"Truth is not a mature fruit that is picked. It's a buried beast that is unearthed, with bare hands. »»
- Fragment found in a sealed bone, dead archives
Ashen was advancing alone.
Not in the alleys of Edelstadt this time.
But in gray areas, where the walls were older than the city itself.
Foundations of foundations.
Where the cobblestones sometimes bleed an old humidity, and where the oil lamps refused to burn more than a minute.
The indicator had indicated to him a passage.
Not a door. Not a tunnel.
An injury to the city.
A section of wall collapsed behind an old sealed well, in the old scholarship - now a refuge for crazy, exiled scribes and forgotten children.
Ashen had gone there in silence.
He had not yet crossed the opening.
Not yet.
For the moment, he was watching.
He listened.
And he learned.
For three days, he lived in the shadow of a dilapidated bell tower, sleeping next to a collapsed sanctuary dedicated to Calem the incomplete - a saint erased from the texts.
He observed the comings and goings around the temple of the threshold.
Not the large temple with a black dome visible to all.
But the annexes.
Secondary buildings.
The doors that no one crossed, except the priests dressed in ash.
And sometimes ... royal soldiers, in civilian clothes, discreet.
Always two by two.
He noted the schedules.
Rituals.
Words.
Each evening, he climbed the heights of the old neighborhood, and scribbled in an old flax blanket.
"Three priests come through the southern door, still at the time of the death knell. »»
"The word Veritas often returns, whispered but never shouted. »»
"One of the guards is afraid. He tightens his badge too hard. He looks behind him. He knows. »»
And every night, dreams became heavier.
Not nightmares.
Memories mixed with things he had never experienced.
He saw faces.
Old prayers.
Window rooms.
And cries.
On the fourth day, he met an old scribe, with eyes covered with strips.
The man held a sign where you could read:
"Knowledge kills more surely than poison. »»
Ashen offered him a room.
Man laughs.
- Are you looking for the steps below, huh?
Ashen did not answer.
- You will find them. But each walk also descends into you.
Then he added, in a broken voice:
-Tell me, when you touch the sealed books ... Will you hear them howl?
That evening, Ashen returned to the passage.
The collapsed wall.
There was still an hour, without moving.
The wind was blowing in ruins as a child sigh.
He put his hand on the stone.
Not yet.
But soon.
In the distance, a death knell echoed.
And under Edelstadt…
… The dead archives slowly opened an eye.
"What you forget does not disappear. It just becomes something else. »»
- Maxime Noble of the Valemyr house, sealed in private texts.
Elaira observed the hanging gardens of the Haut-Sceau, hands crossed in the back.
The wind was shaking the purple leaves of the Royal Laurean.
A mechanical bird sang a false note.
Behind her, the city stretched like an old painting - too perfect to be honest.
Edelstadt.
Proud capital, queen of masks.
- You think too much, said Kael behind his back.
She did not turn around.
- Maybe. You never think.
He sneered, sat on the balustrade like a too big child, his look fierce.
- You have been weird for a few days.
- I'm doing well.
- You went twice to the same spectacle of acrobats. You refuse the temple audiences. And you speak alone, sometimes.
She turned her head slowly.
- I'm not talking alone. I listen to the things you don't say.
Kael shrugged, then walked away.
Later, Elaira entered the Family Bureaulithique - a piece prohibited for domesticity, where only the Valemyr of blood could enter.
The walls were covered with opaque stained glass.
Faces of forgotten ancestors were looking in the void.
She touched an old manuscript connected in black.
- Blood index. Census of official lines, verified by the High Time and countersigned by the Crown.
She was looking for.
Page after page.
KAEL.
Herself.
Their cousin Syron.
Duke Veyron.
And…
She frowned.
Nothing.
Just a space.
An empty line.
An erased name, but whose ink had gnawed the paper.
She touched the page.
Burn.
She straightened up suddenly.
- It's nothing. It's nothing, Elaira.
In the evening, she asked her father.
- Father ... I came across strange archives. On a missing generation.
The Duke raised an eyebrow.
- The archives are old. Some errors are natural.
- There was an erased name. As if someone ... had removed an existence.
- It's impossible.
-So why am I sure I have already seen this name? Or his absence?
The Duke but a sip of wine.
- You ask too many questions. Go sleeping, Elaira.
She did not sleep.
