Sineus rose from his knee. The movement was slow, measured, each centimeter gained a deliberate claiming of authority. He did not look away from Levan Dadiani, whose face was a mask of confusion and awe. The thirty Khevsur warriors remained still, their hands resting on the hilts of their newly sheathed swords, watching the silent exchange between the two leaders. The immediate threat of bloodshed had passed, but the air in the reception hall remained sharp, brittle.
He had mended one memory. Now he would expose the void where another should be.
The ache behind his eyes, which had receded to a dull thrum, sharpened again. It was the price of looking not at what was there, but at what was missing. He focused on the intricate memory-paths etched into Levan’s armor, seeing the brilliant tapestry of honor and oath. But he also saw the gaps. The clumsy, brutal cuts where whole sections of history had been carved out.
— A man’s honor is not the sum of his victories, — Sineus said. His voice was not loud, but it carried across the stone floor, a quiet weight in the vast hall. — It is also in how he carries his failures.
He held Levan’s gaze, letting the silence stretch.
— But other memories are missing, aren’t they? — Sineus pressed, his voice dropping lower. — Whole wars. Times of shame. The Kinslayer War.
The name fell into the hall like a black stone into a still pool.
Levan Dadiani stiffened as if struck. The color drained from his face, leaving the weathered skin pale and tight. His hand, which had been loose at his side, clenched into a fist. He took a half-step back, a reflexive retreat from a truth he thought was buried forever. The Kinslayer War. A time of civil strife when Khevsur honor had shattered, when clan turned on clan and brother shed brother’s blood. It was the deepest stain on their history. A stain they had paid a fortune to forget.
His breath hitched. His eyes darted to his men, then back to Sineus, wide with a dawning horror. How could this northern prince know their most secret shame?
— That shame is gone, — Levan said, his voice a harsh rasp. — Lord Kurov helped us. He came to us when our spirits were broken by the memory. He purified our history.
The name hung in the air between them. Rostislav Kurov. The man from the fortress of agony. The architect of their impossible prison.
— He didn’t purge it, — Sineus stated, his voice flat and cold as river stone. The words were not an argument; they were a correction. A sentence passed on a false belief. — He stole it.
Levan stared, his mind refusing to grasp the meaning. He shook his head, a small, jerky motion.
— He took your people’s greatest agony, the memory of your deepest failure, and he wears it, — Sineus continued, stepping closer. He was inside the circle of Levan’s personal space now, the confrontation intimate and brutal. — He wears it as a shield.
The Khevsur leader flinched. He looked down at his own armor, at the honorable deeds of his ancestors, and for the first time, he must have felt the hollowness. He must have felt the phantom limb of a history that had been amputated. His people’s pain had not been healed. It had been harvested.
— The Blight consumes memory. It feeds on what is real, — Sineus explained, his voice relentless. He would not allow Levan the comfort of turning away. — But it cannot see a man who is already cloaked in the memory of perfect agony. A man who wears a shroud of pure, weaponized despair. Kurov walks unseen in the dark because he is wrapped in the stolen shame of your fathers.
The full, horrifying truth settled in the hall. It was a poison that unmade everything the Khevsur believed about themselves. Their clean history was a lie. Their strength was a lie. The very honor they would have killed to protect moments ago was a hollow thing, its foundation sold to an enemy who now used their pain as a tool.
Levan Dadiani shuddered. The formidable warrior, the mountain of pride and steel, seemed to shrink. His shoulders slumped. The fire in his eyes died, leaving only the grey ash of disillusion. His certainty, the bedrock of his entire world, was shattered.
He looked at Sineus, his expression broken. He was no longer a lord of the mountains. He was a man who had been robbed of his own soul and had not even known it was gone.
— Tell me, — Levan whispered, the words barely audible. — Tell me everything.
The dust motes danced in the silent shafts of light. The scent of spilled wine, sharp and sweet, rose from the stone floor.
In the silence of the great hall, the mountain lord finally broke. He would listen.
