62.-Echoes in The council

The Council Chamber of the Adventurers' Guild in New Eldrin stood as a monument to the kingdom's resilience, a grand hall carved from the remnants of a past that refused to fade. Towering stained-glass windows lined the walls, their panes ablaze with legends of Eldoria's heroes—golden griffins soaring over vanquished dragons, kings raising swords against shadowed hordes—casting a muted kaleidoscope of light across the polished mahogany table that stretched like a dark river through the room. The air carried the faint scent of aged wood and wax, mingling with the sharp tang of ink from parchments scattered across the table, each marked with the meticulous script of a Guild that had learned to measure its steps after a century of chaos. High above, a wrought-iron chandelier swayed gently, its candles flickering with a nervous dance that mirrored the tension brewing below.

Around the table sat the Council of Elders, a dozen men and women whose faces bore the scars of battles fought and won, their voices rising in a heated chorus over the Guild's budget for the coming expeditions. Lord Cedric Veylan, Supreme Master of the Adventurers' Guild in Eldoria, presided at the head, his presence a quiet storm amid the clamor. His silver hair, swept back with a soldier's precision, gleamed under the light, and his gray eyes—sharp as daggers forged in the fires of a hundred years—cut through the room with an authority that needed no shout to command. Clad in a black tunic embroidered with gold threads, his lean frame belied a strength untouched by time, a secret the Guild guarded as fiercely as its vaults. He listened to the arguments, his fingers drumming a slow rhythm on the table's edge, but his mind drifted elsewhere—eastward, to the troubling reports piling up from Eastwatch and Veridian Forest.

"—And that's why, Guild Master," concluded Captain Drusus, a broad-shouldered warrior with a jagged scar slashing across his cheek, his voice booming with the confidence of a man who'd faced ogres and lived, "I say we boost the allocation for the Elven Ruins expedition by twenty percent. The rumors of a new mithril vein are too rich to ignore—think of the weapons we could forge, the gold it'd bring!"

Cedric tilted his head, his expression unreadable as stone. "Noted, Drusus," he replied, his voice smooth but edged with a dry bite that silenced the room. "A fine plan—if we had the luxury of chasing rumors while the east bleeds shadows. But we don't, do we?" His gaze flicked to the captain, a flicker of mockery in his eyes that made Drusus shift uncomfortably in his seat.

Before the warrior could retort, the heavy oak doors swung open with a groan, and Eldrin, Cedric's personal secretary, hurried in, his pale face flushed and his round glasses slipping down his nose. His dark robe swished around his ankles, ink-stained hands clutching a rolled parchment sealed with the crimson wax of Eastwatch. "My apologies, Guild Master, honored Council," he said, his voice trembling with urgency as he bowed hastily, nearly dropping the scroll. "A new report from Lord Valerius Thorne in Eastwatch—just arrived, marked urgent."

A ripple of surprise passed through the Elders, their murmurs rising like a tide. Cedric raised an eyebrow, leaning back in his chair with a deliberate calm that belied the tightening of his jaw. "Urgent, you say?" he murmured, his tone laced with the sarcasm he'd honed over a century. "Well, don't keep us in suspense, Eldrin. What fresh disaster has Valerius stumbled into now?"

Eldrin swallowed hard, unrolling the parchment with hands that shook faintly, the wax seal crumbling under his fingers. "Lord Valerius reports that one adventurer returned from a group sent to Veridian Forest to investigate reports of anomalous activity," he began, his voice steadying as he read. "A woman, physically unharmed but… her mind's a wreck. She speaks of monsters, shadows, a fog that clouds the senses. The scout with her, Faelan, didn't make it back alive. Valerius says he… exploded during questioning, his body torn apart in a burst that drenched the hall in gore. No explanation, no precedent—just chaos."

The room fell silent, the weight of the words sinking into the Elders like a cold blade. Cedric's fingers stopped their drumming, his gray eyes narrowing as a memory flickered behind them—the roar of a bleeding sky, the crack of stone as Harveth's voice was swallowed by fire a hundred years ago in Aethoria, the old capital. He'd been there, a trembling apprentice, when the trumpets blared and the knight of shadows spoke of "the Queen's first echo." The official tale of a comet had buried the truth, a lie spun by the Ivory Tower to calm a shattered kingdom, but Cedric had seen it—felt it—and the echo of that night stirred now, sharp and unbidden, as New Eldrin rose atop the ashes of that lost city.

"Exploded?" Maestra Elyria broke the silence, her voice sharp with disbelief as she leaned forward, her silver hair glinting under the chandelier. A veteran mage, her hands bore faint scars from runes gone wrong, and her blue eyes flashed with skepticism. "What nonsense is this? A man doesn't just burst apart—Valerius must've botched the interrogation, or the girl's lost her mind. Shadows and fog? Sounds like a campfire tale to scare recruits."

