Asarmose steps into the cottage first.
There were exactly eight people seated in the living room including Elara and Aldric. The place looked crowded, and all eyes turned to him.
"You are not from this land," a short man with jet black hair, a deep voice, and small wrinkles around his eyes says as a matter of fact.
"That is correct," Asarmose says, gliding to a chair furthest from the 'leaders'. "Like I told the others, I am a traveler. I did not specify which land I came from."
"But you do not act like one," the man said, still skeptical about this stranger.
"How so?", Asarmose says. His eyes narrowed, spotting a threat.
Before another word was uttered, Alistair stepped in.
No longer covered in soot, he looked different—less like a grunt and more like a noble in rags. The man was about to speak again when Aldric stepped in.
"Now now, Jones. You're interrogating the wrong person," Aldric said, a gentle smile on his lips. "Why not introduce ourselves before we begin the discussions?"
Jones grunted, leaning back, but his eyes never left Alistair's face. "Fine. Jones. I train the scouts."
The woman with the calloused hands and silver-streaked hair spoke next. "Maren. I run the mining logistics."
"Barek, I manage the camp records" the man with scarred arms said shortly.
"Sila, Food and Clothing" the woman beside him added.
The others followed—Oren, and Mara—each name a piece of the mountain's history. Finally, it reached Elara. She didn't look up, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.
"Elara," she said, her voice sounding far away. "I lead the scouts."Seven leaders… Plus Aldric. Eight pairs of eyes now fixed on Alistair, waiting for him to fill the silence.
"And you?" Jones asked, his voice dropping an octave. "Without the dirt, you look less like a miner and more like a royal. Who are you really?"
"As some of you know, my name is Karl". Alistair stares unmoved, "And this is my mate, Aris"
In a room full of leaders who lived by instinct, the claim was more than just a name—it was a boundary.
"Your mate," Jones repeated, his voice skeptical as he looked back at Alistair's clean, sharp features. "You've got a lot of nerve, 'Kael.' You walk in here looking like a—"
"Names and mates aside," Aldric interrupted, his voice cutting through the rising tension before Jones could push further. He looked at Alistair, his gentle smile fading into something more serious. "We didn't bring you here to gossip about your personal lives. We brought you here because of what's under our feet."
He gestured toward the heavy wooden door set into the floor.
"The man you brought us," Aldric continued, his voice dropping into a heavy, somber tone. "His name is Vane Ashford."
He trailed off, his eyes glazing over as though he were looking through a distant, painful past.
The silence that followed was different from the one before. It wasn't full of suspicion; it was thick with a grief so old it had become part of the cottage's foundations. Jones, who had been so aggressive a moment ago, suddenly looked away, his jaw working as he stared at the wall. Barek and Sila shifted, their expressions softening into a grim, hollow sadness.
At the center of it all, Elara remained motionless. The mention of the name didn't make her move, but the air around her seemed to vibrate with a silent, agonizing frequency.
"Vane Ashford was one of us," Aldric said, finally finding his voice again. "He was a scout. A husband. A friend. We thought The Council took him during the first raid on the lower caves, ten years ago. We thought he was long dead—erased by the Black Barrack like so many others."
He looked back at Alistair and Asarmose, his gaze searching.
"We didn't know he was the one behind all this," Aldric says, his voice cracking with the weight of the betrayal.
The air in the cottage turned ice-cold. Alistair felt the sharp, jagged edge of the truth slicing through the room's grief. He remembered the sterile chamber in the Black Barrack—the scent of chemicals, the purple-stained fingers, and the way Vane had looked at them with clinical curiosity.
To these people, Vane was a martyr who had vanished ten years ago. But Alistair knew better. He knew Vane was the "prodigy" the Council had supposedly lost to a laboratory accident only a few years back. The timeline didn't just clash; it exposed a decade of collaboration."
He was our hero," Jones muttered, his hand trembling slightly against his knee. "We told stories to the children about his resistance. We thought he died protecting our secrets."
"And instead, he was perfecting the very serum that turned your people into soulless vessels," Alistair said, his voice smooth and dangerously level. He didn't look at Elara, but he could feel her silence—a heavy, suffocating thing that filled every corner of the room.
Elara finally looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but there was no softness in them anymore. Only a hollow, terrifying void.
"He's awake," she said, her voice a flat, dead whisper. "And he's calling for his 'research notes.' He doesn't even care about the names of the men he used be with."
Aldric stepped toward the cellar door, his hand hovering over the iron ring. He looked at Alistair, then at Asarmose, his gaze searching for an answer to a question he was too afraid to ask.
"He saw you in the barracks," Aldric said. "He knows what happened during the 'accident' with the smoke. He's been screaming about a 'divine bring' and a 'thief' who stole his future."Asarmose's lips curled into that slow, terrifying smile—the one that made him look less like a traveler and more like a god waiting for a sacrifice. "A thief?" Asarmose hummed, the sound vibrating in the small room. "How curious. I thought I was simply a traveler passing through."
"Enough talk," Jones snapped, standing up. The frustration of being lied to by a man they once loved was boiling over. "If the one responsible for our misery is sitting in our cellar, I want to see his face. I want to see if he can still look his mate in the eye after what he's done."
Aldric pulled the door open. The sound of wood scraping against stone echoed through the cottage like a death knell. A faint, bitter scent of antiseptic wafted up from the dark, clashing with the cedar and woodsmoke of the room above.
"Kael, Aris," Aldric said, gesturing into the dark. "Since you were the ones to bring him, you should be the ones to help us face him."
Alistair looked down into the pit. He knew the risk. If Vane saw him—really saw him without the soot—there was a chance the scholar would scream the word King before anyone could stop him.
He glanced at Asarmose. The Prince was already moving, gliding toward the stairs with a chillingly calm grace. Alistair adjusted the "noble rags" on his shoulders and followed, his heart hammering a rhythmic, royal beat against his ribs.
The stairs were narrow and damp. As they descended into the dim light of the cellar, Vane's voice drifted up—high-pitched, frantic, and devoid of the man these people once knew.
"Where is it? The serum?! I was so close!"