By lunchtime, Richard had come to understand one unpleasant fact: the House had far too many problems.
So many, in fact, that he did not even know which one to tackle first.
It seemed that every time he managed to resolve one matter, another, even more complicated, emerged from beneath the piles of papers.
Documents collected over the past few weeks covered the large writing desk in the study.
Bills, expense lists, and reports on the condition of the lands were mixed together with tax statements and contracts with merchants.
Several letters from craftsmen in the city lay nearby—some of them were already beginning to demand a response.
But there was one document that concerned Richard more than all the others.
He had read it for the third time already, slowly running his eyes over the lines as though he hoped that, upon checking it again, the figures might somehow change.
But they remained exactly the same.
Richard frowned and finally leaned back in his chair.
“This figure can’t be right.” Sebastian, who had been standing across from the desk all this time, looked at him calmly.
“Unfortunately, it is.” Richard bent over the document again and pointed to the relevant line.
“Here.” “Do we owe this amount?” Richard looked at the figure once more, as though he still hoped to find an error in the calculations.
“Yes.” “To whom?” “The merchants.” Richard frowned and turned his gaze to Sebastian.
“Why?” “For grain.” For several seconds, silence settled over the study.
Richard slowly raised his head, as though only now beginning to grasp the full meaning of what he had been told.
“We buy grain?” “This year.” “Why?” Sebastian paused briefly before answering.
From his expression, it was clear that he liked the explanation no more than Richard did.
“Because part of the harvest was lost.” Richard silently leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his face.
He looked at the papers spread out before him once more, then turned his gaze to Sebastian.
“How much land belongs to the House?” “About nine thousand acres.” Richard said nothing for several moments, as though trying to reconcile that figure with what he had just heard.
Nine thousand acres.
And yet they had to buy grain from merchants.
He slowly raised an eyebrow.
“And we buy grain?” “Yes.” “Then what do we need nine thousand acres for?” Sebastian tilted his head slightly and thought for a moment, as though searching for the most appropriate answer.
“Good question.” Richard slowly raised his eyes to him.
“Are you doing that on purpose?” A barely perceptible smile flickered across Sebastian’s face.
“Sometimes.” “Why?” “Because you’re asking questions no one has asked in a very long time.” Richard said nothing.
He lowered his gaze to the papers spread across the desk, but now he was looking at them quite differently.
Gradually, the bigger picture began to take shape before him.
The problem was not simply a lack of money.
Far worse was the fact that no one was managing the House as a whole anymore.
Everyone was concerned only with their own part, trying to patch their own hole and giving little thought to what was happening around them.
The craftsmen went about their business on their own, trying to squeeze whatever profit they could from their trade.
The town lived its own life, barely feeling any connection to the House.
The knights trained on their own, following old customs and habits.
The lands were being worked, but no one was paying much attention to how efficiently they were being used.
Everyone was doing their job.
But no one was seeing the whole picture.
Richard slowly ran his fingers along the edge of one of the documents and realized, for the first time, that what lay before him was not merely a pile of unresolved problems.
It was a system that had been left to run on its own for years, gradually falling apart into separate pieces.
And now it was up to him to put them back together.
The lands were being worked as well as the available people and resources allowed.
And the House itself seemed merely to watch as it happened, year after year allowing each part of its estate to carry on as though it were entirely independent.
Richard lingered over the documents for a moment before asking: “Who handles the finances?” Sebastian hesitated slightly.
“Now?” “Yes.” “I do.” Richard raised an eyebrow.
“You?” “After the previous steward died.” “When did that happen?” “Five years ago.” Richard frowned.
“Five years?” Sebastian nodded calmly.
“Yes.” “Why did no one tell me about it?” Sebastian looked at him for several long seconds, as though he was not sure whether Richard truly did not remember or simply did not want to acknowledge the obvious.
“You were told.” Richard froze.
For a moment, the study fell completely silent.
