Ciaran walked through the keep, Martha and Penelope walking with him. His tears dried out and his face was blank. He ignored the suffocating grief pressing in on him from every direction, pushed away every what if running through his mind, and focused on the biggest priority at the moment — packing his things and running as far from this place as possible.
As he led the two middle-aged woman to the dressing room he’d been in earlier, Martha asked, “Lord Ciaran, where are you going? What… what happened? Why..”
She broke down again. Penelope soothed her and said, “Young Lord… No, Your Grace. What do you need us to do?”
Your Grace.
That’s right. Everyone else was dead. That would make him the current duke. He pushed the title aside, however. If he thought further about it, he would truly break, and falling apart was not something he had time for.
“There’s no need to be so formal. I won’t be officially accepting my title or role as the Duke just yet.” He took a shaking breath before saying, “I saw everything. One moment everyone was fine. No one was on the brink of a fit of madness, no signs of the curse were showing more than usual. And yet, the second after everyone toasted each other and drank from their glasses, mother, uncle, and grandfather progressed through every stage of the curse in less than a second, until they hit the one right before death. The most violent, irrational stage of the curse, and never appearing in anyone below the age of 35. This has never happened before. As terrible as the curse is, it has a step-by-step progression, a pattern that never broke before, ever. I don’t know what happened, but I know this was no freak accident. There must be someone or something behind it. I’m sure of it.”
He clenched his fists, feeling his nails digging into the palm of his hand, but he never stopped moving. “Martha, Penelope, listen carefully. I don’t know when, but sometime soon, someone may come to the keep and confirm the current situation. If anyone asks, you have to tell them I’m dead. If someone plotted this, and if they know I’m alive, they’ll never stop hunting me until they make sure I’m dead. As fast as you can, I need you…”
His voice choked for a second before hardening into steel. He poured all of his emotions into a small jar and sealed the lid, then threw it into a small, dark corner of his heart. He couldn’t afford to grieve right now. If he let himself do so, he’d die. “I need you to cremate the bodies of every Duvane in that room and send them to the family cemetery as soon as possible. For people not from our family, please send their bodies back to their families and give them as much compensation as you need. It’s not right, but there’s nothing else I can do right now. Prioritize my young cousins and then the adult Duvanes. From this moment forth, until it’s safe for me to come back as the Duke, Ciaran Duvane is dead. He died alongside his family in a tragic manner. This way, whoever is behind this will think he succeeded in killing every Duvane, and I will have some time to keep the truth hidden.”
Ciaran stopped before the staircase, then turned around and said, “I trust you two. I trust you more than I trust anyone else here. So I need you to do this alone, and to not tell a soul about it. Tell whatever servants are left that all of the Duvanes had gone crazy and killed each other, and that they can leave. Feel free to give them and the families of the deceased their compensation from the treasury. It’s not as if there’s anyone left to use it.”
Ciaran handed them a ring on his finger. He had engraved a dimensional storage pocket onto it after a lot of studying and failed attempts, allowing people to store anything inanimate and non-living within a limit of six cubic meters. He had usually used it for trivial things. He never expected to use it one day to store the corpses of his family members. Before he handed it over, he took out a key from the ring and gave it to them together.
He whispered, lecratos, and the ring glowed for a moment before dulling, allowing people other than him to use it. “Martha, I’m going to need to take your hair dye. I apologize in advance… you can use the gold that’s stored in the treasury to buy another. You can buy ten, actually. It’s meaningless now. This key opens the treasury. I’m not supposed to have it, but mother… mother gave me a copy the other day.” She had told him to take whatever he wanted from the treasury as a birthday gift. He hadn’t taken anything out of it yet, just keeping the key on him.
Martha wiped away her tears, a determination shining in her eyes. She bowed and said, “Your Grace, we will follow your orders. We won’t breathe a word of this to anyone else, even at the cost of our lives. But please always remember one thing.”
She paused before taking his hand and covering it with both of hers and said, “So long as this keep stands and the people of the duchy exist, they will need Your Grace to guide them. Your existence is not meaningless. Whenever you’re ready, Neix Keep and the Duvane Duchy will be waiting for you. We will only take the minimum amount we need, and then we will store the key in the ring and hide it in the keep, somewhere no outsiders can access.”
Ciaran understood which hiding place she was referring to. Before Ciaran left, Penelope spoke up. “Your Grace, before you go, please stop by Her Grace’s office. The bottom right drawer of her desk has a false bottom engraved with a magic seal that is only accessible by members of your bloodline. If you open it, you will find something useful to you… a keepsake your mother brought back, that was given to her by your father. She told me to tell you this if anything ever happened to her.”
Ciaran’s breath stalled. He hadn’t expected to hear that. His mother never spoke of his father, no matter how many times he asked. The only thing she ever said about him was that he was a fleeting dream. Given the habits the Duvane family developed after the curse broke out, his mother had gone to another city at 18 with the purpose of conceiving a child, hoping to give birth to an heir without having an outsider marry into the family. The risks were too numerous, after all, with the curse being largely kept a secret. There were many rumors swirling about the decline of their family, but very few knew the truth, and they always intended to keep it that way.
