CHAPTER 7 — “Drowned Honor” #5
He’s eager, practically vibrating with energy, and I spend two hours teaching him things I probably shouldn’t. Basic stances. How to read an opponent. The fundamental principle of not dying that I’ve been refining through personal experience.
“You’re holding back,” he says at one point, frustration bleeding through.
“I’m keeping you alive. There’s a difference.”
“How am I supposed to learn if you don’t show me real fighting?”
“You learn by surviving long enough to see real fighting. The dungeon will teach you more than I ever could—if you’re ready. If you’re not, it’ll kill you.” I meet his eyes. “I’m trying to make sure you’re ready.”
He quiets after that. Listens more. Questions less.
He might actually make it, Johnson says as Bram leaves, heading back to the village with a new bruise and a lot to think about. With proper training. With time.
“We don’t have time.”
Then he’ll have to learn fast.
I watch the young man disappear down the road, and I think about all the things I wish someone had taught me at his age. About trust and betrayal and the difference between confidence and competence.
Maybe I can be that teacher.
Or maybe I’ll just get him killed.
Time will tell.
Evening comes.
The sun sets behind the hills, painting the sky in shades of orange and red that remind me of fire. Of destruction. Of endings.
Mariella and I sit on the cottage porch, watching the light fade, and neither of us speaks for a long time.
Finally, she breaks the silence.
“You first.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“I need to know what I’m getting into. What you are, who you were, why someone like you ended up in a place like this.” She turns to look at me, green eyes steady. “Then I’ll decide how much of myself to share.”
It’s fair. It’s also a negotiating tactic—get me to commit first, maintain leverage.
I respect that.
“Fine.” I lean back against the cottage wall, gathering my thoughts. “My name is Velthar. Two hundred years ago, I was an Archmage. Level 97. The most powerful battle mage on the continent, and one of the five people who killed the Demon Lord Karvaxis.”
She doesn’t react. Just listens.
“After the final battle, my party turned on me. My best friend stabbed me. My wife held my hand and told me it was ‘better this way.’ They performed a ritual—the Mary Harvest—and split my power five ways. Then they erased me from history.”
Still nothing. Just those steady green eyes.
“I woke up two months ago in a dead man’s body, on a farm I apparently built centuries ago as a backup plan.
Level 1. No power. No friends. No idea what happened to the world while I was gone.
” I gesture at the dungeon entrance, barely visible in the fading light.
“The dungeon is mine. I built it as insurance—a place to store resources and hide research. It’s been sealed for two hundred years because no one else has the right mana signature to open it. ”
Silence.
Then, quietly: “The Legendary Four.”
“The Legendary Five. But they made sure no one remembers the fifth member.”
“Dario. Persephone. Gorath. Sylva.” She pauses. “And you were the fifth.”
“Yes. Anton was there too, but never as a public member of the Five. He was Dario’s covert operative. He’s the one who erased me.”
“So when you talk about revenge…”
“I mean bringing down the most powerful people in the Empire. The Emperor himself. The High Priestess of the Divine Church. The Grand Marshal. The Court Mage. And the head of imperial intelligence.” I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Simple, right?”
Mariella is quiet for a long moment. Processing. Deciding.
She believes you, Johnson says from inside the cottage. Her heart rate is elevated, but it’s not fear. It’s… recognition.
Recognition.
“Your turn,” I say.
She takes a breath.
“My name is Mariella Valdris. My brother is Emperor Dario.”
The words hang in the air like a blade.
I don’t move. Don’t react. Just sit there, feeling the weight of what she just said settle over me like a shroud.
Mariella Valdris.
Dario’s sister.
Well, Johnson says in my head. That’s unexpected.
She’s watching me carefully, tensed like she expects me to attack. To run. To do something other than sit here in stunned silence.
“I didn’t know,” she says quickly. “When I came here—I didn’t know who you were. I didn’t know about the dungeon, or the Fifth, or any of it. I was just running.”
“Running from what?”
“From him. From Dario.” Her hands are shaking now, clenched in her lap.
“He’s not what people think he is, Velthar.
The golden emperor, the beloved hero—it’s all performance.
Underneath, he’s…” She trails off, searching for words.
“He’s wrong. Something’s wrong with him.
Something’s been wrong for as long as I can remember. ”
She’s sincere, Johnson says. Either that, or she’s the best liar I’ve ever encountered.
“Tell me,” I say. “Everything.”
And she does.
Mariella was five when Dario killed the Demon Lord.
She doesn’t remember the celebration, the coronation, any of the historical moments that supposedly defined the era. She remembers a brother who came home different. Who looked at their father like he was calculating something. Who smiled at their mother with teeth that never reached his eyes.
“People don’t notice,” she says. “They see the charm, the beauty, the legend. They don’t see what’s underneath.
But I grew up with it. I saw the servants who disappeared.
The advisors who disagreed and then stopped disagreeing—stopped existing, really.
The way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching. ”
“Looked at you how?”
“Like I was a chess piece. Something to be used.” Her voice is flat now, controlled, reciting facts instead of feelings. “When I turned sixteen, he started talking about marriages. Political alliances. Who I could be traded to for maximum benefit. I was never a person to him. Just… currency.”
“So you ran.”
“I ran. Changed my name—used our mother’s maiden name, from before she married into the Valdris line.
Changed my appearance. Started moving every few years, never staying anywhere long enough to be noticed.
” She laughs bitterly. “I’ve been invisible for seven years.
And then I came here, and there’s a dungeon that the Empire is suddenly very interested in, and a man who claims my brother murdered him two hundred years ago. ”
“Coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence anymore.”
Neither do I.
We sit in silence, the last light fading from the sky, two runaways who ended up at the same broken farm for completely different reasons.
Or maybe not so different.
“You hate him,” I say finally.
“More than anything.”
“And Persephone? The others?”
“I never knew them well. Persephone scared me—all that light and warmth, but something cold underneath. Gorath was just… there. A soldier. Following orders.” She pauses.
“Sylva was nice to me, actually. Taught me how to throw knives when I was twelve. But she was always watching, always calculating. I never trusted her.”
“And Anton?”
Her face darkens. “Anton is the reason I run. He’s the reason I keep moving, never staying, never letting anyone get too close. His network is everywhere. If he ever found out I was alive…”
“He’d use you. To get to Dario. Or to protect him. Depending on what served his interests.”
“Yes.”
I think about that. About Aldric, the “merchant” who asked too many questions. About imperial scouts and mana density readings and sealed dungeons suddenly waking up.
“They don’t know you’re here,” I say.
“Not yet.”
“But they might figure it out.”