairs at their table.
"Enough," Darion growled, his voice a thunderclap in the hall. "I will not have my authority questioned!"
He whirled toward the guards lining the walls. "Send riders. Scouts. Every hunter in the Vale. Search the woods, the rivers, the old roads. Bring them back — alive."
The guards bowed and rushed to obey, but the command hung hollow in the air.
Lysera laughed bitterly. "You think they'll come back willingly now?"
Darion did not answer. He could not.
The family — the once-proud, once-mighty Skarns — stood broken in that moment, not by blade nor blood, but by their own pride and fear.
A heavy silence fell again.
The hearth crackled and spat embers.
Outside, the winds of the mountains howled, carrying with them the first whispers of a storm.
And then, the councilmen spoke.
"My lord," said Lord Verandor, voice cold, bowing low. "Perhaps... it is for the better. The boy was not what he seemed. He spied where he should not have. He lied, defied, and now fled like a coward. He uncovered things best left buried within the Chambers of Flameheart."
Whispers stirred among the lords gathered at the edges of the room.
"Traitor's blood," another muttered grimly.
Darion stiffened, face unreadable.
It was Therion who snapped first.
In two strides he stood before Verandor, seizing him by the throat and slamming him against a pillar hard enough that the stones shook.
The hall gasped.
"If any man," Therion snarled, his voice raw with fury, "speaks one more word against my brother, I'll see their head on a pike before nightfall!"
Verandor choked, struggling against Therion's iron grip.
"And hear me, Father," Therion spat, tossing the councilman aside like a rag. "If Kaleon is not found, if he does not return to this hall of his own will... I will never take your cursed crown. I will never sit that throne built on lies and broken sons."
Darion opened his mouth — but no words came.
Lysera pressed a hand against her mouth to smother a sob. Tears shone in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall, even as she shook with the effort of holding herself together.
The doors creaked again.
A young maid entered, trembling, clutching something to her chest.
"My lady," she whispered, approaching Evelyne with wide eyes. "We... we found this. In Prince Kaleon's chambers."
Evelyne seized the parchment from the maid's hand with shaking fingers.
She unrolled it slowly, and as her eyes scanned the ink, the silence grew deeper, thicker, heavier, like a living thing pressing against the walls.
She read aloud, but it was not her voice that filled the hall —
It was his.
"If you are reading this, then you know we are gone."
"Do not seek us."
"Do not send riders or soldiers to drag us back into your lies."
"Father, you were never a man worthy of the things you held. You wore the crown, but you never carried the heart it demanded."
"I have seen the truth hidden in the Chambers of Flameheart — the truth you tried to bury beneath ash and silence."
"You will call me traitor. Coward. Fool. Perhaps even worse. I care not."
"I am leaving because I must. Because if I stay, I become you."
"I will return — but not soon. Give me six or seven years. Maybe longer."
"By then, I will be stronger than you could ever make me. Stronger than you deserve to know."
"Mother — if you are reading this — do not grieve. I have not left you. You have never left me."
"And to my brothers and sisters — remember: blood is not loyalty. Truth is loyalty."
"One day, I will come back. Not as a boy you could command... but as a man you will never forget."
"Until then — live well. And pray that the fire inside me does not forget you."
"Yours no longer,"
"Kaleon Skarn."
The parchment trembled in Evelyne's hands.
A strange sound broke from her lips — half a sob, half a laugh.
She shook her head, a wet chuckle escaping despite the tears pooling in her eyes.
"Turned into a fine young man after all," she whispered under her breath, her voice cracking.
Around her, the council looked stunned.
Darion stared at the letter as if it were a blade plunged into his gut.
Lysera sank into a chair, burying her face in her hands, finally letting the tears fall.
Therion turned away, his fists trembling at his sides, staring out into the storm brewing beyond the castle walls.
The hall was broken, bruised — and in the spaces where Kaleon's voice had filled the air, it felt emptier than it ever had before.
The others lingered, hollowed by the words they had heard, yet none dared speak.
One by one, they drifted from the great hall like ghosts — Lysera, still weeping silently; Malric guiding little Elryn by the hand; the councilmen muttering among themselves in hushed tones, careful not to draw Therion's wrath again.
Only Darion Skarn remained.
The heavy doors of Vaeloria's hall closed with a deep boom, leaving him alone beneath the towering pillars and shadowed banners.
For a long moment, he stood motionless, staring at the crumpled parchment on the floor where Evelyne had let it fall.
The hearth's flames crackled and popped, casting flickering shadows across his weathered face.
Then — slowly, with a hand that trembled despite himself — Darion knelt and picked up the letter.
His eyes traced the words again, burning each line into his mind.
Each sentence struck like a hammer.
Each word a knife twisting in old, unseen wounds.
"You were supposed to be my heir," he rasped aloud to the empty hall, his voice breaking into a whisper. "My legacy..."
The parchment crinkled in his grip.
Without warning, Darion roared — a sound of such rage and despair that it echoed through the stone bones of the castle — and hurled the letter into the fire.
The flames greedily devoured the parchment, curling the edges into blackened ash, the ink boiling and vanishing as if it had never been.
But the words — Kaleon's words — had already carved themselves into him.
Darion stumbled back, breath ragged, striking the long oaken table with his fist.
The heavy table cracked under the blow, splintering down the middle.
He paced like a wounded beast, his heavy boots slamming against the stone floor, hands running through his greying hair, tugging, pulling, cursing.
He had thought fear would keep Kaleon in check.
He had thought duty, blood, the old ways — they would bind the boy to him.
But pride had broken him.
And now pride had taken Kaleon from him.
Darion sank into the lord's chair — his chair — but it felt colder, emptier now, a mockery of power.
The great hall of Vaeloria, once a place of honor and triumph, loomed around him like a tomb.
He buried his face in his hands.
And for the first time in many long, bitter years, Lord Darion Skarn wept.
The fire crackled.
The storm outside deepened, and the winds howled like mourning spirits through the mountains.