The sun barely rose in the North Tower.
Its light spilled sideways through iron-framed windows, filtered through smoke and dust, like even the sky had grown weary of this place.
Kaelen sat at the edge of his bed, staring at the letter again.
"You watched the first death.Let's see if you can survive the second."
Every word was calculated. Not to kill him—But to unravel him.
He'd spent three nights replaying the whispers behind the chapel. Three nights pretending to sleep while the palace slithered around him.
He knew one thing for certain:
Someone inside the walls wanted him dead.And not just for politics.
But for who he was.
"Ren," he said that morning, "you told me once about a man named Silo. A servant who knew my mother."
Ren hesitated, his hands shaking as he poured water into a basin.
"He's not like the others, milord. He… forgets things. Speaks in circles. Sometimes curses at the walls."
"Where is he?"
"East Wing. Lower quarters. But they say he doesn't talk to anyone anymore."
Kaelen stood. "Then let's see if he talks to me."
The Lower Quarters were nothing like the rest of the palace.
No velvet. No gold. Just stone corridors, thin light, and the faint smell of mold and old candle wax. This was where the forgotten servants lived—the ones too old or too broken to serve, but too dangerous to let go.
Kaelen found him sitting alone in a ruined dining hall, hunched over a chipped goblet, muttering to no one.
His beard was white, twisted like thorns. One eye was clouded. The other watched Kaelen the way a starving dog watches a stranger's hand.
"You shouldn't be here," Silo rasped.
"I'm not here for safety," Kaelen replied.
"Then you're dumber than your mother."
Kaelen froze.
So he did know her.
"You knew her?" Kaelen asked.
Silo's eye narrowed. "I carried her blood-soaked robes the night she gave birth. I burned the records. I lied to the priests. I buried your name so deep, even the gods forgot it."
Kaelen stepped closer. "Why?"
"Because if they knew… if the council knew what she was… they would have drowned you in the river before you took your first breath."
Silo stood, voice rising with a fury that shook the air.
"Your mother wasn't a maid. She wasn't a farmer. She was the last blood heir of House Caeryn—the rebel house. The one the king destroyed himself."
Kaelen felt his chest tighten.
"I thought—he forced her. That she was a—"
Silo spat. "No. She chose him. And for that, they called her traitor and whore. And they killed her in silence."
A long pause.
Silo turned toward the cracked window.
"You were supposed to die with her. But she made me promise. One promise. That I'd hide you. Erase you."
Kaelen stared at the floor.
Then whispered: "Why now? Why let me be found?"
Silo laughed bitterly. "Because power never forgets. And blood… always rises."
Before Kaelen could ask more, the old man collapsed to his knees, coughing violently.
Ren rushed forward to help.
A moment later, Kaelen noticed the blood.
Dark red dripping from Silo's lips.
He was dying.
"Poison," Kaelen whispered. "Someone knew I'd come to him."
Silo clutched his sleeve weakly. "They're not just after you, boy. They're afraid of what you represent."
His final words came in a choke of breath:
"They erased your name once.Make sure they never erase it again."
That night, Kaelen burned Silo's body himself. In silence.
No funeral. No prayers.
Only the fire, and the wind, and the smell of vengeance forming in the back of his throat.