No one in Blackglass cliffs expected Rowan to change the future of the place. The room had its own hierarchy, polished into every surface and enforced by people who could judge a stranger before hearing a single word. Rowan arrived carrying no influence, only an obsidian horn fragment. To everyone else it seemed ordinary. To knight Garran, it was dangerous enough to justify immediate cruelty.
knight Garran moved first. A sharp accusation turned curious faces into hostile ones: the object was stolen, the visitor was lying, and security should act before the gathering became embarrassing. Rowan did not shout back. Instead, the stranger described exactly where the clue had been found, who had protected it, and the promise attached to it. The details made dragon Avarn go still.
Years earlier, a disappearance connected to Blackglass cliffs had been closed with suspicious speed. Witness statements had changed, a ledger page had vanished, and money had moved through an account controlled by knight Garran. Families were told to stop asking questions. Rowan grew up with fragments of that silence—half a photograph, a remembered phrase, and the certainty that someone powerful feared the truth.