Chapter 1 #2
Evidence alone changes nothing. Evidence needs someone to wield it. Someone with the power to act, the authority to challenge the Triumvirate, the legitimacy to demand justice.
In all of Ashkar Keep, there’s only one person who fits that description.
Prince Zorath Flamebound.
The name conjures images I’d rather not examine.
Reports I’ve read during my two years here.
Incident records. Witness accounts. The prince who killed two of his own guards for suspected disloyalty.
The heir apparent who responds to political challenges with barely-concealed threats.
The young orc who the entire court agrees will be worse than his father’s murderers if he ever takes power.
Monster.
The word surfaces unbidden. I push it away. I’m better than that. I don’t believe rumors without evidence. I don’t accept consensus without verification. I’ve spent my entire career proving that accepted truths are often neither true nor acceptable.
But the evidence regarding Prince Zorath is…substantial.
I shake my head, tucking the draft more securely against my chest. It doesn’t matter what I think of the prince. What matters is the truth. The Triumvirate killed his father. He deserves to know. What he does with that knowledge is his choice.
And if his choice is bloodshed? Chaos? Making himself into exactly the monster everyone fears?
I don’t have an answer.
The sound reaches me from the outer archives—footsteps on stone, the rhythmic cadence of a guard patrol. I check the time by instinct, though there’s no clock in this section. Too early for the second-bell rounds. Someone’s schedule changed.
Or someone suspects.
I move without conscious thought, sliding the false bottom back into place, replacing the box on its shelf, slipping through the brass gate and easing it closed behind me.
The footsteps grow louder. Closer. The guard is taking the central aisle—the one that passes within twenty feet of my workstation.
I reach my desk with seconds to spare. Grab a random document from my “to be catalogued” pile. Assume the posture of bored tedium that I’ve perfected over two years of working in plain sight while hiding my true purpose.
The guard rounds the corner.
He’s one of Regent Kreth’s men—I recognize the bleeding eye sigil on his armor. Big, even by orc standards. Muscle built for intimidation rather than protection. His tusks are yellowed, chipped at the tips. His gaze sweeps the archives without interest, passes over me without pause.
The human archivist, working late. Nothing unusual. Nothing to report.
He moves on. His footsteps fade into the darkness. I don’t breathe until I can’t hear them anymore.
That was close.
Too close. The Triumvirate has been watching me—not actively, not with focused suspicion, but with the general wariness they apply to anyone who spends time in the archives. If they realize what I’ve found…
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll decide what to do.
The hours crawl toward dawn. I don’t sleep.
I pull every report I can find about Prince Zorath—official records, noble gossip, incident documentation.
I read until my eyes burn, until the words blur into meaninglessness, until the first gray light of morning seeps through the archive’s high windows.
The picture that emerges is terrifying.
A prince who has killed. Multiple times.
The two guards were just the most recent—before that, an assassin who tried to reach him in his chambers; before that, a noble’s son who challenged his right to breathe the same air as legitimate heirs.
Each death technically justified. Each death leaving more blood on hands that already dripped red.
The court whispers that he’s unstable. That the grief of watching his father die broke something in him.
That the three years of imprisonment have turned rage into madness.
They say he speaks in commands, moves through the Keep with barely-contained violence, looks at the Regents with promises of brutal death in his gaze.
They say he’ll burn the kingdom to ash if he ever gets the chance.
And I’m about to give him exactly that chance.
I close the last report. The dawn light creeping through the windows turns the archive dust into floating gold.
My grandmother’s locket presses against my collarbone—I’ve been touching it without realizing, seeking comfort from cold metal and colder memories. She would tell me to think carefully. To consider all options. To remember that evidence without a witness is just paper.
I read the incident reports again. The ones from the night King Morvak died. The assassin he killed with his bare hands. The wound he took—a scar that now runs from eyebrow to cheekbone—while trying to reach his father in time.
He failed.
I sit with it for a moment, turning it over in my mind. The reports paint a picture of rage, of violence, of barely-controlled fury. But beneath the rage…grief. Loss. A boy who watched his father die and couldn’t do anything to stop it.
I push the thought aside, file it away for later examination. Right now, I need to decide.
The evidence in my pocket proves regicide. It proves the Triumvirate are murderers, that they’ve spent three years lying to the kingdom, that they’re planning to install a puppet king before the true heir comes of age. All of that is fact. Verifiable. Documented.
I think of my workspace—the colored ribbons marking era and subject, the careful organization I’ve maintained for two years. Somewhere in those stacks are more pieces of this puzzle. More contradictions. More evidence waiting to be assembled.
But this piece—this draft with its damning words—changes everything.
What happens next is speculation.
If I take this evidence to Zorath, he’ll have what he needs to challenge the Regents. To expose them. To claim the throne that’s rightfully his. The court will have to choose sides. Blood will spill. The kingdom will burn or transform, depending on which way the fire spreads.
If I do nothing…the Triumvirate crowns their puppet. Zorath dies—quietly, probably, an accident or illness that no one questions too closely. The truth stays buried. The kingdom continues under the rule of murderers.
Neither option is good. Neither option is clean.
But one option is true.
I stand, bones aching from a night without rest. The morning light makes the archive feel different—less sanctuary, more trap. Every shadow could hide a watcher. Every sound could be footsteps coming to silence me.
The stone shelves around me hold centuries of history. Treaties signed in blood. Wars declared and ended. Dynasties risen and fallen. All of it preserved, catalogued, forgotten. And somewhere in these stacks, the truth about a murdered king has waited three years to be found.
I found it. Now I have to decide what to do with it.
I have evidence of regicide. I have a choice to make. And I have, at best, hours before the Triumvirate realizes someone’s been digging in places they’d rather keep buried.
The prince’s reputation says he’s a monster. The reports say he’s unstable. The entire court agrees that giving him power would be a catastrophe.
But the evidence says his father was murdered.
And if I’ve learned anything in my years as a scholar, it’s that the truth doesn’t care about reputation. The truth doesn’t care about consensus. The truth is just the truth, and it demands to be told.
I press the draft tighter against my ribs. The parchment shifts under the wool, the smallest reminder of what I’m about to set in motion. A death sentence, maybe. Or a coronation. Or both.
Tomorrow, I’ll decide.
But dawn has already broken. Tomorrow is today.
And I already know what I’m going to do.