Chương 311: Ch301- Ashfal

Alforc Morn nudged the door shut with his heel, arms full of reports because no one else in the Covenant could be trusted with paperwork without setting it on fire. His study smelled of ink, dust, and the faint trace of whatever hex someone had cast on his filing cabinet last century. Two figures waited inside, dark-robed, hoods shadowing faces. Never a good sign. Alforc winced.

"If you're here before breakfast, someone's dead or someone wants me dead. And you're in my chairs." They didn't move. Fine. He set the stack of scrolls on his desk and rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

"What's this about?" he asked. One of them spoke, voice cold.

"It's about Lord Bathael." Alforc wanted to sigh out loud. That tone again, as if everyone expected him to produce answers, when he was quite obviously the worst person to expect anything from. He swallowed.

"What did he do?"

"Not what he did," the second said.

"What he is." Alforc eyed them warily.

"Meaning?"

"His record's inconsistent." He held up a hand.

"You'll have to be specific. The Covenant has sixty-six members, half lie about their age and the other half lie about everything else.

'Inconsistent' is our baseline." The first robed figure leaned closer.

"He claims to have lived through the Ashfal." Alforc went still. The Ashfal. Every hair on his arms prickled. He looked at them.

"Yeah, and?" The witch on the left lifted her chin. Her hood slipped enough for Alforc to catch the faint violet glow threading through her irises. Nightingale's bloodline always had that odd shimmer.

"Lady Nightingale says," she replied, "the Sovereign of Ashfal she remembers from the legends wasn't the man calling himself Lord Bathael." Alforc's grip tightened round the folders.

"And what does she know? I was there when it happened. Do either of you even know what Ashfal means? Does she?" Both robed figures stared back, silent. That look made his stomach fold. He leaned back until the chair creaked.

"Saints' sake. Fine. Say your accusations out loud so I can at least pretend to be insulted properly." The second robed figure tapped the armrest.

"His mannerism doesn't match the Sovereign of the Ashfal. His magic doesn't match the surviving records. Nor the oral accounts Lady Nightingale preserved." Alforc's hand shook. He set it on the desk to steady it.

"You two are too young to remember the Dark King, aren't you?" Neither robed figure answered. Alforc swallowed, throat scraping dry. Even saying the title made his stomach roll. The witch on the left spoke first.

"We remember what our elders taught us. The Sovereign of Ashfal led the burn." Alforc barked a humourless laugh.

"Taught you, did they? Lovely. Did they teach you how many survived?" The two shifted. Neither replied. Alforc leaned back against his desk.

"Before you start parroting Nightingale's little archive, let's clear something up. I'm a plague-warlock. I don't fight fronts." He ticked the air with one finger.

"But I was there." He took a deep breath.

"You weren't born," Alforc said.

"Nightingale wasn't born when it started. Her great-grandmother was barely old enough at the time. And that version she's pushing? The one where the Sovereign of Ashfal was some robed prophet leading a polite cleansing?" He snorted.

"Rubbish." The taller of the two clenched his fist.

"Then what happened?" Alforc stared at the carpet. His knuckles tapped the edge of the desk, an old habit from days when his hands shook too badly to hold a quill.

"You've heard the pretty version," he said.

"But the Ashfal wasn't a ritual gone wrong, and it wasn't a 'purge,' despite what the Covenant scribbles in its own history books." He lifted his gaze to them.

"It was a war." Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. The witch frowned.

"Against whom?"

"Against the Dark King," Alforc said quietly.

"And the things he dragged across the land with him." He shook his head with a laugh.

"You think Dementors are bad," He went on.

"Saints, children, the Dark King bred whole hosts of amortals. Lurkers, Wights, things without breath or decay, creatures that wouldn't die because they'd never lived. He split villages with a whisper. Entire regions went grey behind him. Magic buckled where he stepped." He paused. His hand tightened. His throat bobbed, "Tell me something," he said, eyes flicking between the pair of them.

"Have either of you ever seen a Lurker?" Both shook their heads. He swallowed.

"Most haven't. That's the point. They don't reveal themselves. They don't stalk, they don't strike, they don't leave prints or residue or a whisper for a Diviner to grab. All we ever catch are... hints. A room colder than it should be. A scuff on stone no foot made. A gap in the records where something should've happened but didn't." The younger one frowned.

"So they hide?"

"They don't hide," Alforc said quietly.

"They exist around you without letting you notice. They move where people gather, watch everything, take everything. Stories, spells, memories, magic, doesn't matter. They consume it all, and they give nothing back. No warning or trace. No gratitude." He drew a thin breath. His voice shook now, no matter how he tried to hide it.

"Do you know how frightening it is," he went on, "to know something stood right behind you and left nothing but the sense you should've felt it? That's a Lurker. They're always there. Always reading the world, never participating in it." The two exchanged a look. Alforc tapped the desk.

"Count yourselves lucky. Lord Bathael dealt with them so the rest of you can sit in your gilded chairs and argue about names." He sighed.

