The Great Hall of Blackcliff, built for feasts and pronouncements, had never witnessed a gathering like the one that now filled it to the stone ribs. The air was thick with the smell of damp wool, candle smoke, and the sharp, nervous scent of human anticipation. William sat on the Stone Throne, a heavy, unadorned seat of black basalt, feeling less like a king and more like a referee at a brawl of ghosts.
Before him, the hall was partitioned not by walls, but by palpable hostility. To the right, on raised benches, sat the Lords Spiritual and Temporal. Duke Daerlon held court at their center, a benign smile on his face, whispering to a hawk-nosed bishop newly arrived from the south. Count Maurice was a pale, praying statue beside him. The other lords and high clergy were a sea of rich fabrics and stern faces, a living tapestry of entrenched privilege.
To the left, on simple wooden benches, were the Commons: mayors in their best tunics, guildmasters with symbols of their trade, a few freeholders with dirt still under their nails. They looked overwhelmed, suspicious, and defiant all at once.
In the center, on chairs of finely crafted but not ornate wood, sat the Merchant Consortium and Master Trades, led by Jonas Hiller. They occupied the ambiguous middle ground, dressed for business, their eyes constantly calculating the room.
William had opened the Convocation with the barest minimum of ceremony. He stated the facts: the Norse threat was dormant but not dead; the Purifier heresy was a wildfire in the south; the treasury was reliant on loans; the kingdom's unity was fraying. He then presented the question, his voice echoing in the silent hall: "How do we mend what is broken?"
The resulting three days had been a masterclass in dissonance. The Lords' Chamber, led by Daerlon, spoke of restoring "natural hierarchy" and "divinely ordained authority." Their proposals centered on dissolving the Merchant Council, revoking the mountain clans' charter, and launching a "great crusade" of noble levies to purge the Blackweald—a crusade that would, of course, be funded by new taxes on the towns and trade.
The Commons' Chamber was a cacophony of specific, desperate grievances: purges of corrupt local bailiffs, protections from arbitrary impressment into lords' armies, guarantees on grain prices, and relief from the "crusade tax" before it was even levied. They saw the Purifiers not as a spiritual enemy, but as a symptom of lordly neglect and Crown indifference. Their fear of Silas was matched by their fear of their own overlords.
The Merchant Chamber, cool and pragmatic, proposed a series of treaties: formalize trade agreements with Greyport to boost revenue, issue Crown bonds to fund a professional, salaried army (led by competent officers, not necessarily noble ones), and establish a uniform legal code for commerce to override feudal tolls like Ferdinand's at Stonebridge. Their vision was of a streamlined, fiscally solvent state, and they viewed both the lords' crusade and the commons' pleas as sentimental obstacles to efficiency.
William listened to it all, hour after hour, his initial hope curdling into a cold, hard lump of despair. Alaric's warning echoed in his mind: You must forge a new story… or the story that wins will be the one that ends in a tide of silent, hungry dark. This was not a forge. This was a scrapheap of conflicting stories, each clanging against the other.
On the morning of the fourth day, as the Lords' Chamber was again demanding the right to raise private armies to "defend their lands," a commotion erupted at the hall's great doors. A guardsman hurried down the central aisle, his face ashen. He didn't go to the dais. He went directly to Jonas Hiller, whispered urgently, and handed him a small, stained leather pouch.
Hiller's usual composure shattered. He stood up, his chair scraping loudly on the stone floor. All eyes turned to him. Without asking leave, he strode to the foot of the dais. "Your Majesty. My lords. Forgive the interruption. News from the south. From my agent who infiltrated the Blackweald with Captain Kaelen."
A tense silence fell. Even Daerlon leaned forward.
Hiller's voice was unsteady. "The agent is dead. This pouch came back with a refugee. The news inside… it is not military." He opened the pouch and withdrew two items. The first was a piece of vellum, covered in a tight, coded script. The second was a lump of rough, dark stone, identical to the one Alaric had shown William. It seemed to make the torchlight around Hiller dim.
"The agent's final report," Hiller said, his eyes scanning the vellum. "He confirms the Purifiers are not merely hiding. They are… building. In a deep grove at the heart of the forest, they are constructing a great… platform. Of stone. Not quarried. Stones that seem to have been… gathered. From places of old sorrow, battlefields, abandoned shrines. Silas presides over it. He calls it the 'Altar of Unmaking.' They work day and night, chanting. The agent writes… he writes that the air there is dead. No birds sing. The very trees seem to watch. And the stone…" Hiller held up the dark lump. "It is warm. And sometimes… it whispers."
