Chapter 32:

  The Home He Left Behind

  As I mulled over the implications of my new skill, I stepped out of the core room and sealed the door behind me. Even knowing exactly where it was hidden, it amazed me how effortlessly it vanished back into the wall. After sliding the table into position once more, I took a final look around the basement.

  Confident I’d uncovered everything worth finding, I headed up the stairs back into the living room, then turned toward the wooden steps rising behind the fireplace.

  At the top of the surprisingly steep staircase, I reached a small landing, just big enough for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder. Two doors waited there, one on the left and one on the right. The room with the large window was probably on the right, so naturally, I went for the left door first.

  Locked.

  I jiggled the handle a few times, but it didn’t give an inch.

  With nothing else to try, I turned to the opposite door. The handle turned without effort, and the door swung inward as if inviting me inside.

  The bedroom beyond was both grand and humble in its design. A gentle vaulted ceiling arched overhead, and the space was bathed in light from the large circular window I’d admired from outside.

  To the right, a broad bed waited, stripped down to just its frame and mattress. It wasn’t stuffed with straw like the one I’d grown up with, this mattress had been made for comfort. Real comfort.

  My father would’ve called it a waste of good coin. But standing here, I couldn’t help thinking how incredible it would feel to sleep without waking to the crunch of dry reeds beneath me.

  A quick search led me to a dark oak chest at the foot of the bed, where the linens and quilts had been neatly folded and tucked away.

  On the far side of the room, a sturdy armoire carved from the same timber as the chest took up most of the wall. When I opened it, I was surprised to find a few sets of clothes still hanging inside, and at a glance they looked as if they were about my size.

  I slipped one of the shirts over my head and found that, though it fit my frame, my shoulders weren’t yet broad enough to fill it out completely. I felt like a child trying on my father’s clothes, as if I were pretending to be someone I was not… not yet, anyway.

  While sorting through the clothes, I noticed a row of drawers built into the lower half of the armoire. Naturally, curiosity won out, and I started rifling through them in hopes of finding some forgotten treasure. To my delight, I discovered a small leather pouch, pleasantly heavy with the weight of coin.

  My smile only grew as I emptied the pouch into my palm: four gold coins, fifteen silver, and a small iron key. Strangely, it wasn’t the money that caught my attention, it was the key. Its weight, its worn edges… something about it felt important.

  Huh… I wonder if this goes to the locked door?

  Tempting as it was to rush off and test the theory, I forced myself to finish looking through the room I was already in.

  On the wall opposite the bed, a dark green curtain hung over a set of double doors, each fitted with several small windowpanes. Light filtered through the glass, blending with the warm glow from the circular window overhead.

  I stepped forward, unlatched the doors, and pulled them open. A sudden rush of air slipped inside the room, stirring the fine layer of dust that had gathered during years of quiet neglect.

  Beyond the threshold, a small wooden balcony waited, framed by sturdy beams and a simple railing. Vines heavy with yellow blossoms climbed along the edges, stopping just short of the balcony as if they didn’t dare trespass onto the space itself.

  When I stepped outside, the valley unfolded in every direction. The lake below gleamed like polished glass, mirroring the pale sky above. Fields of green and gold rippled softly in the breeze, and beyond them, the mountains stood like silent sentinels, keeping watch over all who lived within their embrace.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  I rested a hand on the railing and let the stillness settle around me. And in the quiet, a question I’d been avoiding since I arrived rose gently to the surface.

  Why would he leave?

  Until now, I’d always assumed my uncle was alive somewhere, chasing the same wanderlust that had carried him away from the farm years ago. So much had changed so quickly, it had been barely more than a week, just fourteen days, and I hadn’t even paused to ask what had become of him… or what his fate might truly be.

  Should I have asked? Probably. But I think I’d been avoiding the question out of fear that he’d already returned to the Path. And if he’d wanted me to know his business, or if I truly needed to know, I imagine he would’ve told me. He gave me a gift, and I accepted it. Even the letter he left behind kept his title hidden. It had simply read “redacted.”

