That frigid morning, five men hung. Their bodies, stark against the bruised dawn sky, swayed in the brittle breeze like macabre pendulums.
One for sedition, his face a bruised mask of defiance.
Two for "collusion with a neighboring duchy to sabotage the campaign." They had been spies, woven deep into the fabric of the court for months—but now, with the Duke's bloody victory sealed and the unyielding Church at his side, he was ready to send a message. A message delivered with the sickening crack of bone and rope, loud, clear, and utterly final. He was cleaning house, purging the last vestiges of dissent.
Another—an aging baron, his silk doublet now a ragged shroud—had refused to pay tithe, citing a string of poor harvests. But the Duke's relentless spies, like hungry rats, had uncovered his vast embezzlement. Crops weren't the only thing he'd hoarded; his coffers had swollen with stolen gold, glinting with a dishonest sheen.
And the last? A man once known as the former Duke's loyal right hand. Respected. Loyal. Now, convicted of blasphemy and subversion. His singular, fatal crime: daring to speak in a smoky tavern—three ales deep, emboldened by the potent brew—that the brutal war had never been about protection, never about the common folk.
"The dragon avoids our homes," he'd slurred, oblivious to the watchful eyes. "We should do the same. This entire campaign is just a way to amass gold and titles beneath a holy banner." His final words, choked by the noose, were lost to the wind.
The crowd gathered in the gallows' lengthening shadow, a silent, grey mass of humanity pressed tightly together at New Brightward—the freshly fortified outpost, still smelling of new timber and raw earth, just a few miles from the haunted stretch of forest known as Hanged Path. The rough-hewn nooses swayed softly, lazily, in the biting morning breeze, silhouetted against the pale, indifferent sky. The executioner wore not the customary black, but blood-red, a deliberate choice, stark and unapologetic. This wasn't justice meted out; this was a merciless cleansing.
A priest of the Church of the Light, robed in pristinewhitelinen that seemed impossibly bright in the grim light, read holy verses aloud as the condemned men dropped, their struggles brief, horrifying dances. He didn't tremble. He didn't blink. His voice, clear and resonant, offered no comfort, only the cold recitation of divine judgment.
And neither did the man watching from the elegant stone balcony above, his silhouette framed against the rising sun. His name was Duke Martel Vaedrin.
Second son of the previous Duke, a result of a fleeting liaison between his noble father and a lowly maid, he was now, improbably, the ruthless ruler of three sprawling provinces and the de facto warden of the treacherous dragon-border. He had never personally slain a beast with his own hands—until now. But with cunningly applied coin, the potent leverage of faith, and the grand, bloody theater of war, he'd carved an empire from a corpse. Pile up enough bodies, cultivate enough fear, and anyone can forge themselves into a legend.
The death of the dragon—what the Church, in its divine pronouncements, had swiftly named a Divine Scourge—had become the chilling keystone of his meteoric rise. A pyre he'd turned, with cold calculation, into a throne.
Martel's voice was low, a silken murmur, coiled and precise like a viper ready to strike.
"Beautiful," he murmured to the man beside him, his gaze still fixed on the swaying figures below. "Public order and political theatre. Hangings truly achieve both with such… efficiency."
Beside him, Minister Bael—a man perpetually hunched as if burdened by invisible weights, bald pate gleaming faintly, and fingers perpetually ink-stained—gave a nervous, almost obsequious nod. His eyes darted between the Duke and the scene below, a flicker of unease in their depths.
"The merchants are exceptionally pleased, your Grace. Mining rights near the Path have been judiciously divided. New veins of glimmeringsilver and richobsidian have been discovered. And… aetherstone, too. Potentially more if we press deeper into the mountains." Bael's voice was a low, conspiratorial murmur.
"And the Church?" Martel prompted, his gaze now sharp, turning to Bael.
"Pleased," Bael repeated, almost a whisper. "The Inquisitors have been gifted a generous portion of the revenue. Two new monasteries, impressive structures of stone and piety, have already been commissioned, their foundations blessed."
Martel smiled, a thin, almost imperceptible curve of his lips.
"Excellent. Everyone receives their piece of the feast. And the beast is irrevocably dead." A beat of silence, heavy with unspoken possibilities. "Or… most of it."
He turned, his movements economical, to his guard captain, a burly man whose armor seemed too tight for his bulging frame.
"Still no word on the child?" His voice dropped, losing its prior theatricality, becoming chillingly direct.
"Nothing conclusive, your Grace. A few scattered witnesses. A girl in rags, described as unusually pale, seen heading west, deep into the wilds." The captain shifted uncomfortably.
"Might be nothing," Martel mused, his gloved finger tapping a slow, deliberate rhythm on the cold stone railing. Then, colder still, his eyes narrowing to slits of pale, calculatingice: "Might be everything." He paused, the tapping echoing in the sudden silence.
