With the spokesman’s opening words, the hall fell into silence. He waited a few seconds, allowing every eye to settle on him, before continuing in a firm voice:
“The first item on the agenda.” He ran his eyes over the open book in front of him. “Are the Annual reports. We begin with the northern domains.”
A broad-shouldered man with a graying beard rose on the second tier, the representative of the Viscountcy of Karath, as Cesar could tell from the crest embroidered on his sleeve.
The man spoke with the economy of someone who doesn’t like words, only facts: harvests as expected, border patrols without major incident, a minor dispute with a neighboring barony over grazing rights that was awaiting mediation.
The spokesman nodded. “Mediation will be scheduled after this meeting. Next.”
And so the hall moved along, slow and methodical, with the rhythm of people who had done this fifty-seven times before. Production reports, recruit numbers, the state of roads and aqueducts.
A baroness with red hair and a voice sharp as a razor raised an objection about export taxes that drew murmurs of agreement from half the room and hard looks from the other half.
A captain of the Black Squadron presented the previous year’s losses with the coldness of someone reading a shopping list: seventeen dead on patrol, four from natural causes, two for reasons the report classified only as internal incidents. No one asked for clarification.
Luminus listened. He watched more.
Cesar, beside him, had his elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his clasped hands, the posture of someone paying attention without wanting it to be obvious.
Israel was a few seats over, his back too straight to be natural. Tension disguised as composure.
“External affairs.” The spokesman turned a page. “The Kingdom of Stormhaven has renewed the non-aggression treaty for another twenty years. The negotiations went ahead without complications worth noting.” A short pause. “The same cannot be said of the talks with the Kingdom of Solmere.”
The tone didn’t change, but the room did.
Some heads lifted. An elder with a hollow face and small eyes slowly crossed his arms, like someone who had been expecting this.
“Solmere has refused, for the third consecutive time, to renew the trade agreements. Their conditions remain, in our assessment, deliberately unacceptable.”
The spokesman paused. “The Council considers that this stance has ceased to be one of negotiation. It has become one of declaration.”
The hollow-faced elder, Cesar didn’t know his name, but he recognized the weight the man carried just from the way the others avoided looking directly at him, leaned slightly forward.
“A declaration of what, exactly?” His voice was low. It didn’t need to be loud.
“Of their intent.” The spokesman did not look away. “Intelligence reports from the past eight months point to military movements on Solmere’s eastern border. Nothing conclusive. But consistent.”
The silence that followed had a different texture from the earlier ones. Heavier. More alive.
Cesar saw Thomas, projected by the crystal to the spokesman’s left, slowly clench his fist. Baldwin, on the opposite side, had his eyes fixed on the spokesman with an attention that left no room for distraction.
“This matter will be dealt with in a closed session after the meeting ends.” The spokesman turned another page, as if he had just remarked on the weather. “Internal matters.”
There was a redistribution of tension in the room, some shoulders dropping, others rising.
A middle-aged woman, representing one of the southern Counties, raised her hand and was given permission to speak. She had a calm voice and precise vocabulary: one of the captains of the Purple Squadron had been accused of misappropriating resources by two of his subordinates. The evidence was circumstantial but plentiful. She asked that the case be referred for formal investigation.
The captain in question, Cesar identified him by the way the left half of the room avoided looking at a man in a black uniform with purple details on the fourth tier, kept his face absolutely neutral. Too neutral.
The spokesman took note. “A case will be opened. The captain will be suspended from operational duties until the investigation is concluded.”
The man in the black uniform with purple details said nothing. He couldn’t. But the tendons in his neck betrayed him.
Other minor matters passed, an inheritance dispute between two baronies that had already lasted three generations and seemed destined to last three more, a request for a temporary tax exemption from a region hit by floods, a proposal to build a new outpost on the northeastern border that divided opinions but not enough to block approval.
And then the spokesman closed his eyes for a moment.
Just a moment. But it was enough for the room to notice.
When he opened them, his voice came out different, not louder, not slower, but charged with something that hadn’t been there before.
“The next item.”
The spokesman didn’t need to raise his voice. The room was already quiet, it had been quiet for most of the meeting, but this silence was different. Denser. Like the air before a thunderstorm.
“And the one of greatest weight.”
No one moved. Somewhere behind Cesar, someone held their breath and did not let it go.
