Khaemon had become intimately familiar with the walls of his quarters.
The stone was grey-brown, quarried from the hills east of Ptah-Ankhara and fitted together by craftsmen whose names had been forgotten centuries ago. Thin veins of copper ore ran through certain blocks, catching the lamplight and creating patterns that shifted as the hours passed. He had traced those patterns a hundred times in recent days, his eyes following their meandering paths while his mind wandered through territories far darker.
He spent too much time here now. He knew this. His brothers had noticed, had made comments at family dinners about the reclusive third son who preferred solitude to society. His father's gaze had grown more speculative, more assessing, as if trying to determine what weakness Khaemon was hiding in his chambers.
But the alternative—venturing out into the compound, subjecting himself to the constant scrutiny of a family that had never truly wanted him—was worse.
At least here, he could think. Could research. Could pursue the task that the mausoleum meeting had assigned him without interference or observation.
The scrolls spread across his desk represented three weeks of careful acquisition. He had approached the family archives with manufactured excuses—a sudden interest in the history of Ka-Forging techniques, a desire to understand the philosophical foundations of his path. The archivists had been surprised by his attention; Khaemon had never shown scholarly inclinations before. But they had provided what he requested, and he had copied the relevant sections by lamplight, building a private collection of knowledge that no one else knew he possessed.
Basic meditation methods. Fundamental breathing exercises. The simple techniques that underlay all cultivation, regardless of path or tradition.
Most of what he found was useless—either too specific to Ka-Forging to apply to his Umbral awakening, or too advanced to serve as a foundation for the control he desperately needed. But scattered among the dross were fragments of genuine value. A breathing pattern designed to calm the heart and steady the flow of internal energy. A visualization exercise meant to create separation between the self and its powers. A series of physical postures that promoted harmony between body and spirit.
Small things. Basic things. But perhaps, when combined with what Seraphina and Darian discovered in their own searches, enough to make a difference.
The dream-meeting had given him something he had not possessed in months: hope. The knowledge that others shared his burden, that solutions might exist, that the madness awaiting him was not inevitable—these thoughts sustained him through the long hours of isolation and research.
But hope, he was learning, was a fragile thing.
—————
The knock came just after midday.
Khaemon looked up from the scroll he had been studying, irritation flickering across his features. He had given strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed during his "meditation practice"—the excuse he used to explain his extended seclusion. The servants knew better than to interrupt without cause.
"Enter," he called, setting aside his work and assuming an expression of mild inquiry.
The door opened to reveal not a servant, but his mother.
Lady Nephara Osirath stood in the doorway, her face pale and drawn in a way that Khaemon had never seen before. She was normally a woman of perfect composure—years of navigating the treacherous waters of noble society had taught her to wear masks as naturally as other women wore jewelry. But now those masks had cracked, revealing something raw and frightened beneath.
"Mother?" Khaemon rose from his chair, genuine concern cutting through his habitual wariness. "What has happened? Are you unwell?"
She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, the gesture carrying a weight of finality that made his stomach clench. Her hands were trembling, he noticed. His mother's hands never trembled.
"Sit down, Khaemon." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Please. I need to tell you something."
He sat. Not because she had asked, but because something in her manner warned him that whatever was coming would be easier to receive while grounded. His knife pulsed at his belt, responding to his sudden unease, and beneath his sleeve, the shadow-mark writhed with hungry anticipation.
Lady Nephara took the chair across from him, her movements careful and deliberate, as if she feared that sudden motion might shatter something irreparably. For a long moment, she simply looked at him—studied him, really, with an intensity that went beyond maternal affection into something more complicated.
"I had a nightmare last night," she said finally. "A terrible dream, full of fire and blood and the screaming of those I love. I woke convinced that death was coming—for me, for you, for all of us—and that I would face it with lies still unspoken between us."
"Mother, what are you—"
"Let me finish." The words came out sharper than she probably intended, and she winced at her own tone. "Please. If I stop now, I will never find the courage again."
Khaemon fell silent, his heart beginning to pound with a dread he could not name.
"I have done something unforgivable," Lady Nephara continued, her eyes dropping to her hands, which were clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had gone white. "Something that has haunted me for eighteen years. Something that I convinced myself was buried so deeply that it would never surface."
Eighteen years. The number struck Khaemon like a physical blow. Eighteen years was his age. Whatever secret his mother carried, it had been with her since before his birth.