"Send agents. Not soldiers—their clumsiness would betray them. Spies. Discreet. No crests. No banners. I want her found. And if she is something more… something of the beast's true blood…"
His smile was thin. Empty. A void of chilling ambition.
"…we'll harvest that too. Every drop."
---
Beneath the Silk
That evening, Martel dined with his most crucial merchant backers in the red-draped banquet hall of his newly claimed keep. The air was thick with the rich, cloying scent of exotic incense and the hearty aroma of flame-roasted boar, its skin crackling with succulent fat. Laughter, loud and boisterous, rang against the gleaming goldenplates and the ornate candelabras that bathed the room in a warm, flickering light.
They ate the tender meat, tearing at it with unrestrained relish. They drank southernwine from slendercrystal flutes, the deep burgundyliquid catching the light.
And beneath the polished oak table, in a silent, practiced ballet of power, papers exchanged hands like well-honed weapons.
"Ownership deeds to the Ironwood timberlands."
"Guild approval for the new Aetherstone mine, granted with unprecedented haste."
"Quarter shares of all obsidian shipments, from the mountains to the coast."
"Tax exemptions for six months, renewable upon favorable market conditions."
And then—the crown jewel of the night's transactions.
A parchment scroll, thick and heavy, stamped with seven formidable royal and ecclesiastical seals, each one a testament to his burgeoning power:
The Duke's Petition to Expand Border Holdings, now ratified, signed, and indisputable. A new era, carved from the dragon's demise.
Martel raised his goblet, the crystal chiming softly.
"What once belonged to monsters," he announced, his voice carrying clearly over the fading din of conversation, "now feeds kingdoms. And enriches those with the wisdom to claim it."
The merchants cheered, their faces flushed with wine and greed, a unified roar of approval.
One, tipsy and emboldened by the potent vintage, leaned forward, his eyes bright with a dangerous question.
"And if another dragon comes, your Grace? What then?"
Martel reclined in his plush chair, his expression utterly unreadable, a silent, inscrutable mask.
"Then we'll kill it," he stated, his voice flat, devoid of emotion, the words falling like cold, final stones.
A beat. A moment of chilling silence where only the crackle of the hearth could be heard.
"Or," he added, his lips curling into a slow, terrifying smile, "we'll breed it."
Later, as the flames in the great hall dimmed to embers and the last drops of wine ran dry, his childhood friend and most trusted adviser, Lord Alaric, spoke in hushed, urgent tones.
"The king watches your rise with unease, Martel. Your star's burning hot, a comet blazing across the political sky. Burn too bright…"
"And I'll blind him," Martel replied, cutting him off, his voice sharper than any blade.
But his tone, for the first time that night, lacked its usual humor, lacked the arrogant triumph. There was a cold, hard resolve there, a recognition of the perilous path he walked.
---
Interlude: The Card That Wasn't Drawn
In a smoky street corner of the sprawling capital, far from the Duke's bloody machinations, a tired seer sat beneath a threadbare, patchwork canopy, dealing cards for meager coin. A man sat opposite him, hollow-eyed, silent, a ghost haunted by recent tragedy. His wife, a gifted mage, had perished in the dragonfire that had consumed so many.
It should have been me, he thought, the silent lament a constant, bitter companion.
The seer, his face a roadmap of ancient wrinkles, flipped through his worn, oiled deck.
He stopped abruptly, his gnarled finger hovering over The Hanged Man, its familiar image of sacrifice and perspective.
Then he paused. A strange ripple passed through the air, unseen.
His fingers twitched—and instead, with an almost imperceptible sleight of hand, he drew a card no conventional deck should ever hold, a card not meant for mortal eyes.
XII – The Hanged Man
Yet, on this card, a different, darker image materialized before the man's eyes, vibrant with a terrifying, impossible truth:
A dragon, magnificent and terrible, bound in cruel, gleaming thorns.
A mother, her essence reduced to a swirling pyre of smoke and ash.
A child, cloaked in rags of silvery blonde and dark mourning, walking with grim determination toward a horizon that glowed with an ominous, vengeful fire.
And above them all: a throne, grand and terrible, built not of timber or stone, but of neatly stacked ledgers, of glinting swords, and of taut, waiting ropes.
The seer didn't explain it. His gaze was distant, seeing more than mere cards.
He just whispered, his voice raspy like dry leaves, "Perspective… is a privilege bought with blood. And some truths are too heavy for words."
Across the bustling street, a bard sang a triumphant ballad of glory and valor, his voice ringing with false cheer. The city hummed with indifferent life, oblivious to the deeper currents of fate.
And no one noticed the faint, fine ash in the biting wind, carried from a distant, tragic pyre.