He slowly looked at the papers lying before him, then back at Sebastian.
Five years.
For five years, one man had effectively been handling the House’s finances while everyone else continued living as though nothing had changed.
And worst of all, Richard genuinely had no memory of that conversation.
“And what happened after that?” Sebastian lowered his gaze slightly.
“You said you would deal with it later.” Richard slowly closed his eyes.
His memory remained silent.
He tried to grasp onto anything at all—a voice, a face, the surroundings, the conversation itself, which, according to Sebastian, had already taken place long ago.
But nothing surfaced in his mind except emptiness.
And yet, along with that emptiness, an unexpected sense of guilt came over him.
Not his own.
Someone else’s.
Heavy and dull, as though it belonged to the man Richard had once been.
Then a brief, almost painful image flashed through his mind.
A desk.
Documents spread across it.
A younger Richard sitting in the chair.
The irritation he had not even bothered to hide.
And his own voice uttering a single word: “Later.” The image vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Richard frowned.
But before he could understand what exactly he had seen, his memory offered him another brief fragment.
From the depths of his memory came Sebastian’s voice: “My lord, if we don’t settle this matter now—” “I said later.” And with that, the memory broke off.
Richard slowly opened his eyes.
For several seconds, he simply sat there, motionless, returning to reality.
Sebastian was still standing before him, watching him carefully.
“Did you remember?” Richard did not answer at once.
“A little.” Sebastian took a barely perceptible step forward.
“What exactly?” Richard lowered his gaze to the documents lying on the desk.
They seemed especially heavy now—not because of their number, but because of how many years of inaction lay behind each of them.
“How I kept putting off everything I didn’t want to see.” Sebastian said nothing.
He merely looked at his lord in silence, and there was neither reproach nor any attempt to justify the past in that silence.
Richard ran his palm along the edge of the nearest document, then picked it up.
“Then let’s start with the fact that I won’t be putting things off anymore.” He unfolded the first sheet.
For several seconds, he studied it carefully before looking up at Sebastian.
“Fetch Claudia.” “Now?” “Now.” Sebastian gave a brief nod and left the study.
Claudia arrived a few minutes later.
She stopped at the door, smoothed the folds of her dress, and looked at Richard questioningly.
“You sent for me, my lord?” But this time, Claudia entered the study not as a maid.
She wore a simple dark dress without any adornments, and in her hands she carried a small leather folder.
She looked calm and composed, as though she already knew why she had been summoned and exactly what would be expected of her.
Richard noticed the folder immediately.
His gaze lingered on it a little longer than it did on Claudia herself.
“What’s in there?” “What you asked for.” Richard frowned slightly.
“I asked you to come.” “Exactly.” Claudia approached the desk and, without a word, placed the folder in front of him.
Richard stared at it for several seconds before opening it.
Inside were letters.
A great many letters.
So many that, at first, he could not even tell how many there were.
Some had been neatly folded and tied with thin ribbons, while others lay in loose stacks, as though they had been gathered in haste.
Some looked quite old.
The paper had darkened around the edges, and the ink had begun to fade in places.
Others, by contrast, were quite recent.
Richard ran his fingers over the top letter, then looked up.
“What are these?” Claudia answered calmly: “Correspondence.” Richard looked back at the folder.
Judging by its contents, this correspondence could tell him far more about the House than all the reports spread out before him.
“I see.” Richard turned over the top letter, but almost immediately placed it back.
“Then let me put the question another way.” Claudia looked him directly in the eyes.
There was neither hesitation nor her usual caution in her gaze.
“Do you truly want to know?” Richard stopped.
He understood that there was more behind the question than mere correspondence or yet another unpleasant detail about the state of the House.
Claudia was clearly about to show him something that, until now, people had preferred to keep silent about.
“Yes.” She did not look away.
“Even if you learn things you won’t like?” Richard was silent for a moment before answering firmly: “Especially then.” Claudia studied his face for several seconds, as though trying to determine how serious he was.