"Your father—Lord Osirath—" She stumbled over the words, as if they had suddenly become unfamiliar. "When you were conceived, he was away. A military campaign on the eastern border, one that kept him from home for nearly a year. We had fought terribly before he left. He had… there was another woman. A servant girl. I discovered them together, and he felt no shame, showed no remorse. He told me that a man of his station was entitled to such diversions."
Khaemon felt ice spreading through his veins. He knew, suddenly, where this confession was heading. Knew it with a certainty that went beyond logic into the realm of visceral understanding.
"In my anger, in my wounded pride, I sought revenge." Tears were sliding down his mother's cheeks now, silent and unacknowledged. "There was a general visiting the compound. A man of the Second Army, handsome and attentive, and he looked at me in ways that your father never had. I told myself it was justice. I told myself that what was permitted to the husband should be permitted to the wife."
"Mother, stop." The words tore from Khaemon's throat before he could contain them. "I don't want to hear this."
"You must." Her eyes met his, and he saw in them a desperation that went beyond tears. "You must understand, Khaemon. You must know the truth about who you are."
Who I am.
The phrase hung in the air between them, pregnant with implications that Khaemon's mind refused to process. He knew what she was about to say. Had known, perhaps, from the moment she walked through his door. But knowing and hearing were different things, and hearing made it real in a way that knowing did not.
"You are not your father's son." The words fell from her lips like stones into still water. "Your blood is not Osirath blood. Your father—your true father—was General Merenhotep of the Second Army, a man who died in battle three years after your birth, never knowing that he had left a child behind."
Silence.
Absolute, crushing silence that seemed to swallow all other sounds, all other thoughts, all other realities except this one: the foundation upon which Khaemon had built his entire identity had just crumbled to dust.
He was not an Osirath. Had never been an Osirath. The bloodline that was supposed to flow through his veins, the heritage that was supposed to shape his Ka-Tool, the family legacy that he had spent his whole life trying to live up to—none of it was his. He was a bastard. A cuckoo in the nest. A fraud who had been masquerading as nobility since the moment of his birth.
The knife.
The thought cut through his shock with sudden, terrible clarity. His Ka-Tool—the simple blade that had shamed him among his brothers with their great swords and axes—suddenly made a different kind of sense. He had manifested a knife not because he was a lesser Osirath, but because he was no Osirath at all. His true father had been a soldier, not a smith. A warrior who fought with standard weapons, not Ka-Forged implements of legendary size.
And Lord Osirath—the man Khaemon had called father for eighteen years—must have suspected. Must have looked at that humble knife and wondered. Must have seen in its modest form the evidence of a betrayal that his wife had successfully concealed.
"Does he know?" Khaemon heard himself ask, his voice flat and distant. "Does Lord Osirath know the truth?"
"He suspects." His mother's words were barely audible. "Your Ka-Tool… it raised questions in his mind. He has never confronted me directly, but I have seen the way he looks at you. The way he has always looked at you, even when you were a child."
The way he has always looked at me.
All those years of coldness. All those subtle slights, those moments of dismissal, those occasions when Lord Osirath had treated Khaemon as something less than his other sons. Khaemon had attributed it to his own inadequacy—his lesser Ka-Tool, his quiet nature, his failure to live up to family expectations. But it had never been about inadequacy at all.
Lord Osirath had looked at him and seen a living reminder of his wife's betrayal. Had raised another man's child as his own, probably never certain but always suspicious, always harboring doubts that poisoned every interaction between them.
"Why are you telling me this now?" Khaemon asked, and his voice had gone cold in a way that made his mother flinch. "Why, after eighteen years of lies, have you decided that the truth is suddenly necessary?"
"The nightmare—"
"The nightmare is an excuse." He rose from his chair, unable to remain still any longer, and began to pace the length of his quarters. The shadow-mark on his wrist was burning now, feeding on his turmoil, growing stronger with every surge of emotion that crashed through him. "You have had eighteen years of opportunities to tell me. You chose this moment. Why?"
Lady Nephara was silent for a long moment, and when she spoke again, her voice had lost some of its desperate edge. "Because things are changing in this house. Your father—Lord Osirath—has been making arrangements. Quiet arrangements, regarding the disposition of family assets and the acknowledgment of heirs."
Khaemon stopped pacing. "He's planning to disinherit me."
"I don't know for certain. But I have seen documents on his desk, consulted with lawyers whose specialties suggest… certain conclusions." She met his gaze, and there was something like steel beneath the tears now. "If he moves against you publicly, if he declares that you are not of his blood, you will be destroyed. Cast out without resources, without status, without protection. I could not let that happen without warning you. Without giving you time to prepare."
