Chapter 14:
Veyr left before breakfast.
Not secretly,he didn't sneak out or wait for the house to be distracted. He simply got up, pulled on his coat, and walked out the front door while Raiden was arguing with Aren about something in the kitchen and Elara was moving around with the quiet efficiency she brought to mornings. Nobody stopped him because nobody had reason to. Veyr came and went on his own schedule, always had, and the family had long since learned that asking where he was going usually got you an answer that technically answered the question without actually telling you anything.
He walked east.
The morning was grey and cold, the sky a flat white that meant clouds without rain â€" the kind of day that felt like the world was holding its breath. His footsteps were quiet on the frost-hardened path that led away from the village and into the older part of the forest, where the trees grew wide and the light came through at angles that made everything feel slightly removed from ordinary time.
He'd been here before. Many times, in the weeks since the window had opened. He'd sit on his stone and look east and feel the presence there â€" patient, still, aware of him in return. He'd learned its rhythms the way you learn the rhythms of something you live near for long enough. When it was more active. When it went quieter. The particular quality it had at different times of day.
This morning felt different.
He couldn't have explained exactly how. Just â€" different. Like a room where furniture has been moved slightly. Same room, same furniture, but your body knows before your eyes do that something has shifted.
He kept walking.
He went further east than he usually did, past his stone, past the oldest trees, following the pull of the window with the same unhurried patience he'd learned from weeks of practice. Not chasing. Just walking in the direction that felt right and letting the destination come to him.
He stopped when he reached a small clearing he hadn't been in before.
It wasn't dramatic. No mist, no unusual light, no sense of arrival that the stories would have given it. Just a gap in the trees where the sky came through, and old roots crossing the ground in complex patterns, and frost on the grass that hadn't melted yet.
And someone standing at the far edge of it.
Veyr went still.
The person standing there was young â€" closer to his own age than he'd expected, for some reason. He'd built a picture in his mind of the eastern presence over weeks of feeling it from a distance, and the picture had been something older. Ancient, maybe. The kind of presence that felt that old from the outside.
But the person standing at the edge of the clearing was not ancient. He was perhaps a year or two older than Veyr, lean and still in a way that had nothing to do with tension and everything to do with a body that had learned, over a long time, that stillness was more useful than movement. His clothes were dark and practical, worn in a way that said they'd been worn through seasons, not days. His eyes, when they met Veyr's across the clearing, were steady and direct and gave nothing away.
They looked at each other for a moment without speaking.
Veyr was not the kind of person who felt compelled to fill silence, and apparently neither was the person across the clearing, because neither of them said anything for a while. The forest made its quiet sounds around them. Somewhere above, a bird moved through the branches.
Then the other person spoke.
"You look like him." His voice was even. Not unfriendly, not warm â€" just straightforward, the way you'd say something that was simply true. "Your father. Around the eyes."
Veyr absorbed this. "You knew him."
"I met him once. The night before he left." A pause. "He stood at the boundary for an hour. I watched him for most of it before I let him know I was there."
"Why did you wait?"
"I wanted to see what he'd do." Something moved through his expression â€" not quite a smile, but adjacent to one. "He didn't do anything. He just stood there. Most people, when they're standing at the edge of something they can't see but can feel, they fidget. They talk to themselves. They perform bravery for an audience that isn't there." He looked at Veyr. "He just stood there and waited. Like he had all the time in the world and wasn't afraid of what was on the other side."
Veyr was quiet for a moment. That sounded exactly right. "What did he say when you came out?"
"He said he needed to ask something. Not a favor â€" he was specific about that. He said he didn't have the right to ask favors. He said he wanted to make a request and leave the decision entirely with me."
"What was the request?"
The person at the edge of the clearing looked at him steadily. "He said he was going to a war he didn't expect to come back from. He said he had four sons who would need time to become what they were supposed to become. He asked me not to let anything end that process before it finished." A beat. "He said if the time came and they needed something, I'd know. And that he'd understand if I said no."
Veyr felt the words settle into him, slow and heavy, the way important things settle. His father, standing at the boundary in the dark, asking a stranger to watch over his children because he already knew he wouldn't be able to.
"You said yes," Veyr said.
"I said yes."
"Why?"
The question sat in the clearing for a moment. The other person seemed to consider it genuinely, not the way people consider questions they already have answers to, but the way you consider something you've thought about before and keep arriving at the same place.
"Because he asked honestly," he said finally. "Most people who want something from a Valdris try to bargain, or threaten, or find some angle. He just said what he needed and left the door open to be refused." He paused. "That's rarer than you'd think."
Veyr looked at him. "You're Valdris."