"Or a drunkard's delirium," added Captain Drusus, crossing his thick arms with a grunt, his scar twitching as he smirked. "Two groups gone, and all we get is this? I'd wager she's covering for her own failure—probably ran while her team bled out."

Cedric's lips curved into a faint, dry smile, but his eyes remained cold, cutting through the room like a blade through fog. "A convenient theory, Drusus," he said, his voice low and edged with mockery. "And Elyria, I'd love to believe Valerius is just a fool who can't handle a rattled girl. But men don't explode from bad questions—or good ale. This isn't a tale or a failure. It's something else." His fingers brushed the table, a tremor passing through them—an echo of the apprentice who'd fled a burning Guild hall a century ago.

"There's more," Eldrin continued, his voice faltering as he scanned the parchment, adjusting his glasses with a nervous tic. "They found remains in the forest—shredded, unrecognizable, presumed to be Alatar Norian, one of the lost. Valerius says the wounds don't match any beast or known magic. It's… unnatural. And Lord Comar Norian, Alatar's cousin and advisor to Viscount Reinard, has been informed. He's furious—demanding justice, threatening to take it to King Alaric himself."

A murmur of dismay rippled through the Council, hands tightening on goblets and parchments. Cedric's smile faded, his jaw clenching as he leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. "Two groups lost," he said, his voice a quiet growl that filled the silence. "A noble dead, a cousin howling for blood, and now this—explosions and shadows. This isn't some orc raid or rogue mage's trick." His gaze flicked to the map on the wall, tracing the green sprawl of Veridian Forest with a finger that stilled as another memory surged—the black fissures, the knight's laughter, the sky bleeding red over Aethoria.

"Orcs, perhaps?" ventured Maestra Elyria, her tone skeptical but cautious, her fingers tapping a rhythm on the table. "They're brutal enough, though I've never heard of them making men burst."

Cedric shook his head, a dry laugh escaping his lips. "Orcs leave corpses hacked to pieces, Elyria, not dust and echoes. Their trails are blood and fire, not this… subtlety." He paused, the word tasting bitter on his tongue, his mind flashing to the trumpets that had shaken Aethoria a hundred years ago, before New Eldrin rose from its ashes. "No, this is different—older, deeper."

"Dark magic, then?" asked Counselor Thrain, a wiry man with a bald head and a voice like gravel, his hands clasped tight as if warding off a chill. "Some artifact gone wild, maybe? We've seen cursed relics twist men before."

"Possibly," Cedric replied, his tone measured but heavy with something unspoken, his eyes distant as he recalled the vial of red ashes from Veridian Forest months ago—ashes that matched the dust he'd swept from Harveth's charred remains in Aethoria. "But this isn't a trinket's tantrum. It's too precise, too… deliberate." His fingers curled into a fist, the memory of that knight's voice—"The Queen has awakened her first echo"—ringing in his ears like a curse he couldn't shake.

The Council shifted uneasily, their skepticism clashing with a growing unease. "You're not suggesting the Catastrophe again, are you?" Drusus scoffed, leaning back with a smirk that didn't reach his eyes. "That was a comet, Guild Master—everyone knows it. The Ivory Tower proved it a hundred years ago. Shook the magic, killed a few thousand, and left us with bad dreams. What's that got to do with this?"

Cedric's gaze snapped to Drusus, his smile vanishing as a cold fire flared in his gray eyes. "A comet," he repeated, his voice dripping with sarcasm that cut like a blade. "Yes, how convenient—a rock from the sky that cracked the earth, bled the heavens, and laughed while it burned Harveth alive in Aethoria. Tell me, Drusus, did your comet speak too? Did it promise a queen's echo before it shattered Alaric's light?" His tone was sharp, a rare crack in his composure, and the room stilled, the Elders exchanging wary glances as Cedric's words hung like a storm cloud.

Elyria frowned, her fingers pausing mid-tap. "That's old lore, Cedric," she said, her voice softening but firm. "The Tower's records are clear—it was a celestial event. Alaric stopped it, and we built New Eldrin over the ruins. You're chasing ghosts from a night most of us never saw."

"Most of you didn't," Cedric shot back, his voice low and hard, his gaze sweeping the Council with a weight that silenced their murmurs. "I did. I was there when the sky split over Aethoria, when the trumpets froze the blood, when Harveth died screaming under a beam I couldn't lift. The Tower spun their tale to keep the kingdom from crumbling, but I saw it—a knight of shadows, a voice that wasn't human. 'The Queen has awakened her first echo.' That's no comet, Elyria—it's her, and she's back."