A murmur of superstitious fear rippled through the Commons. Some of the lords scoffed, but their faces were pale. Count Maurice crossed himself fervently.
"There's more," Hiller continued, his voice dropping. "The agent learned their ultimate doctrine. It is not just to overthrow the Crown. It is to erase the 'Age of False Contracts'—by which they mean all kingdoms, all laws, all buying and selling. They believe the world is corrupted by agreement, by promise, by debt. They seek a 'Cleansing Tide'—a return to a state of pure, immediate will. No kings, no gods, no masters. Only the pure expression of the faithful, guided by Silas's voice. And they believe their altar, when consecrated in blood, will thin the veil of the world and let this tide wash over the land."
The hall was utterly silent now. The political grievances, the squabbles over taxes and titles, seemed suddenly trivial, childish. Daerlon's "crusade" sounded like sending boys with sticks to fight a forest fire.
William stood. The weight of the quartz in his pocket was the only solid thing in a swimming world. "Thank you, Lord Hiller." He looked out over the stunned, frightened faces. "You have heard it. This is not a rebellion. It is an annihilation. They do not want my throne. They want your deeds, your charters, your marriages, your coins, your very words to cease to have meaning. They fight against the idea of a future built on the past."
He stepped down from the dais, walking among them, his voice gaining a raw, urgent power he didn't know he possessed. "You, my lords, speak of ancient rights and blood. They would make your blood run into the earth and your rights a forgotten whisper. You, of the commons, speak of justice and fair measure. They would burn the scales and silence the judges. You, merchants, speak of contracts and profit. They would make your ink vanish and your gold melt into worthless sludge."
He stopped in the very center of the hall, turning slowly. "For days you have debated how to divide a pie that is crumbling. The Purifiers do not want a slice. They want to smash the plate and scatter the crumbs to the wind. Your arguments are with each other. Their argument is with reality itself."
Daerlon found his voice, though it had lost its smooth certainty. "This is… demonology! Witchcraft! It must be met with holy fire! A true crusade, blessed by the church!"
"With what?" William shot back. "With levies who will desert at the first strange whisper in the woods? With knights who fight for plunder against an enemy that collects stones? Your 'holy fire' may be exactly the kind of fervor they feed on."
A mayor from a Riverlands town stood, his voice trembling. "What do we do, then, Majesty? If we cannot fight them… are we to kneel?"
"No," William said, the plan forming in his mind as he spoke, born of desperation and Alaric's cryptic wisdom. "We do not fight their story. We build a better one. A stronger one. Right here. Right now."
He walked back to the dais but did not sit on the throne. He stood before it. "This Convocation was called to mend the kingdom. We have failed. We have bickered. So let us not mend it. Let us remake it."
He pointed to the Lords. "You will have your authority. But it will be defined. A charter of noble obligations: the right to administer justice in return for the duty to uphold the King's Peace and fund a standing royal army. No more private wars. No more arbitrary tolls like the one at Stonebridge." He turned to the Commons. "You will have your justice. A royal judiciary circuit. The right to petition the Crown directly against corrupt officials. Guaranteed rights to your land and produce, free from seizure without lawful cause." Finally, he looked at the Merchants. "You will have your laws. A uniform commercial code, applicable to all. The right to form and govern your own councils in chartered towns. And a voice, a permanent voice, in a new council that will advise the Crown on all matters of trade and provisioning."
He took a deep breath. "We will draft it today. Not in three separate chambers. Together. In this hall. We will call it the Blackcliff Covenant. It will be a single parchment. It will define the rights and duties of the Crown, the Lords, the Commons, and the Chartered Towns. It will be signed by every person here. And it will be read in every town square, preached from every pulpit, taught to every child. It will be our answer to Silas's 'Unmaking.' We will offer a making. A making of law, of promise, of a future built on agreement, not oblivion."
The silence that followed was profound. It was the sound of paradigms shifting. Daerlon was first to grasp the sheer, breathtaking scope of it. He saw not just constraints, but a stunning consolidation of royal power at the expense of feudal anarchy, wrapped in a gift to the commons. He saw a kingdom that could actually function, and himself as a key architect. "A… covenant," he mused, the word tasting strange. "One law for all."
The commons representatives looked at each other, hope warring with disbelief. They were being offered a seat at the table, not scraps from it.
Hiller's eyes gleamed with a capitalist's fervor. A uniform commercial code was worth more than a mountain of gold.