  I had told myself that was enough, that whatever he was doing wasn’t my concern. And honestly… it never even crossed my mind that a hero like my uncle might be someone in need of saving. He was Sir Lucian Garner, after all.

  But after meeting the people of this valley, after seeing its beauty and discovering the care he’d carved into every corner of this home… I couldn’t imagine walking away from it. No rational person would ever abandon something like this. One might travel for a while, sure… but not forever. Not from this.

  The question lingered, and the peace I’d felt moments before soured.

  I turned away from the idyllic view and walked purposefully back toward the locked door at the top of the stairs. When I reached it, I pulled the iron key from my pocket and slid it into the lock.

  Somehow, I already knew it would fit.

  The key turned, producing a quiet click that echoed far louder than it should have in the stillness of the house.

  I hesitated, my hand resting on the door’s handle. For reasons I couldn’t explain, a heaviness settled over me, it was a grief so tangible it seemed to cling to the door itself, silently pleading for me to leave it closed.

  And yet… I couldn’t walk away.

  As I stepped inside the locked room, a long forgotten childhood memory rose unbidden to the forefront of my mind.

  When I was a boy, we had a neighbor who owned the field beside ours. She was a widow, well along in years, with no family left to call her own. Some days, my mother would send me to her home with small gifts… a loaf of bread, a basket of eggs, or whatever else we could spare at the time. Whenever I knocked, she always greeted me with open arms, and despite knowing exactly who I was, she always said the same thing.

  “Oh, my sweet child, you’ve finally come home to me.”

  She would weep and cling to me, her frail hands trembling as if she feared she might never hold me again. Every single time.

  As a child, I hated visiting Mrs. Felders. I felt uncomfortable, confused by her tears and the way she looked at me as if she was seeing someone else. I would beg my mother not to send me, but week after week she placed a basket in my hands, and week after week I found myself knocking on that door.

  Until one day, I knocked, and no one answered.

  Later, after telling my mother what had happened, men from town gathered at her home, and upon entering they found her still form sitting in her chair, an old photograph clutched tightly to her chest. It was a picture of her son, dressed in the king’s colors before he was sent to hold the Eastern Gap to defend our border from the Wandering Horde. He had been nineteen. He had never come back home.

  I hadn’t understood the depth of Mrs. Felder’s grief. I’d been too young to realize that when she looked at me, she wasn’t seeing me at all. For that brief moment, she was seeing her boy coming home one last time, into the arms of the mother who had been waiting for him all that time.

  That quiet memory shaped the way I saw the ruin now laid bare before me.

  The room beyond was smaller than the bedroom across the hall. Yet, like the room before, light from a rounded window spilled across the far wall and illuminated a mural that had been painted with careful, loving hands.

  It was a painting of a scene I knew all too well. The house. The fields. The trees. All of it was there, painted with such care it almost felt alive. For a moment, I could almost smell the soil after rain, hear the wind moving through the wheat. It was home, or at the very least, the memory of it.

  In front of the mural was a crib, empty save for a stuffed bear that lay alone within its wooden frame.

  The rest of the room was a storm frozen in time. Broken furniture lay scattered across the floor. Splintered wood, shattered chairs, and multiple holes opened up the walls like deep, bloodless wounds.

  I stepped carefully through the wreckage until I stood before the crib. The little bear’s button eyes stared up at me as I reached down and lifted it gently into my hands.

  A small heart shaped patch had been stitched into its chest with fraying string. When I loosened it, a folded picture slipped out and into my palm.

  It was a picture of my uncle and a beautiful, blonde haired woman standing at his side, they were both smiling as her hand rested on her rounded belly.

  Tears streamed quietly down my cheeks.

  I hadn’t understood how my uncle could leave such a wondrous home, in a valley filled with such kindness and beauty… but now, in this shattered room, the revelation of his grief bore down upon my heart.

  My uncle, a man hailed as a hero, beloved by the kingdom, and spoken of as if nothing could ever break him… had been suffering in silence. For the first time, I realized the valley he left me wasn’t just an inheritance.

  It was the last piece of a life he could no longer bear to hold.