Chapter 5 Ebonhold Awaits

Dawn came slow and gray, stretched thin over a sky the color of ashwater.

The outpost was gone.

In its place: black skeletons of buildings, chimney bones, drifting coils of smoke that looked like they were trying to remember what had once stood here.

Caelen stood at the edge of it, wrapped in Lareth's old traveling cloak, watching the last embers die. The snow around him had melted to slush, steam rising in soft columns from the scorched earth.

He had not spoken in hours.

Lareth returned from the trail with two horses-one black, lean, with the strange pale eyes of desert breeds. The other was older, a war-trained dun with scarring down its flank.

"I'll ride ahead and clear the border pass," the mage said, handing him the reins. "You follow within the day. Travel alone. Don't draw eyes."

Caelen took the reins. The horse snorted once, then fell still, as if it understood its rider had no use for comfort.

Lareth unhooked a leather satchel from the saddle and passed it over. "Your papers. Ring. Signet. Coin. And one small mercy."

Caelen opened it and pulled out a folded piece of parchment-his new lineage, written in the fluid, practiced calligraphy of royal record keepers. It read like truth. Like someone who'd been loved, educated, given purpose. A lie that felt like theft.

He set it against his thigh and pressed his signet into the wax. His hands didn't tremble.

"Once you're in," Lareth said, "you'll need a patron. Someone close to the queen. Earn their favor. Slowly."

Caelen didn't respond.

Lareth mounted. "The court has a hundred knives. Most of them smile. Some of them might already know your name. But they don't know your eyes. Not yet."

Still, no answer.

The mage leaned forward in the saddle. "What are you thinking?"

Caelen stared into the smoke. "I'm thinking of the last thing she ever said to me."

"Rythe?"

He shook his head. "My mother."

Lareth waited.

"She said, You are not your name, Caelen. You are the silence that follows it."

Lareth didn't reply. He turned his horse. "We'll see what kind of silence you make in Ebonhold."

He rode off.

Caelen waited until the hoofbeats faded, then looked west.

He mounted.

The saddle was hard. The wind sharp. The journey ahead uncertain.

But the silence behind him was absolute.