The Things That Linger

Ser Aldric's disappearance had done something to the fortress.

The morning drills continued. The knights remained sparring in the courtyard. The recruits still muttered behind cupped hands. But there was a gravity now, something unsaid cheapening the keep, a weight that pressed down into he'd walls and seeped into the halls like a slow-moving fog.

People weren't raising questions.

They were avoiding them.

That alone said everything to me.

I sat at the edge of the training yard, rolling this wrist absently, gauging the soreness from my fight yesterday with Asura. It hurt, but it was a good pain — the kind that told me that I was actually getting better.

She knelt opposite me, rubbing her dagger against a rock in slow, measured strokes, the clatter of steel against stone breaking the silence between us.

She hadn't said much since yesterday. But she didn't need to.

I knew her well enough now.

She was waiting.

Watching.

Thinking.

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. "Something's off."

She didn't look up. "Only just now noticing?"

I shook my head. "No. I mean, how people are behaving."

She tilted her head slightly.

I pointed to the recruits, the knights, and the castle beyond the training yard. "They're acting like nothing's wrong."

That finally made her look at me. "And?"

I frowned. "It's not normal."

She tsked in a low voice, tossing the dagger in her hand before grabbing it by the hilt. "Depends on who you ask. For some people, pretending is the only way to be safe."

The words sat between us.

For some people.

I scrutinized her, but her face was inscrutable.

Asura never mentioned her family. Not openly. Not unless the conversation forced her hand, and even then, she revealed only as much as she chose.

But I knew what she meant by that.

It was easier to forget her brother than to ask why he was gone.

People turned a blind eye to disappearances because to admit them was to welcome them into your orbit.

She had lived through that.

And now, so were we.

I leaned forward, propping my arms on my knees. "They have to know something. At least some of them."

She nodded once. "Of course they do. But knowing and speaking are different."

I exhaled sharply. "So, what? We just do nothing?"

A small smirk. "Since when do we not do anything?

That was the answer enough.

We started by listening.

Not pushing, not probing — just listening.

The fortress had endless great halls, endless cold stone hallways that carried whispers, and endless draped alcoves where knights spoke in low voices, convinced they would not be heard.

It didn't take long to see the pattern.

Ser Aldric's name was being wiped away.

Not officially. There were no proclamations, no official denials of his existence. But there was nothing worse — a silent, conscious refusal to talk about him at all.

Knights who had trained with him walked with their heads lowered. The recruits who had tussled under his eyes remained silent.

Even the teachers, those who had once stood shoulder to shoulder with him, allowed his name to die on their tongues before it could reach the air.

The fortress swallowed him whole as if he were nothing.

A series of knights at the armory were discussing whether they would like to lay claim to that castle as Asura propped her back against the stone wall with me.

"Orders came from above. We're not to pursue it."

"Not our business anymore."

"Have you heard what they found in his room?"

A pause.

Then—"Nothing. That's the problem."

My stomach tightened.

Asura's gaze shifted to me, inscrutable.

I had already attempted to access Aldric's quarters last night, and it wasn't much we could learn.

The knight's order wishes to keep whatever had happened to him a mystery.

But mysteries never stayed buried forever.

And we were not the only ones seeking answers.

…

By the time the sun had started down toward the horizon, I had the answer I was looking for.

It was a risk, but it was the best lead we had.

I knocked on the wooden door of the knight's barracks, the old quarters where the longest-serving knights had been based.

A gruff voice answered. "What?"

I glanced at Asura. She merely raised a brow for me to proceed.

I pushed the door open. "Ser Rodric."

The knight sat at a wooden table, grinding the edge of his sword. The candlelight played on his scarred face and his prematurely gray beard, which hung tangled from neglect. He didn't look up, but I knew he had seen me.

He had trained Aldric.

And he had avoided me since the disappearance.

Rodric snorted through his nose. "You're persistent, boy."

I stepped forward. "I just want to know what happened to him."

The whetstone rasped the blade, slow and steady. "Nothing happened."

Asura scoffed. "That's a lie and you know it."

His jaw tensed. But he didn't argue.

I took another step forward. "They act like he never existed."

Rodric finally looked up. His gaze fi flat, weighed down by something ancient. "And you should do the same."

I clenched my fists. "Why?"

He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. "Because that's the way that you make it."

The words landed in the stillness.

I felt my pulse in my throat.

Rodric wasn't lying.

He wasn't for covering anyone.

He was afraid.

I swallowed hard. "This has happened before, hasn't it?"

"His fingers curled white around the hilt of his sword.

Asura came nearer, her voice lowered now. "How many?"

Rodric looked at her for a long moment.

Then—"Too many."

A beat.

A shift in the air.

"And no one who asked ever lived long enough to regret it.

I exhaled slowly. A warning. A challenge. A truth wrapped in a threat.

Rodric wasn't asking us to drop it because he wanted to protect anyone.

He was telling us to leave it alone because he knew what would follow.

Asura's face remained unchanged, but I knew what she was thinking.

We weren't backing down.

Rodric saw it too.

He sighed and rubbed a hand across his face, then muttered, as if to himself, "I knew the two of you were going to be trouble."

That almost made me grin.

Almost.

Instead, I just nodded. "If this has happened previously, then there's definitely a pattern."

Rodric's gaze flickered.

I stepped closer. "Tell me how it started."

Silence stretched between us.

Then—he mumbled some words under his breath.

I barely caught it.

But I did.

And the second I heard it, my stomach knotted into ice.

Because it wasn't a name.

It was a number.