She descended into the portraits.
The one where the paintings of children Valemyr were preserved.
Each generation had its gallery.
She traveled the frames.
His steps resounded slowly on the cold slabs.
There was an empty space.
Between two portraits.
The dust did not settle there.
She reached out.
- Someone was there. But is no longer there.
She felt her heart accelerate.
A breath in the room.
Not a voice.
A suspicion.
In the early morning, she wrote in her newspaper:
There are heavier absences than presences.
I miss someone.
Someone whose name I don't know.
And yet, I'm sure ... that he has already held my hand.
She put her pen.
And whispered, without realizing it:
- Ash ...
She froze.
This name.
Where did he come from?
"There are such old truths that they are taken for absences. »»
- Proverb of the threshold temple
In the morning slowly slid over Edelstadt, dragging behind his fog sails and softened bells.
Elaira was already standing.
Standing, but elsewhere.
Sitting at her hairdresser, she had stored a mirror for long minutes, without seeing anything.
It was not a reflection that intrigued him.
But the frame.
An old worked setting.
Silver blackened.
A vacuum inside.
It had always been, it was said.
An ornament without utility, inherited from a great-aunt without children.
But why was she feeling something else, just by placing her eyes on it?
Why a part of her wanted to scream while looking at ... this nothing?
She got up.
In the silent corridors of the Valemyr manor, Elaira crossed his mother, Elaira the elder, duchess of the winter of the names.
-Mother, she said carefully, you remember all your children, right?
A sharp look, almost amused.
- What a strange question. You are the only one I have brought. And Kael, of course. The others are cousing business.
- No child… forgotten? Lost young?
The duchess barely frowned.
- We are not that kind of family. The Valemyr do not forget.
… And what we are erased, we do it properly.
She left, leaving behind a fragrance of incense and iron.
Elaira descended into the sub-levels.
The cold wings of the domain.
Where ancient objects were archived.
She herself unlocked the toy room of former heirs.
Failed sandblasters.
Wax dolls.
Wooden soldiers.
And a box.
Black.
Slightly engraved.
She opened him.
A puppet.
A little grotesque puppet, half burned, wearing a split mask.
One engraved under the foot.
She touched him.
A thrill crossed her.
You offered me a toy, you too ...
But when?
Or ?
Why this feeling of cold and warm heat?
Why did this certainty that something had been taken?
She slowly rests the puppet in the box.
But the feeling did not fade.
In the evening, she leafed through the blood books and oaths.
newspapers held by the Valemyr heirs for generations.
That of his father was sober.
Ordered.
No wonder.
But between two pages, she found a slipped sheet.
Without signature.
Only a sentence.
The madman looked at me one day. And I thought I saw a brother. I laughed, of course. But he didn't laugh.
She fell in her seat.
His hands were shaking.
She returned the sheet.
No writing.
But a task.
Maybe ... a tear?
In his room, late, Elaira reopens his newspaper.
Something is missing in our tree.
Someone.
I don't know why I cry when I read this word: A.
But I think ... that it is no coincidence if I went twice to the circus.
And no coincidence either if, that day, he tied a toy for me.
I still have it.
I keep it near me.
He looks at me when I sleep.
And in my dreams ... I hear her speak.
Through the window, Edelstadt shone.
Falsely peaceful.
And in the ashes of the past, a name was fighting to exist.
A name that Elaira, without knowing it, already carried in his heart.
"When you come back from death a thousand times, the world ends up feeling less strong than a vacuum. »»
- Ashen
The night had flowed on Edelstadt like an ink coat.
But Ashen was not sleeping.
He was lying on the roof tiles of an abandoned building, halfway up from the Sceaux district.
From there he saw almost everything:
The palace.
The temple.
And the crowd, below, who lived as if nothing was broken.
He was still holding the letter in his hand.
The seal had been melted with black wax.
"... The king pact with the high-priests to serve non-believers from here the equinox.
A name must open the way. »»
A name.
What did it mean?
A valemyr?
Or ... a madman?
He slowly crushed the parchment and put it in his sleeve.
Since meeting the indicator, things had accelerated.
The mask never left him.
Neither physically ... nor inside.
Each evening, he felt his memory sink.
Sometimes he dreamed of a life where it didn't even exist.
From a world where the Valemyr lived without ever having pronounced his name.
And yet he felt their absence. Their looks. Their faults.
