The walls of Vornheim didn't bleed when they fell.
They crumbled. Quietly. As if even the stone was too tired to scream. In the early hours of that cursed winter,
the city burned without flame and no one came to save it.
Inside a collapsed hall once known as The Hall of Fathers,a boy knelt. Eight winters old. Face stained with soot and silence.
Thalric.
He didn't cry. He didn't know how. Not anymore.
The banners above him still hung from blackened beams, torn and fluttering like ghosts. They bore the emblem of the Vornheim Lock a chained lion, mouth stitched shut. How fitting, he would later think. His fingers were small, shaking not from fear,
but from the cold of truth. Before him lay three things:
1. The ashes of his mother's last braid.
2. A pendant cracked, glowing faint blue.
3. A name etched into blood-soaked marble:
"General Raegar Lock: Protector of the Old North."
He stared at the name. Not with grief. But confusion.
"Protector?"
He looked around at the broken beams, the shattered glass, the hollow halls.
Protector of what? That was the first moment…the silence inside him turned to iron.
Outside, footsteps. Crushing gravel. Heavy boots. The boy didn't flinch. Not even when the door creaked open. A man entered not with fury, but duty.
Armor dented. Eye bleeding. Sword still dripping red.
"You survived…" the soldier whispered, almost… disappointed.
Thalric didn't answer. The man stepped closer. "Where's your father?"
No answer.
The soldier bent down. "Where's General Lock?" Thalric blinked, once.
"He ran," the boy said, voice hollow.
"Before the fire reached the eastern gate."
The man's expression didn't change.
He simply stood, took a long breath…and raised his blade.
"Then the bloodline dies here."
That moment stretched like frost just before it shatters. But before the blade could fall,a second voice echoed behind the soldier:
"Touch him, and your soul will never find peace."
The sword froze mid-air. Then slowly lowered. From the shadowed doorway, a woman stepped forward. Eyes dark like winter wells. Hair braided in thorns. Voice made of broken glass. Seren Thorneveil. She looked at Thalric not with pity, but the same way one looks at a dying star:
"You don't raise weapons to silence."
"You kneel before it."
The silence after Seren's words wasn't peace. It was threat. The kind that doesn't shout or swing but lingers in the lungs, heavy like wet ash. The soldier stepped back, his boots slipping slightly on blood-streaked stone. He looked at Seren then at the boy.
Thalric hadn't moved. Not a blink. Not a twitch.Just still…like a statue carved from war.
"He's a Lock," the soldier muttered. "One of them."
Seren's voice sliced through his doubt.
"Not anymore."
The man's lips curled, but he said nothing more. He sheathed his sword with a grunt and walked away,his footsteps echoing like judgment fading into cold hallways.
Seren knelt beside the boy. She didn't reach for him. Didn't ask him if he was okay. She knew the answer.
She just sat there. On the cold stone floor. With him. In the ruin.
"Do you remember your mother's voice?" she asked softly.
Thalric turned his head slightly. Not to answer. Just to let the silence fall differently.
"It's okay," she whispered. "Sometimes silence is the only thing we're left with."
She looked down at the broken pendant on the floor. Her fingers hovered over it then stopped. She didn't touch it.
Because some things don't need to be touched. They just need to be… respected.
Suddenly a sound.
BOOM.
A distant echo.
From the outer wall a signal fire collapsed. Another piece of Vornheim's spine breaking. A child screamed somewhere in the distance. The war hadn't ended.
Not yet.
"They'll come back," Seren said, standing slowly.
"Looking for survivors. To finish what they started."
She looked at Thalric.
"But you… you're not a survivor, are you?"
Thalric's eyes met hers. For the first time…they blinked without fear.
He didn't speak. He just picked up the cracked pendant,closed his fist around it and stood.
"I'm not a survivor," he finally said.
"I'm what they should've feared."
Outside, the snow began again. Slow. Soft. Like white ash from a sky that had already given up. And as the boy and the woman stepped out of the Hall of Fathers,they didn't look back. There was nothing left to remember. Only something to become.
The outer ruins of Vornheim groaned beneath every step. Stone and snow fused together into a graveyard too stubborn to collapse. Thalric's boots were too small. They sank into blood-packed slush,and yet he never slipped.
Seren walked behind him.Silent. Watching.
He didn't ask where they were going.
She didn't tell him. Some people are not led. They are just… followed.
They crossed the Eastern Arch or what was left of it. Charred banners hung like rotting skin. Every pillar held names carved in gold now blackened, unreadable.
But one name still shimmered…half-melted, half-saved:
"Seren Thorneveil Blade of Mercy."
Thalric paused.
"Mercy?" he muttered.
She looked away. For the first time her breath wavered.
"Names lie. Like fathers."
They came upon what once had been the Children's Ward. It was now a crater. Toys scattered like corpses.
Wooden horses with missing heads.
Charred dolls holding hands. A cradle still rocking, but empty. Thalric walked to the center of the crater. The snow there wasn't white. It was pink.
He knelt. Pressed a hand into it. Closed his eyes. No tears came. Just a whisper:"They were my age."
"Yes," Seren said behind him. "That's what made them dangerous."
He stood slowly, turning to her.
"And me?"
She looked him dead in the eyes.
"You're not dangerous, Thalric."
"You're inevitable."
Far above, the storm broke. Thunder rolled over the spires of the broken palace,and lightning traced veins through the clouds like the sky was bleeding.
Thalric watched the skies. His voice low. Deadly.
"They'll come again."
Seren nodded.
"They always do."
"And I'll be ready."
She smirked, for the first time. Not warmth. But recognition.
"Not yet. But you will be."
She knelt beside him and pulled a black cloth from beneath her coat. Unfolded it. Inside:A dagger. Small. Iron. Etched with three runes.
One for death.
One for debt.
One for destiny.
She offered it to him.
"This is not a weapon," she whispered.
"It's a question."
Thalric took it.
"Then I'll make the world answer."
The wind howled once again. But this time, it didn't sound lonely. It sounded… warned.