In the darkness, there was cold.
It wasn't the cold of the underground chamber. It wasn't the cold of stone that had never seen sunlight and maintained its temperature as a fact rather than a condition. This was a different cold. It was the cold of a place that had chosen its climate and kept it, the cold that was consistent with the quality of air that moved through fir trees at the northern outskirts of the Kingdom, where the ground stayed frozen.
Cold. It was the quality that served as the deciding factor for most people, that the ground wasn't worth living on.
To him, cold was the warmth. Cold was the familiarity.
He was born in the cold, in the northern outskirts.
Much younger than he is now, the doorframe of the wooden house was taller than he could reach. The window looked out at fir trees that went further than he could see and produced silence that he perceived as natural.
His mother was at the fire.
She was not doing anything dramatic. She was simply feeding it with the practiced motion of someone who had been doing this for long enough that the motion had become the same kind of thing as breathing. Her hair was the same dark shade as his. Her hands, which he remembered more clearly than her face because hands were at his eye level in those years, moved in a gentle, caressing motion as he always remembered.
He stood at the bottom of the staircase and watched her for a moment in the way children watched their parents when they didn't know they were being watched—the specific attention of someone discovering that the person who defined their world existed independently of them.
Then she turned.
She wasn't startled. She never startled. She was someone whose nervous system had been calibrated into a steady register that surprises rarely disrupted her.
"You're awake early," she said.
Her voice was careful with its words in a way that the people he would meet later in life weren't, as if language were something she had learned to treat with respect rather than convenience.
Now that he thought of it, she was always different from others. Was it because he was her son?
No, that couldn't be it. If blood ties could define the reason behind her warmth, why was he treated as such in House Valerius?
"Too cold," his younger self said.
She looked at him for a moment. Then at the window. The fir trees were visible in the pre-dawn dark as shapes rather than colors.
"Come here," she said.
He crossed the wooden floor on bare feet—cold and shivering—and she wrapped something around his shoulders. It was a blanket, which had been near the fire long enough to carry its warmth without its light.
They sat.
The fire was the only sound for a while. Outside, the fir trees did whatever fir trees did in the pre-dawn dark of the northern outskirts, which was mostly nothing visible to human eyes and required no attention.
"Mom," he said. He must have been six. Perhaps seven. The age when questions arrived without knowing they were questions. "Why do we live here?"
She looked at the fire for a moment before answering. Her clear eyes reflected the fire, and to him, they appeared as though they were flowers blooming through the winter's cold.
"Because here," she said, "no one tells you what you are."
Back then, he didn't understand what that meant. He accepted it the way children accepted things they didn't understand—not as confusion, but as something that would become clear later, placed carefully in his memory that would be recalled and become clear upon reflection.
She looked at him then. The fire was between them and her face had the specific quality of someone whose expression was doing something that the light wasn't fully revealing.
"Remember this, Isaac," she said, "dead lives in the cold, and yet, they don't feel it. Feeling cold is something only the alive can feel."
He leaned on her, again, not understanding what she meant by that. She would speak of things that his younger self couldn't process back then. However, the fact that he couldn't understand didn't matter. After all, the blanket was warm, the fire continued its work, and outside, the fir trees continued to stand still, doing whatever they were doing.
He fell asleep there.
He didn't remember being carried back to bed. He only remembered the warmth—one that was felt more clearly because it was felt amidst the cold.
It was his memory from the past, in one house at the desolate, northern outskirts of a Kingdom where no one came.
The fire burned.
The trees stood.
His mother's hands were warm.
___
Isaac opened his eyes.
He was in a bed he didn't recognize.
The ceiling was high. The light was coming through the window.
For a second, his mind was blank. Then, slowly, he assessed the surrounding.
He was in a room. From his judgement, it appeared to be one of the recovery rooms stationed in the temple of Order of Acacia.
He looked at his body underneath the blanket. His top was wrapped around by a long, medical bandage.
The wound at his back seemed to have improved, although the recovery wasn't complete. It seemed like the healer in charge of him had a skill of C-rank or below.
Thankfully, none of his injuries prevented his movement; they simply made it harder.
Taking his eyes off his body, he placed his head back on the pillow beneath. Lay still for a moment.
Many things happened. Life-threatening, the most dangerous battle he has ever gone over, happened.
And Henrick…
Henrick died.
He remained silent for a moment. Death sounded foreign to him. Someone talking to him was now gone. He felt the cruelty of the world down to his spine.
Turning his head, Isaac located a calendar that was on top of a small round table by the side of the bed.
Seventh day… His eyes widened. Today was seemingly the day of the banquet. What's the time? There was a clock nearby.
"We will meet at the Academy's eastern gate at the fifth bell and a half."
Luckily, he had three more hours. Then, he would need to go.
He slowly pushed his body up and sat. Breathed as he brushed his messy hair that was covering his eyes.
Then, he paused. Henrick just died. There was an explosion. Perhaps, the banquet has been cancelled.
For the time being, he decided to forget about the banquet. First thing was to retrieve his items that were on the round table and a chair next to it.
Isaac stood up. Walked up to it, slowly and steadily. He observed the sheathed knife that was returned to him, now on the table. Then he moved on, taking his coat from the chair to feel its weight.
The book was not present in his coat. It was gone—likely in Gladius's possession.
The insignia. It was last seen in Henrick's pocket.
Isaac sighed, deducing that the insignia is likely gone. Then he let it go, for none of two items served as crucial evidence.
He, placing the coat back on the chair, walked up to the window.
He froze.
There was a change to the capital's landscape that could be seen from his current viewpoint.
It was a hole. Rather gigantic, having swallowed the entire district that contained Hearthstone.
Army appeared to have been dispatched to keep the site in control, preventing the approach of wailing citizens.
The festival was no more. People's festival spirit was crushed by the hard reality of war.
The scenery was chaotic. Just watching the scene made him tired.
Why not leave this place?
Then, a thought arrived without announcement.
What's the point of staying in this place? Just run away.
Henrick was dead. Seran Crane was aware he'd survived and seen his face; the Academy's headmaster will likely try to kill him now, if he wasn't already. Running was a rational response.
He held the thought for a moment.
But… He placed his hand on his chest. His mind was telling him otherwise, that he had an unfinished business here.
Events he went through in the capital flashed through his mind. Henrick, Hearthstone, weapons training, nightly assault, assignment in the Free Ground, meeting friends, higher class, duel…
…as well as sabotaged wands and Atticus.
An anger surged within him.
He dressed. The movement was slower than usual. He found the iron charm on the bedside table. Put it in his pocket.
He picked up the sheathed knife and left the room.
A royal guard stood at the corridor's end.
"You shouldn't be—"
"Is banquet still happening?" Isaac said.
The guard paused and assessed him. "Yes," he said before stepped aside, having realized that Isaac still had a duty to fulfill.
Isaac walked toward the eastern gate.
Outside, the festival's liveliness was replaced with the murmurs and cries of people who hadn't expected the festival to face such conclusion.
He walked in his usual silence.
The week wasn't over yet.