The Last Palace did not echo.
Not in the way mortal halls echo with footsteps or laughter. Its corridors drank sound the way deep wells drink light — absorbed, held, returned only when the Palace itself permitted it. Even the wind that drifted through open archways moved in perfect quiet, as though the air had long ago been taught to obey.
Kaelith Thaloryn stood alone in one of the sealed antechambers on the thirty-seventh level. The walls here were not stone but solidified starlight veined with silver cold to the touch, yet alive in the slow way mountains are alive. He was the youngest of the twelve heirs, though "young" meant little when one had already walked seven hundred and twenty years. Realm 11 – Dominion Sovereign, unstable. The instability was not a flaw; it was a fracture — a place where something older than the Ladder tried to look through.
He had come here because the silence was wrong.
Most people heard silence as absence. Kaelith heard it speak.
Tonight it had teeth.
He pressed a palm to the wall. The starlight warmed briefly under his skin, then cooled sharply — a warning from the Palace itself. The structure was aware in the way ancient forests are aware: patient, watchful, never surprised.
Kaelith closed his eyes.
The silence showed him fragments:
A frontier outpost in the Ironcrag Range. A boy no older than sixteen, Ember Vein realm, blood leaking from his ears. A name spoken in rage and terror: Lucian Thaloryn. A violet-black tear in the sky, edges bleeding colors that did not belong to this world. A whisper — layered, many-voiced, old and hungry: the Ladder cracks… your children will forget…
The fragments dissolved.
Kaelith opened his eyes.
His hand remained on the wall. The starlight had dimmed to a sullen glow.
"Again," he whispered.
This was the third time in as many months that the silence had carried something foreign. Not qi native to Aetherion. Not heavenly tribulation. Something from outside — from places the Palace had once sealed shut long ago.
He turned and walked the long corridor toward the central spire. His footsteps made no sound. The Palace preferred it that way.
At the corridor's end a single arch opened into the Hall of Quiet Decrees — one of the smaller audience chambers, used only when the family gathered without formality. Tonight it held only one figure.
Valeria Thaloryn stood at the far window, hands clasped behind her back, gazing down at the embedded sword that pierced the mountain peak below.
The Mandate.
Even from this height the blade was immense — hilt rising like a crown of adamant, runes pulsing with slow, deliberate light. It had stood unmoved for ten thousand years, a stake driven through the heart of the world to anchor the Ladder. Most of Aetherion saw only a distant gleam on the horizon, if they saw anything at all. To the Thaloryn family it was simply there, like the sun or the Palace itself.
Valeria did not turn when Kaelith entered.
"You felt it," she said. Not a question.
"Yes, Mother."
She exhaled once — the smallest sound in the vast hall.
"The boy spoke the name."
Kaelith nodded. "With hatred. And fear."
Valeria finally faced him. Realm 13 – Celestial Regent. Her beauty was severe, regal, untouched by centuries. Black hair bound in a single braid that reached her waist, eyes the color of polished obsidian. When she looked at her children, even the eldest felt measured against an impossible standard.
"The Palace recorded it," she said. "A tremor in the eastern ley lines. Minor qi deviation across three provinces. Nothing the sects will notice yet. But the tear… that is new."
Kaelith hesitated. "It carried voices. Not one. Many. And colors I have never seen in qi."
Valeria's gaze sharpened. "Describe them."
"Violet threaded with black. Like ink spilled into void. It did not feel like chaos qi from the old era. It felt… deliberate. As though something was testing the Ladder, testing its seams."
She was silent for a long moment.
Then: "Your father heard."
Kaelith's breath caught. Of course he had. The name was spoken. The thread pulled.
"Has he… moved?"
"Not yet." Valeria's voice was calm, but there was weight behind it. "He is listening. That is enough for now."
Kaelith looked toward the window. The Mandate's runes pulsed once — slow, deliberate, like a heartbeat acknowledging the disturbance.
"Mother… the silence is speaking more often. Not just tonight. Three times this season. Each time the same flavor. Something outside is pressing."
Valeria stepped closer. She placed a hand on his shoulder — light, but the touch carried the full authority of a Celestial Regent.
"You are the only one who hears it this way," she said quietly. "The others feel tremors, pressure, unease. You hear words. That is why you must be careful."
Kaelith met her eyes. "I am not afraid of what I hear."
"You should be." Her voice softened, almost imperceptibly. "Not of the words. Of what might answer back."
She released him and turned toward the archway leading deeper into the Palace.
"Come. The others will gather soon. Aurelian is already en route from the northern fleets. Seraphine has sealed the diplomatic relays. We will not wait for the next whisper."
Kaelith followed her into the corridor.
Behind them, the Hall of Quiet Decrees fell silent once more.
But the silence was no longer empty.
Far below, in the deepest throne chamber where no heir had ever been permitted to enter alone, a man sat motionless on a seat carved from the same white-gold adamant as the Mandate.
Lucian Thaloryn.
Eternal Throne.
He had not spoken in decades. He had not needed to.
The name had been spoken.
A single finger lifted — not in anger, not in haste.
The Mandate responded.
Its runes brightened for the briefest instant.
Then dimmed again.
But the light lingered in the blade's edge a fraction longer than before.
Somewhere in the outer dark, beyond the sealed boundaries of Aetherion's domain, something ancient paused.
It felt the gaze.
And for the first time in ten thousand years, it remembered fear.