The silver fork felt like ice against Noctis's palm. He sat at the far end of the twenty-foot oak dining table, as far from the head as the furniture allowed. Distance was the only mercy House Umbra ever gave him. At the other end, Lord Alistair Umbra worked a blade through a bleeding slab of venison, the steel scraping loudly against expensive porcelain.
"The Vanguard scouts confirmed the perimeter." Alistair wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. "Tomorrow's taming trials proceed at dawn. Bastian, you will bond with the Forest Lynx. Do not embarrass this house."
Bastian cut a piece of meat and chewed it slowly. "I won't fail, Father."
He sent a look down the long expanse of wood. His lips curled, showing food between his teeth.
"What about the bastard?" Bastian gestured with his knife. "Are we letting him bond with a kitchen rat? I hear the cellar is full of them."
Lady Isolde Umbra didn't look up from her wine glass. Her black silk gloves swallowed the candlelight whole. She sipped her red wine, completely indifferent to the boy sitting at the far end of her table.
Alistair swallowed, then leveled his cold steel-gray eyes at Noctis.
"You remain here." Alistair tapped his ring against the table. "Your presence at the trials is a liability. Keep to the servants' quarters. We can't have a problem wandering around the staging grounds and reminding the other noble Houses of past indiscretions."
Noctis stared at his empty plate. No food tonight. The reflection in the silver platter gave back his erratic dark hair and his unsettling, pitch-black left eye. He tightened his grip on the cutlery. The cold metal pressed into his skin, grounding him. Resignation was a heavy, familiar coat, and he wore it well.
"Yes, Lord Umbra," Noctis muttered.
* * *
Midnight swallowed the mansion. Noctis slipped past the sleeping guards, his bare feet silent on the freezing marble floors. He reached the main library and moved past the rows of family history and tactical taming manuals. He knew exactly where the real knowledge was kept.
He slid his fingers behind a thick, dust-coated spine: Chronicles of Valyria, Volume II. He pulled the hidden iron lever. The massive oak bookshelf ground open, scraping against stone. A pitch-black passage waited behind it.
Noctis stepped inside and pulled the shelf closed. He struck a match against the wall. The weak flame lit rows of banned texts and heretical research hoarded by the first Lord Umbra. The air smelled of rotting paper, dry rot, and stale magic.
He went straight to the back pedestal. Chronicles of the Primordial Era: Volume III sat on a frayed velvet cushion. Noctis opened the heavy leather cover.
The pale, brittle pages felt heavy in his hands. He traced a finger over the forbidden script. He read about the Great Collapse, an era where raw, untamed magic shattered continents. He read about the Void, the vast, empty power that predated the sanctioned light magic of the Church.
The words didn't just sit on the page. They dug into his skull. The strange, dormant energy in his blood snapped awake, thrumming with sudden violence. The ink seemed to writhe and twist under his gaze. His pitch-black left eye burned with a freezing pain. For the first time in his life, the emptiness inside him felt like a weapon. He leaned closer, desperate to reach the next passage on drawing power from the shadows.
Searing light flooded the room.
"I knew I heard a rat."
Noctis spun around, dropping the book. Bastian stood in the doorway, an arcane lantern lighting his sharp, cruel features. A massive Forest Lynx paced at his boots, its yellow eyes locking onto Noctis, a low growl vibrating in its throat. A glowing silver collar of obedience bound its neck.
Noctis stared at the beast, pulse hammering against his ribs. "The taming trial isn't until dawn."
Bastian bared his teeth in a vicious smile. "Did you really think Father would leave a public spectacle to chance? The bond is already sealed. Tomorrow is just theater for the lesser Houses."
"You're cheating." Noctis tightened his fists. "The entire trial is a lie."
"This is my house, you piece of shit." Bastian spat on the stone floor. "Everything in it belongs to me. Including the truth. You're just a thief. Caught stealing family artifacts in the dead of night."
"I was just reading."
"Save it for Father." Bastian snapped his fingers.
