Any child could eat without payment.
That had been Elias’s first demand when the council asked what reward he wanted.
Not land.
Not gold.
Food.
Mira teased him for choosing soup over a palace.
He never regretted it.
Inside the kitchen hung no portrait of Elias.
He prohibited one.
Instead, above the doorway, someone carved:
NO CHILD IN VALORIA SHOULD HAVE TO BECOME A PRINCE BEFORE SOMEONE NOTICES HE IS HUNGRY.
Elias pretended to dislike the sentence because it sounded sentimental.
He secretly loved it.
One winter evening, Aurion found him standing beneath it.
“You are thinking loudly,” the Guardian said inside his mind.
Elias smiled.
“That sounds like something Mira says.”
Aurion’s enormous eyes dimmed warmly.
“You miss them.”
Elias did.
Master Oren was gone.
Serah too.
Mira had died at sixty-three after spending forty years terrorizing council meetings.
Corvin lived longer.
He and Elias had grown from suspicious brothers into something stranger and stronger.
Not rivals.
Not exactly family in the traditional sense.
Chosen brothers who happened to share blood.
Corvin died before Elias.
His last words were reportedly:
“Tell Mira I still won more votes.”
No one knew whether death delivered messages.
Elias promised anyway.
The Stone Keeper grew old.
Aurion did not.
That became its own sadness.
At seventy-two, Elias climbed Mount Arken one final time.
Slowly.
With a cane.
Aurion walked beside him, matching each tiny human step.
“You can go faster,” Elias said.
“I know.”
“You’re making this embarrassing.”
“I know.”
Elias laughed.
Inside the mountain, most Guardians slept again.
Not sealed.
Resting by choice.
Tal, the ancient Keeper, had faded decades earlier.
Before disappearing, he told Elias:
“The Covenant no longer needs blood.”
“What does it need?”
“Memory.”
Elias had not understood then.
He did now.
Power becomes dangerous when people forget why limits were created.
The old festival had forgotten.
The monarchy had forgotten.
The Guardians themselves had forgotten.
Memory was not nostalgia.
It was defense.
At the central chamber, Elias sat on a stone bench.
Aurion lowered himself nearby.
Not kneeling.
Sitting.
The old man smiled.
“You finally learned.”
The Guardian looked toward him.
“You taught me.”
Elias laughed.
“That’s generous.”
Silence.
Then Elias asked the question he had avoided for sixty-one years.
“Why did you kneel?”
Aurion’s golden eyes shifted.
“You know.”
“I know what everyone thinks.”
“Ask.”
Elias waited.
Aurion answered.
“When you touched me, I recognized your blood.”
Elias nodded.
“But that was not why I knelt.”
The old man looked up.
“Why?”
“Because I was ashamed.”
Elias stared.
Aurion continued.
“We Guardians failed your family.”
“How?”
“When the old dynasty fell, we chose sleep rather than remain among humans who feared us.”
“You were exhausted.”
“Yes.”
“You had fought for decades.”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t failure.”
“To you.”
Aurion looked toward the sleeping giants.
“But children inherited the cost of our withdrawal.”