But he didn’t ask any questions, nor would he. If it was useful to him, then he’d take it. The origin didn’t matter. He turned around and started up the stairs before pausing and saying in a low voice, “Thank you… for finding me.”
He turned the corner and went up, not wanting to hear their response. They were like family to him. If he stayed any longer, he would waver in his decision, and he couldn’t do that, not when so many lives were taken due to a malicious scheme.
He began to run, and kept running until he found the dressing room he’d been in earlier. He remembered now that he was still wearing that exquisite suit, his hair adorned with priceless ornaments. He had the urge to rip it all off, but he resisted. Stepping inside, he found the haircutting scissors and hair dye, his goal. If he were the mastermind behind last night’s nightmare, and he wanted every single Duvane to die, but one of them escaped, what would be the first thing he did?
Of course, it was to look at all of the runaway teenagers with very long black hair and silver eyes, gouge how expensive the fabric of their clothes was, and wonder whether any of them was a young duke with a wounded back, escaping from the strike of a backstabbing knife. As he was taking off the hair ornaments, as fast as he could without damaging the ancient relics, he began to think about the guests that had come last night. Every single one of them had loyal, friendly relationships with their estate for many years. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been invited to such a private gathering. Was one of them a traitor? Was it a servant? Or did the mastermind carry out their plan with some magic spell? Maybe it had nothing to do with any of that, and Ciaran just had no way of imaging how such an insidious individual thinks. He had no way of knowing, and the fog covering the truth frustrated him.
He took the hair jewelry off, and then grabbed the scissors and started cutting his hair short. As the long strands fell to the floor, he felt the relief of their weight and the sudden air brushing against the back of his neck. It was a strange feeling, but he ignored it and began to dye his hair, eyebrows, and even his eyelashes, dabbing a drop on them and watching as the semi-magic dye spread on its own. Thankfully, this hair dye made one’s hair a very light blond. Nobility like the Duvanes would never dye their hair another color, not openly, anyway. Their lineage was so ancient, keeping their original features was also considered to be respect to their ancestors and noble status, so the chances of someone suspecting his real identity would be much lower.
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After he finished his rough, jagged hair cut, he grabbed the scissors and the hair dye, as well Astraphos’ relic before making his way to the male servant quarters. After he arrived, he was thankful to see that everything was deserted, left in disarray. They must have left in a hurry after the servants that survived and escaped last night came back to tell the news. It was better for him that way.
He entered a random room and found a worn-out brown cloth bag slung over a desk chair. He took it and shoved everything he was carrying inside of it, intending to make another storage ring later when he had the chance to. For the moment, this was good enough. He opened the doors of the wardrobe and was glad to find the servant’s going out clothes next to his work clothes. He quickly put them on, dressing himself in old brown cloth pants and a baggy white linen shirt, the strings at the top a little loose. He tucked part of the shirt inside the pants before securing the loose waistband with a belt. He took his blood-stained shoes off and found a pair of dirty leather boots, putting them on and trying not to grimace at the smell. He took his suit and old boots with him, intending to burn them later.
He searched through the drawers and stuffed a few extra clothes of a similar style in the bag. In one of the desk drawers, he found a rough map and decided to take it with him. He rushed out and began to run to his mother’s office, locating a few floors above where he was. He had never cared before about how big the keep was, since he had been born and raised here and was accustomed to it, but right here and now, he cursed whoever built it. It took so long just to get from one place to another, and was anxious about how much time he had left.
After running up many flights of stairs and down several hallways, he burst into his mother’s study and paused. It smelled just like her. The jar of emotions he’d sealed up shook and trembled, threatening to burst. Before his grief overwhelmed him, he ran inside and opened the drawer Penelope told him about, trying to distract himself. He took out some folders and documents and traced his fingers over the wood. As someone that learned inscription magic, he knew there was an engraved spell here. They weren’t visible usually, not unless the engraver was working on one or the spell was being activated, but Ciaran had always had a knack for sensing them that others didn’t have.
He closed his eyes and let his mana flow through the wood, sensing what spell was engraved on it. Not a second passed before he realized that the opening mechanism was very simple — a drop of blood from a Duvane would do. He took out the pair of scissors in his bag and cut his finger, watching as the blood dripped down and splashed the wood before disappearing. The spell activated, and the inscription glowed golden, the thin lines in a circular shape twisting and locking before the bottom panel slid inside the desk and revealed the contents within.
Ciaran didn’t pick them up right away. He was surprised. Inside were just two items — an engraving pen, one that inscriptionists like him used to engrave spells to create new mechanisms and technology, and a silk black blindfold. He lifted up the blindfold, and understood why his mother had brought this back. She must have used it to hide the color of her eyes when she met his father. He ran a finger over the cloth, and sensed that their was an inscription. Bloodline magic — something inscriptionists used on tools to allow only people of a certain bloodline to use the specified tool or mechanism. Curious, he rubbed a streak of blood from his cut finger onto the inscription, watching as the spell glowed for a moment before vanishing again, then lifted the blindfold and tied it around his eyes. After he tied it, he understood what the rest of the inscription was for.
