A sudden, overwhelming weakness washed over me. It wasn't fatigue; it was as if the very will to stand was siphoned from my bones. My vision swam, the grey light of the cavern dissolving into splotches of darkness. My knees buckled. As my eyes fluttered shut, I saw Duke Michael—unshakable, imperturbable Michael—stagger. He went down on one knee, his sword plunging point-first into the stone floor to hold himself upright, his head bowed as if against a gale.
Then, not dreams, but memories—vivid and relentless—flooded my mind. Not my own, I felt, but… his. Reynard's.
I saw him as a young prince, laughing as he showed me a fledgling hawk. "Patience, Alistair. True strength is in the waiting." I felt the grit of campaign dust, his hand pulling me up after a fall during a skirmish. "On your feet, old friend. The work isn't done." I stood beside him as he argued with stiff-necked priests about diverting temple grain to a starving village. "If our gods demand we let children starve to fill their golden plates, then they are not gods I recognize." His face, etched with grief after his first queen's passing. The quiet, defiant joy when he brought Emilia to court, meeting the nobles' disdain with a steady gaze. His large, calloused hand resting on Leo's golden head, a look of such profound, vulnerable love it could break your heart.
It was a cascade of a life—a good life, a human life. And through it all, a profound, wordless gratitude seemed to wash over me. A thank you for standing with him. For serving not just a king, but the man.
But beneath the gratitude, a cold, bottomless sorrow took root. A farewell. Not a sad one, not entirely, but a final one. A door closing.
No… I tried to scream in the prison of my mind. Sire, no…
I came back to myself with a gasp, as if breaking the surface of a frozen lake. I was on the cold stone floor, propped up against the cavern wall. Two of Michael's knights stood near me, but their eyes were not on me. They were fixed ahead, their faces ashen with a terror that transcended battle.
My own gaze, bleary and fighting the lingering weakness, followed theirs.
The black doorway to the Tomb was opening. Not with a sound, but with a silent, impossible shift of the seamless stone. A wave of… something… rolled out. It was not the oppressive pressure of Duke Michael's magic. It was older. Cleaner. And infinitely more lonely. It tasted of high, wind-swept peaks and the deep quiet at the heart of mountains.
My heart, a frantic drum against my ribs, screamed for my king to emerge.
But only one figure stepped out.
Prince Leo.
He walked slowly, with a measured step that was utterly alien on a five-year-old boy. The simple clothes he had worn in were gone. He was clad in a tunic of pure, undyed linen, too large for him, its hem brushing the floor. It was stark, simple, ancient. His golden hair seemed to hold the faint grey light of the cavern itself.
His face… Gods, his face. It was Leo's face, but the childish softness was gone, replaced by a stillness that was centuries older than his years. His eyes, once a bright summer blue, were now the color of a twilight sky—darker, seeing distances no child should see.
He passed the threshold. And as he did, the black stone doorway sealed itself seamlessly behind him, as if it had never been.
The cavern was dead silent for three heartbeats.
Then, a whisper, ragged and broken, from one of the priests: "The King…? Where is the King?"
Others took it up, a ripple of panic. "Your Grace!" a knight hissed at Duke Michael, who was slowly, stiffly, pushing himself to his feet, his eyes never leaving the small, solitary figure.
I found my voice, a dry croak. "Leo…" I managed. "Your Highness… where is your father?"
The boy—the prince—turned his twilight gaze towards me. There was no recognition in it, not at first. Then, a flicker, as if someone were lighting a very small, very deep candle within.
"He stays," the child said. His voice was still a boy's voice, but the inflection was flat, ancient, final. "With the First. It was… the price. And the gift."
A collective gasp tore through the assembled men. One of the priests fainted, collapsing in a rustle of robes.
Duke Michael was the first to move with purpose. He strode forward, his power a visible aura of violet tension around him, and knelt before the prince, not as a lord to a child, but as a Sworn Shield to his sovereign. He looked into those changed eyes, searching for something. After a long moment, he bowed his head.
"Who returns from the Tomb?" Michael asked, his voice low and gravelly.
The boy-prince looked down at his own small hands, then back at Michael, a shadow of confusion crossing that terrible calm, like a child trying to recall a dream.
"I am Leo," he said, but it sounded like a question he was asking himself. Then, his spine straightened, and the confusion vanished, replaced by that eerie certainty. "The King is with our Forefather. I… am what remains."
The truth, impossible and devastating, crashed down upon us all.
King Reynard, the mortal king who sought a divine sign, was not coming back. He had traded his life, his future, for… for what? For a sign? For his son's worthiness? For the stability of the kingdom?
And he had left us with this. A golden child, walking out of a god's tomb alone, wearing the weight of a bargain we could not understand, his eyes holding the twilight of a world we could not see.
The gamble was over. The king had played his final card. And as I stared at the orphaned prince who was now, by dreadful default, our sovereign, I understood the cold sorrow I had felt.
It hadn't just been a farewell. It had been a passing of the torch. From a king who tried to be a man, to a boy who had just been touched by something far, far more. And I felt only a piercing, profound dread for what would come next.