At last, she gave a short nod.
“Very well.” She opened the leather folder again and took out one of the envelopes.
The paper was slightly worn around the edges, but the envelope itself was still neat enough.
“These letters have been arriving at the House for the past six months.” Richard took the envelope and carefully opened it.
Inside was an ordinary sheet of paper.
There were no seals, unusual markings, or any other indication that the letter held any particular significance.
The text itself appeared completely mundane—it concerned deliveries, deadlines, and various matters of estate business.
Richard was about to turn the page when his gaze stopped at the bottom line.
Beneath the signature was a strange sequence of numbers.
He frowned.
For several seconds, he simply stared at it, trying to understand what exactly he was looking at.
Then he raised his eyes to Claudia.
“What is this?” “A cipher.” Claudia said it calmly, as though they were discussing the most ordinary thing in the world.
Richard looked at the sequence of numbers at the bottom of the letter once more, then turned his gaze to her.
“You understand it?” “Yes.” “How?” Claudia did not answer.
She merely lowered her eyes to the letter, as though deciding whether she should continue.
Richard narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Claudia.” She looked him directly in the eyes again and calmly held his gaze.
“Because I was trained.” Richard frowned.
“By whom?” This time, Claudia did not answer immediately.
“Your family.” Richard froze.
For several moments, he said nothing, trying to make sense of what he had just heard.
Until now, he had regarded the letters before him as merely another part of the House’s old problems.
But now everything looked different.
Meanwhile, Claudia took a second letter from the folder and placed it beside the first.
“The House of Ravenhart once had its own intelligence network.” Richard shifted his gaze to the new envelope.
Something stirred faintly in his memory, as though a forgotten word were trying to break through the fog.
He frowned.
“The Ravens.” “Yes.” Richard continued to look at Claudia for a few more seconds, as though hoping to determine from her expression just how much she had truly been hiding all this time.
“And you were part of this network?” Claudia nodded calmly.
“I was one of them.” Silence settled over the study.
The muffled sounds of the estate drifted in through the window, but here, surrounded by papers and old letters, everything suddenly seemed unnaturally quiet to Richard.
He shifted his gaze to the letter, then looked back at Claudia.
“You’re a mage?” A faint smile appeared on her lips.
“A little.” Richard raised an eyebrow skeptically.
“How little?” Claudia said nothing.
Instead, she slowly raised her hand and extended her index finger.
A tiny black feather appeared at the tip of her finger.
It appeared without a sound, as though woven from the very shadows.
For a moment, the feather hovered above her fingertip, trembling slightly, before crumbling into nothingness and vanishing without a trace.
Richard frowned.
There was more than mere surprise in his eyes now.
“Magic?” “Raven magic.” Richard looked once more at the spot where the feather had just disappeared.
“What does it do?” “It allows me to see farther than the eye can.” Claudia said it calmly, as though she were speaking of something long familiar and perfectly ordinary.
She placed the letter back on the desk and lightly touched it with her fingers.
“Sometimes, quite literally.” Richard studied her closely.
Now, many things were beginning to make sense.
Her attentiveness, which he had previously taken for nothing more than keen observation.
The way she noticed the slightest changes around her.
How she almost always seemed to know who was in the house, who had gone where, and what was happening in the neighboring rooms.
Even her strange certainty about certain things no longer seemed quite so strange.
As though she really could see a little more than everyone else.
Richard slowly straightened in his chair.
“Why did you hide this?” Claudia held his gaze for a moment.
“Because the House no longer had any need for mages.” Richard frowned.
The answer seemed too simple.
“Or because someone might find out?” Claudia remained silent.
And that silence was enough.
Richard knew he had struck a nerve.
However, he did not press her further.
Instead, he turned his attention back to the letters lying before him.
“Is there something important in the letters?” “Yes.” Claudia took another sheet from the folder.
This time, she did not place it before Richard immediately.
