The noon bells of Château de Montclair tolled slow and heavy, each peal rolling across the white-stone courtyards like distant thunder. No feast awaited, no tournament, no pageant of banners. The castle held its breath.
A lone figure passed beneath the portcullis.
He wore no metal, no plate nor mail to proclaim rank. A long black coat hung straight from his shoulders, its seams cinched by scripture-bound straps; a wide-brimmed hat cast his gaze in shade. At his belt, relics and charms clicked softly—a sunburst medallion, a rosary of teeth and bone, a sealed glass phial within which pale Light swirled as if alive. Across his chest ran a bandolier of vials filled with condensed radiance, each a narrow storm held captive. Tall boots took the flagstones in steady, unhurried strides.
Where he walked, whispers died.
Servants shrank away. Men-at-arms bowed, their eyes lowered, as if to meet his was to invite judgment. The great doors of the marble hall swung open at his approach, not by herald's command but by a fear older than ceremony.
The Witch Hunter of Golden Wrath had come.
Lord Gérard de Montclair received him upon the dais beneath banners of the silver stag. The hall was scrubbed spotless; braziers breathed perfumed smoke as if incense might drown the scent of dread. Louis stood at Gérard's right hand, jaw clenched and knuckles white upon his sword hilt. Antoine waited at the left, still as a shadow. Isabelle lingered by a pillar, pale as first snow.
The Witch Hunter removed his hat and inclined his head—a bow measured to courtesy, not submission. His voice carried without effort, cool and precise as a blade laid upon a whetstone.
"Lord Gérard. The Church has questions."
Gérard descended one step from the dais. "Montclair answers the Church," he said, a thin, hard smile upon his lips. "Ask."
"Do you know anything of the curse laid upon the heir of House de Foncé?"
A shiver moved through the onlookers. Gérard felt his mouth dry. The question was not a probe; it was a string tugged to see which bell would ring.
He set his shoulders. "A tragedy," he answered evenly. "And yet—if reports are true—a miracle. The boy lives. The Light protected him."
"The Church has not asked about miracles," the Witch Hunter said, unblinking. "It asks who invited Darkness."
Gérard drew breath, but the gloved hand rose—palm lifted, still, inexorable—and the words died in his throat.
"A daughter of Montclair," the Witch Hunter said. "Seen in whispers. Seen in shadow. Seen in company she should not have kept."
Silence struck the hall flat.
Antoine's eyelids lowered a fraction. Louis stiffened, a snarl barely caged behind his teeth. Isabelle's fingers released their grip on the pillar; they fluttered once, helplessly, like a fallen bird's wing.
"Father," she whispered, turning toward the dais, "listen—"
Gérard moved like a storm breaking.
He descended another step, voice cracking the marble air. "Then it is true." His finger stabbed down the hall. "My daughter betrayed us all. This was her will, not mine. Not Montclair's."
Gasps burst, scattered, died. Guards flinched as if from a blow that had not struck them.
Isabelle stumbled forward, face awash with desperate color. "Father—no—! You knew, you agreed, you—"
"I knew nothing," Gérard thundered, and the lie stung his tongue like frost. "You will answer for what you have done."
The guards closed on her. She fought, not with strength but with the whip-fast panic of the condemned. Fabric tore. A shoe skittered across stone and spun to a stop. Servants bowed their heads; some wept. Louis looked away at last, breathing through clenched teeth. Antoine did not move.
The Witch Hunter's hand rose higher.
No incantation left his mouth. No sword slipped from its scabbard. A prickle of pressure gathered in the air—hair lifted on forearms, the tongue tasted metal—and then heaven opened without cloud.
A spear of golden lightning fell through the vaulted ceiling as if stone were candle smoke. It struck Isabelle cleanly, so bright that for an instant the banners burned white and every shadow fled to the far corners of the world. Her cry lasted no longer than a heartbeat. Flesh became ash, ash became drifting gray, and her gown collapsed upon the tiles like a shed skin.
The light withdrew. Dust settled.
The Witch Hunter lowered his hand. His face was unreadable—no savor in it, no pity, merely the calm of a verdict spoken at last.
"The Church has spoken," he said. "House de Montclair's rank is lowered. From this day, you fall from Counts of the Sun Empire to mere Viscounts. You will bow before those you once sought to eclipse."
The words struck harder than the lightning.
Count no longer. Viscount—less land in title, less voice in council, less place at table. In a court where the order of seats was the order of knives, such a drop was not a bruise but a broken spine.
Gérard's fingers dug into the carved armrests until pain steadied him. He felt the hall as if from a distance: the scrape of a guard's boot; the hiccuping sob of a maid; Louis's strangled oath bitten off behind his teeth; Antoine's long breath leaving him noiselessly. His gaze fell upon the small mound of gray upon the marble—the remainder of a daughter—then lifted to the man beneath the hat.
