The Crimson Veil

The cavern still remembered him. It remembered the boy who had come down these tunnels as a stolen infant, wrapped in a moon elf shroud he was never meant to unfold. It remembered the woman who was not his mother, sharpening his blades at dawn, whispering that a weapon is only ever loved by the hand that swings it. It remembered every lesson that had been called a mercy while it broke him. He remembered too. That was the trouble. The Veil was supposed to be finished. He had watched a great many things end in a chamber of glass and blood, and he had walked out of that chamber believing the fortress in the south was quiet. He had been told, kindly and at length, that when a family bleeds out on its own throne, the throne goes cold.