Light filtered through the heavy blue curtains, cutting the room into pale bands. A discreet ticking came from a pendulum clock set into the wall, like a mechanical heart that had started beating just to fill the silence.
On the canopy bed, the child opened his eyes.
He stayed still for a long moment, pupils fixed on the ceiling moldings. There was nothing to recognize. No memory rising up, no image, not even a clear enough emotion to put a name to. Just that confused sensation: being here, without knowing from where.
He slowly sat up. The mattress dipped, and he immediately placed a hand on it, surprised by its softness.
"…It's soft," he murmured, as if he had just discovered an unknown species.
The door opened a crack, just enough to let a worried face peek through. A young valet, a towel over his shoulder, met the child's gaze, turned pale, and immediately spun around.
As he shut the door in a hurried gesture, he discreetly brought two fingers to his lips—a brief symbol of protection one uses when something makes you uneasy.
"He's awake!" he shouted into the corridor.
The child blinked, not sure whether that was good news.
A few moments later, heavy, controlled footsteps echoed on the floorboards. The door opened properly, letting Calen Ardris in.
The captain of the guard's armor had been cleaned, but some of the fresh scratches still refused to disappear completely. His face was closed, save for his eyes: there, one could sense fatigue, vigilance, and a trace of relief he would rather have hidden.
"You're awake," he said in a measured voice.
The child looked at him. His face had the too-smooth look of those who have nothing to tell—neither to others nor to themselves.
Calen took a few steps in, stopping at a reasonable distance from the bed.
"Do you remember anything?" he asked gently. "Where you lived? The people with you? Your name?"
He paused briefly before the last word, as if giving it more chance to surface.
The child thought. Or rather, he tried to. His gaze drifted toward the window, to a patch of gray sky streaked with smoke from a tall city chimney. Nothing came.
He shook his head.
Calen felt his jaw tighten.
"Nothing at all?"
Another shake of the head, slower this time.
"Very well," the captain said, more to himself than to him. "We'll have time to come back to it. You're in Elyndor's palace. You're safe here. That's all that matters for now."
Calen didn't want to risk pushing the newcomer too hard and triggering a catastrophe no one could have foreseen.
Just as he was about to ask another question, an impatient voice rose from the hallway:
"Oh, let me in already!"
The door flew open, nearly hitting a guard. Eleanor poked her head through, then the rest of her small self, like a wave that doesn't ask permission.
She stopped dead when she saw the child.
Her cream day-dress, edged with a discreet gold trim, was already wrinkled. A strand of hair had escaped her ribbon. Her eyes, however, were perfectly clear, fueled by unfiltered curiosity.
"Is that him?" she asked Calen, without taking her eyes off the boy.
Her memories of that day were still hazy. The young princess only remembered being saved by a boy. Even the return journey felt uncertain. She had not seen him again since that day, as the queen still didn't know whether he might prove dangerous.
"Yes, Your Highness," Calen replied. "The child we found near you."
She walked up, cautiously but without the slightest hint of fear, as one might size up a strange animal one has not yet decided will be a toy or a secret.
Calen's muscles tensed; he was ready to react at the slightest problem.
She wrinkled her nose.
"Hello… uh…"
She turned back to Calen.
"What's his name?"
The captain sighed.
"He doesn't remember," he said. "Not yet."
Eleanor immediately redirected her attention to the child.
"So… what's your name?" she asked, very serious and utterly tactless.
He stared at her.
Something shifted inside him. Not a memory, not an image—just a word, stuck somewhere in his throat like a splinter or a reflex.
"Na… ye…" he finally managed to say.
The sound felt foreign to him. He blinked, surprised by his own voice.
"Naye," Eleanor repeated. "That's pretty."
She smiled, satisfied with the answer as if she had just completed a complicated ritual.
"Do you know where that name comes from?" she asked at once.
Once more, the child searched inside himself.
Nothing.
"No," he simply said.
"That's all right," she concluded. "Your name is Naye now. And you're in Elyndor. That's the capital. You're in the palace. That's my home."
She made a vague gesture around them to indicate the room, the walls, the ceilings, the entire city.
"I'm Eleanor," she added. "The princess."
Naye tilted his head, as if the word still contained nothing.
"Is that… important?" he asked.
Calen coughed.
"Yes," Eleanor replied with absolute conviction. "But you don't need to understand right away."
She clambered unceremoniously onto the edge of the bed, sat beside him, and propped her elbows on her knees.
"Do you want to see the garden?"
"Your Highness…" Calen began.
"He's not going to stay locked up in here, is he?" she protested. "He looks even more lost than the new servants."
Naye looked at the captain, then at Eleanor.
"Is that… outside?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "There are trees. And fish. And the best pastries."
He thought for a moment, as if the idea of "outside" required complicated calculations.
"All right," he said.
Calen closed his eyes briefly.
"Very well. A short walk," he conceded. "Within the palace grounds only. And I stay with you."
"You're always with us anyway," Eleanor replied, as if stating a law of nature.
Calen chose not to comment.
