The Ashvale estate burned quietly.
The wind did not howl. The walls did not scream. Even the heavens above seemed reluctant to bear witness.
Lucien counted the links.
One.
Two.
Three.
...
The chains groaned with each breath he took, as though the iron itself disapproved of his existence. Twenty-seven in all. He knew because counting was the only thread keeping him from unraveling. Twenty-seven links on the shackles at his wrists, twenty-seven biting into his ankles, twenty-seven circling his throat like a collar fashioned by God himself.
Beyond the ringing in his ears, there was only the Gray Man.
A figure draped in a gray coat and silence, moving as though the world had already surrendered to him. His mask, cracked like an old cathedral window, revealed nothing of the thing that lived behind it.
"Your bloodline holds a gift," he said, tightening the chains until they hummed against bone. "The world bends for those who believe enough to break it."
Lucien said nothing.
Because belief, he was learning, begins where pain no longer has a name.
Time had lost its edges.
It dripped like cold water through his thoughts. The chains whispered in rust. His own breath sounded foreign. Somewhere deep inside, beneath the bruises and the iron and the voice of the Gray Man, something began to coil.
Not hatred.
Something older.
A promise that would outlive this room. Outlive the Gray Man. Outlive the boy himself, if it had to.
Twenty-seven links.
Enough to hold a child.
Not enough to hold what he would become.