“The Hunter’s Judgement.”
Two words. Simple. And yet the effect was immediate, shoulders dropping a millimeter, backs straightening, eyes fixing on the spokesman with a different kind of attention from what they had given the economic reports or the border disputes. Everyone there had descendants in the Judgement. Everyone had gone a year without news.
The spokesman let the weight settle before continuing.
“The Hunter’s Judgement has always been a mark of honor. The rite that turns cubs into hunters. The proof that the blood still runs as it should.”
His voice changed in quality after that, not in volume, but in something subtler. Like someone swapping a torch for a knife.
“Three hundred years ago, the Blood Mausoleum was lost.”
On the upper tiers, an elder closed his eyes. Only for an instant.
“Since then, the Judgement has been held in the Demon Forest, which considerably lowered its level of difficulty.”
Cesar knew the story in broad strokes. Everyone did. But there was a difference between knowing something and hearing it said aloud, in a room like this one, with those faces.
“Forty-six years ago, sixty percent of our fighting forces were decimated.” The spokesman neither sped up nor slowed down. He simply continued, like someone reading a sentence already passed. “In response, the difficulty of the Judgement was reduced. The intention was to rebuild the ranks.”
An elder with completely white hair clenched his fist on the table. The man beside him lowered his eyes, not to the book in front of him, not to the spokesman. To nothing. To some place that was his alone.
“We recovered in numbers.” A count of breaths. “Not in excellence.”
The red marks on the tables pulsed.
Not much, just enough to notice. A crimson that vibrated in tune with something in the room, something Cesar couldn’t name but could feel, like static before lightning. The emotions of everyone present, all converging on the same point.
“And it was that erosion that made us vulnerable. Seven years ago.”
The effect was like throwing a stone into still water.
Bodies leaned forward. Hands closed. The crimson lines on the tables glowed deeper, responding to what ran in the veins of those who touched them.
Cesar felt something tighten in his chest, not fear, not anger, but something with teeth, something that came from a place he usually kept closed.
Luminus, beside him, went completely still. The kind of still that isn’t calm.
The spokesman went on, and there was something in his voice now, a tiny fissure, almost imperceptible, that revealed he was human too.
“The most recent incident was the invasion during last year’s Judgement.” A breath. “There were no casualties among the invaders. But one of our own...” He did not finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.
“Our soil was stained. Our men did not detect the infiltration in time. We survived by luck, not by merit.”
Someone behind Cesar made a very low sound. It never became a word.
“If their intent had been otherwise, entire villages would have burned.”
The silence that followed had texture. Cesar looked at the marks on the tables, they had stabilized, but they still burned with a color that was not the one from the start of the meeting.
“Our descendants learned from that affront.” A dry pause, almost ironic. “They became stronger. More resolute.” The spokesman’s eyes swept the room.
“but... it was still not enough.”
Some of the young ones exchanged glances. A dark-haired boy three rows above Cesar opened his mouth and closed it again.
“The number of deaths in the Judgements has dropped to under ten percent. In earlier eras, it ranged between fifty and sixty.”
Luminus let out a breath very slowly through his nose.
“We of the old guard have learned too.” His voice dropped a notch. Not from weakness, from weight. “In the worst way. Dracknum, which was always the hunter, became the prey.”
No one said anything. There was nothing to say.
“It has therefore been decided: the Hunter’s Judgement will return to what it should always have been. No concessions. No mitigating factors.” The spokesman’s eyes did not waver. “Only the fittest will prevail.”
The room breathed strangely, like someone receiving news they had expected but that still hurt when it arrived.
“And this begins immediately.”
A count of heartbeats… Until the spokesman finally announced:
“Sir Issack, former captain of the First Division of the White Squadron, took it upon himself to abduct three hundred children who had survived the Judgement. Including those whose blood does not belong to Dracknum.”
The shock was physical.
Half the room rose partway, pure instinct, before any thought. Hands struck the tables.
Someone made a sound that never became a word.
But no one stood up completely, because the marks on the daggers suddenly heated against their skin, a heat that didn’t burn but warned, firm and unmistakable.
The voice of tradition would not be interrupted. That was exactly what the ritual was for.
On one of the middle tiers, a man with a brown beard did not move. At all.
Cesar noticed him because Luminus had noticed him first, a discreet glance to the side that led him to look for what Luminus was seeing.