Slowly, Lord Gérard de Montclair bowed. The angle was deep enough to be seen from the very back of the hall. He held it long enough that his spine screamed.
"We obey," he said, his voice level, each syllable carried on iron. "Montclair kneels to the Sun."
The Witch Hunter replaced his hat, turned, and walked away. He needed no escort. The doors opened before him, and the light beyond caught on the hem of his coat like a second, paler fire. His boots counted the steps to the world outside—measured, steady, absolute—until the final thud of the doors left the hall sealed and still.
No one moved.
At last a serving boy coughed and choked on it, and that small human sound loosed the others. Attendants shuffled. Priests crossed themselves and backed away. Guards traded glances like men saved from a wave that had stopped at their toes.
Louis rounded upon the heap of ash, his expression a raw knot of grief and rage. He half-drew his sword; the ring of steel against scabbard hushed the nearest dozen throats. But it was aimless fury—there was no enemy left to carve. He stared a heartbeat longer, then shoved the blade home and turned his fury inward, into the taut set of his jaw.
Antoine slipped down the dais and knelt. Not over the ash—over a fallen ribbon, singed at its edge, which he lifted with two fingers and folded once. He did not speak. He slid the ribbon into his sleeve and rose, face like a still pond, eyes unreadable.
Gérard had not straightened.
He remained bowed, hands braced on the armrests, head cast down. The posture read to the hall as humility. Only the crack of his knuckles betrayed the strain beneath.
At length he stood. The years were not heavy on him, but in that moment, they seemed to be. He looked to the ash again and nodded once.
"See to it," he said, and even his steward flinched at the depth in his voice. "There will be no spectacle. She will be given to the river by night."
Étienne bowed quickly and signaled. Two senior servants came with a shroud, moving as if carrying a sleeping child. They were careful, terribly careful, though their eyes were wet. Gray gathered upon white linen until it was no longer ash but weight, a thing with the gravity of a name. The bundle was borne away.
The hall emptied by degrees. No one wished to be the last under the stag banners.
Louis lingered. His hands flexed and curled, flexed and curled, as if strangling fate itself. "Father," he said at last, voice low enough to keep the walls from hearing, "give me leave. I'll—"
"You will do nothing," Gérard said, and the words fell like a gate. "The Church watches from every eave. One more wrong foot and we tumble from Viscount to dust."
Louis swallowed. His mouth worked. He nodded once, a grunt of swallowed thunder, and left.
Antoine did not speak. He inclined his head to his father, the gesture small, almost gentle. Then he, too, was gone, his footfalls quiet as a rumor slipping under a door.
Gérard stood alone beneath the silver stag.
The hall seemed larger without voices. The braziers' perfumes had turned sour in his nose. He stared at the place where the lightning had touched the world and felt, for a moment, very old.
Count to Viscount. Father to… less.
He clenched his hands behind his back until pain cut through numbness. He lifted his eyes to the stag, and in it saw not a proud beast but an animal ringed by hounds.
"De Foncé," he whispered, and if anyone had been close they would have heard how little breath the name left him. "All of this… and still you rise."
He turned from the dais and walked the length of the hall alone. His boots made the only sound, the measured pace of a man who had learned there was nothing left to hurry for—only the slow work of enduring. At the threshold, he paused and glanced to the high windows, where noon's pale light washed the marble as if trying to cleanse it.
"We obey," he repeated, quieter, tasting the words like iron filings. Then, inwardly, a second vow—soundless and cold as a knife laid flat upon the palm. We endure.
And a third, which no priest would ever hear:
We repay.
Outside, the bells began again, and every peal seemed to strike upon the same nerve. The castle shuddered through its routines—orders barked, corridors cleared, a shroud borne toward the river. The wind from the eastern hills slid between the stones and carried with it the finest sift of gray, a last veil lifting, dispersing into a thousand glittering motes which the sun briefly mistook for gold.
By evening, the stag banners drooped in the heat. Courtiers whispered behind their hands in the galleries. Messengers rode from the gates with the new address on their tongues: Viscount Gérard de Montclair.
No crier proclaimed it on the steps. No trumpet blared. The demotion hung in the air like weather, like an illness: felt, not announced. And in every breath of it, the pride of a house sagged a finger's breadth lower.
Yet pride is a thing with roots.
Night came to the keep. In a small chamber behind the dais, Gérard lit no candle. He stood by the window, watching the river where the shroud had gone to the current, and he did not move for a very long time.
When at last he spoke, it was to the empty stone.
"Bow, and endure," he said softly. "And when the day returns…"
The rest he did not say. Words were for halls and witnesses, for priests and hunters.
Vows were for the dark.