Dawn unfurled quietly over the Althearo estate, casting long shadows through the trimmed hedges and cracked cobblestone paths of the southern garden. Dew clung to the grass like pearls, and the air carried the crisp scent of pine and cold iron. A lone figure moved among the silence—graceful, precise, steady.
Lucca Althearo, heir by blood but not by name, shifted into a low stance beneath the old whitethorn tree, muscles taut with the memory of a hundred mornings just like this one. His bare feet pressed into the earth as he rose in a smooth arc, blade slicing through the air with disciplined elegance. The steel whistled—a lonely sound.
He did not speak. There was no one to impress here.
No tutors to evaluate, no brothers to mock his form, no father to sneer that kindness made a man brittle.
His mother used to watch him once, sitting on the stone bench beneath the window ledge, her eyes full of quiet warmth. But lately, her presence had waned—like the candle that burned itself away night after night, dimming to a flicker.
The final movement of his training sliced through the silence like a vow. Lucca exhaled and lowered the blade, its tip touching the mossy soil. He rolled his shoulders with a practiced stretch, feeling the tight pull where bruise met bone.
That was when he heard it—a shuffle, too hurried to be part of the morning's peace.
"Master Lucca!" a voice barked, cracking the calm.
Lucca turned sharply. It was Old Brinn, the ever-loyal steward with thinning hair and a permanent worry line carved between his brows. The man was panting, his cloak askew.
"It's your mother. She's—she's taken a turn. Worse than yesterday. There's blood."
Lucca froze. Then he ran.
Through corridors still steeped in sleep, he stormed into the west wing, heart pounding like a war drum. When he reached the chamber, the smell of iron was already in the air.
She lay curled beneath too-thin linens, her skin a washed-out parchment. Crimson stained the handkerchief that had fallen from her trembling fingers. A maid sobbed softly in the corner.
"Mama," he whispered, rushing to her side.
She didn't answer.
Panic clawed at his throat, but he forced his voice to stay calm. "Fetch the physician. Now."
It felt like hours before the doctor arrived—an old man with clouded eyes but deft hands. He examined her carefully, muttering to himself, before stepping aside with grim finality.
"It is the Corruption of the Heart," he said, voice low. "A rare affliction. Incurable by ordinary means. Her time is short."
"There must be something," Lucca said, chest tightening.
The physician hesitated. Then: "There is an old remedy, nearly forgotten. A flower—Soliaris Aurem. Found only in the Abyssal Vale."
Brinn's eyes widened. "That place is cursed."
"Indeed," the doctor said. "No one who goes there returns unchanged... if they return at all. And the flower blooms only briefly each month. You have a week, at most."
Lucca turned back to his mother, her breath shallow, her face gaunt beneath silver strands of hair.
Fear gripped him—but beneath it stirred something stronger.
Resolve.
That night, Lucca stayed by her side. He cleaned the blood from her lips, changed her damp cloths, whispered stories from the days they walked the gardens in springtime.
She woke once, in a fragile moment between sleep and suffering. "Lucca," she rasped, her hand trembling in his. "Don't… don't do anything foolish. Promise me."
"I promise," he lied.
She drifted back into dreams, unaware of the new fire that had kindled behind his eyes.
Later, beneath the dull silver of moonlight, Lucca stepped out onto the balcony. The wind was sharp, tugging at his sleeves. Far beyond the hills, past the river bends and ruined fortresses, lay the cursed ravine where gods were rumored to whisper and men vanished in screams.
The Abyssal Vale.
He remembered the stories—of noblemen losing their minds, of beasts with two mouths and no eyes, of spirits that wove illusions from sorrow. Royal decree forbade any citizen from crossing its borders, under penalty of death.
But he had lived under his father's roof. He knew cruelty. Death was not always the worst thing that could happen to a soul.
His father—the Grand Marshal of the Crown—had never once lifted a hand in love, only fury. To him, Lucca's mother was a plaything gone dull, a faded flower. And Lucca himself? An heir in blood, but not in spirit. Too kind. Too soft. Too much his mother's son.
In truth, Lucca had never been anything else.
But now, kindness demanded courage.
He looked toward the east. The stars were fading into the horizon's breath. In three days' time, the next moonrise would begin the Soliaris Bloom.
He had until then to reach the Vale, survive its haunted stormlands, and pluck a single, golden flower from its poisoned earth.
"I will save you," he whispered to the night. "No matter what it takes."
Somewhere, a breeze rustled the ivy like an answer.