The gates of Eryndor closed behind them with a whisper that did not fit their weight.
It was the sound of something ancient exhaling.
Lucien turned in his saddle and watched the heavy doors seal against the mist.
For a moment, the world outside — the endless grasslands and open air — seemed more real than the city now swallowing them. Then the iron bolts slid home, and the echo vanished into the fog like a breath drawn and never returned
He faced forward again.
The capital unfolded before him in slow, deliberate layers.
Bridges arched over dark canals. Towers rose like the ribs of a sleeping giant. The water below them gleamed black as obsidian, catching the lanterns' glow in fractured ribbons.
The air here had a taste.
Old stone.
Metal.
And something faintly electric — like a storm waiting for permission to strike.
The people of Eryndor moved like water themselves — silent, fluid, practiced. Every glance was measured, every gesture polished by habit and expectation. Lucien felt their eyes as he passed, not openly, but in the way ripples form when something stirs beneath the surface.
It was not curiosity.
It was recognition — or perhaps memory.
He didn't like it.
The deeper they rode, the narrower the streets became. The outer bridges gave way to elevated causeways, and the hum of the city softened into something more muted — the hush of restrained power.
His horse's hooves struck the cobblestones in rhythm with the pulse behind his ribs.
He tried to focus on that sound. The steady, familiar rhythm.
But beneath it, he could hear another pattern.
A slower beat. A hidden current.
It moved under the streets, under the walls — a subterranean flow that hummed faintly against the back of his teeth.
Lucien exhaled and tried to ignore it.
His father, Adrast, rode ahead, posture perfect, expression unreadable beneath the faint silver sheen of his cloak. The sigil of House Seravain — a river splitting a flame — gleamed on his shoulder.
Lucien followed without speaking.
He didn't need to ask why they'd been summoned. No one summoned the Seravain unless the balance was shifting again — and in Eryndor, balance was only ever another word for war.
They crossed a long bridge lined with statues. Each one depicted a knight with their sword plunged into stone, heads bowed in eternal penitence. Moss crawled up their arms like veins, and the rain had softened their faces into something almost human.
As Lucien passed the last statue, he glanced down at the water below.
It was dark, too dark. The surface reflected nothing — not the sky, not the towers, not even his own face.
He frowned.
Then, for the briefest instant, the reflection changed.
He saw the same city, the same towers — but broken, drowned beneath waves that moved without wind.
The current beneath his skin jolted, sharp and cold.
He blinked.
The image was gone.
Only water now.
Still, patient, black.
His horse shifted uneasily. The pendant at his throat pulsed once — faintly, like a heartbeat trying to sync with something older.
They rode in silence for some time.
Eryndor was not a place that invited conversation.
Every building here seemed built with intention — every stone a line in a story no one living could still read. The canals were too straight, the roads too symmetrical. It was a city designed for precision, not life.
Lucien found that the longer he looked, the harder it was to tell where the city ended and where it began to consume itself.
He remembered a story his tutor once told him — that Eryndor had been built over an ancient river that once connected the entire continent. That the water still ran beneath the foundations, hidden but restless.
Rivers remember, she had said.
And when they remember enough, they move again.
He hadn't understood it then.
Now, with every echoing hoofstep, he thought he did.
When they reached the palace gates, Lucien felt the air shift.
The scent of water was gone. In its place came the sharp, clean emptiness of stone that had forgotten what it was built to protect.
The guards saluted, lowering halberds etched with glowing sigils. They didn't speak.
Adrast inclined his head in silent acknowledgment.
Inside, the palace was all mirrors and marble. The floors were polished to a near-perfect reflection. Lucien could see himself — or something that resembled himself — with every step.
Sometimes the reflection matched his movement.
Sometimes it didn't.
Once, as they turned a corner, his reflection lingered half a second longer before following.
His pulse stumbled.
He looked to his father, but Adrast's gaze was fixed ahead, unreadable as ever.
The central hall was vast — circular, domed in glass. The light here was strange. Not sunlight, not torchlight, but a filtered radiance, thin as breath.
At its center was a fountain — or what had once been one. The water no longer rose or fell. It simply folded inward, collapsing into itself in an endless, silent motion.
Lucien felt it before he understood it: the distortion in the Flow.
The river here wasn't still. It was trapped — turned upon itself, devouring its own rhythm.
He felt a phantom ache in his chest.
Adrast spoke without looking at him. "The Flow of Eryndor was redirected generations ago. The court feared its strength. So they bent it inward, caged it beneath stone and word."
Lucien's voice was quiet. "You mean they broke it."
His father didn't reply.
But silence, in House Seravain, often said more than words.
As they climbed the marble stair toward the audience chamber, Lucien ran his fingers over the walls. Carved runes covered every surface — old Flow-script, its lines curved and fluid, overlaid by rigid geometric sigils of the newer court mages.
Two languages at war.
One breathing, one binding.
He could almost feel the tension between them. The old marks pulsed faintly beneath his fingertips, struggling to remember what it meant to move.
He drew his hand back. The sensation lingered — a faint hum under the skin.