Instead, she held it in her hands for several seconds, as though this particular letter were far more important than the others.
Then she slowly extended it toward him.
“A few months ago, someone began buying land around the city.” Richard frowned.
“Who?” “We don’t know yet.” “Merchants?” “Officially.” Richard held her gaze.
“And in reality?” Claudia looked him directly in the eyes.
“The money is coming from different places.” Richard slowly leaned back in his chair, considering her words.
“It could be ordinary trade.” “It could.” Her answer was calm, but Richard had already noticed that Claudia rarely spoke with such caution without a reason.
“But you don’t think it is.” “No.” “Why?” Claudia said nothing.
Instead, she picked up a prepared list from the desk and placed it before Richard.
He lowered his gaze.
There were several names on the sheet.
Some were familiar to him; others he was seeing for the first time.
Beside each name were dates, sums, and brief notes written in neat handwriting.
Richard scanned the first line, then the second.
With each successive name, his expression grew more serious.
This no longer looked like a coincidence.
Some of these names meant nothing to Richard at all.
He was about to move on to the next line when one name made him stop.
Blackthorn.
Something stirred faintly inside him.
It was not a memory—not something Richard could call a memory, at least.
Rather, it was a vague sensation rising from somewhere deep within.
Cold.
And with it came unease, an almost-forgotten sense of danger.
Richard slowly ran his finger over the name written on the page, never taking his eyes from it.
“Who are they?” Claudia did not answer immediately.
“An old house.” “How old?” “Older than many of the houses that exist today.” Richard frowned.
If Claudia was telling the truth, then they were dealing with a family whose influence could reach far deeper than it appeared at first glance.
He looked up.
“And what do they want?” Claudia calmly met his gaze.
“That is what we are trying to find out.” Richard was silent for several seconds, once again staring at the name on the list.
Now the name no longer seemed like just another line on a sheet of paper.
For some reason, it felt familiar.
And he did not like that feeling at all.
“‘We’?” Richard narrowed his eyes slightly, catching the word.
Claudia smiled faintly.
“I’m not the only one who works for the House.” Richard was about to ask what exactly she meant and how many more people were hiding behind that mysterious “we,” but he did not get the chance to finish.
The study door opened, and Sebastian appeared in the doorway.
“My lord.” Richard turned to him.
“What happened?” “The healer asks you to come.” Richard frowned.
After everything he had learned lately, he did not like the sound of that at all.
“Now?” “He says it concerns your condition.” Richard fell silent for a moment.
His gaze involuntarily shifted to Claudia.
She was already closing the leather folder, gathering the letters back inside.
There was neither surprise nor concern on her face, as though she had expected this visit.
“Go,” she said calmly.
Richard looked at her.
“And you?” “I’ll continue going through the letters.” He remained by the desk for a few more seconds before finally nodding.
Richard rose, leaving the papers and the list bearing the Blackthorn name on the desk.
He headed for the door after Sebastian, but just before leaving, he glanced back at Claudia once more.
She had already opened the folder again.
It seemed that while he was speaking with the healer, an investigation of its own would begin in this study.
“And Claudia.” She looked up from the folder.
“Tell no one about the Blackthorns.” “I wasn’t planning to.” Richard had already taken a step toward the door when he stopped and looked back at her.
“Not even Sebastian?” For the first time, a genuine smile appeared on Claudia’s face—not the barely perceptible one from before, but a sincere, almost teasing smile.
“My lord, Sebastian knows far more than you think.” Richard slowly turned his gaze to the butler.
Sebastian stood by the door and, upon hearing those words, merely let out a heavy sigh.
“Unfortunately, she’s right.” Richard said nothing.
He studied the two of them for a while longer, trying to understand just how much had been kept from him, but eventually he left the study.
They headed toward the west wing.
The old mage lived there.
Richard had never been to this part of the estate before.
The farther they went from the living quarters, the quieter everything became.