The mad mask had become a skin.
And under this skin, a fire.
But not a hatred fire.
A waiting fire.
Ashen descended roofs at daybreak.
The city resumed its pace of obsession.
Guards passed without seeing it.
Merchants opened their stalls.
The world continued ... as if no one had shouted.
He returned to the back of the theater where the circus stored his accessories.
There was no longer its place.
Nor his name on the list.
Nor his mask in the trunk.
But someone had left a chalk scribbled message on the wooden board:
"You made her cry. She came back. Twice. She looked for you."
Ashen closed his eyes.
Elaira.
He had seen her.
And she hadn't recognized it.
But then ...
She had returned.
The indicator said that this world had killed him a hundred thousand billion times.
And yet he was coming back.
Always.
Not to take revenge.
Not to remember.
But to understand.
For what ?
Why me?
Why this mask?
Ashen looked up to the sky, in the exact place he had seen the king's carriage pass the day before.
The palace floated in the distance, crowned with white smoke.
He now knew what he should do.
"If the gods want an offering ... let them offer me a reason."
He spent the day wandering between the secondary streets.
Observing.
Listening.
In a tavern held by a tongue man, he heard about a "black book" that the church was trying to recover.
A prohibited grimoire, having belonged to a certain "nameless writer".
The name struck him like a fine blade.
Him.
A nom-nom.
A blurry memory: an old man, in a carriage.
A painted mask.
Fragments of the future.
"You will not remember anything. Until you no longer need it."
Ashen resumed his journey.
Her black coat swept the cobblestones, and his mask, fixed on his face, no longer let any smile filter.
But deep down, an idea was growing.
Something was preparing.
And if we wanted to kill the non-believers ...
So he had to become their guide.
Not a Savior.
Not a king.
A fire.
He stopped at the crossroads of three alleys.
An old man handed him a sheet, without saying a word.
Ashen took him, mechanically.
A page, stained.
A sentence written in red ink:
"When memory goes out, fate takes fire."
He looked up.
The old man had disappeared.
Ashen folded the sheet.
His reflection, in a puddle on the ground, no longer showed his eyes.
Only a white, cracked mask.
And behind, a voice.
Not that of a madman.
Not that of a king.
But that of the one who had returned a thousand billion times ...
And who, this time, was not going to leave.
"Some men forge their greatness in the light. Others are content to turn off the torches around them. »»
- Military maxim of the Valemyr house
Kael watched his reflection in the polished mirror.
It was perfect.
Hair pulled. Impeccably adjusted black and red tunic. The sword on the left side, to remember that he, unlike a certain imaginary brother, had always deserved his name.
And yet ...
Something was wrong.
For the past few days, Elaira seemed ... distant.
Distract. Dreamy.
- "You look at your reflection as a man who is afraid of seeing him crack," slipped a voice behind him.
Kael turned his head.
Lira.
Still where he didn't want her.
- "Don't tire me, read. »»
- "You say that every time I ask the only question that you refuse to formulate. »»
She approached. Sits nonchalantly on the edge of the office.
-"Tell me, brother darling." Why has Elaira have been away every afternoon for a week? Why does she look at the acrobats in the streets when she despises beggars? And above all ... why did she bring back a puppet engraved with the letter A? »»
Kael did not answer.
He thought of the show. To this grotesque clown.
In his way of speaking. To smile.
This tone. This mask.
He knew him.
But it was impossible.
Ashen was dead. Buried. Forget.
Erapel Valemyr's blood.
- "Do you think it was him? "Breaned up.
Kael closed his eyes. He inspired a long time.
- "It never existed, will read. »»
She laughs.
- "Oh if. Exactly. Too strong, too painful, too forgotten. These are the most strong. »»
He clenched his fists.
- "It was just a bastard. An error. A puppet. »»
- "And yet ... he marked you enough to make you sleep without your blade under the pillow. »»
Kael leaps. Captures her by throat.
- "Do you think it's a game?! That he returned?! »»
-"I believe ..." she replied, smiling despite the pressure, "... that you are no longer sure of anything. »»
He released her. It will go back, choking slightly, but always mocking.
- "Same father begins to be agitated. He asked Maelrath twice if one of the buffoons had not changed his behavior. »»
Kael frowned.
- "Do you think he ... plots? »»
- " No. I think he is shaking. »»
A silence.