His blindfold was securely tied around him, with no holes in the opaque fabric, but he could still see as if nothing hindered his vision. He would have to keep it on as often as he could to avoid having people see his real eye color. He turned his sights to the side, picked up the pen and looked at it, then wondered for the first time who his father could be, because there’s no possibility of him being an ordinary farmer. This inscription magic was simple, but it was clear to Ciaran that it was made by a master, someone much more skilled in the art of inscription magic than him. The pen had a simple appearance, with a golden tip and a wooden finish. Someone that could make a blindfold like the one he was wearing, however, was no ordinary person.
“At least its useful.”
Ignoring the buds of curiosity that sprouted in his mind, he put the pen inside his bag and stood up, closing the secret drawer and putting the folders and documents back where they were, as if no one ever moved them, then closed the drawer. He stood up and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath of the air here. It may be the last time he would have the chance to stay somewhere that smelled so like his mother.
Before he lost his grip on himself, he left the room and headed to another not far away — his workroom. He walked inside and found what he was looking for — a firestarter. It was a tall, cylindrical tool that narrowed into a small, flat top. He took out the clothes he had worn earlier — the fancy suit, the sapphire brooch and cuff links, his boots with dried blood crusting at the edges. He dumped them onto his steel, scorch-proof workbench, and pressed the button on the side of the firestarter, lighting the fabric ablaze.
He watched as the flames, different from a normal fire due to a small inscription he added that made the flame hotter and better at burning things, ate away at the expensive, intricate clothes. The sapphires burned and cracked, the metal melting and corroding. When it was all a pile of ash and scattered, broken pieces of gems and metal, he found an empty container and gathered everything inside, then put it in his bag. Everything he had to do was completed, so he said goodbye to the workroom he’d spent many hours studying and practicing in before turning around and leaving, the door closing behind him.
As he walked to a hidden entrance at the side of the keep, his quickening steps mirrored his heart rate, which was speeding up with every passing minute. He wondered when the enemy would send his next pawn, would make another move on his chessboard. Did he have enough time, or was he just racing in a losing game? He couldn’t say, but he would never concede. So long as he had the chance to find out the truth of what happened, he would. So long as he was alive, he would strive to find the person behind this, but he couldn’t just yet. Right now he was too young and too vulnerable. In 5 years he would have his second coming of age and become an adult, and soon after the first symptoms of the curse would appear. At first it’s small — the nail beds becoming black. But once it starts, it doesn’t stop. He needed to break the curse as soon as possible, needed to grow stronger to not be crushed by whatever forces that mastermind may send to kill him, and he had to figure out who the mastermind even was.
He pushed open the heavy wooden side door that the servants would use to bring in new shipments of food and felt a breeze brushing past his cheek and ruffling his short, light hair, then spotted a barrel on the side that had a few items on it. He stepped forward and found a note being held down by a lumpy cloth sack.
It read, Your Grace, please take some provisions with you. We worry about you going hungry. After we sent the rest of the maids and servants on their way, we found something helpful in the treasury that we wanted to give you. Praying for your safety and wellbeing, Martha and Penelope.
A surge of emotion coursed through his heart. He folded the note carefully and put it in a small shirt pocket near his heart. The lumpy sack that held the note down was filled with food, with the exception of a rolled up piece of parchment. He took it out and unfurled it, his breath hitching as he saw what it was.
A teleportation scroll.
These were so exceedingly rare that even one of them could be sold at an auction for the price of a small castle. The mages that were able to make these were not only very powerful, but also very picky with how they use their skills. To use teleportation magic was one thing. To have the skill and mana capacity to transfer that magic to a fragile piece of paper that anyone could use was another.
Ciaran slung the bag of food over his shoulder before turning around to face the keep one last time. “I will come back one day.”
He tore the scroll and vanished on the spot, not seeing as the parchment was set ablaze and disappeared, not even ash left in its place, nor seeing the soldiers that burst through the wooden door half a minute after he left. One searched the ground for a hidden trapdoor, and others poured outside to search through the fields and the woods. The rest of the keep was crawling with them, searching through every room they could, searching for the last remnants of the Duvane lineage.
He didn’t see as Martha and Penelope put on the act of a lifetime, sobbing and breaking down as they shared the story of how every person at the gathering last night, including the young heir Ciaran, had tragically died. In their grief, they wanted to give them all a proper goodbye, so they cremated their remains in keeping with the family burial traditions and placed them in the Duvane family cemetery, never telling them about the storage ring that still had some of the corpses of the Duvanes inside. Some of the soldiers soothed them, while others harshly questioned them, but in the end, they were let go. As they left, a messenger was sent out ahead of time, to spread the news to every corner of the empire. The next morning, newspapers would all share the same headline:
The Duvane ducal family killed each other in fits of madness! What will happen to the duchy now that it’s bereft of an heir?