"And someone, somewhere, convinced themselves they could bargain with him." Neither robed figure moved.

"When the first cities fell," Alforc said, "everyone thought it was a plague. That's why they called me. Thought it was my territory. People dropping where they stood, no injuries, nothing to track, nothing to heal. It looked like disease. It felt like disease. But you can cure disease." His fingers curled slightly.

"You can't cure annihilation." The windows rattled faintly as if the old magic was reacting to old names. Alforc ignored them.

"The Covenant sent its best. Keepers tried to quarantine half the continent. And the Dark King walked straight toward the one region that hadn't lifted a wand... The Valley, later became the Ashfal, was the target." The witch frowned.

"The texts say the Sovereign lured him there." Alforc shook his head sharply.

"He didn't lure anything. He lived there. He was the Valley's Sovereign. Spent decades keeping the place isolated. Wouldn't join a war unless someone kicked his door down." The second figure's voice came low.

"And the Dark King did."

"Yes. And that," Alforc said, "was his only mistake." He stepped round the desk, too excited to sit still.

"You two want to know what the ash was?" he asked.

"The ash that fell for three days? The ash Nightingale's family still sings about like it was snowfall in springtime?" Both shook their heads.

"Amortal corpses," Alforc said.

"Reduced to dust." Silence snapped tight.

"No one 'burned' anything," he said.

"There weren't any holy flames or ritual circles. It wasn't a divine intervention. The Sovereign didn't cast a grand spell. He didn't chant or raise an army. He walked out his front door." Alforc's hands spread helplessly.

"That's all." He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering.

"The land rose with a blinding light," he murmured.

"That's what it looked like. One heartbeat calm, the next... everything screaming. Magic folded in on itself, then branched outward so fast the air peeled. And the amortals, things that had marched through fire and curses and battlefields without losing a hair, started coming apart." He drew one finger along the desk, tracing a line in dust. The robed figures stared at him, fully still now. He huffed.

"You weren't there. You didn't smell it. You didn't hear the sound they made. You didn't watch the creatures that terrified the world crumble like rotten paper." The witch finally spoke.

"How?" Alforc hesitated.

"Lord Bathael walked through it," he said.

"Through the ash. Through the remains. Straight toward the Dark King." The taller one leaned forward.

"And killed him?" Alforc barked a short, bitter laugh.

"If the Sovereign had killed him, we wouldn't have needed Covenant law for the next three centuries. No. He didn't kill him. He broke him. Shattered whatever tether kept that creature pinned to the world. The Dark King vanished. Out of our plane entirely." He rubbed his jaw, remembering the way the sky had shifted, the way the wards cracked like dry bone.

"You don't forget an event like that," Alforc said.

"You don't misremember it. And you certainly don't mistake the man who did it." He jabbed a finger at the pair of them.

"So unless Lady Nightingale's great-grandmother was standing elbow-deep in ash beside me, and unless she watched amortals die like sand in the wind, she doesn't get to claim the Sovereign was someone else." The witch's eyes narrowed.

"You're certain Bathael is the same man?" Alforc's mouth twisted.

"I'm certain I watched the Sovereign walk. And the man you're questioning walks the same way." The taller one asked quietly, "If he did all that... why would he lie low?" Alforc let out a weak laugh, nearly tired.

"He just wanted some peace. Peace of that beautiful garden." The room held its breath. Alforc turned away, pulling a stack of parchment toward him.

"Go report whatever you like," he muttered.

"But don't insult my memory. I may be a coward, but I know what I saw." He flicked his quill toward them without looking up.

"And if you're planning to accuse him of something, take my advice and don't." He paused.

"He only wanted the Dark King gone. The rest of us only survived because he let the world keep turning." The two figures exchanged a glance. And for the first time since they'd entered, neither had anything to say.

Hours after the two robed figures left his office, Alforc tidied the last stray scroll, checked the lock on his cabinet twice, then stepped into the chalk circle etched across his floor under a carpet. He took a deep breath, muttered the activation, and the world folded. A heartbeat later, stone and dust vanished. He stood in a wide, sun-lit room. A long hearth with a soft fire burned at the farthest wall, its warmth drifting through the air. Tall windows opened onto a quiet garden, leaves moving in a lazy breeze.

The light carried that soft afternoon air that made even old bones settle. And in the middle of it all, two people seated by the hearth. A man, reading with one knee propped up, quill tucked behind his ear as though he might switch from book to notes without bothering to stand. A woman beside him, an open volume spread across her lap, her hair lit gold by the window behind her. They looked like they'd been pulled from a painting left hanging in a peaceful century. Alforc swallowed. Hard.

This place did not belong to the Covenant's world of shadows and suspicion. It felt lived-in. The opposite of everything he'd swum in for decades. He walked forward, slower than he meant to, until he reached the short carpet before them. His knees hit it before he'd decided they would. He looked up.

"Master Flamel," he said.

"The Covenant is suspicious about Lord Bathael."