There was almost none of the House’s usual bustle here: no one hurried through the corridors, there were no voices, and no clatter of dishes reached them.
The corridor was almost completely abandoned.
A thick layer of dust covered the floor and windowsills.
Old cabinets stood along the walls, filled with books, many of which, judging by their appearance, had not been opened in years.
Closed doors stretched along both sides of the corridor.
Some were locked, while others were simply shut tight, as though no one had lived behind them for a very long time.
Richard instinctively slowed his pace.
This place was nothing like the part of the House he had seen since waking.
There was a sense of abandonment here.
As though the west wing held something the rest of the House had long since chosen to forget.
Old portraits of people in long robes hung on the walls.
On some, the faces had nearly faded with time, but the House’s crests and symbols were still discernible.
Ravenhart mages.
Richard found himself lingering on one of the portraits.
He did not know these people, yet for some reason he had the strange feeling that he had seen their faces before.
Sebastian, meanwhile, stopped in front of one of the doors.
A thin strip of warm light spilled from beneath it.
He knocked.
“Come in.” The answer came at once.
The voice was old and deep, yet remarkably clear and firm.
There was none of the frailty Richard had expected to hear from a man of such advanced age.
Sebastian opened the door.
The room was warm.
Logs crackled in the fireplace, and the soft glow of the flames reflected off the bookshelves, which were packed with ancient tomes.
An eighty-year-old man sat beside the fireplace.
Thin—almost painfully so—with long white hair falling to his shoulders.
His face was marked by deep wrinkles, but his eyes remained sharp and attentive.
He was reading a book, settled comfortably in an old armchair.
When Richard entered, the man slowly raised his eyes.
For several long seconds, he said nothing as he studied him.
Not his clothes, not his face—it seemed as though he were trying to look far deeper, searching for something in Richard that was long familiar.
At last, the mage spoke quietly: “At last.” Richard stopped at the entrance, his gaze fixed on the old man.
“You were waiting for me?” The old man gave a faint smile.
“No.” He slowly closed the book and placed it on the armrest of his chair.
“But I have been waiting for this day.” Richard frowned.
“Why?” The mage raised his eyes to him.
There was something strange in his gaze—not surprise or curiosity, but rather careful scrutiny, as though the old man were trying to see something in him that could not be perceived at a glance.
“Because you are the only person in this house whom I cannot sense.” Richard froze.
“Cannot sense?” “Your magic.” The old man raised a hand.
A small blue flame appeared above his palm.
It flickered with a steady, cool light, casting a pale glow across the mage’s wrinkled face.
“Magic exists in everyone,” he continued calmly.
“In some, there is more.
In others, less.” The flame flickered and grew slightly brighter.
“But it is there.” The old man looked directly at Richard.
“And in you, I sense nothing.” Richard tensed involuntarily.
He wanted to ask what exactly that meant, but the words caught somewhere inside him.
Because for the first time that morning, he saw something in another person’s eyes that was more than mere concern about his illness.
There was genuine worry there.
“Some have less.” The blue flame above his palm flickered, becoming almost transparent for a moment before going out.
The old man lowered his hand and looked at Richard again.
“But it is there.” He paused briefly, as though choosing his words carefully.
“But around you…” The mage fell silent.
Richard felt the tension inside him mounting.
“What?” The old man did not answer immediately.
His gaze remained fixed on Richard, as though he were trying to make certain of what he was sensing.
“Emptiness.” An unpleasant chill ran down Richard’s spine.
“Is that bad?” A faint smile appeared on the old man’s face.
“I don’t know.” He spoke with complete calm, which somehow made his answer sound even more unsettling.
Then the mage gave a quiet chuckle.
“And that is precisely what makes it interesting.” He rose from his chair.
His movements were slow but steady.
Walking over to the old cabinet against the wall, he ran his fingers along the spines of several books before stopping at one.
The old man carefully pulled it from the shelf.
The book looked so ancient that the leather of its binding seemed ready to crumble at the slightest touch.
