Drop Two: The Man Who Bowed

The air shimmered as the rift peeled open.

Cassian stepped out onto marble.

Cold. Too clean.

He was standing in the sunken garden courtyard of Vale Manor, just beneath the pink arch. The place where, once upon a time, he had been told to enter through the servant path. Always the servant path. Never the front.

He walked forward slowly, each footfall deliberate.

The courtyard was dead quiet.

No music. No guests.

The roses were gone. The old tree where he'd hidden blueprints as a child had been trimmed into polite nothingness.

And waiting on the far end standing beneath the archway, dressed in a perfectly pressed coat, white gloves over aging fingers was Gregor Hale.

House Vale's senior manservant.

Old. Stoic. Unshakable.

Still wearing the same silver pin of office.

Cassian stopped a few steps away.

Gregor bowed, not deeply.

"Master Cassian," he said. "You've returned."

Cassian pulled back his hood. Let the mask hang at his side.

"So it is true," he said softly. "You can recognize a bastard without the title."

Gregor's eyes did not move. "I recognized you by how quietly you walk. The nobles stomp. You always… glided."

Cassian studied him.

Same voice. Same composure.

The same man who had wiped his blood from marble floors after "disciplinary lessons" and served tea afterward without blinking.

"You watched them break me," Cassian said.

"I obeyed your father."

"You served him," Cassian snapped. "That's not the same."

Gregor bowed his head. "It is not. But it was what I was taught."

Cassian's fingers curled at his side.

"You were there the night of the arrest."

"Yes."

"And you said nothing."

Gregor looked up, eyes sad.

"There was nothing I could say that would have been heard."

Cassian stepped closer.

"No. But you could have said it anyway."

Silence.

"You let them drag me in chains," he said, voice shaking now. "You ironed Thorne's cuffs the next morning. You poured Elira's tea. You let them call me traitor while you dusted the books I wrote."

Gregor didn't defend himself.

"I made you weapons," Cassian said. "Blueprints. Devices. I trusted you more than I trusted my own father."

"You were a boy," Gregor said quietly. "And I was a man too old to do anything but survive."

Cassian's jaw clenched.

"That's your excuse?"

"No," Gregor said. "That's my truth."

Another silence. Deeper.

Cassian reached into his coat.

Pulled out something small.

Not a weapon.

A key.

Old brass, etched with the crest of Vale.

Gregor's eyes widened.

"The lower vault," he whispered.

Cassian nodded. "I know it was you who left this in my workshop. Just before I was arrested."

Gregor said nothing.

"Why?" Cassian asked.

The old man's voice cracked.

"Because… I believed in the boy more than the house. I just didn't have the spine to say it aloud."

Cassian stared at him.

Then he placed the key in Gregor's hand.

"I'm not here to punish you," he said. "I'm here to free you."

Gregor looked up, confused.

"You're retired now," Cassian said. "The manor doesn't need you. The house is dying. The Chain will fall."

He leaned in.

"But you still have one thing I want."

Gregor stiffened. "What?"

Cassian's eyes glinted.

"Your memory."

An hour later, in a sealed drawing room lit by a single spell lamp, Gregor spoke.

Every meeting he'd overheard.

Every lie he'd watched the Duke sign.

Every order given to make Cassian disappear quietly.

Cassian listened. Didn't interrupt. Only nodded. Once.

When it was done, Gregor sat back, hands shaking.

"I've told you everything."

Cassian stood.

"You've finally done what you should've done years ago."

Gregor nodded. "Am I forgiven?"

Cassian didn't answer right away.

He just stood there, staring at the old man with eyes that had seen too much fire. He could hear the manor ticking faintly pipes shifting behind the walls, the ghost-sound of a house still pretending it was full.

Then he moved.

Not toward the door.

He pulled out a chair and sat down across from Gregor, the rift behind him still softly humming.

"You know," Cassian said, voice low, "the first time I ever broke the rules in this house, I was nine. I rewired the hearth automaton to walk in circles. It started spinning mid-banquet and spilled wine on some diplomat's lap."

He smiled faintly. "Father had the staff whipped. You came into my room that night and left a compress on my desk. Didn't say a word. Didn't look me in the eye. Just… left it."

Gregor swallowed.

Cassian's tone sharpened.

"And when Thorne started his little experiments—when he bled that servant boy just to test a glyph. I told you. Remember?"

Gregor flinched.

"I told you, and you just… tightened your gloves and said, 'Some blood makes the engine run.'"

Cassian leaned forward.

"I hated you for that."

A beat.

"I still do. Some days."

Gregor didn't speak.

"But," Cassian continued, softer now, "I also remember the winter I came down with that lung fever. Thorne was off in the north, Father was too busy signing treaties. It was you who sat by my bed. You who read me those terrible adventure novels in that ridiculous voice."

A ghost of a smile crossed his lips.

"You stayed up three nights in a row."

Gregor's eyes misted.

"I remembered all of it," Cassian said. "The good and the cruel. The silences. The small mercies. You were never kind, not in the way I wanted. But you were present. And I know what kind of courage it takes to survive in a house like this, where loyalty is expected, and love is taxed."

He stood slowly.

"You were part of the machine that broke me. But not its engineer."

He looked down at Gregor. This tired old man in pressed gloves who had once held his childhood between callused fingers.

And he said, with no ceremony:

"Yes."

Gregor blinked.

"You're forgiven."

Cassian turned toward the rift, its edge folding wider.

"But don't waste it," he said over his shoulder. "You've got years left. Use them. Tell the truth. Speak names. Clean what you can."

Gregor's voice cracked. "And you?"

Cassian paused at the threshold.

"I'm not here to clean," he said. "I'm here to burn."

And with that, he stepped into the light and vanished.