Gaelor’s golden eye shifted.
“It did not.”
Aren frowned.
“I heard my name.”
“Yes.”
“Then?”
“The sword was silent.”
Aren stared.
“Who called me?”
Gaelor looked toward the mountain beneath them.
“Your mother.”
Aren stopped breathing.
“No.”
“Not living.”
The giant clarified.
“Memory.”
Elara had left part of herself in the Covenant when she rewrote it.
Not a ghost.
Not consciousness.
An echo.
A final instruction tied to Aren’s presence.
Come.
The voice that drew him toward the sword.
His mother had reached him twelve years after her death.
Aren closed his eyes.
For decades, he thought the mountain had remembered him.
It had.
But first his mother had refused to let the world forget.
“What did she leave?”
Gaelor answered with words Aren had never heard before.
A woman’s voice.
Faint.
Warm.
If you are hearing this, my son, then I failed to give you the childhood you deserved.
Aren’s throat closed.
I do not know what they will tell you about blood, crowns, giants, or destiny.
Believe none of it merely because I was your mother.
Choose.
Always choose.
And remember that anyone who loves you should want your choice to remain yours, even when it hurts them.
The echo faded.
Aren sat beneath the mountain and cried like the twelve-year-old boy he had once been.
Gaelor said nothing.
Stone understood silence.
The next morning, Aren knew his life was near its end.
Not magic.
Age.
He had been tired for months.
He looked toward Gaelor.
“I have one request.”
The giant waited.
“Do not kneel at my funeral.”
Gaelor’s eyes brightened.
“Never again.”
“Good.”
Aren returned to Eldoria.
He died the following spring.
Not on a throne.
Not in the palace.
In a modest house beside the eastern market.
The same neighborhood where he once stole food.
His final meal was bread, cheese, and one apple.
He laughed when he noticed.
“Someone planned this.”
His oldest apprentice denied responsibility.
Badly.
Aren died asleep before dawn.
The bells rang throughout Eldoria.
People gathered in the Royal Square.
Thousands.
Gaelor came from the mountain.
The ground shook as he approached.
Children were afraid until adults told them he was an old friend.
Aren’s body rested beside the ancient black-marble platform.
The empty slot where the Kingmaker Sword once stood remained visible.
Gaelor stopped.
People expected him to kneel.
He did not.
Instead the giant placed one enormous hand flat against the square.
Aren’s apprentices placed their hands against it.
Then citizens.
Thousands.
No one bowed.
The funeral became a line of people standing.
That was what Aren would have wanted.
His burial marker was placed beside Princess Elara’s memorial.
The Council proposed dozens of inscriptions.