"A soldier does not grieve on the battlefield. He grieves after, when the silence comes."* — Iron Covenant field manual
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In the cellar, the lantern flickered.
"Listen." The grip on Kael's arm was iron. How, from a man whose lungs were filling with blood, Kael didn't know. Covenant enhancement. The thought came from somewhere cold and distant. Aldric's face was grey. His lips were red where he'd bitten through. "The Silver Office wants a device your father built. It's not in the journal — I looked. That means it's hidden somewhere only Edric knew, or somebody else has it. Vex might know. Find him."
"You need a healer, I can—"
"I need you to live." Blood in his teeth. Blood running off his chin. It hit the workbench. Drops. Then a thin run. "Don't spend what I bought you on a dead man."
"You're not—"
"I've been dying for six months. I know you've been counting the coughs." The smallest smile. "You're too smart. Same as your father."
The cough came back and this time Aldric let it take him. He sat down on the floor — or rather he stopped being upright, the way a building does when the last support goes. Found the workbench edge. Held on. Breathed. Thinner and thinner.
"Go east," he whispered. "Wayfare Road. Caravan to Aldmere."
"Aldric—"
"Don't tell—" A breath. You could see the effort of it in his throat. "Don't tell anyone your real name. Not until you're ready."
He tried to say something else. His hand opened, finger by finger.
The lantern flickered.
Kael had read enough in the journal already — in the pages Aldric had left uncoded — to know that channeling left traces. So did death. Veil mages could read the last moments of a place: fear, pain, the moment the life in a body let go. The lantern flickered again. Not from draft. The flame dipped and swayed as if something had passed through it. A death-trace. The room holding the shape of what had just happened. He would remember that. The way the light had bent. The way the silence had weight.
Then the lantern steadied. The room was quiet.
Kael sat with him for a while after. How long, he couldn't have said. The lantern burned. The cellar didn't change. He kept waiting for the next cough, the next word, and when it didn't come the silence was wrong. He put his hand on Aldric's shoulder. Still warm. The fabric of the old man's shirt was rough under his palm. He left his hand there. The warmth faded slowly. When it was gone he didn't move for a long time. Somewhere above, the cottage was quiet. The fire would be dying. The crack in the table would still be there. None of it mattered. He left his hand on Aldric's shoulder until his arm ached, and then a little longer.
He didn't cry. He'd cried before, in the other life, at his mother's funeral in a cemetery in Oregon. Tried it once. Didn't take. Here his eyes stayed dry and his throat stayed closed and the only thing that moved was his hand on the old man's shoulder, until he made himself stand. The cellar was too small. The ceiling was too low. He needed air. He climbed the steps. The barn was cold. The night was black. He went back down. He couldn't leave him there. Aldric had said *there, when the time comes* — the oak. So he would take him to the oak. He lifted him. The old man was lighter than he'd expected. He carried him up into the cold. The hatch. The barn. The night air hit like a slap. Aldric wasn't heavy. Covenant build or just the weight of a man who'd been shrinking for months. Kael didn't think about it. He walked. The oak at the edge of the property was where Aldric had pointed once, years ago. *There. When the time comes.* He'd never asked what that meant. He knew now. Next to the oak stood an unmarked stone — no name, no dates. Just a flat grey rock half-sunk in the earth. Aldric had never said whose it was. Kael had always assumed. His mother's, maybe. A Veil marker, the journal had mentioned: places where the boundary between worlds thinned, where the dead could be laid so they didn't pull at the living. He didn't know if that was superstition or fact. He didn't care. He laid Aldric down on the frost and took the shovel from the barn. He dug beside the unmarked stone.
The digging took a long time. The ground was frozen at the surface; the first few strokes barely scraped. Then it gave. His arms hummed with whatever energy had cracked the table and the shovel went into the earth deeper than it should have. He didn't stop. Dirt. Roots. A stone he had to work around. The hole grew. His back ached. His hands blistered. Once, halfway through, his hands shook so badly the shovel slipped. He stood in the hole and breathed until he could pick it up again. Control the breath and the rest follows. The sky stayed black. No moon. The stars were there, the wrong stars, the ones he'd never learned to name properly. He dug until the hole was deep enough. Then he climbed out.
He stood over the grave when it was done. Filled it in. The dirt was cold. It didn't take as long as the digging. When the mound was level he stood there. Said nothing. Nothing would've been enough. Aldric deserved a eulogy — a ceremony, something with weight and ritual and other people who remembered him. Kael had no words. The ones that came were the wrong ones: *I'll find them. I'll find what they did to you.* That wasn't a eulogy. That was a promise. Instead Aldric got a fourteen-year-old with blistered hands and a head full of loss from both lives, standing in frozen dirt at three in the morning, trying to feel something that wasn't anger.
He had the river stone in his pocket. For a moment he thought of putting it in the grave. *She said they remembered the water.* He didn't. He kept it. The selfishness of it sat in his chest and he let it.
The anger was easier. Cleaner. It had edges he could hold.
The Silver Office killed your parents. The Athenaeum ordered it. And Aldric kept you alive for fourteen years, and the cost was everything he had left.
He'd deal with the grief later. Right now grief was a luxury. Anger was a tool. He intended to use it.
He stood there until the sky began to grey at the edges. The oak was a black shape above him. The unmarked stone was a darker patch in the dirt. He'd filled the grave. There was nothing else to do. No one to tell. No one who would come. He'd left the cottage as it was — the cellar closed, the body carried out. He hadn't gone back inside. He'd packed in the barn. Journal. Crystal. Letter. Stone. The bag was at the base of the oak. He picked it up. The weight was familiar. Everything he had. Somewhere east the road was waiting. So was whatever had been checking on Aldric. He didn't know which would find him first. He walked.