The days that followed unfolded with a deceptive calm.
Gravenreach, still cloaked in snow, felt almost timeless in its isolation. The villagers went about their routines with a little more vigor, and Caelan, now Baron Gravenhart in full, no longer felt like a stranger walking through the bones of a dead fiefdom. He was building something—even if no one else could see it yet.
Beneath the manor, however, ambition burned.
The Runestone pulsed once every few days now, absorbing faint ambient mana and storing it silently. Caelan had begun preparing the ritual chamber—clearing more debris, carving protective sigils based on the High Sovereign's side lore, and adjusting the flow of cold air to preserve the delicate reagents he'd begun to collect.
His coded ledger was filling.
Today Caelan sat alone at his desk, hovering over a parchment filled with notes about four beast he considered have unique Oathbone: Volkren Wolf, Stonehorn Elk, Umbrafang Panther, and especially Gravemaw Tyrant—a massive, subterranean beast known for its rare gravity affinity, capable of manipulating weight and force through mana fields. The Gravemaw's presence warped the terrain around it, and its Oathbone was said to grant its bearer dominion over pressure, balance, and mass—an affinity both rare and dangerous in the right hands.
The Gravemaw Tyrant's gravity affinity called to him—measured, precise, and profound in its dominance. He didn't need brute strength or blazing magic. He needed control. Weight. The quiet pressure of inevitability. As someone from a world where gravity governed everything from stars to atoms, Caelan knew its power intimately. It was the force that tethered the universe together—the unseen hand that shaped destiny through mass and motion. What better gift for someone born without a core than dominion over the very weight of the world?
Gravity was not just a force—it was the silent architect of creation. To master it, even partially, was to wield a power few could ever hope to understand, much less control.
He circled the Gravemaw Tyrant with his stylus.
"I was never meant to rise beneath a sun that refused to know my name," he muttered, the weight of inevitability pressing against his spine like the gravity he had chosen to command.
He told the trader about a new transaction required.
The trader from Kyrrhyn returned a few weeks later. She brought the next phase with her.
Caelan handed her a letter and diagram. "Black-iron basins, obsidian bases triple-inscribed. Quiet hands only."
She nodded once. No questions.
He passed her payment in gemstones harvested from the caves near the manor's ruined western wing. She had brought small packets—carefully sealed powders and resins.
Among them was a pouch of finely ground powdered starglass, shimmering faintly even in shadow.
Another was a shard of soulroot, veined with violet threads, and a vial of thick ashbark resin, still bubbling slightly within its sealed glass. The ashbark, taken from trees that grew only where fire had once ravaged and magic had lingered, was known to anchor volatile elements and bind spiritual properties within ritual circles.
But perhaps the most curious she brought was a wrapped bundle containing something Caelan had not asked for but desperately hoped for.
She had found Beast Oathbone. Specifically, one that matched the Gravemaw Tyrant.
Before she left, Caelan asked in a quiet tone, "Does Kyrrhyn still deal in slave flesh trading?"
The trader narrowed her eyes. "Some. Not openly. But there's a ring in the Lower Region. Hard to trace. What do you need?"
"Not now. Just information," Caelan replied. "I'll need eyes there soon."
With her departure, Caelan was alone again. But the final shape of his ritual had begun to form.
He returned to the Runestone chamber and carved a circular platform using chalk, salt, and burnt ashwood. At its center, he suspended the Runestone with iron chains. Around it, sigils marked the five corners where ingredients would be placed.
He studied each one again:
Mirrorbloom petals: to harmonize. Silver in color, these rare petals had already been collected from a shrine northeast of the village.
Ashbark resin: to bind volatile forces.
Powdered starglass: to channel and amplify arcane flow.
Soulroot shard: to hold the essence and form a vessel. It grew in mana-drenched ground, rare and heavy with latent magic.
Oathbone of the Gravemaw Tyrant: to align and grant affinity.
But now he had doubts.
Not about the ritual.
About the choice.
He would gain an affinity—one unnatural to him. There would be no undoing this.
This wasn't fate.
It was preparation.
He stared into the glow of the Runestone, its pulsing core reflecting the quiet fire in his eyes.
