Calen moved forward through the cave with a caution he had not felt in a long time.
Every step was a struggle.
Not against a visible enemy, not against an army. Against… the place itself.
The ruins assaulted him.
Not physically. No traps triggered, no projectiles whistled through the air. What attacked him were the symbols. The frescoes. Each time his gaze slid over one of them, stray thoughts surged up, images with no context, sensations that were not his own.
He was no novice.
He had studied forbidden grimoires, faced sorcerers who tampered with minds. He knew the signs. He knew how to recognize the onset of madness.
This was… different.
It carried the taste of infinity.
He clenched his jaw.
"Don't look at the walls," he ordered the two soldiers with him. "Keep your eyes on my shoulders. Breathe. If you feel your thoughts slipping, tell me immediately."
"Yes, captain," they answered in strained voices.
He deliberately restricted his magical senses. It went against his nature. All his life, he had been taught to open his mind to mana, to feel every fluctuation, every current. Here, he did the opposite.
He shut down.
He folded inward.
Just enough to keep walking. Just enough to hold onto a single goal: Eleanor's presence. Faint, as if asleep, but still there, somewhere ahead.
"How long has this place been here?" one of the soldiers whispered, unable to hold back. "I was born two days from here and I've never heard of it…"
"If anyone remembered it," Calen said shortly, "we wouldn't have walked in so easily."
They went deeper.
Then he felt it.
The trace of an event.
Like a burn in the fabric of the world. A point where mana had been torn away, shaped, twisted with unimaginable force.
He stopped dead.
"Captain?" one of the soldiers asked.
"Do you feel…?"
"Nothing," the man replied, worried.
Of course they felt nothing. To them, this was just another stone corridor. To him, it was like walking along the rim of a crater without seeing the drop.
He moved on.
At the end of the corridor, he expected to find… he didn't know. A chamber. An altar. Some monstrosity.
What he found was, in a way, worse.
A door.
A simple wooden door.
There was nothing spectacular about it. A panel, a frame, dark but ordinary wood. No visible runes, no strange metalwork. As if someone had ripped a tavern door from its hinges and planted it here, among impossible ruins.
In front of it, on the floor, two bodies.
Eleanor.
And a boy.
Calen's heart clenched so hard it almost hurt physically. He rushed forward, dropping to his knees beside the princess.
"Eleanor!"
She did not respond. Her chest rose and fell steadily. Her skin was pale, but not ashen. He placed two fingers at her throat. A pulse, steady.
He let out a breath that was equal parts relief and exhaustion.
"She's alive," he murmured. "Just unconscious."
Then he noticed her right hand. The palm was red, as if burned by something. Not a normal burn. The edges were clean, almost drawn.
He looked away by instinct.
The other child looked human. Dark hair, fair skin, fine features. A little older than Eleanor—or perhaps her age, hard to tell. His clothes were not those of a local villager, nor those of a noble. A simple tunic, poorly cut by Elyndor standards, and dark cloth trousers.
Calen placed a hand on his chest as well.
There was a heartbeat.
But something was wrong.
It wasn't that he felt no mana.
It was that he felt too much.
Not in quantity, but in… strangeness. As if the boy's very nature did not follow the same rules as everything else.
He drew his hand back, thoughtful.
"Captain…" one of the soldiers said in a faint voice. "That door…"
Calen turned to look at it.
There was… nothing special. Visually, at least. Even as he cautiously extended his magical senses, he perceived no flux. No trap. No seal.
But he knew, with absolute certainty, that it must neither be opened nor damaged.
He tried anyway.
Because it was his duty.
"Help me move it," he ordered.
The two soldiers set to it. They pushed, pulled, strained. Nothing budged. The wood was not only solid. It was… unresponsive. To everything.
Calen placed his hand on the panel. He tried to push a bit of mana into it. The magic dispersed like water on dry stone.
He clenched his teeth.
"Very well," he said. "We're not wasting any more time here."
He looked at Eleanor, then at the boy.
He didn't like the idea of bringing something unknown, something strange, into the heart of the capital. But he liked even less the idea of leaving a potential threat in a place their enemies clearly knew well enough to set an ambush.
And then there was that stubborn intuition.
Nothing here felt… hostile. Not toward her, at least.
"We're taking them," he decided. "Both of them."
The soldiers exchanged anxious glances, but did not argue. Each lifted a child carefully onto his shoulders. Calen cast one last look at the door.
It remained a simple wooden door.
That was the worst part.
He turned away.
Stepping back into open air was an almost painful relief. The sunlight burned his eyes. The wind on his face felt strange after the silent oppression of the ruins.
The farther they moved from the cave, the lighter the weight on his mind became. The world returned to normal. Or to something like it.
And somewhere along the path, once they had put a respectable distance between themselves and the hill, Eleanor opened her eyes.
"…Calen?" she murmured.