Time to prepare. As if any amount of time could prepare a man for the demolition of everything he had believed about himself.
"Get out."
The words came from somewhere deep within him, cold and final and utterly alien to his own ears. He saw his mother flinch, saw the pain that crossed her features, and felt nothing. The capacity for sympathy, for understanding, for any emotion other than this vast, freezing rage had been temporarily burned out of him.
"Khaemon, please—"
"I said get out." He turned his back on her, staring at the copper veins in the wall, seeing nothing. "I need to think. I need to be alone. Whatever else you have to say, it can wait."
He heard her rise from the chair. Heard the whisper of her robes as she moved toward the door. Heard her pause, as if gathering herself for one final attempt at connection.
"I am sorry," she said quietly. "For the lies. For the years of deception. For all of it. I know you may never forgive me, but I want you to know that I have always loved you. You are my son, whatever your blood may say. That will never change."
The door opened. Closed. And Khaemon was alone with the wreckage of his identity.
—————
He did not sleep that night.
Instead, he sat at his desk, staring at the scrolls he had so carefully collected, seeing in them a bitter irony. He had been searching for methods to control his powers, to manage the imbalance between his Ka-Forging and his Umbral awakening. He had been trying to survive a curse that threatened to drive him mad.
But madness, it seemed, had more than one form.
The knife lay before him, its single golden stripe catching the lamplight. He had always resented this tool—had seen it as evidence of his inadequacy, his failure to live up to Osirath standards. Now he understood that it had been telling the truth all along. It was not an Osirath blade because he was not an Osirath man.
General Merenhotep of the Second Army.
He knew the name, vaguely. A competent commander who had risen through merit rather than birth, who had died heroically in a border skirmish before Khaemon was old enough to remember him. The histories recorded him as a loyal servant of the Dominion, a soldier's soldier, a man of action rather than politics.
His father.
The word felt strange, applied to a stranger. Khaemon tried to summon some feeling about this revelation—grief for a father he had never known, connection to a bloodline that was actually his, anything that might anchor him to this new understanding of himself.
He felt nothing. The capacity for feeling had been temporarily exhausted.
But as the night wore on, something else began to emerge from the numbness. A clarity of thought that cut through the emotional wreckage like his knife through silk.
This changes nothing, he realized. Or rather, it changes everything except the things that matter.
He was still a dual-path practitioner, still facing madness if he could not find control. He was still hiding the shadow-mark on his wrist, still concealing the Umbral awakening that would mean his death if discovered. He still had Seraphina and Darian, still had the dream-mausoleum, still had the fragile hope of finding a solution to the curse they shared.
What had changed was his relationship to House Osirath. And perhaps, if he looked at it clearly, that change was not entirely unwelcome.
He had never truly belonged here. Had always felt like an outsider in his own family, never quite measuring up to expectations he did not understand, never quite fitting into a mold that had been shaped for someone else. Now he knew why. The knowledge was painful, but it was also liberating.
He did not have to be an Osirath any longer. Did not have to chase the approval of a man who was not his father, did not have to compete with brothers who were not his brothers, did not have to remain in a house that had never truly been his home.
He could leave.
The thought crystallized with sudden, startling clarity. He could leave House Osirath, leave Ptah-Ankhara, leave the entire suffocating structure of noble expectations that had constrained him since childhood. He could go somewhere new, somewhere no one knew his face or his blood or his shameful little knife. Somewhere he could pursue his true purposes without interference.
Somewhere he could be free.
His mind turned to the information he had gathered during his weeks of research. The nine kingdoms between the empires—small states that maintained independence through neutrality and strategic value. The Duchy of Ankh-Serel, in particular, had caught his attention.
Ankh-Serel sat on the border between the Second and Third Empires, built atop pre-Sundering ruins that attracted scholars and treasure-hunters from across the continent. It was a place of mysteries and secrets, where questions about one's past were considered impolite, where a young man with resources could establish himself without the burden of family history.
And it was far from Ptah-Ankhara. Far from House Osirath. Far from everything that had been slowly crushing him for as long as he could remember.
But I need resources, he thought. I need connections. I cannot simply walk away with nothing.
His mother's face rose in his memory—tear-streaked, guilt-ridden, desperate for forgiveness. He had sent her away in anger, but now he saw an opportunity in her remorse. She had contacts throughout the Dominion, relationships cultivated over decades of noble socializing. She had resources that were hers to command, separate from her husband's control.
And she owed him.
For eighteen years of lies, for the childhood spent trying to please a man who looked at him with suspicion, for the damage that her choices had inflicted on his life—she owed him more than apologies.
