Chapter 2 — The Oath of Ashes
Leo woke to the taste of iron and burning in the back of his throat. For a beat he lay still, convinced the smoke and heat of the dream-castle were not gone at all but lingering in the corners of his room. The candlelight on the sill trembled; the wooden rafters sighed. Slowly, his lungs began to accept air that was not flame, and the familiar, antiseptic smell of the healer's oils replaced the phantom stench of charred flesh.
He blinked. Bandages wrapped the length of his left forearm; there were no deep wounds where death had struck him on the marble floor—only a faint trail of bruises. The bed beneath him was feather-soft and surprisingly warm. Someone had seen to him. A lucky mercy, he thought, and then a cold realization uncoiled in his chest: the world outside his window should have been ashes and screams, but it was not. No demon. No banging of armor. No shouts of command. The city slumbered as if nothing had happened.
His fingers curled reflexively into his palm. He felt the small, familiar scar by his thumbthe mark burned into his skin the night he first tasted forbidden knowledge. For a moment, the images of the burning throne room returned: the princess, the chains, Kelly's blade. He felt the weight of the head on his palm as if it were still there. He swallowed, and the phantom taste of ash vanished again.
He reminded himself of the pledge he had formed in that terrible vision. In the bed's dimness he spoke the rule aloud as if testing its strength" I'll never chase love again And only make myself happy by becoming stronger, richer, and more successful. Make myself a man whose value could not be decided by love. Never go back to the dark road of the forbidden demonic techniques again. "
The words steadied him like a strap around the heart. He had died in a future that was not his to keep. He had seen what awaited if he let himself succumb to despair and rage. He would not let that be him.
A knock sounded at the door—a small, nervous sound—and a maid swept in on silent slippers, eyes darting around like a bird's. She was young, her face plain but easily kind, and her hands were folded in front of her as if in prayer. Behind a polite mask, something else flickered across her features—disgust, fear, and a faint, almost sorrowful hatred. When she saw Leo blink awake, her relief was immediate, but it was a relief so small it trembled.
"My lord," she said, voice brittle, "you have been asleep for three days. The palace—" She stopped and swallowed, an expression he had seen often: the one people wore when they did not know whether to pity or condemn. "You must prepare to meet the Your Father. He demands your presence. For you to receive… your punishment."
"Punishment?" The word tasted wrong. Leo swung his legs out of the bed and felt the world tilt. His knees trembled under him. "Why? What has happened?" His throat felt raw as if he had been shouting for an age.
The maid looked away. "There are rumors in the halls, my lord. The expedition… the losses. The nobles are calling it folly. The patriarchy—" Her gaze cut to his face. "Your Father wishes to see you."
She left then without waiting for him to ask more. The door closed with the soft tap of wooden hinges, and the silence of the room returned like water into a drained basin.
Three days. He had slept for three days and in the span of those nights had been shown forty years of ruin. He had borne the memory of a thousand deaths in an instant. The discrepancy made the brain reel. He sat again and tried to recall. He had gone to the sea of lost treasures. The Maw of Thieves because Diana had been his light, his impossible sun. He had followed his hunger for knowledge into the teeth of monsters because he thought knowledge would buy love. He had let the thought of binding a future to himself grow so large in his chest that it had become a hunger. He had led men there—soldiers loyal enough to follow him into hell. He had come back with the Fatedestin, with a relic that told him a terrible truth, and it had cost him half of the men he owned.
He remembered the feel of the Fatedestin in his hands—cool, humming like a trapped insect. He remembered its whisper: the price, the image of his future, the final scene of a head rolling across marble. He remembered his own hands curled in shame. He remembered, too, the way the palace had turned when word of his methods spread. People who used to whisper his name with pity and curiosity now spat it in conversation. It was no longer enough to be a keeper of knowledge; the ability he carried. The curse of touch. made him a pariah.
He could read someone with a touch. He could take the knowledge of a being and uncover its secrets: hidden talents, dormant memories, the precise motion of a soldier's parry. He could give a man the knowledge of a swordmaster in an instant, or take a thief's cunning into himself. But every miracle had a mirror: people recoiled because his touch stripped them bare and left him access to things they'd never meant to share. Nobles feared he could steal their Ideas. Girls feared he could listen to their secrets with one touch. Soldiers feared he might take their take their powerswhich they have worked for many years and use carelessly . The curse was beautiful and monstrous—gift and violation in equal measure.
And worst of all, there were two persons in his life who had loved him enough to stay: Kelly and Diana. Kelly his best friend had been his shield. He had been the boy beside Leo at dawn practice, laughing at bruises and poor footwork. Diana his childhood crush had been the sun, warm and merciless, offering attention in those careless youth-days and then, later, love unknowable to him. It had been a treachery to find out by nothing more than a physical touch that Diana's heart belonged to Kelly. Leo had wanted to know; his need to know had ripped the act of trust into two. In that moment, knowledge had hurt like the coldest knife.
Because the mind remembers what we cannot un-remember, Leo saw the faces of those who died for his obsession. He saw men whose names he now could barely pronounce, faces that had once been bright with life—boys who trusted him because of loyalty or because he had given them a coin and a mission. He saw how their fate had been sacrificed on the altar of his hunger for one answer: whether Diana would ever love him if he held more power.
His hands flexed. They had brought ruin as surely as a pyre. He had ached for love, and in that begging had summoned a storm.
Now he would face his father—the patriarchy. He had expected rage; he had expected trial and censure. He had not expected how thin the walls between pity and contempt had become. In three days, whispers had made him into a monstrous parable: a man who would take any price for knowledge. He had become a tale of misfortune told to kids.