It was Count Maurice who voiced the deepest objection, his face anguished. "And God, Your Majesty? Where is God in this… covenant of men? You speak of laws and trades. What of the soul?"
William met his gaze. "The soul, Count Maurice, is protected by the promise that a man will not be hanged for a differing prayer, so long as he keeps the King's Peace. That his church will not be burned for not flying a white hand banner. The first article of the covenant will be the 'Peace of the Realm.' The Crown guarantees the safety and lawful practice of all faiths that do not preach sedition or murder. Your church, my lord bishop, will have a honored place. But not an exclusive one. We fight a heresy that seeks to dominate all spirit. We answer with a realm that protects many."
It was a revolutionary, terrifying idea. Religious tolerance as a weapon of state. Maurice looked as if he might faint. But the other lords, less pious, saw the practicality: it undercut Silas's claim of being persecuted for his faith.
What followed was not a debate, but a drafting. Scribes were brought in. The three groups, forced into proximity, began to argue, but now with a purpose. The language was legal, precise. They argued over clauses, not ideologies. "In return for the knight's fee, the lord shall provide…" "No freeman shall be disseised of his land save by lawful judgment of his peers…" "All charters of trade shall be honored uniformly from the mountains to the sea…"
William moved among them, not as a ruler decreeing, but as a facilitator, a moderator. He wielded the white quartz stone in his pocket like a talisman, a reminder of a simpler truth: a handhold, an agreement with the rock.
As dusk fell on that incredible day, the parchment—four feet long—was laid out on the great table. The essential framework was there: a tripartite balance of power, enshrined rights, defined duties, the Peace of the Realm. It was messy, imperfect, a patchwork of compromises. But it was a thing. A tangible story written in ink.
"It will need signing," William said, his voice hoarse. "And then it will need defending. For Silas will hear of it. And he will see it as the ultimate 'False Contract,' the thing he must destroy above all else."
It was then that a new messenger arrived, this one from Brann at Stonebridge. The news was succinct: "Ferdinand has withdrawn half his archers from the bridge. He marches south. Not towards Blackcliff. Towards the Blackweald. He sends word: 'If the realm is making a covenant, the Vale will not be absent from its defense. We clear our own doorstep first.'"
Even Ferdinand, the arch-opportunist, was choosing a side. The gravity of the threat was pulling the pieces of the kingdom into a new, unstable alignment.
The signing began at midnight, by the light of a hundred candles. William signed first, a bold, stark "William Rex" at the top. Then Daerlon, his signature a flowing work of art. Then Hiller, his precise and efficient. Then the mayor of the largest town, his hand shaking. One by one, lords, commoners, merchants came forward. The scratch of quills was the only sound.
As the last signature was blotted, William felt no triumph. Only a staggering weight. They had built a dam of words against a tide of madness. It was flimsy, untested. But it was all they had.
He ordered the Covenant sealed and copied. Riders would take it to every corner of the land at dawn. The story was now loose in the world.
Retiring to his study, he found Alaric waiting for him, a ghost in the shadowed corner. The lore-warden's silver eyes gleamed.
"You have done it," Alaric said. "You have focused a will. A collective 'No' to the unraveling. The Covenant is a psychic anchor. It will hold… for a time. It will make the veil here, in this place of its making, stronger."
"And Silas? His altar?"
"His altar is a focus too.A darker one. Now there are two poles. The story of Law against the story of Unmaking. They will pull at each other. The land itself will become the battleground. Expect… strangeness. The conflict is no longer just of men."
William thought of the warm, whispering stone from the Blackweald. "What can men do against such strangeness?"
"Believe in their story," Alaric said simply. "Live it. Defend it. The strength of the Covenant will not be in its parchment, but in the number of hearts that truly hold to its promise. If they believe it is just more words, more calculation, it will shatter like glass, and the dark will pour in. You have given them a tool, King William. Now you must make them believe it is a weapon."
Alaric faded back into the shadows, leaving William alone with the monumental fragility of what he had wrought. He looked at the signed Covenant on his desk, a maze of ink that held a kingdom's hope. Outside, the wind had picked up, but it no longer sounded like a scream. It sounded like a challenge, a vast, waiting breath.
The Forge King had not forged a sword or a crown. He had forged a idea. And now he had to lead his people to war with it, against an enemy that fought not with steel, but with the corrosion of meaning itself. The arithmetic was over. The age of faith—in laws, in promises, in each other—had begun. And its first test was coming from the heart of a cursed wood.