She owed him a way out.
—————
He went to her at dawn.
Lady Nephara was in her private sitting room, looking as though she had not slept either. The evidence of tears had been carefully removed, her composure restored to its usual perfection, but exhaustion lurked beneath the surface.
"Khaemon." She rose as he entered, hope and fear warring in her expression. "I did not expect—"
"I am leaving."
The words stopped her cold.
"Leaving? What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly what I said." Khaemon remained standing, maintaining distance, refusing to let sentiment cloud what needed to be a practical conversation. "I am leaving House Osirath, leaving Ptah-Ankhara, leaving this life. There is nothing for me here anymore, if there ever was."
"But—your training, your position—"
"My position as the bastard son of a dead general?" Bitterness edged his voice despite his efforts at control. "My training in a path that was never meant for me? I will find my own way, Mother. Somewhere that does not require me to be something I am not."
Lady Nephara was silent for a long moment, processing his words. Then, slowly, she nodded.
"Where will you go?"
"Ankh-Serel. The Duchy has scholars, libraries, opportunities for advancement that do not depend on bloodline." He met her eyes steadily. "I will need resources. Money, letters of introduction, contacts who can smooth my way. You have these things. You will give them to me."
It was not a request.
His mother's expression shifted through several emotions—guilt, resignation, and finally, something that might have been respect.
"You have thought this through."
"I have had all night to think."
"And if Lord Osirath discovers your departure? If he suspects my involvement?"
"Tell him whatever you wish. Tell him I fled in shame after learning the truth. Tell him I was always unstable, that the shock unbalanced my mind." Khaemon allowed a cold smile to cross his features. "He will believe it. He has never had a high opinion of me."
Lady Nephara flinched at the words, but she did not argue. She moved to a cabinet near the window and retrieved a small chest, which she placed on the table between them.
"There is gold here," she said. "Enough to establish yourself modestly for a year or more. I will have letters prepared by noon—introductions to contacts in Ankh-Serel who owe me favors, who will ask no questions about why a young man of the Khemric Dominion has come seeking a new life."
She looked at him with eyes that held eighteen years of accumulated guilt.
"I would ask for your forgiveness," she continued, "but I know I have no right. Perhaps, someday, when you have found whatever it is you are seeking, you will be able to think of me without hatred."
Khaemon took the chest, feeling its weight, calculating its contents. "I do not hate you, Mother. I am too tired for hatred." He turned toward the door, then paused. "I may need to contact you, in the future. For information, resources, assistance. When I do, you will help me without question."
"Yes." The word came instantly, without hesitation. "Whatever you need. Whenever you need it."
He nodded once and left without looking back.
—————
The preparations took three days.
He could not simply vanish overnight—such a disappearance would trigger investigations, searches, complications that he could not afford. Instead, he manufactured a story: a scholarly expedition to study ancient texts in the southern archives, sponsored by his own funds, requiring an extended absence from the family compound.
Lord Osirath—he could no longer think of the man as his father—barely acknowledged the announcement. His brothers offered mocking farewells, delighted to see the reclusive third son remove himself from competition for family resources. No one suspected that he would not be returning.
On the morning of his departure, Khaemon stood in his chambers one final time, looking at the walls he had studied so carefully during his weeks of isolation. The copper veins still traced their meaningless patterns through the stone. The scrolls he had collected still sat on his desk, carefully concealed beneath innocuous texts.
He took only what he needed: money, clothing, his knife, and the knowledge he had gathered about basic cultivation methods. Everything else he left behind, artifacts of a life that had never truly been his.
The road to Ankh-Serel was long—two weeks by caravan, through disputed territories where the authority of any single empire was questionable at best. But the journey would give him time to think, to plan, to prepare for whatever awaited him in the Duchy of secrets.
As the gates of House Osirath closed behind him, Khaemon felt something loosen in his chest. Not happiness—he was too raw, too damaged for happiness—but something adjacent to relief.
He was leaving his cage behind. Leaving the lies and the suspicion and the endless, exhausting performance of being an Osirath when he had never truly been one.
Ahead of him lay uncertainty, danger, and the ever-present threat of the madness that awaited all Fractured practitioners. But at least he would face those challenges as himself—not as the unwanted son of a hostile house, but as his own man, charting his own course.
Ankh-Serel, he thought as the caravan began to move. A place to forget this hell of a family. A place to begin again.
The shadow-mark pulsed beneath his sleeve, hungry and patient.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, the dream-mausoleum waited, promising connection to the only allies he had left in the world.