Greyroot Marshes, Southern Velgrath Border
By dusk, the march led them into wetlands where the sky lowered like a scold and the air thickened with the reek of salt, peat, and rotting wood. What had once been roads were now causeways of broken stone flanked by standing water and briar. Frogs croaked like coughs from unseen pools.
Harwin reined in beside Aeron. "This is where sellswords go to drown."
"Or vanish," Aeron replied. "Which is what we need."
The others—Garrick, Thale, Elric, and the boy—followed warily, weapons within reach. No one spoke. Not after the last hamlet's warning: Turn back before the tides claim your tongue.
Ahead, rising like a rot-toothed maw from the marsh, loomed a sunken fort of timber and stone, half-eaten by moss and neglect. It wasn't marked on any roadwarden's chart. But Harwin knew it.
"Salt-Hollow," he muttered. "Old smugglers' keep. Used to belong to House Lhore."
"They were stripped of title three reigns ago," Aeron said.
"Aye. But their bastards bred fast, and their knives never dulled."
They crossed the causeway under the watch of slitted arrow-loops. From the dark rampart came a call—three clicks of flint, then silence.
Aeron answered: two clicks, then a low whistle.
Moments passed. Then the gates creaked open.
Inside, the keep's courtyard was slick with slime and boot-tracked brine. Dozens stood within—armed men, cloaked women, branded slaves and freedmen alike. They bore no heraldry. Only scars.
From the steps of the inner tower came a woman in armor as black as pitch-oil and twice as bitter. Her eyes were sharp, her brow marked with salt-rune tattoos.
"You're late," she said. "And smaller than I was told."
Aeron bowed slightly. "That's because I lost everything. And now I'm here to find it."
"You come with ghosts, then."
He held up the scorched half-coin.
The woman's expression shifted. "So it's true."
"Aye," Harwin growled. "Thorne's blood walks again."
She laughed once—dry as wind through hollow bones.
"They'll hang you for it."
"Only if they catch me."
She turned. "Come. The creed must be spoken if you want sanctuary."
They followed her into the hall, where the walls were carved with names—not of noble lines, but of every fugitive, outlaw, and broken vassal who'd ever pledged to the Salt-Hollow Creed.
She lit a candle. "Kneel, Aeron Thorne."
He knelt. The boy stood beside him.
"Speak the words."
"I am unmoored. I am unsworn. But I remember."
"What do you remember?"
"That oaths break. But names endure."
"What name do you raise?"
"Thorne."
"What will you give to defend it?"
"My breath. My blood. My lie, if need be."
She studied him long and hard.
Then she handed him a rusted dagger.
"Carve it."
He took the blade, approached the wall, and scraped his name beneath a hundred others.
Aeron Thorne.No title. No crown. Only truth in salt and steel.
The woman nodded.
"Then Salt-Hollow is yours to rest in. But not to rule. Not yet."