The hall of records was silent except for the faint drip of water echoing from somewhere in the stone ceiling. The Glacier Monks had guided Kaelin here after his training, saying little, only that the truth of his bloodline waited beyond these doors. The air was heavy, not cold this time, but with the weight of years. Dust floated in thin beams of light, and the frozen shelves lining the walls were stacked with scrolls bound in frost-thread.
The eldest monk placed a key carved from clear ice into Kaelin's hand. "These were sealed when the Empire still stood. They have not been touched in decades. Within them is the history of the Aeryn Line… and its fall."
Kaelin's fingers closed around the key. The cold sank into his skin, steadying his breath. He stepped toward the tall cabinet at the back of the chamber. The lock was simple, but it creaked as though it resented being opened. Inside, stacks of royal records waited, each scroll sealed with a faded crest of the old court.
He took the first one carefully, as if it might crumble, and laid it across the frost-slab table. The seal cracked under his thumb.
The ink was still sharp despite the years, preserved by the ice. His eyes moved quickly at first, scanning the formal words. It was a record of the final days before the palace burned. A list of names… Guild leaders, generals, noble houses… those who had sworn loyalty and those who had broken it.
At first, the names were only shapes on a page. But then he began to recognize them. Whispers from his childhood, voices that had visited the palace before it fell. He saw the crest of the Guild of Storms, marked as loyal until the end. The seal of the River Lords, noted as neutral. And then… the first traitor's name.
Kaelin froze. The letters seemed to darken on the page. He read on, each name cutting deeper. His pulse began to quicken. These were not strangers. These were people who had walked the halls his mother had ruled, who had dined at her table, who had bowed in the court before turning their blades.
One name appeared twice, marked both as a councilor and as a commander. He could still recall the man's laughter, deep and warm, carrying through the winter halls when Kaelin had been no taller than the banquet table. The scroll said nothing of his death. Only the word "defected" and a seal of the Fire Guild beside it.
Kaelin swallowed hard, turning to the next scroll. The parchment was thicker, the handwriting sharper. This one was more than a list. It was an order, signed by the Guild Alliance, authorizing the attack on the Aeryn stronghold. The inked signatures were like frozen blood across the page.
His hand trembled as he traced the first name on that order. It was as if each letter whispered the truth he had never been allowed to know. The betrayal had not been chaos. It had been planned, deliberate, sealed with promises and exchanged in shadowed chambers while his family still breathed.
The cold in the hall grew heavier, though no wind stirred. Frost began to creep from his fingertips onto the edge of the table. He could feel the water in the air condensing, drawn toward him without thought. The monks noticed but said nothing.
As he read the final scroll, the names blurred through a haze of rising breath. He could see them all now… the faces behind those letters, the smiles that had hidden knives, the voices that had sworn loyalty as the fire was already at their backs.
When he set the last scroll down, Kaelin did not speak. He only stood there, his hands gripping the frost-thread binding so hard that thin cracks spread through the ice.
The truth had a taste, sharp and metallic in his mouth. It was not grief this time. It was something colder.
...
Kaelin's gaze swept over the final scroll again, the names no longer just ink on parchment but echoes of voices that still haunted the empty halls of his memory. He had read dozens already, each a wound, yet this one… this one was different. The shape of the letters seemed to burn even through the frost that coated the table.
Lord Nareth.
The name rang in his head like a war drum. Leader of the Guild of Fire. The title itself carried weight across the Shattered Empire, but to Kaelin, it carried something far heavier. He stared at the bold, deliberate signature, its ink a deep crimson that had not faded with the years. It felt as though the page itself had been scorched before it was sealed in ice.
A flash of memory cut through him.
He was eight years old again, standing on the palace balcony beside his mother. The winter winds swirled around them as she pointed toward the south, where banners of red and gold approached along the frozen causeway. "That is Lord Nareth," she had told him. "Remember his face, Kaelin. He is a man who commands fire as though it were born in his veins. He will speak kindly to you… but fire always hungers."
He had not understood then. Nareth had bowed, had placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, and had told him that the Aeryn Line was a beacon in dark times. His smile had been warm, his eyes bright. Kaelin had thought him a friend.
Now the truth pressed against his chest like a blade. That same man had signed the order to burn the palace. That same hand that had rested on his shoulder had guided the flames that devoured his home, his family, his future.
The hall seemed smaller, the frost-thread shelves leaning in like silent witnesses. Kaelin's breath deepened, each exhale forming a swirl of mist that lingered in the air. He could feel it again, the pull of the water in the stones, the slow forming of ice under his skin.
The monks stood at the edges of the chamber, their eyes on him but their lips sealed. They had warned him that the scrolls might stir things best left buried. They had not warned him that it would feel like this, as though the very core of his being was shifting.
Kaelin traced Nareth's name with his fingertip. The frost beneath his hand darkened as moisture froze solid in an instant. He imagined the Fire Lord now, seated in his grand hall of flame and stone, perhaps sipping wine, perhaps laughing as the years carried him farther from the crimes he had committed.
The thought ignited something inside Kaelin that was not fire, but the perfect opposite. A cold so deep it could smother the hottest inferno.
He remembered the day the palace fell, the black smoke rising beyond the gates, the sound of screaming horses and shattering ice. He had run through corridors filled with heat and ash, his lungs burning. Somewhere in that chaos, the voice of his mother had cried out his name. And somewhere beyond that, he had heard the crackling laugh of a man watching it all burn.
Kaelin's fingers clenched into a fist. The frost along the table surged outward, crawling across the floor in delicate spiderwebs of white. The air chilled until even the monks' breath turned to mist.