He turned to her at once. The soldier carrying her set her gently on the ground.
"I'm here," Calen said, kneeling beside her. "Easy."
She blinked, confused. Her memories were wrapped in cotton.
"I… I remember the forest… the carriage… the men… I fell… then…"
She frowned.
"There was a door… a really strange door… And… someone… I think…"
Her gaze shifted to the unconscious boy on the other soldier's back.
"It's him…" she stammered. "He's the one who saved me."
A chill ran down Calen's spine.
"Are you sure?"
"I… no… I… I don't really remember. But I know he was there. And if you don't take him with us, it'll be unfair," she added with the unshakable logic of children.
He couldn't help a faint smile.
"I was going to take him anyway," he said. "Just not for the same reasons."
He rose.
"We're not continuing to Rochebois," he announced to his men. "We are returning to the capital."
"Captain?" one of them protested. "But the front…"
"The front is in the north, the capital is better defended, and what we saw today goes far beyond the simple matter of sending the princess away from danger," Calen cut in. "The queen must be informed. Immediately."
He cast one last glance at the hill. The cave was invisible at this distance, hidden by trees and rocks. If you didn't know exactly where to look, you would never find it.
That was reassuring.
But not enough.
The queen of Elyndor listened to Calen's report without interrupting.
She stood near one of the great windows of the throne room, hands clasped behind her back. Her black velvet gown fell in sober lines, without the excessive ornamentation other royal courts had grown fond of. Her graying hair was pulled into a strict bun.
When he finished, a long silence followed.
"So you are telling me," she finally summarized, "that Rethan himself attacked my daughter's convoy… that you drove him back at the cost of half your men… that you discovered, beneath a hill only a few hours from the capital, an ancient complex of ruins no one remembers… that these ruins bear symbols capable of driving an experienced mage mad… and that at the end of all this, you found Eleanor asleep beside a boy from nowhere, in front of a wooden door that cannot be opened. Is that correct?"
Calen bowed his head.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"And this boy is now…?"
"Settled in one of the apartments under heavy guard," he replied. "Still unconscious. The healers haven't found anything… normal. No apparent injury, no known illness, but his mind seems… suspended."
"And his mana?" she asked, her gaze suddenly sharper.
Calen hesitated.
"Stable," he said. "But… twisted. Off-key. Like a note that's right, but in the wrong song."
Another silence stretched between them.
The queen finally turned toward him. In her eyes, Calen read fear, exhaustion, and that cold resolve that made her a feared sovereign.
"My daughter told me," she went on, "that this boy saved her life."
Calen blinked in surprise.
"She doesn't seem to remember clearly what happened down there, Your Majesty. Her memories are confused, fragmented. But her instinct clings to that idea."
"And you?" the queen asked. "What does your instinct say, Calen Ardris?"
He closed his eyes briefly.
The symbols on the walls. The unmoving door. The breath of mana that had rolled through the forest, older and vaster than anything he had known. The golden eyes he had never seen, but which his imagination—or something else—now placed on the face of the sleeping boy.
"My instinct tells me, Your Majesty," he said slowly, "that we have brought something into this palace. Something that does not belong here."
He lifted his head.
"But it also tells me that, in some way, it was already there. Sealed away. And that we did not choose this moment. Something… else did."
The queen gave the slightest nod.
"Very well," she said. "You will remain responsible for Eleanor's safety—and for that boy's. As long as he is not awake, no court mage will tear his mind apart under the pretext of understanding him. I want to know where he came from, but I refuse to let him become an object of dissection at once."
Calen blinked, taken aback.
"Your Majesty… you trust him?"
"No," she replied simply. "But my daughter does. And that has always carried weight in this palace."
She turned away again, returning to the window. In the distance, beyond the rooftops, the blurry line of the hills could be seen. And somewhere behind them, the hollow hill.
"Inform the Master of Arcana," she added. "Discreetly. And double the guard around my daughter. We will soon have to deal with Rethan and his army."
She paused.
"But before that, we must understand what you found beneath that hill. And what now sleeps within our palace. I am counting on you to make sure this situation does not slip out of our control."
Calen bowed deeply.
"As you command, Your Majesty."
He withdrew.
Before he reached the door, the queen called after him:
"Calen, I leave it to you to determine how Rethan learned about the convoy."
"Yes, Your Majesty," Calen answered gravely.
In a room set a little apart, at the heart of the palace, two guards stood before a closed door. Inside, an unknown boy lay on a soft bed, eyes closed, his face strangely peaceful.
Had one been able to see beneath his skin, beneath his bones, one would have glimpsed a weaving of light and shadow barely stabilized, still wavering between what he had been and what he was being forced to become.
His eyes fluttered behind his lids.
He dreamed of things no human mind could have grasped.
And somewhere, far away, in a place where words held no meaning—in the silence of the ruins—the closed door was settling back into its place.
What had been imprisoned was imprisoned no more.