Chapter 56
The car crunched to a stop on the gravel that barely passed for a driveway. No real tracks marked the ground—no fresh tire prints, no hint of recent passage. It was as if the earth itself had swallowed every trace of whoever had taken Riven.
The house loomed ahead in the fading light, a sprawling estate of weathered stone and ivy-choked walls. Riven might have called it beautiful once, in a somber sort of way. Now it felt hollow. Abandoned. Forgotten.
Thane stepped out of the car with a quiet that made Riven hesitate. No sharp command followed, no brisk order to move. He just stood there, shoulders rigid—but not with the usual readiness for violence. This was something else, an older grief.
“This place…” Riven said softly, drawing up beside him. “Is this where you grew up?”
Thane didn’t answer right away. His gaze swept the grounds, taking in the long-dead hedges, the creeping vines, the stillness that clung to the air like ash. No signs of life. No wards. No hum of magic. Just silence.
“I didn’t grow up here,” he murmured. “But my father did. He brought me here sometimes, when he needed to think, or disappear. Said the silence helped him remember who he was.”
Riven glanced toward the house again. The silence was absolute. Not even birdsong lingered in the trees. The breeze stirred nothing. The whole property felt like it was holding its breath.
“Do you want a moment?” Riven asked.
Thane exhaled, a dry, bitter sound. “A moment wouldn’t be enough.”
Then, with that familiar precision Riven had come to expect from him, Thane pushed it down—the memory, the emotion, the weight of the past—and walked toward the front doors like none of it had ever touched him. But Riven had seen that flicker of sadness in his eyes. He followed without a word.
Inside, the house was dry and cold, the air thick with the scent of dust and stone.
The power had long since been shut off. Layers of dust blanketed the floors, but something about the atmosphere felt off.
The air carried the uncanny weight of something recently disturbed, like the echo of a breath that had just been drawn.
The bones of the estate were still striking—arched hallways, vaulted ceilings, an elegant echo that swallowed even the quietest footfalls. But beneath the beauty was something wrong. Riven felt it in his skin, a crawling tension, like a memory just out of reach trying to claw its way back.
“This feels…wrong,” he said under his breath. “Familiar. But wrong.”
Thane’s head turned slightly. “Be careful. Just because it’s quiet doesn’t mean we’re alone.”
They moved as one, deeper into the house. Riven’s boots left shallow impressions in the dust beside Thane’s more deliberate steps, but it was the stairs that stopped him cold.
He froze. The sight of them hit him like a punch.
“I think I remember these,” he said slowly. “Going down. I was out of it. I almost fell.”
Thane’s eyes sharpened. “But someone helped you.”
“Yeah,” Riven murmured. “The Virellien agent. Kept me upright. Said something about how I’d be safer in the cellar.”
Thane’s jaw tightened. “Of course they would.”
They descended together. The temperature dropped with every step, the air growing colder, heavier. And then the mural came into view.
The unicorn.
Faded, but unmistakable. Proud. Wild-eyed. Its horn cracked just above the base. Riven stared, the haze in his memory lifting as the image came into focus with a clarity that made his stomach twist. He’d seen it before, but now it felt real.
Thane stopped at the doorway, and something shifted in his face. His breath caught. His fingers trembled as he reached out to brush the unicorn’s flank. No sound left him, but the grief came off him in waves.
Riven didn’t think. He just moved.
He stepped in close, sliding his arms gently around Thane’s waist. His body pressed lightly against the elf’s back.
He braced himself for the recoil, the sharp word, the inevitable reminder of boundaries.
But Thane stilled.
And then, impossibly, let him stay.
Riven’s hands flattened over Thane’s abdomen, and he felt the other man breathe.
Silence stretched between them, charged and fragile.
Then Thane stepped away, breaking the contact, but not the moment.
They stood in the stillness for a while.
The quiet here wasn’t just eerie—it was unnatural.
And the longer Riven looked, the more wrong it felt.
The dust.
It hadn’t been disturbed.
Not even slightly. No footprints. No scuffs. Nothing. The kind of undisturbed that meant it had been untouched for years. He began to move more deliberately, unease tightening in his gut. He crossed to the bed and stared down.
The blankets were stiff with time. The same faded ones he remembered lying on. He grabbed the edge and yanked them back, bracing for bloodstains. Something.
Nothing.
The sheets were pale and yellowed with age—but pristine. There were no stains, no impressions. As though no one had touched them in a decade.
“This doesn’t make sense,” he muttered. “This was the room. I was here.”
Thane came to stand beside him, arms crossed, eyes sharp. “I believe you.”
Riven turned, startled. “You do?”
Thane gave a single nod. “You described the mural. The crack in the horn. That’s not something you invent.”
“Then what the fuck is happening?” Riven’s voice trembled. Anger and fear coiled in his chest like smoke. “Why does it look like no one’s been in here in decades?”
“They’re playing games,” Thane said grimly. “The Hollow Hand excels at that.”
Riven’s stomach turned. “Games,” he echoed.
“Mind games,” Thane said. “Designed to unsteady us both. You were taken to this room. You remember it clearly. That mural isn’t public knowledge. So they used this place on purpose. And now, they’ve scrubbed it, like you were never here.”
“But why?” Riven whispered. “Just to fuck with you?”
“That’s part of it. But that’s not the endgame.” Thane turned fully to face him, eyes dark as obsidian. “The Hollow Hand doesn’t just agitate. They annihilate. They want to tear me apart from the inside. And when they’re done, they’ll raze House Virellien to the ground.”
The words chilled him, but he shook it off. He couldn’t stop now.
“There has to be something,” he muttered. He moved fast, pulling at drawers, shifting rugs, tapping on walls. “Come on. I was here.”
Thane didn’t stop him.
Riven’s eyes kept drifting back to the mural. The unicorn. Something about it nagged at him, drew him in. He stepped closer. Narrowed his eyes.
There. A glint. Just at the base of the horn. Something catching the light—metal? Glass?
Heart racing, he reached for it.
“I wouldn’t—” Thane began, voice taut.
Too late.
Riven’s fingers brushed the crack in the horn.
The wall ignited—sigils bursting in violent reds and golds, fire sweeping across the mural’s surface like a living thing. Heat blasted against Riven’s face.
Thane shouted his name—
And the wall erupted, magic screaming to life as a surge of fire hurtled straight toward his skull.