Eldris Saber's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Eldris walked the eastern edge of his swamp at dusk. Moss clung to his bark-dark skin. He stopped at the iron gate that marked where his land ended and the fae court began. The metalwork twisted human and fae shapes together. Beyond it, he needed a pact that would keep his swamp sovereign forever. But he had no one who could speak the fae tongue without bleeding. He had tried sending a marsh-scribe last week. She had bowed wrong. The fae sent her back with her words turned inside out. Eldris could not cross himself yet, not while two of his own court watched for any stumble. So he built. On stilts above the still water, he raised a small pavilion of silk curtains and pale glass. It would house an envoy he had not yet found. A workspace. A signal. Anyone who entered would know they spoke with his full weight behind them. Near the gate, he set a tall stone pillar. Into its spiraling face he carved every fae custom he had gathered through long study. How to greet. How to refuse. Which words bent and which words bit. An envoy could read it before crossing and walk in armored. He stood between the pavilion and the pillar as the moon rose. The pieces waited. The seat was set. The warnings were cut in stone. But the chair inside the silk curtains remained empty. Eldris had solved the silence. Now he needed a voice to fill it — and he knew, with cold certainty, that the only person in three territories fluent enough to sit in that chair was someone he had spent years refusing to call upon.