Glenfold Catacombs – Depths of the Old Pact Vault
The steward moved like a shadow unmoored from flesh. His voice echoed long after his lips closed, whispering things the torchlight dared not touch.
Aeron circled the altar slowly, his eyes never leaving the carved name—Thorne—half-worn but unmistakable. Older than any living memory. Older than exile. He felt a weight pressing in his chest, not of fear, but of something crueler: legacy.
"How long have you waited here?" Aeron asked.
The steward knelt beside the bone staff and struck it once against the floor. The sound echoed with unnatural clarity.
"Long enough to forget the sun. Not long enough to forget the betrayal."
Harwin frowned. "What betrayal?"
The steward smiled faintly. "When the Thorne blood first claimed Caer Velnar, they made pact with the Vale. Not with crown nor law—but with the land, and those who kept its peace. When they broke that oath, the roots rebelled. The rivers dried. The pact was sealed with bone to never rise again."
Aeron straightened. "I was a child when they exiled us. My father died rotting in a debtor's cage. Don't speak to me of pacts I never saw."
The steward turned, slowly, and touched the carved name with gnarled fingers.
"Blood does not forgive. It remembers in marrow and dream."
Tarn crept closer to Elric, clutching his blade. "I don't like this. It's wrong down here."
Elric nodded mutely.
The steward's voice softened. "You came seeking a path. You found a tomb. The only way forward is through memory—and memory demands sacrifice."
Aeron narrowed his eyes. "What kind of sacrifice?"
The torch flickered again. The walls shifted subtly, as if breathing. The steward gestured to a side vault, sealed by twin doors of stone marked with iron sigils.
"One must walk alone into the vault of remembrance. There, blood and bone will answer."
Harwin stepped forward. "He's not walking into that alone. Not while I draw breath."
"You cannot follow," the steward replied. "Only the marked blood can pass."
Aeron reached into his pouch and withdrew the scorched half-coin—the one the hooded man had left him. He turned it slowly in his fingers.
"This enough to mark me?"
The steward nodded once.
Aeron stepped to the vault doors. The sigils flared faintly as he approached, heatless and white. The stone split down the middle and groaned open, revealing darkness beyond.
Before stepping through, he looked once at Harwin.
"If I don't return—"
"You'll return," Harwin said. "Or I'll tear this damned tomb apart stone by stone."
Aeron entered.
The door sealed behind him.
The Vault of Remembrance
The air inside was colder, the kind of cold that sank into bone and sat there. The torch in Aeron's hand dimmed as he moved deeper, its flame shrinking against the unseen weight of the room.
Then he saw them—figures lining the walls. Not statues. Corpses. Preserved in alcoves. Each wore the sigil of House Thorne upon their faded surcoats.
His ancestors.
He passed them one by one. Grandfathers he'd only heard of in drunken tales. Great-uncles and bannermen, forgotten by the living.
Then came a final dais, and upon it lay a single stone sarcophagus.
Aedric Thorne, it read.
His father.
The lid had been shattered, but inside the bones were laid with care. On the corpse's breast lay a second half-coin, unburnt. Whole.
Aeron reached for it—and visions struck.
Not images. Sensations.
Fire. Screams. A keep burning under red banners. His father kneeling before a cloaked figure. A pact broken not by blade, but by mercy. A sparing that damned a hundred.
His knees buckled.
When he opened his eyes again, the corpse was still. But the coin in his hand was now whole. Restored.
His name—Aeron Thorne—was etched across its back in blood-red runes.
He stood, steadied himself, and turned toward the vault's entrance. The stone doors opened before he touched them.
The steward waited.
"So?" Harwin demanded, striding forward.
Aeron said nothing.
He dropped the restored coin into Harwin's hand.
Then he turned to the steward.
"I remember now. And I accept the weight."
The steward nodded. "Then the pact is reforged. Not in silence. But in vengeance."
Behind Aeron, the bones in the alcoves began to stir.