Kael approached the window.
Edelstadt stretched in front of him. Immense. Twisted.
- "Even if he was still alive ... He would never have had the strength to come back. He was born to crawl. He knows it. »»
- "And yet, it is you who are shaking. Not him. »»
He turned suddenly.
- "Do you want to know the truth?" The real one? »»
- "Always say. »»
He walked to the wooden trunk, opened it, and came out ... a notebook.
Yellowed. Stain. Connected with a flashed line.
- "I kept that. »»
- " It's what ? »»
- "His notebook. »»
- "Ashen wrote?" »»
- " No. He was engraved. In leather. Like an animal. With nails. »»
Lira approached.
On the first page, a sentence, carved by hand:
"One day, I will get up. And that day ... I will laugh so hard that you will forget how to cry. »»
She stepped back.
- " Charming. »»
Kael closed the notebook.
- "If it is him ... then he returned for a reason. »»
- "To take revenge?" »»
- " No. To understand. It's worse. »»
A long silence.
Then read murmured:
- " And you ? What do you do if it really comes back? »»
Kael looked at his reflection again.
Nothing seemed straight to him.
Nor the lines of his jaw.
Nor the arrogance of his gaze.
He just said:
- "I will make sure he never leaves. »»
"Silence never lies. But he doesn't save anyone. »»
- Fragment found, without author.
Edelstadt.
The night covered the city as an old betrayal promise.
Ashen was walking in the quarters of the quarter of the inkwell. The pavement was still lukewarm, responsible for the sweat of the day, and the shadows thickened between the broken arches.
He had left the carriage of the light at the Auberge of the 3 forgotten. Pretext: Take the air. Real reason: suffocate.
The conversation in the carriage still haunted him.
- "You have been broken a hundred thousand billion times. And yet, you stand up. For what ? »»
Ashen had blown, tired:
-"Maybe because I don't even know how to fall." »»
- "No, Ashen. It is because there is one thing in you that nobody understands: you refuse that their world is the end of your story. »»
He wanted to laugh. But he no longer had the heart.
- "So?" What is this famous mission that you promised me? Make me dance again, for another crown? »»
The indicator had smiled.
- " No. This time, you are the ones the rules. But for that, you have to see. Really see. »»
- "See what?" »»
The light had said nothing.
Just stretched a letter, marked with the seal of the royal eye.
A simple sentence, traced in black ink:
"The order of the veil authorizes the discreet eradication of non-believers in external districts. The valid king. The church executes."
Ashen had folded the parchment. Slowly.
Then he just said:
- "I start to understand why I came back. »»
Now in the streets, he thought about Elaira.
To his voice.
To his question:
- " Who are you ? »»
He had almost said everything.
But he was you.
Maybe by cowardice.
Perhaps because he no longer knew, himself.
He whispered in mid-voice:
-"Am I the one they threw ... or the one they let come back?" »»
A beggar missed him, without seeing him. An old woman hummed a psalm in a broken tongue.
Ashen stopped.
His reflection, in a dusty display case, seemed blurred. Floating.
-"Am I still ... human?" »»
He took out the mask.
The madman's mask.
And fixed it.
Polished wood, split arabesque, exaggerated smile.
A mirror.
Not what it was.
But what the world had done with him.
A voice came out of the shadows.
- "Beautiful mask. It looks like you. »»
Ashen did not move.
- "You are late, seeing. »»
The seer's silhouette came out of the porch.
Long black coat. Half hidden face. Tinted glasses, even at night.
- "And you, you walk in the street with your past in your pocket. Not very discreet. »»
Ashen shrugged.
-"Tell me what I have to do. »»
- "You have to listen to. Observe. Collect. But above all ... do not kill. Not yet. »»
- " For what ? »»
- "Because the pieces are not all on the chessboard. And because if you move too early, you will become the weapon ... and not your hand. »»
Ashen looked at him for a long time.
- "What if I refuse?" »»
The light replied without trembling:
- "So I erase you. Completely. Not a trace. Not a memory. As if they had succeeded. »»
Ashen sighed.
- "So ... I play. But in my own way. »»
- " Alright. Your next step? »»
Ashen put the mask. His gaze hardens.
- "I want to infiltrate the great temple. »»
- "The threshold?" You're crazy. »»
A smile.
- "That's why you chose me. »