The air in the Vernhardt estate didn't flow, it was stifling. It was a thick, humid soup of over-perfumed lilies and the damp, heavy scent of the Southern marshes. For Varon, however, the atmosphere felt like it was made of jagged flint.
He was pacing the length of the marble loggia, his boots clicking with a frantic, uneven rhythm that set the nearby servants on edge. In his hand, he clutched a stack of letters, parchment he had personally penned with increasingly demanding scripts. They were all there. Every single one. Returned, unopened, or simply ignored.
The silence from the North was a physical weight, a slap to a face that had never been struck.
"Nothing," Varon hissed, his voice a low, vibrating snarl. "Not a word. Not a 'thank you, brother,' or 'I am well.' Nothing but that... that insult."