"Noctis Valdris," the other said. Not proudly, not reluctantly. Just stating a fact.
Veyr turned that over for a moment. "I'm Veyr. Veyr Nythera."
"I know who you are." Something in his tone made it clear this wasn't a boast â€" he'd been watching for three years, after all. "I know all of you. Aren and his fire. Raiden and his lightning. Lior and what he found on the battlefield last week." His eyes stayed on Veyr. "And you."
"What about me?"
Noctis looked at him in a way that was different from how people usually looked at Veyr. Most people, when they looked at Veyr, were trying to figure him out â€" reading the stillness, searching for something behind the quiet. Noctis wasn't doing that. He was looking at him the way you look at something you already understand, and are just confirming what you knew.
"You see things before they happen," Noctis said. "Not visions. Not prophecy. Something more fundamental than that. You read the shape of how things are moving and you understand where they're going." He paused. "You knew your father wasn't coming back. Before the war horn. Before anyone told you."
Veyr held his gaze. "Yes."
"And you didn't say anything."
"There was nothing to say. Nothing that would have changed it."
Noctis nodded slowly. "That's the hardest part of seeing clearly. Most people think the gift is knowing. The hard part is knowing and understanding that knowing doesn't always give you the ability to change what you know."
The clearing was quiet for a moment.
Veyr thought about three years of carrying that. The particular weight of having understood something that nobody else knew you understood. The specific loneliness of watching events you'd already seen coming arrive anyway.
"You said the same thing once," Veyr said. It wasn't a question.
Noctis looked at him. "More than once," he said.
They stood in the clearing and let that sit between them without trying to do anything with it.
Then Veyr said: "Three years. Darius hasn't come because of you."
"Because he knows I'm here. Yes."
"Can you stop him? If he comes?"
Noctis was quiet for a moment â€" not the quiet of someone avoiding the question, but the quiet of someone giving it the honesty it deserved. "I can make it costly enough that he'd think carefully before trying. Whether that's the same as stopping him depends on how much he wants it."
"He wants it very much," Veyr said.
"I know." Noctis looked east, past the treeline, in the direction of a fortress that neither of them could see from here. "Which is why three years was always a limit, not a solution. He's been patient. Preparing. Whatever he sends next will be different from the Wraith."
Veyr absorbed this. "How much time do we have?"
"Not as much as you need," Noctis said plainly. "More than you think."
Veyr looked at him. "What do we need? That we don't have."
Noctis turned back from the east and looked at Veyr directly. "Your father was the way he was because of one thing that had nothing to do with power or bloodline or training. He was complete. Every part of him pointed in the same direction. His brothers, his family, his village â€" all of it unified into one thing he was willing to die for." He paused. "Your brothers are strong. They're becoming stronger. But right now each of them is pointing in a slightly different direction. Aren is leading but carrying the fear of failing. Raiden is powerful but still fighting himself as much as the enemy. Lior has found his gift but hasn't forgiven himself yet for what he did to find it."
Veyr was quiet.
"And you," Noctis said, "are watching all of this very clearly and haven't told any of them what you see."
The words landed without cruelty. Just accuracy.
Veyr looked at the frost on the ground. At the complex pattern of roots crossing each other, finding their own ways through the same soil. "If I told them everything I seeâ€""
"It would change things," Noctis said. "I know. That's the calculation you've been making for three years and you're not wrong to make it." He paused. "But there's a difference between protecting people from what you see and carrying it alone forever. One is wisdom. The other is just a different kind of afraid."
The clearing was very still.
Veyr thought about that for a long time, standing in the frost with the grey sky above him and the old roots below him and a stranger who wasn't quite a stranger on the other side of the clearing.
"Will you come back?" he asked finally.
Noctis looked at him. "I haven't left in three years."
"That's not what I asked."
Something shifted in Noctis's expression â€" the closest thing to openness Veyr had seen from him yet. "I'll be here," he said. "When it matters."
Veyr nodded once.
He turned and walked back the way he'd come, through the old trees, through the frost, back toward the village and the training yard and his brothers who were waiting without knowing they were waiting.
Behind him, the clearing went quiet.
Noctis stood at the edge of it and watched him go, the way he'd been watching for three years â€" patient, still, present.
And he thought about a man who had stood at a boundary in the dark and asked for something without demanding it, and the specific quality of honesty that had made him say yes.
He thought about four brothers who were almost ready.
Almost.
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If Chapter 14 hit differently that's Noctis doing his job.
Support the story with Power Stones if you're enjoying it. And drop your thoughts in the comments what do you think Noctis really is? What did Kaelen say to him that night that made a Valdris say yes to a stranger's request?
See you in Chapter 15.