Chapter 10: The Catalyst

　　The dead flower was a brand in Caden’s palm, its fragile, dried petals holding the weight of a declaration of war. Violet’s message was unequivocal: she was not just following the trail to Aretia; she had physically grasped it. The audit, the watchful eyes of Prefect Kaine—it was all background noise to her now. She had moved beyond fear, into the terrifying, clear-headed resolve of someone with nothing left to lose.

　　Caden felt the paradigm shift like a physical tremor in the foundations of the Archives. The careful, years-long dance of Hint‌ and misdirection was over. Violet was forcing the endgame. And in doing so, she had handed him both the greatest risk and the only possible path forward: he had to become the catalyst.

　　He had to give her not just another clue, but the key. The one piece of information that would make all the others click into place, transforming a collection of suspicious facts into an undeniable, actionable truth. He had to hand her the weapon that could slay a dragon, even if the resulting inferno consumed them both.

　　The problem was the source. The evidence that connected General Sorrengail directly to the massacre at Aretia, that proved the official story of Brennan’s death was a lie engineered to consolidate her power, did not exist in any file, not even in the deepest vault. Lilith was too meticulous for that. The proof existed in only one place: Caden’s memory.

　　He had been there. Not as a rider, but as a young, junior scribe attached to the Sixth Wing, tasked with recording the campaign. He had seen the orders change mid-march. He had seen the loyalist units, the ones filled with the rebellion’s sympathizers, deliberately positioned as the vanguard against an impossible gryphon force. He had seen Brennan Sorrengail and his wing ordered into an ambush disguised as a relief mission. He had buried the original dispatches and helped write the sanitized after-action reports that painted Brennan as a hero who died in a glorious, last stand. He had survived because he was a nobody, because he knew how to keep his head down and his mouth shut. The guilt had festered for twenty years, a cancer that had made him the silent, watchful ghost he was today.

　　He could not write this down. No document he forged would carry the weight. It had to come from a source Violet would trust implicitly. It had to come from the one person who had been closest to Brennan.

　　It was time to risk everything on a single, desperate cast of the dice.

　　He waited for the moonless night, when the clouds hung low and thick over Basgiath. The audit had concluded, Prefect Kaine and his men gone, their report—which undoubtedly recommended heightened surveillance—now sitting on some superior’s desk. The temporary pressure had eased, replaced by the promise of permanent scrutiny. He had a small window.

　　He did not go to the Archives. He went to the one place he had avoided for two decades: the scribes’ quadrant. He moved through the sleeping campus like the ghost he was, his passage masked by the familiar shadows. His target was not a person, but a place: the memorial garden, a quiet corner dedicated to the scribes who had fallen in service. It was a place of reflection, but for Caden, it was a mausoleum of his own complicity.

　　There, tucked behind a marble slab inscribed with the names of the dead from the Aretia campaign, was a small, hollow space behind a loose stone. A dead drop. A secret known only to him and one other person—Brennan’s lover, a brilliant, fierce scribe named Elara, who had been transferred to a remote outpost weeks after his death. A transfer Caden had always suspected was a gentle form of exile.

　　He had not spoken to her in twenty years. He had no idea if she was even alive. But she was the only one who would have the context, the pain, and the motive to believe him.

　　He slipped a single piece of parchment into the hollow. It contained no names, no specifics that could be traced. It was written in a cipher they had invented as junior scribes, a child’s game turned into a vessel for treason. The message was simple, a single, coded sentence:

　　“The seed you helped me plant in the shadow of the willow has grown thorns. The harvest is near, but the scythe is blind. The field was always Aretia.”

　　The “willow” was their code for Brennan, for his graceful strength. The “seed” was the truth they had both secretly clung to. The “blind scythe” was Violet. If Elara was alive, if she ever checked this drop, if she remembered the cipher, she would understand that Brennan’s sister was now digging into the truth, but she was doing it without knowing the full horror of what had happened. She was a weapon without a target.

　　It was the most Caden could do. He was signaling to a ghost, hoping to summon an ally from the past. He was putting the final piece of the puzzle outside of his control, trusting in the loyalty of a woman he hadn’t seen in a generation.

　　The following days were an agony. Violet’s frustration was palpable. She had reached the limit of what the Archives could give her. She needed the human element, the testimony. She paced the Archives like a caged animal, the dead flower from Aretia a silent accusation on his desk. The pressure was building towards a breaking point. He had set the catalyst in motion, but would it arrive in time?

　　The answer came on a rain-swept afternoon. A travel-stained courier, his uniform marking him from a distant southern outpost, entered the Archives. He didn’t ask for Caden. He went to the main desk and left a small, oilskin-wrapped package. “For the head archivist,” he said. “Botanical samples for classification. From the Esbenay range.”

　　Caden’s blood turned to ice. The Esbenay. The range of the persistent stream.

　　When the courier was gone, he took the package to his desk. His hands were steady as he unwrapped it. Inside was not a plant, but a small, leather-bound journal. And tucked into its pages was a single, fresh white flower, identical to the dead one Violet had given him.

　　With a heart thundering against his ribs, Caden opened the journal. The handwriting was unfamiliar, a precise, elegant script. But the words… the words were a direct, point-by-point recollection of the altered dispatches, the repositioned units, the specific orders that had sent Brennan to his death. It was signed with a single initial: E.

　　Elara was alive. And she had answered.

　　He did not take the journal to Violet. That would be too dangerous. Instead, that night, he committed every word to his flawless memory. Then, he burned the journal in the Archives’ furnace, watching the truth turn to ash, its essence now living only in his mind and, he prayed, soon in Violet’s.

　　The next morning, as Violet sat at her desk, her face drawn with exhaustion and despair, Caden approached her. He carried a large, flat volume on the flora of the Esbenay range. As he placed it on the table before her, he allowed the book to fall open to a detailed illustration of the white alpine flower.

　　“A resilient species,” he said softly, his voice barely a whisper. “It clings to life in the most unforgiving soil.” He paused, then added, his eyes holding hers for a fraction of a second, “It is said to bloom most abundantly in places where the blood of heroes has watered the ground.”

　　He saw the understanding dawn in her eyes, a terrible, glorious light. He had given her the key. He had confirmed the location and the connection to her brother. The catalyst had done its work.

　　The fallen knight had thrown the final torch onto the pyre. There was no turning back now. The conflagration would come. And he would stand beside the girl he had forged, ready to face the heat.

　　Chapter 10 - End