A heavy silence fell, the Elders' faces paling as Cedric's words sank in. Thrain's hands unclenched, trembling faintly, while Drusus shifted, his smirk fading into a grimace. "Her?" Elyria echoed, her voice barely above a whisper, her skepticism wavering. "You mean… the Queen from the tales? The one the mad priests still whisper about?"

"I mean the power that broke us," Cedric said, rising from his chair with a fluid motion that belied his years, his tunic rustling as he paced to the map. His fingers traced Veridian Forest, pausing where red ink marked the losses. "The comet was a lie—a shield for a kingdom too scared to face the truth. I've spent a century waiting for her to stir again, and now she has. Shadows, fog, a man exploding—this isn't random. It's a move in her game."

The Council stared, their breaths shallow as Cedric's certainty clashed with their disbelief. "If you're right," Thrain said, his gravelly voice quaking, "what do we do? We can't fight a myth."

"We don't fight myths," Cedric replied, turning to face them, his gray eyes blazing with a fire forged in that long-ago night. "We fight what's real—what's killing our people now. But we don't rush in blind, not like Harveth did." His voice softened, a rare note of caution threading through it, his fingers tightening into a fist as he remembered the screams. "We need to know more before we strike."

"What's your plan, Guild Master?" Drusus asked, his tone subdued, the weight of Cedric's words pressing down on his bravado.

Cedric returned to the table, his steps deliberate, his mind racing with a strategy honed over decades. "First," he said, his voice firm but measured, "we send word to Valerius. Keep the survivor under lock and key—no one talks to her but him, and he squeezes every scrap she's got, discreetly. I want details—sounds, smells, anything that echoes what I saw. No mistakes, no leaks."

Eldrin nodded, scribbling furiously, his glasses slipping as he glanced up. "And if she's broken, sir?" he asked, his voice cautious. "What if there's nothing left to get?"

"Then Valerius finds a way," Cedric snapped, his tone cutting but calm. "She's all we've got—make her talk, or we're blind." He paused, his gaze flicking to the Council. "Second, I'll call an emergency meeting with Alaric and his court. We'll tell them of monsters and losses—stick to the shadows and fog, keep it vague. No mention of queens or echoes, not yet. We control the story—let Comar Norian howl all he wants, but we don't give him fuel for a war we can't win blind."

Thrain leaned forward, his bald head gleaming under the light. "And Comar? He's not one to sit quiet—Alatar was blood."

Cedric's lips twitched into a faint, cold smile. "Let him rage," he said. "He'll push Alaric, and Alaric will push us—but I'll handle the king. Comar's a dog barking at shadows; he doesn't see the jaws yet." His voice hardened, his fingers brushing the table with a tremor he buried deep. "We don't bow to grief—we use it."

"And third?" Elyria pressed, her blue eyes narrowing, skepticism lingering but softened by unease.

Cedric straightened, his gaze sweeping the room like a blade. "I'll send my own team—not some ragtag band, but the best we've got. The Silent Reapers—trackers who can follow a whisper in a storm, mages who've tamed curses older than this hall, fighters who've felled beasts that'd make your nightmares weep. They'll go to Veridian, quiet and sharp, and they'll find what's killing us—or they'll die trying. No witnesses, no mercy—just answers."

The Elders exchanged glances, their faces a mix of doubt and awe. "The Reapers?" Drusus said, his voice low, respect threading through it. "They ended the Shadow Cult in a night—left no trace but ash. You think this is that big?"

"I know it is," Cedric replied, his tone flat and final, his gray eyes burning with a certainty that chilled the air. "I've seen this before—felt it in my bones when Harveth burned in Aethoria. We're not chasing a comet this time—we're hunting her." He turned back to the map, his fingers lingering on Veridian Forest, the red marks glowing like blood under the candlelight. "And when we find her, we'll be ready—not running, not breaking, but striking."

The Council fell silent, the weight of his words settling like dust after a storm. Elyria's fingers stilled, Thrain's hands clasped tight, and Drusus stared at Cedric with a mix of fear and trust. Eldrin's pen scratched the final notes, his glasses fogging faintly as he exhaled. Cedric stood alone by the map, his back to them, his mind racing through a century of echoes—trumpets, laughter, a knight's voice promising a queen's return. He'd been a boy then, helpless as Harveth died, but now he was the blade, tempered by time and loss. Whatever stirred in Veridian Forest, whatever shadow had awakened, he'd face it—not as a pawn, but as a hunter.

Outside, New Eldrin hummed with life under a sky that held its breath, oblivious to the game unfolding in its shadows. And deep beneath the earth, in a throne room of bone and roots, a young woman with green hair and amber eyes smiled, her laughter a silent echo of the chaos she'd begun a hundred years before.