The man had his eyes fixed on the spokesman and his lips slightly parted, like someone doing sums and not liking the result.
He was not the only one doing those sums.
“We condemn the process.” The spokesman let the words settle. “We do not condemn the outcome. Sir Issack’s actions, though reprehensible in form, will be recognized as beneficial to the family. They will be forgiven. And incorporated as the second phase of the Hunter’s Judgement.”
The black columns seemed to absorb the echo of those words and keep them.
The unrest that followed was contained but dense, fingers drumming, feet shifting beneath seats, eyes seeking confirmation from neighbors. More than a thousand children had entered the Judgement.
Three hundred were now with a man whose name, for many of those present, evoked not respect but something closer to an ancient chill. Some Children who had never held a sword. Descendants sent to claim a surname, not for this.
It was Cesar who raised his hand.
Deliberate. But with something underneath, an urgency he was holding back with both arms.
The spokesman nodded.
“I don’t understand this decision.” Firm. His tense jaw betrayed the rest. “A measure of this scale, applied to descendants who have never touched a weapon, imposed by our own rules. How is it justified?”
On the tiers above, the dark-haired boy closed his eyes for a moment. Three rows below, a young woman nodded almost imperceptibly, her lips pressed together.
On the opposite side, the elders stiffened, not out of irritation. Cesar knew irritation. This was different. The eyes that dropped slightly, the hands that rested on the tables with too much care. Shame didn’t need words to take up space in a room.
Then a hand rose.
Old. The knuckles twisted by time, the veins like roots at the surface. But it rose without hesitation, with the steadiness of someone who no longer has anything to prove.
The spokesman granted the floor.
The elder stood slowly. Not from age, from intention. When he was fully upright, he swept the room with his eyes: Cesar, Luminus, Israel, the other young ones scattered across the tiers, the three empty seats that no one had mentioned but that weighed on the room in their own way. He lingered on every face.
“Young Cesar.” Grave. Without harshness. “And all those present of this generation.”
He bowed his head. His white hair fell over his shoulders.
“I cannot answer for the mistakes of the past generation. But, on behalf of our entire generation, I ask your forgiveness.”
Cesar’s eyes widened.
Luminus straightened slowly, as if the room’s gravity had changed direction.
Israel went completely quiet, which for him was the equivalent of a scream.
Through the crystals, Thomas and Baldwin strained, but their fists closed at the same time, mirrors of each other in what they could not say.
The elder did not wait. He gripped his cane tighter and continued, like someone paying a debt long overdue.
“Our incompetence has cost you dearly. But in the name of that same incompetence...” His eyes lifted. “Allow us to be competent at least once more.”
His back straightened. The tone changed, no longer confession. Something older.
“The rule that left you in peace until the age of ten exists because the Dracknum blood works before you do. The regeneration, the resistance to illusions, that you already know. But have you never asked yourselves how you survived in the forest without instruction? How the body acts before the mind decides?”
Some of the young ones shifted in their seats. Like someone who has just looked at something that was always there.
“It is the bloodline. It acts before thought. It is what has made us hunters since birth.”
“But that inheritance has weakened.”
The elder turned, toward Cesar, toward Luminus, toward the three empty seats. His eyes rested on each one like someone recognizing something rare and not sure whether to be glad of it.
“Among thousands... you are anomalies among anomalies. In an environment of peace, you awakened before the age of ten. Israel, being Baldwin’s son, is already out of the ordinary, and exactly because of it, he is less inexplicable than you.”
A murmur ran across the tiers. Muffled by the ritual, but present.
“In your generation, and in the one before, only twenty masters have emerged.” He raised his trembling fingers. Only the fingers. “Twenty. When we should have had hundreds.”
The hand dropped.
“The Dracknum bloodline awakens in adversity. It has always been so. But we denied you adversity.” His voice took on a different quality, not louder, deeper. “We were weak in your education. Weak in preserving what we are. And we carry that as our sin.”
Five seconds of silence.
Then the elder raised his open palm and struck the table.
The crimson lines exploded into light across all the stone of the hall, running over the surfaces like blood through ancient veins, as if Dracknum, in its very foundations, had been waiting for that blow.
“But now...”
His voice came out firm. Final. With no room for any other interpretation.
“...now is the hour for Dracknum to rise again.”