VALOIS KEEP, DUCHY OF VALOIS
The castle’s great hall reeked of betrayal.
Duke Reynaud’s fist struck the oak table, sending goblets clattering. “You turned my serfs into heretics,” he roared, spittle flecking his silver beard. “The Holy See demands your head on a pike, boy. Should I give it to them?”
Aldric stood motionless, the weight of his father’s fury colder than the marble floor beneath his boots. At the duke’s side, Guillaume smirked, fingers drumming the pommel of his sword. Waiting.
“The Blight wasn’t divine judgment,” Aldric said, steadying his breath. “It was the Church’s negligence. Their Aether waste poisoned Belvoir. I saved lives.”
Guillaume snorted. “By burning a village?”
“The Blight zone would have spread to the keep,” Aldric shot back. “Check the cellars. The mortar’s already cracking.”
The duke’s eye twitched. For a heartbeat, Aldric saw fear behind the rage—fear of crumbling walls, crumbling power. Then it vanished. “You’ll ride to Lumière Cathedral,” he growled. “Beg the Holy See’s forgiveness. Or I’ll disown you as my son.”
Aldric’s chest tightened, a familiar fire searing his lungs. Disowned. Free. But exile meant leaving Valenor to rot.
“As you command,” he lied.
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THE CATACOMBS
Isolde waited in the crypts, her lantern casting jagged shadows on ancestral tombs. “Well?” she asked, tossing him a rusted key.
“They want me to grovel before the Holy See,” Aldric coughed, wiping blood from his lips.
“Perfect. While you’re on your knees, ask the Cardinal why his Divine Engines are pumping Aether filth into the aquifers.” She kicked open a hidden door, revealing a tunnel stinking of damp and gunpowder. “But first—this.”
The chamber beyond was an alchemist’s nightmare. Vials of glowing Aether lined the walls, their light refracting through copper pipes and cracked alembics. At its center stood a cannon—crude, ironclad, its barrel etched with runes.
“My magnum opus,” Isolde said, patting the weapon. “Feed it refined Aether, and it’ll punch through a castle wall. Or a Church titan.”
Aldric traced the runes. “You’ve weaponized the Blight.”
“Balance of power, my lord. The Holy See isn’t the only one who can play god.”
A distant bell tolled. Three strikes. Danger.
Thaddeus Grimm slouched into the chamber, his Landsknecht garb splattered with mud. “Inquisitor’s here,” he drawled. “Black robes, worse temper. Rode in with a retinue of ‘Penitent Knights.’” He smirked at Aldric. “They’re asking for you.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
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THE PENITENT
Cardinal Ignatius’s voice was a scalpel. “Lord Aldric de Valois. You stand accused of heresy, sedition, and consorting with infernal forces.”
The inquisitor’s silhouette filled the chapel doors, his black robes swallowing the daylight. Behind him, Penitent Knights stood like iron statues, faces hidden behind visors shaped into screaming mouths.
Aldric knelt, the stone floor biting his knees. “I serve Valenor. Not the Blight.”
“The Blight is your doing,” Ignatius hissed, clutching a reliquary dripping with Aether. “You defy the natural order. You twist the Light’s gifts.”
A serf’s whimper echoed from the square outside. Aldric glimpsed the cataract-eyed girl’s mother chained to a post, her back bared for the lash. A lesson.
“Burn the witch,” Ignatius intoned. “And let her ashes purify this land.”
Aldric’s hands shook—not with fear, but fury. They’ll kill her to silence me.
“Wait.” He rose, ignoring the knights’ blades at his throat. “I’ll submit to trial. By combat.”
Guillaume barked a laugh. “You? Fight a Penitent Knight?”
“No.” Aldric met Ignatius’s gaze. “I’ll fight the Blight itself. Give me three days. If I cleanse Belvoir, the Holy See withdraws its accusations. If I fail…” He gestured to the pyre. “I’ll burn gladly.”
The chapel held its breath.
Ignatius smiled. “A fair bargain. But when you fail, your entire household burns with you.”
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THE WORKSHOP
“You’re mad,” Isolde said, grinding Aether crystals into dust. “The Blight isn’t some village well you can ‘cleanse.’ It’s a cancer.”
Aldric sketched frantically on parchment—pumps, filters, drainage channels. “Then we cut it out. Use your cannon to fracture the poisoned bedrock. Redirect groundwater here—”
Thaddeus leaned against the wall, sharpening a dagger. “And if the whole valley collapses?”
“Then we’ll die as heretics, not fools.” Aldric coughed, crimson speckling the blueprint. “Help me, or the Church burns us all.”
Isolde slammed her mortar down. “You owe me a new workshop after this.”
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THE TRIAL
Dawn painted Belvoir in corpse-gray light.
Aldric stood at the Blight zone’s edge, Isolde’s cannon primed behind him. The fissure pulsed like an open vein, spewing black mist. Peasants huddled on the hillside, flanked by Penitent Knights. Ignatius watched from his litter, a vulture in silk.
“Ready?” Isolde muttered, her hands steady on the cannon’s ignition rune.
Aldric nodded. For the bridge. For the village elder.
The cannon roared.
Refined Aether tore through the fissure, a beam of liquid light. The ground shuddered, stone screaming as the Blight zone collapsed inward. Serfs scrambled back as the mist coalesced—into a thing of writhing shadows and fractured bone.
A Blightborn.
It lunged, claws raking Aldric’s arm. He stumbled, pain searing like acid. Isolde’s vials flew, exploding in bursts of flame and frost. Thaddeus’s mercenaries charged, only to fall as the creature’s mist dissolved their flesh.
Aldric crawled to the cannon, fingers slipping on blood-slick iron. One shot left.
He fired.
The blast ripped the Blightborn apart, scattering its essence into the wind. The fissure sealed with a deafening crack, leaving only scarred earth and silence.
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THE VERDICT
Ignatius’s applause was slow, mocking. “A pretty trick. But the Blight remains.” He gestured to the withered fields.
Aldric swayed, his vision blurring. “It’ll heal. If the Holy See stops dumping Aether waste.”
The inquisitor leaned close, his whisper venomous. “You win today, reformer. But remember—even iron rusts.”
As the Church’s retinue retreated, Aldric collapsed. Isolde caught him, her laughter bitter. “Congratulations. You’ve just made the most powerful enemy in Valenor.”