When the doors opened, light spilled through in narrow streams.
The throne room was a place of ceremony and silence. Courtiers stood in clusters like statues, every movement measured, every whisper deliberate.
At the far end, beneath banners of gold and crimson, stood Lord Thalion Drayvane — the Crimson Flame himself.
His armor gleamed dark red, etched with flame sigils that pulsed faintly as though alive. When he smiled, it was like light catching on broken glass.
"Lord Adrast," he greeted smoothly. "And his son, the quiet one. The river's heir."
Lucien bowed. "Lord Drayvane."
"Tell me," Thalion said, voice low and teasing, "does the river still whisper its secrets to you Seravain heirs? Or has it grown as silent as your father?"
Lucien's eyes lifted.
A flicker of something crossed his face — not anger, not pride, but a sharp, passing chill.
"I suppose it depends," he said softly. "On who's listening."
A faint ripple passed through the hall — amusement, discomfort, curiosity.
Thalion's grin faltered for the briefest moment before returning wider.
"Ah," he said, tone honeyed. "A tongue as silver as his hair. Dangerous, that. Rivers can carve mountains when they choose."
Adrast's silence was a blade. His expression didn't change, but Lucien could feel the current beneath it — the kind of pressure that bent stone.
Thalion continued to speak, his words circling like predators, but Lucien barely heard him.
The hum beneath the floor was louder now.
It pressed against his ribs, a slow, rhythmic pull — almost a heartbeat, but not his own.
The pendant at his throat began to pulse again, faintly glowing through his shirt.
He tried to keep his face composed. Tried not to flinch as the world shifted.
For a heartbeat, the throne room dissolved into reflection. The marble became black glass. Every noble face twisted — not in malice, but in memory. Their reflections beneath the floor looked older, sadder, wrong.
He blinked, and the illusion vanished.
Only Eryndor remained.
He exhaled quietly, forcing his hands to still.
No one else had noticed.
When the audience ended, Adrast turned to him. "Stay close. Do not wander."
Lucien nodded — and then, as soon as his father was pulled into another discussion, he slipped away.
He needed to breathe.
He followed the faint sound of running water through a narrow side corridor. The air grew cooler, cleaner. The sound led him to a small garden hidden between two marble wings of the palace.
It was quiet there — unnaturally so. The air carried the faint scent of rain that never came.
A stream wound through the stones, clear and shallow. Moonlight spilled over it in soft ribbons.
Lucien crouched beside it. The water was cold against his fingers.
Beneath the surface, something stirred.
Not a fish. Not a reflection.
A current. Dark, sinuous, alive.
It brushed against his hand, leaving behind a shimmer of light that sank into his skin.
For a moment, he could hear it — not with his ears, but somewhere deeper.
A murmur.
A voice without words.
Recognition.
He froze. The world felt suddenly thinner, as though he'd stepped onto ice and could hear the water moving just below.
He drew his hand back sharply. Droplets fell onto the stones, catching the moonlight before fading into nothing.
Lucien stared at his reflection.
His eyes — usually pale silver — looked darker now.
Deeper. Like the color of deep water before dawn.
He wasn't sure if it was just the light.
A sound broke the silence — footsteps, soft and deliberate.
Lucien stood, instinctively straightening his posture.
A woman stepped from the shadow of an archway. She was tall, wrapped in gray silk that moved like smoke around her. Her face was half-veiled, her presence strangely calm, but her gaze carried a weight that made the air seem thinner.
"Lord Seravain," she said, voice low, precise. "The water seems to remember you."
Lucien's pulse stumbled. "Do I know you?"
"Not yet," she said, and tilted her head slightly. "But the river does."
He frowned. "You speak in riddles."
"Riddles are all that remain when truth is buried." Her eyes flicked to the stream. "You hear it, don't you? The one beneath the stone?"
He hesitated. "…The Flow?"
Her veil shifted as though she smiled. "No. Not the Flow they taught you to serve. The Flow that remembers. The one this city silenced long ago."
She turned then, steps soundless on the marble path. "When it calls again, do not answer with silence."
Lucien opened his mouth to speak, but she was already gone — vanished into the same still air she'd emerged from.
Only the garden remained.
Only the stream.
And the whisper of water against stone, repeating a name he didn't know he had.
He stood there for a long time, listening to the sound fade.
Then, quietly, he reached for his pendant.
It was warm — warmer than before.
The faint blue light pulsed once, twice, and then went still.
He stared at the reflection of the palace in the stream. The towers shimmered, their edges blurred by motion that should not exist.
For a heartbeat, he saw it again — the drowned city, the broken bridges, the current moving beneath all things.
He felt something stir inside him — not fear, not yet.
Something older.
Something that remembered.
He whispered the words his father had drilled into him since childhood — the Seravain creed:
"Where water meets fire, there stands the river.
Where silence falls, we listen still."
The words steadied him. But deep inside, a quiet truth moved like a ripple through still water.
The river was not listening.
It was waiting.
And this city — this kingdom of stone and silence — was sitting on top of its heartbeat.