The night over Rosenfeld was a sheet of iron.
Clouds pressed low, smothering the moon, their swollen bellies hiding whatever pale light might have softened the jagged lines of the northern fortress. The estate did not sleep; its walls rarely did. Torches burned along the battlements in rigid intervals, a necklace of watchful flames encircling stone and snow.
High within the main keep, behind a door of deep blackwood inlaid with silver-thread constellations, Duke Arcturus von Rosenfeld sat alone in his study.
The room was sparsely lit.
Only three oil lamps burned—one on the broad oak desk, one near the map wall, and one on a side table bearing an unopened decanter of winterwine. Shadows pooled in the corners like patient beasts.
Arcturus did not seem to mind.
He was a man made for northern darkness.
His coat—deep navy wool lined with black fur—hung open, revealing the high-collared tunic beneath. His hair, the color of obsidian dusted with frost at the temples, was tied low. A faint scar ran from the edge of his jaw toward his throat, only visible when the lamplight caught it.
In his hand, he held a letter.
The seal—already broken—lay on the desk: a small, simple mark burned into wax.
Not of any noble house.
But of a single wanderer.
Someone the Empire occasionally remembered to fear.
Arcturus' fingers tightened on the parchment.
He had read the letter once already.
That had been enough to widen his eyes.
Now, he read it again. Slowly. Line by line, as if the ink might change under scrutiny.
His lips moved, soundless, as his gaze traced the words.
My friend Arcturus,
I am sorry.
As soon as I received your letter, I waited beyond the estate grounds for your son to depart. I was maintaining my distance, as requested, and observed where he chose to go.
Arcturus exhaled through his nose.
The memory of that morning surfaced—Kel leaving at dawn with two chosen companions, the boy's back straight, the weight of a curse dragging under his ribs. Arcturus had watched him from the highest balcony, unseen, hand buried in his cloak to hide the tremor in his fingers.
He had let the boy go.
But he had not trusted the world to let him return.
He had written only one letter.
To one man.
You.
He traveled toward the border town of Ashtorne. There, he rested two days.
Arcturus' brows shifted.
Only slightly.
Ashtorne…
The northern border trade sink. Hunters, caravans, smugglers. A place where lives were weighed against pelts and iron.
In that time, your son learned archery.
I will be simple with you: he is… very exceptional in everything.
The duke's hand stilled.
The lamplight flickered.
He read the line again.
A slow, almost imperceptible breath left him.
His gaze unfocused for a heartbeat, fixed somewhere past the ink. He saw Kel's thin frame as it had been years ago—coughing blood into linen, the boy's hands trembling as he tried to hold a wooden practice blade in the courtyard.
Exception.
That word had never belonged to Kel before.
Not in this way.
Arcturus' jaw clenched, then eased.
His eyes lowered again.
He joined a hunt and took part in slaying multiple beasts. His contribution was… not token. He adapted quickly. The hunters accepted him as more than burden.
A muscle moved beneath the duke's cheekbone.
His thumb brushed the edge of the parchment.
There was a warmth beneath his ribs he refused to name.
The next day, they left Ashtorne. Your son traveled with the same hunting party he had joined before.
They parted at a divergence before the mountain routes—your son and his two companions took the northeastern branch.
They then joined a barbarian group.
The room grew… colder.
Barbarian.
The word itself was a knife in northern politics.
Arcturus lifted his gaze briefly to the map wall—ink lines sprawled across parchment, marking borders, choke points, ages of conflict. Near the top, etched in finer strokes, were the barbarian migratory ranges.
One area was circled in faint red.
The border of the cursed lands.
His eyes returned to the letter.
As you know, Arcturus, the barbarians are dangerous. They are more likely to attack any from the Empire who steps into their territory than to speak.
That was true.
He knew it.
Too well.
My specialty is stealth, not direct combat,
A faint, dry curve touched Arcturus' lips.
If that man called his "specialty" stealth, then most of the Empire's shadow operatives were fumbling children.
…but even so, I attempted to infiltrate their camp.
They caught me.
Arcturus' eyes hardened.
His grip tightened.
For a heartbeat, the cold inside him sank lower.
They tried to kill me.
In the process of preserving my own life, I fled.
Right now, I am camped at a safe distance from the barbarian encampment. I am sorry, Arcturus. I do not know what happened with your son inside their camp.
The last sentence seemed to stretch, its ink heavier than the rest.
"I do not know what happened with your son."
The words hung over the lamplight like a curse.
The room was silent.
Arcturus lowered the letter.
His hand rested on the desk.
His other hand rose, fingers pressing briefly against the bridge of his nose before he let it fall again. His expression smoothed.
But his eyes…
They were no longer calm.
Father and Duke wrestled quietly beneath the grey of his gaze.
A gust of wind pressed snow against the tall windowpanes.
The flames in the lamps wavered.
Barbarians… he thought.
Kel.
With his frail body.
In a camp where the Empire's emblem was enough to provoke bloodshed.
His fingers curled.
Then slowly uncurled.
He reached for the map wall.
The parchment crackled as he touched it, fingertips tracing the northeastern mountain line. Ashtorne. The fork. The barbarian migration route.
