Chapter Twelve: An Empty Chair
---
Two years had passed, and time shrank within the heart of the palace like a golden thread twisting between fingers, leaving its mark on faces, on bodies, on souls.
In one of the back training courtyards, the sound of metal rang through the air—clashing with nothing but the wind.
Iswar was there, standing firm, lifting his spear before his old trainer—not seeking praise, nor caring about defeat.
When struck on the shoulder, he made no sound. He lowered his spear, then raised it again, as if his body was learning before his mind.
The trainer said, patting his shoulder:
> "Your spear knows its path, boy… but your heart outruns it sometimes."
Iswar replied, eyes half-closed:
> "That's why I need to slow down my heart."
Upstairs, behind thick glass that reflected the noon light, Ayant sat on the floor, surrounded by open books and scattered notebooks.
As a palace maid passed by the door, she caught a glimpse of him pressing his palm against a sword blade lying beside him—
as if carrying on a voiceless conversation.
He whispered alone:
> "I don't want to fight you… just understand me."
A glow pulsed around him for a moment. It wasn't an aura of combat, but one of refusal… or tenderness.
In the eastern garden, the First Prince stood contemplating the apricot tree, eyes half-mocking, half-drifting.
His personal servant approached and said:
> "The session began an hour ago, Your Highness."
The prince tossed a fruit in the air, caught it again without looking, and replied:
> "You know? Daily training is boring…
But the look on their faces when they're surprised to see me—worth it."
Then he rose lazily and headed to the yard, his sword tied with a velvet ribbon, more decoration than weapon.
Under a small balcony near the courtyard, the Third Prince sat alone, quietly stringing his bow.
He didn't speak, but his eyes followed Ayant and Iswar from afar.
When he fired an arrow into the air, it hit a leaf falling from a distant tree. Nothing more.
He whispered to himself:
> "One star for the eye…
One for the soul."
In her secluded wing, the Fourth Princess raised her hand toward a small magical vortex.
Mana swirled around her as if whispering secrets, then settled into a perfect circle in her palm.
She looked into her mirror and said:
> "It's not power… It's understanding.
I understand it—that's why it follows me."
At the far end of the palace, the Fifth Princess was running through the hallway, her spear trailing a faint watery trace unseen by anyone.
She suddenly stopped in front of her maid and asked with a wide smile:
> "Do you think water gets lonely?"
The maid hesitated:
> "I don't know, Your Highness…"
The girl replied without looking at her:
> "I just feel like my spear gets sad when I don't talk to it."
In this world, power wasn't measured by strikes or stars—
but by how much the soul listens to silence…
and how deeply the aura understands what is left unsaid.
---
//— In the Marquis Sayenar's Estate —//
At a long table fit for ten, only four sat.
There was a fifth chair—empty, yet placed with precision, as if someone would arrive shortly.
Opposite sat Alex, dressed in elegant dark clothes, his eyes focused not on the food but the light reflecting off his wine glass.
To his right sat his wife, a woman with a presence so still she needed no voice to be heard.
Beside her, the second daughter, Melissa, played with the edge of her napkin, her curly chestnut hair bouncing softly.
To Alex's left was the empty chair. Next to it sat the eldest daughter, Angela, poised like an aristocratic cat.
The silence wasn't heavy—it was calculated.
Until Melissa broke it, cutting her meat and lifting her head innocently:
> "Daddy… what does my older brother look like?"
Alex froze for a moment, his gaze drifting toward the empty chair, as if he had heard the echo of the question rather than the question itself.
But the reply didn't come from his eyes—it came from a soft, tense voice behind him:
> "Alex, this is unbearable."
His wife said it quietly, breaking bread without lifting her head:
> "Seven years… He's been there for seven years.
Rarely sees us—as if we're just a faded memory to him."
Alex ran his fingers through his golden hair,
glanced at his daughters,
and said—almost involuntarily:
> "Let's go to the capital.
The banquet's close anyway."
His wife raised her eyes to him, their glint neither anger nor sorrow:
> "You can't even hold your own son…
Even your spies return in pieces."
He didn't reply.
He kept cutting his meat, as if her words had never been said—
as if something else was occupying him.
A long moment passed.
