Five summers had passed since Prince Leo's birth. Five years, and the kingdom held its breath.
The golden-haired boy was a delight—bright, curious, with a laugh that echoed through the stone halls. He could name every hawk in the royal mews and mimic the calls of every bird in the palace gardens. But in the one thing that mattered most in the eyes of Collapsus, he was silent. No spark. No flicker. No tell-tale pressure in the air around him. He was, by all sensing, utterly without magic.
The king maintained a facade of calm. He'd lift Leo onto his shoulders, point out the boundaries of the kingdom from the high walls, and tell him the stories of the First King. But I saw the lines deepening around his eyes. I felt the new tension in his shoulders during council meetings.
The clans had not missed it.
"A robust child, certainly," Duke Thornwood said to me one evening, his tone slick as oil. "Health is a blessing from the earth. But the heavens… the heavens have been quiet, have they not?" His meaning was clear: a prince of the body, not of the spirit. A mortal heir in a line of demigods.
King Reynard's accessibility, once a minor irritation to the traditionalists, was now seen as a profound vulnerability. See, the whispers went, he is not like the First. He is a man who walks among us, and now he has sired a mere man. The divine thread is thinning. Perhaps it is time for a new thread to be chosen…
The pressure was a slow, tightening vise.
One morning, the king did not summon me to discuss taxes or border disputes. He stood before the great arched window, looking towards the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Agri Mountains, holy and forbidding, on the northern horizon.
"We will go to the Tomb," he said, his voice leaving no room for debate.
A chill that had nothing to do with the drafty hall touched my spine. The Tomb of the First King, carved into the heart of the sacred mountain. It was not a place one visited. It was a place one pilgrimaged to, in times of existential crisis. A king would go to seek guidance before a great war, or to give thanks after a miracle. To go there over a prince's dormant magic… it was an admission of fear. And a public one.
"Sire, the journey is treacherous. And the symbolism…"
"Is exactly what is required," he interrupted, turning to face me. The calm mask was gone, replaced by the stark face of a worried father. "They say he does not carry the blessing. So we will go to the very source of the blessing and ask. We will let the stone of the First King bear witness to my son. Let the gods see him. And let the kingdom see me taking him there."
It was a masterstroke of political theatre, born of genuine desperation. He was forcing the narrative. By undertaking the sacred journey, he was shouting to the doubters: My son is worthy of the pilgrimage. The question is not of his right, but of his timing.
The announcement sent a ripple through the court. Duke Michael's reaction was immediate and practical. "I will lead the vanguard. The mountain paths are narrow. Defensible." His violet eyes met the king's. "It is the right course. Action stills the whispers better than any words."
Lady Emilia was terrified. She found me in the scriptorium, her usual calm shattered. "They say the spirit of the First King still resides there. That it can… judge. What if it judges him unworthy? What if the mountain rejects him?" Her hands trembled. "He is just a boy. He loves honey cakes and his pony. He shouldn't be judged by ghosts and gods!"
"My lady," I said, as gently as I could. "The king is taking him to be seen, not judged. It is a show of faith."
"It is a gamble," she whispered, her voice raw. "With my son as the stake."
The day of departure dawned clear and cold. The procession was small but formidable: the king, Prince Leo perched before him on his saddle, Duke Michael and a dozen of his most lethal sworn knights, a handful of priests, and myself. No courtiers. No scheming dukes. This was a family and its protectors going to the house of their ancestor.
As we rode from the citadel, I looked back. The walls were lined with people, silent and watching. They saw their king, his son before him, riding toward the holy mountains. They saw Duke Michael, a figure of living power, guarding their flank. The message was clear, a visual poem of lineage, faith, and might.
But as the gates closed behind us and the road began its steep climb into the thin air of the Agri foothills, the only sound was the crunch of gravel under hooves and the whisper of the pine trees. The theatre of the court was behind us. Ahead lay only the ancient, silent stone, and the truth it held.
And I, Alistair, who had arranged treaties and suppressed rebellions, felt a deeper dread than I had ever known. We were not riding to ask for a blessing. We were riding to receive a verdict. And I feared what the silent stone of the First King might have to say about a golden-haired boy who carried no echo of the divine.