Snowstorms trapped Silverflame Keep for three days.
Troops stopped drilling. Supply wagons halted. The world narrowed to flickering torches, echoing footsteps, and silence thick enough to choke.
Sera used the time well.
She wandered farther than before—quiet, invisible. No one questioned the mute bride. She watched, counted, listened.
And then she found the locked door.
Hidden behind a shelf in the upper library. Marked not with a title, but with a rusted plaque:
**UNCLAIMED ESTATES**
At nightfall, she returned. Hair tucked beneath a hood, torch flickering.
She picked the lock with a sharpened quill.
Inside: scrolls, documents, dust.
She searched until her fingers numbed.
One scroll unraveled into a list of noble lineages marked “extinct."
Her eyes stopped on one name: **House