Then, lifting his glass, he whispered:
> "At least… he's not dead."
No one responded.
And no one truly knew what he meant.
Then, as if someone pressed an inner switch, he suddenly asked:
> "Did you prepare the gifts?"
The girls looked at him in surprise.
His wife smiled softly—a smile like the night.
Angela spoke, a bit excited:
> "Ayant turned ten, right?
They said he formed a sword aura!"
Alex nodded, silently smiling.
Then, unprompted, Melissa suddenly asked:
> "Daddy… does his aura look like yours?"
He replied gently, brushing the rim of his glass:
> "Yes…
But it doesn't hurt like mine does."
And then came the voice no one awaited:
> "Told you… He's a genius.
Because I'm his mother."
His wife said it, with her slow smile—unclear whether it was sarcasm or affection.
Alex laughed, a light laugh—as if at a joke only he understood:
> "Don't dodge it…
He looks more like me than like you."
Suddenly, Melissa bowed her head over the table,
mumbled broken words,
then lifted her eyes, tears trembling in her lashes:
> "I don't know what my brother likes…"
The words were simple…
Yet heavier than expected.
Everyone laughed—not cruelly.
It was a laugh of recognition…
That love is not always simple.
Angela got up and hugged her sister, soothing her gently.
Their mother merely looked at the empty chair and whispered:
> "A day will come… when we'll have to introduce ourselves to him all over again."
---
//— From Alex's Point of View —//
I was eating with them, but I wasn't truly there.
From the start of the meal, my mind was elsewhere—
not on the words,
nor on the meat,
but on something deeper.
My wife.
Still the same.
Her voice as calm as a foggy night, yet when she speaks, the ground quivers beneath the language.
She doesn't need to scream to steer me—just a slow turn of her head, or the way she lifts her glass at an unfamiliar angle.
I've loved no one before her, nor after.
And I didn't love our children—except through her.
Everything she made, I loved because it came from her.
And that boy… Ayant.
They think he's mine.
They call him so, believing blood alone creates belonging.
But I know…
That child wasn't born of us—but of another silence.
That night he stood before me, asking to follow the prince, I saw something I cannot forget.
He smiled…
but nothing in his eyes did.
An unnatural mix.
He doesn't lie, but doesn't tell the truth either.
He breathes like humans do—
but the air doesn't enter him the way it does others.
There's something precisely broken inside him…
And that's why I observe him—not as a father…
but as a scientist before a creature whose laws are unknown.
Am I afraid of him?
No.
But I'm not at ease either.
Sometimes, thinking too much about him, I feel something strange stir within me.
As if… I want to tear him open.
Not out of hatred—but to see inside.
I don't wish for his death…
only his dissection.
As if the truth he holds won't surface unless he's completely shattered.
Then… I remember my wife's face when she says his name.
And I swallow all my urges.
I'm not evil.
Just… afflicted with unbalanced love and an unkillable curiosity.
I laughed then—
not because it was funny, but because something inside me had found its exit.
> "You must prepare the gifts, girls."
I said it as though snuffing out a candle in my mind.
Their responses were childish, amusing—as if we were a normal family.
But when the little one said:
> "I don't know what my brother likes…"
I didn't hear her words…
I heard another kind of ache.
I laughed—yes.
But inside me, a snake coiled tighter around my heart…
Not to choke it, but to watch it.
---
Morning was quiet—but not ordinary.
The sky had a gentle ash hue, unsure whether to rain or not.
And the air… neither cold nor warm—
as if testing the senses to see if they still worked.
Down the marble corridor leading to the carriage square, Prince Iswar and Ayant walked lightly—not in fear, but unwilling to be heard.
They wore long gray silk coats, fastened with hidden pearl buttons.
The fabric shimmered subtly under the dawn light—
not to show off, but to hint they didn't belong in this scene.
Ayant's hair was neatly combed, but a small strand had escaped—
as if it knew today wasn't a formal day.
Iswar, the younger, wore gloves he didn't need—perhaps to hide his hesitation,
or to seem prepared for something larger than himself.
They weren't supposed to leave this way.
No guards.
No permission.
Not even notice.
Yet no one stopped them—
as if the world conspired to let them go… so fate could finish what it began.