Then…
His finger slowed over one spot.
A hollow drawn in thinner ink lines.
No name written near it.
No roads.
No towns.
Just a small notation in the margin, in his own hand, from years past:
Abyss Mirror.
His gaze darkened.
Scarder Lake.
The name was never written.
Not on any public map.
But the old records—kept far from imperial eyes—had whispered of it.
A lake that drank curses.
A gate where the judged either emerged remade…
or never rose from the water.
Kel had headed northeast.
Joined with barbarians.
Toward the cursed lake.
Arcturus' jaw tightened.
Was it coincidence?
The boy had always read too much. Dug into old game manuals from the grand library like a starving fox. He had seen the way Kel's eyes lingered on obscure relic texts. On mention of "abnormal paths of salvation."
Had he… known?
Arcturus turned back toward the desk.
The letter lay there.
Its edges were faintly creased.
He sank slowly back into his chair.
The wood creaked once beneath his weight.
He leaned back, hands folding before his lips, eyes closing for a brief moment.
He saw the boy again, at twelve, standing in the training yard and trembling between breaths, refusing to fall even when the world turned dark at the edges of his vision.
He saw the boy at the banquet, dueling with none of the physical strength his opponent possessed, yet winning with terrifying precision and minimal movement.
He saw Kel's eyes then.
Not desperate.
Not resigned.
Focused.
Intent.
He would go to the lake if he suspected it could answer him, Arcturus thought. Even if it killed him.
A silent exhale left him.
"…Foolish boy," he murmured.
The insult was soft.
Empty of scorn.
Heavy with something else.
His gaze fell once more to the words:
He learned archery. He is exceptional in everything.
A faint shadow of pride crossed his features.
Not the pride of a duke in a useful heir.
The quiet, strangled pride of a father who had expected only funerals from his son…
and was instead told of hunts.
His fingers brushed the ink again, as if trying to anchor the reality of those lines.
Exception…
Kel.
The cursed heir.
Now walking the borderlands, learning to kill beasts.
Joining barbarians.
Perhaps walking toward Scarder Lake itself.
Arcturus' mouth thinned.
He reached for a quill.
Dipped it in ink.
Laid a fresh piece of parchment on the desk.
The quill hovered for a moment above the page.
Then scratched across it, his handwriting precise, controlled.
To my old friend,
Do not approach the barbarian camp again.
Their patience will not stretch a second time.
If my son is alive, he will leave when he chooses. If he is dead… infiltration will not change that.
His hand did not pause.
Station yourself along the return routes between the northeastern mountains and Ashtorne. If you see him, do not reveal yourself. Simply confirm, and write.
A drop of ink clung to the quill tip.
He swirled it away along the margin.
If, in a month's time, you see no movement… withdraw.
Before you waste your life on something fate has already sealed.
He did not write that last thought.
He did not need to.
The man would understand.
Arcturus signed the letter.
Dried the ink with careful blotting motions.
Then sealed it.
His family crest—Rosenfeld's crossed blades beneath a winter star—pressed into hot wax, cooling into authority.
He set the letter aside.
For the messenger.
He stared at the table.
At nothing.
Minutes passed.
Or hours.
The lamps burned lower.
Outside, snow scraped the windows like fingernails.
Arcturus sat in stillness, his silhouette carved out of shadow and faint gold light.
Kel.
In a barbarian camp.
Possibly walking toward Scarder Lake.
If he survives that place… the duke thought, eyes narrowing slightly, he will no longer be the boy this house remembers.
Something else.
Something greater.
Something more dangerous.
To enemies.
To allies.
To himself.
He leaned back in his chair, eyes drifting to the ceiling, then lowering again.
In the quiet, a thought surfaced unbidden.
If you live through this, Kel… I will have to learn how to be father to someone the world cannot easily chain.
His lips twitched.
Not into a smile.
Into something tired.
Almost amused.
And if you die…
His hand closed once against the armrest.
Relaxed.
…the world will never know what it buried.
The fire in the nearest lamp burned lower.
He rose suddenly, the chair sliding back with a soft scrape.
He crossed to the window.
Pulled the heavy curtain aside with two fingers.
Snow fell beyond the glass—thick, patient flakes drifting over the courtyard, the outer walls, the mountains in the far distance.
Somewhere beyond those ridges, his son walked.
Perhaps toward death.
Perhaps toward a new script the world had not written.
Arcturus watched the snow for a long moment.
His reflection in the glass looked older.
Sharper.
He spoke quietly.
To no one in the room.
To someone far beyond it.
"…Kel," he said, voice low, "if it is Scarder Lake you've gone to…"
The words lingered in the frosted air.
A pause.
Then, almost inaudible:
"Then come back alive."
He let the curtain fall.
The world outside vanished.
Inside the study, the duke of Rosenfeld turned slowly away from the window, cloak whispering behind him.
On the desk, the letter from the wanderer lay beneath the map's shadow.
Snow kept falling.
And somewhere, on the far side of the northern mountains, a boy who should have died years ago was walking with lungs that finally obeyed him—
and a mythical lake watching the world through his eyes.