Chapter 777: An Unseen Siege (1)
The afternoon sun filtered through the tall windows of Tharionson Magna’s office, spilling pale gold across the floor, across the edges of the heavy curtains, and across the wide table where reports, sealed letters, casualty lists, investigation records, and court transcripts lay scattered in a disorder that would have been unthinkable for him four months ago.
He sat behind that table in silence, one hand resting against his jaw while the other remained near a stack of papers he had already read more times than he cared to count. Even so, his eyes kept returning to them as though some hidden truth might reveal itself if he simply stared long enough.
He looked nothing like the composed High Marshal people were used to seeing move through the palace halls with measured steps and a controlled face. His uniform was still proper, but only because discipline had long since been carved into his bones. His hair, usually kept neat and deliberate, had fallen into a less orderly state, with a few strands hanging across his face and others pushed back carelessly, as though he had run his fingers through it too many times during the night and had not noticed afterward.
There were shadows beneath his eyes, faint but undeniable, and his expression carried the dull strain of someone who had not gotten a true night of sleep in far too long.
’None of this makes sense,’ he thought, his eyes fixed on one particular report without truly reading the words anymore. ’None of it. Not the timing, not the deaths, not the way the trail keeps closing the moment we reach for it. How can this much happen in four months? How can an entire kingdom begin slipping out of shape right in front of us, and somehow no one sees the hand doing it?’
Four months had passed since the massacre in Zone 19, and in those four months, Solara had changed in ways that should not have been possible. At first, the kingdom had trembled from the horror of what had been found there, from the bodies, the silence, the blood, and the one survivor returned to the capital carrying wounds that seemed almost merciful compared to whatever had been done to the others.
Lady Aleah Olian had been the only living witness. She had been brought back to Ilis under heavy guard and placed immediately under the care of the royal healers, not only because she was one of Tharionson’s knights, but because she was the single most valuable source they had. If there was anyone who could give him even one name, one symbol, one sound, one strange trace of Myst, one detail that could point him toward whoever had butchered an entire unit, it was Aleah.
Even after the healers declared that her sight was gone and that parts of her body had suffered injuries they could not fully reverse, they insisted that her vitals were stable. She was weak, shaken, and unresponsive at times, but her body was healing. There had been no immediate danger. There had been no sign that death was waiting beside her bed.
Then, one week after her return to the palace, Lady Aleah Olian was found dead in the early morning.
She had not screamed. She had not struggled. The healers on rotation claimed that the protective wards around the infirmary had not been broken, that no suspicious movement had been recorded, and that no foreign Myst had been detected near her bed. She had simply died in her sleep.
That was the official statement, spoken carefully, repeated often, and accepted by far too many people who were either too frightened or too tired to ask better questions.
Tharionson had not accepted it.