The lynx lunged. The beast had Noctis pinned to the stone before he could brace himself. Massive, razor-sharp claws drove into his shoulders, tearing through his thin shirt and biting deep into flesh. Warm blood spread across the cold stone. Noctis gritted his teeth, locked eyes with Bastian, and swallowed a scream.
* * *
Dawn came through the stained-glass windows of Lord Umbra's private study. The light threw bloody red patterns across the floorboards. Two family guards stood behind Noctis, holding his arms in a bruising grip. Blood from the lynx's claws was still running down his back, turning his shirt into a stiff, dark rag.
Alistair slammed his fist onto the oak desk. The wood groaned under the force.
"You never learn!" Alistair roared. "You carry the Umbra name, yet you possess absolutely zero taming ability. You skulk in the shadows like a feral dog. And now you break into the forbidden vault to steal what isn't yours."
Bastian leaned against the stone wall in the corner of the room, perfectly relaxed, inspecting his fingernails.
"He had the Primordial texts tucked into his shirt, Father." Bastian lied with practiced ease. "He was going to sell them in the Warrens."
"He's lying," Noctis shot back, tasting copper. "He brought his bonded beast into the vault. Your precious public trial is rigged."
Alistair walked around the desk. He grabbed Noctis by the jaw, squeezing until the bone creaked under his thick fingers.
"A true Umbra controls the narrative," Alistair said, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "You have no magic. You have no worth. You are a defective stain on this family's legacy. I kept you out of pity. And this is how you repay me."
Alistair shoved Noctis backward. The guards yanked him upright, wrenching his bleeding shoulders.
"Take him to the Deadwood Forest," Alistair told the guards. "Leave him past the perimeter."
Ice spiked through Noctis's veins. The Deadwood was an execution. It swarmed with untamed beasts and corrupted void logic. Nobody survived the Deadwood without a high-tier monster bond and a Vanguard escort.
"You're sending me to die." Noctis stared through his dark, disheveled hair, his pitch-black eye finding his father's face. "Do it yourself."
Alistair looked down at him. The gray eyes held nothing.
"You're not my son. You're a mistake."
The guards dragged Noctis backward toward the heavy double doors. He dug his heels into the floorboards, fighting their grip until one of them drove a mailed fist into his stomach. The air rushed out of him. The heavy oak doors slammed shut, sealing him into the shadowed hallway.
* * *
Morning frost coated the iron bars of the prison cart. The guards threw Noctis inside and locked the brass padlock. Metal rattled as the draft horses pulled forward, hooves striking cobblestone.
Noctis sat on the splintered wooden floor. He pressed his face against the freezing bars. Mansion Umbra shrank in the distance, a dark gray monument of stone and gothic spires, gargoyles watching from the slate roof as he left.
The cart rolled out of the Noble District. Vast estates and manicured gardens blurred past the bars. Power here was inherited, hoarded, and weaponized. Noctis had lived inside these walls for sixteen years and never belonged for a single second.
They crossed the checkpoint into the Merchant District. The smell of fresh-baked bread and hammered steel filled the cold morning air. Coin ruled these streets. It bought safety and influence. It meant nothing to a bastard boy with empty pockets.
Further out, the massive white walls of the Inner Citadel loomed over the skyline. The Vanguard military and the Church of Light kept their iron grip behind those walls. They decided who lived and who died in Valyria.
Finally, the cart rattled into the Outer Warrens. Mud replaced cobblestone. Rotting slums pressed against the narrow dirt road. Emaciated commoners huddled around trash fires, watching the cart pass with hollow, desperate eyes. This was the bottom of the world. Even they had a place. Noctis had nowhere.
The enormous iron gates of the outer city walls came into view. Beyond them, the jagged, black tree line of the Deadwood Forest waited.
The guards spurred the horses faster. They thought they were driving him to a graveyard. Noctis closed his eyes and let the memory of the writhing ink come back to him. He felt the dormant, ancient energy pulsing under his skin.
He gripped the iron bars. His knuckles turned white. They called him a defect. They threw him to the shadows to die. But as the towering black trees swallowed the morning light, a cold, hard resolve settled in his chest. The dead woods didn't scare him. If the Void was waiting in the dark, he would find it.
He was going to survive. And he was going to make them bleed for this.