Chapter 3: Misfortune and consequence onsequence
He took his bath and murmured to himself to meet his father as he practiced how he was going to plead . The healer's attendants—two tired, efficient women, braided his hair in a manner befitting a nobleman, and handed him a coat that smelled faintly of lemon oil and old cedar. He moved through the palace corridors like a ghost. The tapestries seemed to look away as he passed.
Outside the great hall, the air was different from the rest of the castle: sharp with incense, the heavy musk of duty. Guards stood in rigid lines; their gazes flitted over him with something very like fear. He wondered if their fear was for him or for what his presence summoned. Workers glared at him ; servants hurried by with careful steps, avoiding his shadow. Soldiers gave killing intent when he was sited showing their hatred towards him.
The patriarchy his father sat upon his chair in his work space—a man with the weight of a dignifying pose and aura. He was younger than Leo remembered: the years of worry had carved furrows in his face, and the golden threads in his hair had multiplied. He regarded Leo with an expression that did not quite hide grief beneath the anger.
"Leo," the patriarchy began, voice even as a blade. "You have returned."
"Your grace" Leo answered, and the form of the words felt foreign. His throat tightened when he said "Father." That word tugged at something ancient and tender, a memory of hands that had lifted him on a knee and taught him how to read the first letter of his name. The memory hurt like a wound reopened.
"The expedition," the patriarchy said. "More than half your men dead. Lands pillaged. A relic sought at the cost of our treasures and lives." He let the list hang in the air like a litany. His advisor murmured approval. The ministers' eyes gleamed with the hunger of men who had waited for this moment. "Explain yourself."
Leo swallowed, feeling for the words. The fine dust of apology clung to his tongue but apology would make him small, and smallness had nearly killed him in the vision. He thought of the Fatedestin, of the image of his head rolling across marble, of the contract Diana had been forced to sign in his vision. He thought, too, of the pledge he had made upon waking: never chase love, never take that ruinous route again.
"We sought knowledge," he said finally. "For the realm. For—" He hesitated. For her, his private heart wanted to whisper, but the words would weaken him before the court. He had learned a brutal economy: never show why you burned unless you wanted to be burned in return.
"For the realm," he repeated, giving the words shape. "But the price was higher than any of us anticipated. The sea took men we cannot bring back."
The Patriarchy atriarchy eyes sharpened. "You were asked to recover the Fatedestin. A dangerous task. We asked you as one of our best. That is not the measure of the harm." He leaned forward. "You brought back forbidden techniques and demonic books and courpes into our lands. The nobles complain of your experiments. They whisper that the way you touch others is a violation. Men have died—men who served you. They blame you for leading them into something none of us fathomed fully. How do you answer that?"
The question was less an interrogation and more a gauntlet. Leo could have told them about the relic's answer: of an outcome so bleak that he had nearly let it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. He could have confessed, bare and bleeding, the black image the Fatedestin had pressed into his mind. He could have begged for mercy. But to reveal his desperate attempt to forestall fate would be to reveal his vulnerability—and that was a currency nobody would accept from him again.
He found, instead, a steadier reply. "I brought knowledge. I will used it to strengthen our men. They died for what I promised them: power to change our territory. If their deaths are my fault, then I accept the punishment ."
A small sound rippled through the court: a mixture of surprise and the thin echo of contempt. The Patriarchy face softened, briefly, at the admission of responsibility. "You accept the punishment?"
"I do." The words were sharp as a blade.
The punishment was not immediate exile or execution. Those had been suggestions shouted by the more venomous advisors. The Patriarchy wanted a different sort of penalty—less blood, more humiliation. He wanted an answer that would stain Leo's name in every mouth but also keep him near where he could be watched. The sentence was precise: public penance, restitution to the families of the lost, and the loss of rank until he could atone. He was to send the coin he had gathered on the expedition back to soldiers, and the men who remained loyal to him would be reassigned. He was to serve as a marshal in a city far from the capital, where he could prove the trust was well placed.
It was enough to ruin a reputation. It was not enough to kill. The court's reaction was half-satisfaction and half-hunger.
As the ministers and advisors dispersed with their discreet smiles of triumph, Leo felt something heavier than shame settle in him: a raw, gnawing guilt that clawed at his lungs. He had survived a fate worse than death. He had been given a clean slate, and the world wished to write upon it in scorn.
Yet the vision had altered him. His first instinct—once always to chase, to bargain, to take—was replaced by a quieter, more dangerous hunger. He would cultivate wealth not as a means to buy love but as a tool to free himself. He had vowed to avoid the dark techniques; he had vowed to be better. But some vows are glass: they glint and cut at the touch. The Fatedestin had shown him one route, and he would now walk another.
He left the court with his punishment clinging to him like a shroud and decided to visit where he was reassigned to. Outside, the city's slums breathed their familiar mixture of stew and stone. He moved among the poor for the first time with eyes unclouded by the hunger of men who believed an object could become a person's fate. He saw faces he had never truly seen before: widows with callused hands, men who sold their pride for a bowl of broth, children who had never known a king's favor. Their lives were a ledger of small tragedies.
He spent that week doing two things: repaying what he could to the families of the dead and practicing a discipline that was not about stealing a skill but sharing it. The touch-ability was a violation to many—but he had seen its use as a means to strengthen the weak rather than to exploit.
He thought to himself maybe he could start a new life here a place far away from his lover and train this desperate people and gain their trust with his knowledge of the future.
But there was an issue they still avoided him every time he came to them or answer him formally to his questions Some were angry no one liked being reminded of what they lacked.
" I guess the rumors of the masses hating the nobles are true" Leo said to himself " but how do I then gain their trust"
But a handful came of children who were street beggars, eyes bright and hungry as the poor often are when offered a sliver of dignity. He then bought food for all of them with the last coin he had.
He looked at the elders among the children a girl in her early teens with tarterd cloth that left her almost exposed.
"Why are there so many beggers and gang members more in this place."
"That's because this is the fursaken land " she said without even looking at his face as she ate her bread like it was going to run away or disappear.
"Um, why is it called that "
"It's because this place is filled with beast and monsters and this is the only place refugees can live "
Leo's then realized that this was not any ordinary punishment not because he was assigned there for six months but because he was broke .
At night, he sat with a single candle and the relics he had bartered for—a map with places marked in an old man's hand, and the Fatedestin itself, quiet and sealed. And device a plan for the solution of his misfortune