Chapter 65 – The Missing Pillar
Two years.
That was how long it had been.
Two years since the youngest of the Empire's Ten Pillars had last stood in the Grand Hall.
Two years since crimson eyes had cut through ceremony like a sword unsheathed.
Two years since the Empire's strongest weapon had spoken a single word within its walls.
And in those two years—
He had sent no message.
He had asked for no aid.
He had made no return.
At first, they called it training. A period of seclusion. A retreat into dangerous lands for the sake of power.
But there was no record of where he had gone.
Not even the Grand Duke, his father, had spoken.
Not once.
And that silence—that silence frightened them more than war ever had.
Because they remembered.
They remembered the war on the Western Front. How a boy of sixteen had ended it alone.
They remembered the way generals had bowed not to his name, but to his presence.
They remembered the look in the Emperor's eyes when Sirius von Ross refused to kneel.
And they remembered what followed.
The way the battlefield had changed.
The way the Pillars had changed.
The way the Empire had not—because they were waiting.
Waiting for him to return.
But now…
The waiting had turned to dread.
The Emperor sat alone in the Chamber of Flame.
Once, it had been a war room.
Now, it was something else.
No maps. No advisors. Only one chair—and a single report, bound in red wax, placed neatly before him.
He did not touch it.
He did not need to.
The reports had not changed.
No sightings.
No messages.
No trace.
But something else had.
The sky.
The western storms no longer followed the calendar.
Animals had begun migrating early, or not at all.
And the great rivers had started to run backwards for exactly twelve seconds every seventh night.
Not enough to flood.
But enough to warn.
And at the center of it—
Nothing.
A void.
A silence.
Where Sirius von Ross should have been.
In the Council of Pillars, voices began to rise.
"We should send a retrieval squad."
"He left his post. This is dereliction of duty."
"He may no longer be loyal."
But none of them dared speak too loudly.
Because no one wanted to say what they truly feared:
If Sirius von Ross had turned against the Empire… there would be no Empire left.
The Grand Duke said nothing. He had not attended the last five meetings. Nor had he sent a representative.
His absence, too, had become its own message.
And far, far beneath the capital—beneath its palaces and monuments, beneath even the catacombs—there was a sealed vault.
No name. No sigil.
No key.
But the door had begun to hum.
Not loud.
Not enough to wake the dead.
Just enough to remind the living.
That Sirius was not gone.
Only waiting.
And when he returned—
He would not be the same boy who left.