He took advantage of the walk to briefly explain the conditions in which the boy had been found. He hoped it might bring back a few memories or reveal something new, but nothing conclusive came of it.
The inner gardens of the palace sprawled in successive terraces, linked by stone stairways and wrought-iron railings. Gas lamps fed by discreet underground pipes waited for night to bring them to life.
For Naye, it was an entire world.
He stopped at the very first flowerbed, fascinated by simple flowers.
"You don't eat those," Eleanor said when she saw him squint at a rosebud.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because they're for looking at. And for smelling."
He bent down and inhaled. His eyebrows rose.
"It stings the nose."
"That's the point," she explained, giggling.
He placed his hand on the trunk of a tree, tapped the bark, then looked up, as if checking whether the sky was heavier above this mass of leaves. He then walked on the gravel, stopped, scooped up a handful, and let it trickle through his fingers.
"What are you doing?" Eleanor asked.
"…I want to know how it slips," he answered.
She stared at him, puzzled, then burst out laughing.
Calen, a few steps behind them, stayed silent. He had never seen anyone look at the garden like that. Most noble children treated it as a playground. Naye, on the other hand, seemed to treat every pebble as if it were a new phenomenon.
They crossed paths with an old turtle in a basin. Naye leaned over the water, tilting his head.
"Why does it have a house on its back?" he asked.
"Because the gods decided she'd be like that," Eleanor answered without missing a beat.
"The gods?" he repeated.
"Yes. The people up there. Mother says they watch us sometimes. And they like offerings. And songs. And that you shouldn't say too many silly things in front of their statues."
She pointed into the distance, toward the white towers of a great temple rising beyond the rooftops and the city walls. One could see the golden shimmer of its dome even in broad daylight.
"That's the Grand Temple of Solarys," she explained. "The sun god. He's got a Pope, you know. Well, a High Pontiff, but it's the same thing."
Naye followed the line of her finger.
"Have you seen him?" he asked.
"Once," she said, proud. "He had white clothes and a very big hat."
Calen finally stepped in.
"The gods," he explained, "are… let's say, a complicated matter. We'll talk about them later."
Naye looked at him.
"Where do they live?" he asked.
"Not here," Calen replied. "And that's just fine."
Later that morning, Eleanor led them toward the training yard.
The clatter of steel, the short barks of orders, and the shouts gave the place a raw energy. Soldiers practiced with blunted swords, others with halberds or staves. A stocky, broad-chested weapons master with a graying mustache strode between them, correcting a stance here, a guard there.
Among the soldiers who briefly paused to watch the boy, some traded discreet glances. Not hostile—but curious, heavy, cautious. The way one looks at something without knowing whether to welcome it or mistrust it.
"Captain," the master of arms greeted him upon seeing Calen. "Good to see you on your feet again—that's a good sign."
"I've seen worse," Calen replied. "Carry on."
Eleanor stepped forward, delighted. She loved watching the guards train. She liked to imagine the fantastic adventures they must live outside the city. But since the war, everything had been different.
She also had fencing lessons with one of her tutors, but she felt he never really tried to put her in difficulty.
"Master Garen, this is Naye," she said, pointing at the child. "He doesn't remember anything. Can you show him a sword?"
The young boys she knew loved to duel to see who was the strongest. She imagined Naye must be a little like that.
The weapons master raised an eyebrow, then looked the boy over.
"Nothing at all?" he asked.
"Nothing," Calen confirmed.
Garen shrugged.
"We'll see about that."
He grabbed a wooden practice sword—the kind used by youngsters learning the basics—and held it out to Naye.
The boy took it by the middle at first, like a stick. Garen suppressed a smile. He had never seen a kid who didn't even seem to know the basic idea of a sword.
"No, like this."
He repositioned Naye's hands on the hilt. The boy let him do it, docile, but it was obvious the stance meant nothing to him.
"How do you like it?" Eleanor asked.
"Heavy," Naye said. "But not in the same way as the bed."
Garen stifled a laugh.
"That's already an analysis," he remarked. "Look, Your Highness."
He took position facing the boy, adopting an exaggeratedly simple guard.
"I'm going to move toward you slowly. You just have to stand still."
He advanced.
Naye watched him come, eyebrows slightly drawn together, as if trying to read something that wasn't written.
The moment the wooden blade came into range, his body moved.
It was nothing spectacular. He simply slid one foot back, turned his shoulders just a little, and let the weapon pass in front of him. The movement was fluid, precise, perfectly natural.
Garen froze.
"Well now…" he breathed. "And we're sure you don't remember anything, huh?"
Naye looked at him, genuinely lost.
"I don't know how I did that," he said. "It just happened."
He tried to reproduce the motion. This time, he almost stumbled and nearly hit himself with his own practice sword. Eleanor burst out laughing.
Calen did not.
He had seen such movement before. In veterans. Duelists. People who had survived enough fights that their bodies reacted before their minds.
But never in a child who had been holding the weapon like a toy seconds earlier.
Everything about this boy was strange, and it would be best not to force that strangeness to show too openly.