Its darkened pages were uneven, and faded symbols could barely be made out along the spine.
He held the book carefully against his chest and turned to Richard.
“I think it is time I showed you something.” The cover bore the same crest Richard had seen before: a black raven and a silver wolf standing on either side of an ancient tree, its branches spreading above them and its roots reaching deep below, as though connecting the House’s symbol to the very earth itself.
Richard slowly reached out and took the book.
The moment his fingers touched the worn leather binding, his heart suddenly began to beat faster.
A flash of light burst before his eyes.
For a moment, everything around him vanished.
He saw roots—vast, ancient roots sinking deep into the earth.
They intertwined with one another and stretched into the darkness, as though they extended far beyond the place he could see.
Then a voice spoke.
Not human.
Neither male nor female.
It seemed to arise directly within his mind, bypassing both hearing and words.
“Blood remembers the one who has forgotten.” The flash vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
Richard drew a sharp breath and tightened his grip on the book.
The old crest was before his eyes once more—the raven and the wolf on either side of the ancient tree.
But now he looked at it differently.
As though, for the first time, he understood that the symbol meant far more than simply belonging to the House of Ravenhart.
Richard released the book abruptly.
It fell onto the table with a dull thud, sending a thin cloud of dust into the air.
The old man had been watching him closely all this time.
Now something new appeared in his gaze—wariness mingled with genuine interest.
“You heard it?” Richard was breathing heavily, trying to steady himself.
“Heard what?” The mage did not answer.
For several seconds, he simply stared at Richard, as though testing his reaction while at the same time confirming something he had long suspected.
Then a slow smile appeared on his face.
“So you did hear it after all.” Richard looked at the book again.
“What is this?” The old man approached the table and carefully ran his fingers over the crest depicted on the cover.
His hand lingered on the symbol at its center—the ancient tree whose roots and branches bound the raven and the wolf together.
“The history of your bloodline.” Richard frowned.
“And Eldarion?” The old man’s fingers went still.
His smile slowly faded.
For several moments, he said nothing, his eyes fixed on Richard.
“Where did you hear that name?” Richard said nothing.
He did not know himself.
The word had simply come to him as suddenly as the voice had.
Eldarion.
Richard did not understand himself why he had spoken the word.
He had never heard it before.
At least, as far as his memory allowed, the name Eldarion had never appeared in any book he had read or any conversation he had heard.
And yet it had slipped from his lips so naturally, as though it had always existed somewhere deep within his mind, waiting for the moment when he would finally remember it.
The old man slowly raised his eyes.
“Who told you about Eldarion?” Richard said nothing.
He could not.
Because at that very moment, a strange sensation came over him—distant, almost imperceptible, yet all the more unsettling for it.
Somewhere far to the north… something had awakened.
He did not know where the feeling had come from or what exactly it meant.
But it was so clear that Richard could not bring himself to doubt it.
Then a sharp raven’s cry came from outside the window.
The old man flinched.
Only for a moment, but Richard noticed it immediately.
The mage, who until then had been calm and composed, suddenly changed.
For the first time, genuine concern appeared on his face—almost fear.
He slowly looked toward the window, then back at Richard.
“We need to talk, Richard.” The old man closed the book and pressed his palm firmly against its worn binding.
For several seconds, he remained silent, as though gathering the courage to reveal a secret he had kept for many years.
“About your ancestor.” A pause hung between them.
“About Arthur Ravenhart.” Outside the window, the wind howled again.
This time, it came from the north.
A cold gust struck the glass, making the old frames rattle softly.
The flames in the fireplace flickered and, for a moment, stretched toward the window.
Richard slowly turned his head.
He did not understand why, but at the sound, the same strange sensation stirred within him once more—the one he had felt only moments before.
As though somewhere far away, beyond the estate, beyond forests and mountains, something was happening that he could not yet see.
The old mage was looking out the window as well.
And this time, neither of them said a word.