Eastern Vale Paths – Beneath the Glenfold
The entrance was half-swallowed by earth and bramble, a stone arch barely visible beneath the twisted roots of a collapsed grove. Moss grew thick across the keystone, where faded carvings marked the passage: a ring of knives around a tree crowned with crows.
Aeron knelt and brushed the moss aside. The stone beneath was cold, even through his glove. The air that crept from the gap below smelled of damp iron and hollow things.
"This is it," Tarn whispered. "They called it the root-chapel."
Harwin grunted behind him. "Doesn't look like a chapel."
"It wasn't always," Aeron said, rising. "Before the Cleansing, places like this held relics. Vaults. Bargains made with things too old for crowns."
Elric leaned on his spear, uneasy. "And we're going in?"
Aeron nodded once. "Only way past the patrols unseen."
With effort, they pulled loose the overgrown stone slab, revealing steps descending into the dark. They were slick with lichen, carved not by tools but worn smooth by centuries of bare feet and spilled oil.
Tarn hesitated. "My da said they buried oathbreakers down here. And worse."
Aeron lit a torch. "Then they'll have company."
They descended in silence. The catacombs opened into a wide corridor, ribbed with stone archways and ancient bindings—iron rings rusted into the walls, symbols scrawled in soot and dried blood. Bones littered corners where rats no longer fed. The air grew colder, heavier, as if memory itself weighed upon it.
Harwin stepped lightly, sword half-drawn. "This place doesn't sleep."
Aeron moved toward an altar at the end of the corridor. It was cracked and flanked by two pillars carved to resemble weeping figures, their eyes gouged out.
Upon the altar lay a broken seal—wax melted into a circle of ash. And beside it, a scroll tied in a faded black ribbon.
He picked it up and unrolled it carefully.
By the will of the Pactlords of Caer Velnar, in the name of the Old Holding, this edict binds the keepers of Glenfold and the kin of Velstrom to peace in perpetuity, under pain of blood-curse and landfall.
Harwin leaned over his shoulder. "So much for peace."
Elric eyed the pillars. "Blood-curse?"
Before Aeron could answer, a distant noise echoed—a sharp ring of metal on stone. Not from behind.
From ahead.
They weren't alone.
Tarn gasped. "Who would—?"
The torches flickered. From beyond the arch ahead, a shape emerged. Hooded. Limping. Carrying a staff carved from the bone of something large.
It spoke in a rasping voice, one that grated like roots dragging across stone:
"You seek truth beneath banners. But truth, boy, does not kneel. It buries."
Aeron stepped forward. "Who are you?"
The figure lowered its hood. A man—though barely. His skin was pallid, lined with glyphs, lips stained with the ink of relic rites.
"I am the last of the Glenfold stewards," he said. "And I remember every pact. Every betrayal. Even yours."
Aeron's hand tensed around the scroll.
"I never signed any pact."
"No," the steward said, stepping closer. "But your name is carved on the back of this altar, boy. Your blood remembers even if your mind does not."
He gestured to the altar's hidden face.
Harwin stepped forward, torch raised—and there, etched deep into stone:
Thorne.
The steward's eyes narrowed.
"So, child of exile. What price are you willing to pay for a kingdom forgotten by all but the bones beneath it?"
Aeron didn't flinch.
"Whatever the living haven't already stolen."