In the Grand Druid's private garden, the wind carried the scent of pine and the soft whisper of leaves dancing in the breeze.
The forested valley stretched endlessly, bathed in the golden light of a setting sun. Treetops swayed like an emerald sea, spotted with shadows where lazy clouds passed. The serenity of the landscape stood in stark contrast to the tension hanging between the two figures facing each other.
Ambrosius Vortigern, wrapped in a linen robe embroidered with ancient symbols, stood tall, hands clasped behind his back. His long white beard fluttered gently in the wind, and his eyes, deep wells of wisdom and heavy memories, were locked on the young woman before him.
Cassandre Délviane, arms crossed and lips tight, met his gaze with a hard stare. Her dark hair, tied in haste, had loose strands the breeze toyed with. Her boots tapped nervously against the gravel path beneath her, betraying the tension coiled within her.
"If this Gaël truly inherited the blade of the fallen brother at Kernéval," Ambrosius insisted, "then we must find him. No matter what it takes."
His voice, deep and solemn, echoed like a drumbeat across the vast valley.
Cassandre hugged her arms tighter to herself.
"But if a professor from the Golden Tree shows up in front of Brann…" She paused, jaw clenched. "He'll slice them into ribbons."
The Grand Druid's lips curved, barely.
"Not necessarily," he murmured, eyes glinting with calculation. "Not if it's you."
Cassandre's eyebrows shot up so fast they nearly vanished beneath her bangs.
"Me?" she choked. "No. No, Exalted One. You can't ask that of me!"
Ambrosius didn't flinch. His stance was like an ancient oak, rooted, immovable.
"He wouldn't go that far with you. He wouldn't dare."
Cassandre took a step back, eyes blazing.
"I could never, this isn't a mission for me!"
Ambrosius inhaled slowly, as if drawing from a reservoir of patience centuries deep.
"You're the best suited," he said, his tone gentler, but no less firm. "Not because you're strong. You are. But because no one knows him better than you. You'll know how to reach him."
Cassandre turned her head away, eyes suddenly moist for reasons she couldn't name. She hadn't cried since... since Briseterre. And she had no intention of starting now.
"You would send me after him," she said hoarsely, "after swearing you'd burn him alive if he ever crossed your path again!"
A silence fell, sharp as a blade's edge.
Ambrosius turned his gaze to the valley for a moment, his features hardening beneath the weight of memory. His eyes seemed to pierce through time, revisiting ghosts only he could still see. Then he sighed, a deep, ancient, weary breath.
"I said it. And I meant it," he murmured. "But that was years ago."
Another breath, longer this time. "It won't be me," he added quietly. "I won't be the one to cross his path again."
Cassandre felt a storm rise within her, anger, confusion, and that old, half-healed wound beginning to boil in her chest. A maelstrom barely contained, straining for release.
"Have you really forgotten everything, just because time passed?" she asked, voice tight with barely contained emotion.
Ambrosius closed his eyes. One heartbeat. Two. Then, slowly, gravely, as if the words carved their way through decades of pride and regret:
"Cassandre... my daughter."
She flinched.
And for a moment, the world seemed to stop spinning.
"I have forgotten nothing."
His eyelids lifted, revealing the deep sorrow of a man who had lived too long… and lost too much.
"But finding the boy is more important. The swordbrothers are a dwindling flame in the night. And Brann..." His gaze darkened. "Brann is no longer a viable path. He's lost. Burnt out. Gaël must return to the Academy. To his path."
Cassandre turned away, struggling with the words she wanted, needed, to say. Her whole being screamed against this decision. And yet... reason and duty, those ever-tightening chains she had always worn, pulled at her.
"I need to think it over," she said at last, though her tone betrayed her reluctance.
Ambrosius, however, shook his head slowly.
"There's nothing left to think about."
The sentence cracked through the air like a verdict. A sentence passed.
But before she could lash back with a sharp retort, he continued, calmer now, almost with a conspiratorial air:
"And you won't go alone."
She raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"Oh? And with whom, exactly?" she asked, voice dry, bracing herself for the worst.
"Take Kaëlan," he replied without hesitation.
"That boy?" she said incredulously. "The one who recites instructors' lessons backward when he's nervous?"
A faint smile tugged at the Druid's lips.
"He knows Gaël well. They've been inseparable since Kernéval. He might find the right words to bring him back. And... he's braver than he lets on."
A sigh escaped Cassandre.
"Great. A diplomatic mission with a teenager who panics at the sound of creaking chalkboards…"
But before she could finish the thought, a clear, mischievous voice rang out, cheerful and bright:
"Me too!"
Cassandre froze.
Her sharp gaze immediately swept the leafy branches of a tall oak at the edge of the garden.
And there, perched on a thick branch, legs dangling and swinging like an idle child defying the sky, sat a figure. Dark locks framed her smiling face, and her eyes, alight with playful mischief, threw a silent challenge at any form of authority.
Ambrosius didn't even blink. His laugh was a quiet sigh, amused, almost as if he had foreseen this moment before it happened.
"Very well," he said to the one he never refused. "You'll watch over your big sister… make sure she doesn't do anything foolish."
"Oh, thanks, Grandpa!" the girl replied theatrically, as if she'd just received a standing ovation.
Cassandre closed her eyes, resisting the urge to groan aloud. One hand rose slowly to her forehead, a silent plea to whatever cosmic forces might be listening.
"By the stars…" she muttered through clenched teeth, "this just keeps getting worse."
"Don't worry, big sister," called the voice from above, falsely reassuring, its owner now stroking the fur of a black-furred ermine with a glint of mischief in its eye.
"I'm very good at impossible missions. Even better at making them fun."
Cassandre cracked one eye open and muttered, flat as stone:
"Great. We're all going to die."
_ _ _
Once his daughters had left, Ambrosius remained still, his gaze lost in the rolling distance. The light of the setting sun slowly slid across his face, deepening the furrows of age and casting a warm glow over the ancient embroidery of his robe.
The wind rose from the pines in long, fragrant waves, carrying the murmurs of the earth and the memories of the sky. It brushed against the druid's white beard, played in the folds of his linen like a child seeking the voice of an ancestor.
Ambrosius seemed to listen, not to the wind itself, but to the song of the world. The kind only the old still hear.
Then, the silence was broken by the soft rustle of wings.
A white raven, sacred bird of the High Cities, solar messenger of Solvaris, landed soundlessly on the carved railing of the garden.
Its feathers, ivory-pure, glowed faintly like a shard of sanctified Moonlight. Clutched in its talons was a sealed scroll, marked with the Solar Seal, pulsing with a golden light, almost alive.
Ambrosius stepped forward and took the parchment, breaking the seal with a steady hand.
His eyes swept across the lines written in gold-tinged ink, lines that seemed to smolder on the page. As he read, his brow furrowed. His face grew colder, more unreadable.
"A summons…" he murmured, voice so low it barely stirred the air, as if afraid the wind itself might overhear.
"An extraordinary council."
His fingers slowly curled around the parchment. The soft crackle of the paper echoed like a verdict.
He didn't read it again. He didn't need to.
"Oblivgrad…" he breathed.
He lifted his head. In the distance, mist danced along the ridgelines, shifting and swaying like the flanks of a sleeping dragon.
"The emergence of a new Brother…" he said under his breath, "...and now, a city-state that bars the Order's path rises into the sky."
A sigh.
"Strange times…"
The wind whistled through the trees, as if in answer. But the old druid had already drifted far away, into thoughts where no wind could follow.