A few days later, the hush of snow was broken by the sound of hooves crunching through frost-bitten earth. Sleek black horses bore cloaked figures whose presence stirred the once-quiet village like a gust of wind through brittle leaves. Their banners bore the Imperial crest—a golden lion—and beside it, the mark of House Virelandt.
The imperial envoy arrived in a procession of silence and solemn duty, flanked by a smaller retinue from the Duchy. At their helm stood the Duchy's Administrator, a severe man clad in high-collared blue mage robe with a ledger strapped to his hip and a silver scroll case in hand.
Caelan stood before them in the snow-swept courtyard, alone, the faint outline of his newly struck manor behind him. He looked every bit the boy he was—fourteen, thin in the face, wrapped in a dark woolen coat—but his eyes held a gravity that silenced the court scribe before he could speak.
"We are summoned to confirm your official date of office as Baron of Gravenreach," the Administrator intoned. "By Imperial law and Duchy protocol, your seal and name must now be registered and witnessed under sun and snow."
Caelan gave a nod, calm and without pretense. "Proceed."
The scroll was unrolled with a rustle that echoed unnaturally across the open courtyard.
The parchment was already inscribed with most of the formal language—the kind dictated by bloodlines and empire—but the space for his own name, seal, and date of office remained bare.
Caelan stepped forward.
He dipped the quill into ink so dark it nearly looked blue and signed in smooth, unwavering strokes:
Name:Caelan Gravenhart
Title:Baron of Gravenreach
Date of Office:First year of the Ember Cycle, in the Third Age
A moment passed.
Then the Envoy from imperial capital cleared his throat. "You must choose your sigil, my lord. One that shall be struck on correspondence, stamped upon wax, carved upon stone, and remembered in record. The House of Gravenhart, should it persist, will bear this mark."
As he spoke, the snow seemed to pause. The cold wind briefly ceased, and a faint shimmer passed through the air—as though the moment itself recognized its gravity.
A glimmer sparked in the administrator's amulet, and the shadows from the envoy's torchlights twisted. The scroll in the Administrator's hand briefly shimmered with silver glyphs—old imperial magic reacting to the declaration. It was lawbinding—arcane and official. Once sealed, no mortal or mage could undo it.
The magic would recognize the chosen sigil. It would become more than ink. It would become law, lineage, and legend.
Caelan paused, just briefly.
He thought of all the things he could have chosen—swords, towers, flames.
But none fit.
He dipped the quill again, and beneath the signature, he drew with measured deliberation: a hart viewed from the side, its front legs raised mid-leap, its antlers sweeping back like a crown of spears. Around one horn, he drew a crown—not above its head, but encircling the horn itself, like a symbol of pain and power combined.
It was a creature in defiance of stillness. A symbol not of what he was—but what he would become.
The scribe glanced at it, then nodded with the slow solemnity of tradition fulfilled.
A heated sigil press was brought forward, its iron body etched with ancient runes that shimmered faintly in the winter air. As the wax was poured into the ceremonial mold, the temperature around them dropped suddenly—the sky overhead dimming as if the world held its breath.
When the hart was struck into the wax with white gold, a pulse of magic resonated through the seal. The runes flared and vanished, absorbed into the sigil itself. A whispering wind circled the gathering, carrying with it a sound that was almost a voice, ancient and forgotten, acknowledging the forging of a new House. The hart shimmered faintly with magic, as if recognizing its master.
It was more than ceremony. It was oath. Recognition. A binding that even fate would not ignore.
Baron Caelan Gravenhart of Gravenreach was, from that moment, not just a title bestowed by birth or inheritance.
It was a truth sealed by Empire and fate alike. The seal bore his will, his chosen path, and a declaration that though abandoned, he would not fade. He would rise—not by the bloodline he was born to, but by the weight he bore, and the legacy he chose to forge.
As the envoys departed back into the blizzard, no horns sounded, and no crowds cheered.
But Caelan remained in the courtyard long after the last hoofprint vanished beneath the snow—watching the sigil cool in the frost, as the weight of everything he was about to do began to press into the marrow of his bones.