They walked in silence.
As if the corridor didn't welcome them—
but dared not stop them either.
Ayant walked slowly—
as if walking within himself, not the world.
Each step echoed only in his ears,
as if the earth remembered him and reshaped beneath his feet.
Iswar watched him from the corner of his eye.
He wasn't worried—
but he felt his brother was changing—
not with age, but with aura.
As if Ayant had lost something without realizing it,
or time had stolen parts of him not yet planted.
When they reached the carriage, Ayant paused—
gazed at a space of nothingness.
An emptiness that took no space—yet existed.
Then he asked in a voice unlike his own:
> "Are we going to buy something… or sell something we don't yet know?"
Iswar didn't answer.
He didn't understand—
or maybe he did, and feared his own reply.
They boarded the carriage.
It departed toward the auction…
But the road wasn't a road.
The window didn't display familiar scenery—
but memories not yet lived:
Their mother's scent,
Their father's shadow,
The old servant's voice,
A call never spoken…
And amid all of it, they sat in silence.
As if transforming into characters in a tale not yet written—
but required to act now,
like actors told to grieve in a scene whose ending they do not know.
There were no birds in the sky.
No one on the road.
Only the carriage,
And a silence that patted their shoulders—
like a kind hand…
Or a hand preparing them for slaughter.
---
Silk Street wasn't bustling with noise—it whispered, as if it already knew who walked its path.
Ayant stepped first, with the same lightness he used to mask his expressions.
Iswar followed, slower, his eyes roaming the shop windows that reflected faces he didn't care for—yet somehow remembered.
The shop looked like any elegant salon—its floor tiled in oceanic marble, velvet hangers carrying cloaks for noble lords and nightly robes.
Despite its luxury, something was off about the silence—
as if the shelves held secrets, and the silk itself turned its gaze from whoever entered.
The shopkeeper glanced at them once—
then smiled immediately.
Ayant spoke just one sentence, calmly, as he traced his finger near his mouth,
as though drawing an invisible symbol:
> "I came to test the final piece."
The phrase wasn't strange to the man—
it was an old password, a key to a door known by only a few.
He bowed with the grace of one performing an ancient ritual, then silently led them to a wall draped in silk.
It wasn't a wall at all.
He opened a hidden door, revealing a long corridor wrapped in the scent of aged wood and a fading blossom.
The farther they walked, the more the light behind them dimmed—
while the faint light ahead never grew brighter.
Their footsteps became the only string of sound in this stretched movement of stillness.
Iswar whispered, barely audible, yet piercing the quiet:
> "Feels like we're digging through a world beneath this one."
Ayant answered, without turning:
> "Maybe we are."
---
At the corridor's end, a man in a stiff gray silk suit greeted them.
He didn't ask for identity or papers.
He only bowed and said:
> "The auction is about to begin."
With a subtle gesture, he led them into a dimly lit hall where shadow danced with shimmer.
Nobles sat behind curtains of colored crystal—watching, unseen.
Iswar murmured:
> "A place like this makes murder feel like a salt trade."
Ayant chuckled softly, handing over gold and silver to a clerk who never raised his head:
> "Luckily… we're just here to watch."
The attendant accepted the coins respectfully, without counting:
> "The Peace Room. Finest view. Absolute discretion."
He opened a small side door—behind it, an isolated box with darkened windows overlooking the main auction chamber.
They sank into the plush couches.
Iswar exhaled deeply, leaning his head back—
and recalled the moments before they left.
A simple conversation cloaked in mystery,
revealing just how fragile human boundaries can be.
He remembered a moment lying on the couch, face buried between pages of an old book—
a book that told of a painful past.
And from that single moment…
Ayant had altered his course.
Brought him here—not for mystery,
but to shield him from eyes that might notice the blackness in his gaze.
Ayant had known—
about the change,
the difference in his brother's eyes.
And still, he brought him here…
leaving behind a simple sentence tucked into a hidden corner of his heart:
> "Don't hide behind pages—change won't be erased by vanishing."
It was a story…
of Ayant accepting Iswar as he was—
even when strange shifts began to show in his body.
Like today…
when his eyes had turned coal-black—
telling a story born from an old past.