Chapter 14: The Sentinel Canvas
(Where Ancestors Whisper Through Paint and Stars)
Part 1: The Canvas That Breathes
Midnight's chill seeped into the Roland library like a thief, its tendrils coiling around the candle flames that guttered in their brass holders. Bennett stood alone beneath the vaulted ceiling, his shadow stretching monstrously across the ancestral portraits. His gaze locked onto one: Lord Admiral Corvain Roland, the 17th-century naval hero whose oil-painted eyes seemed to track him through the gloom.
"You've been watching me since sunset," Bennett murmured, tilting his head. The admiral's stern visage offered no reply—not yet.
He dragged a ladder to the wall, its rungs screeching against the silence. Climbing, he gripped the gilded frame. The admiral's painted pupils dilated in panic as Bennett wrested the canvas free.
Too light for its size.
No hidden alcove lay behind, no peephole for spies—only dust and mortar. Yet the admiral's lips now twitched in silent supplication, his once-rigid posture sagging like a marionette with cut strings.
"A sentient curse," Bennett breathed, excitement threading his voice. He descended, propping the portrait against a marble bust. "Trapped in pigment and varnish. How… quaint."
Snatching a candle, he held its flame inches from the canvas. Corvain's face contorted, his hands—real hands?—pressing against the paint as if to shield himself.
"Speak," Bennett commanded. "Or I'll gift your descendants a pile of ash."
The admiral's mouth opened soundlessly.
Then—
The clocktower bell tolled.
One. Two. Twelve.
As the final pebble of sound rippled through the room, Corvain's eyes blazed cobalt. A voice, cracked and ancient, slithered from the canvas: "The seventh star guides the way. Find what the liar hid beneath the admiral's gaze."
Darkness reclaimed the painting.
Part 2: The Key of Seven Stars
Bennett's laughter echoed off the domed ceiling. A riddle. Of course the Rolands would bind their secrets in theatrics.
He scaled the ladder again, this time studying Corvain's unblinking stare. The admiral's gaze pierced diagonally across the library, landing on a mounted broadsword—Storm's Bite, its blade notched from cleaving pirate hulls.
"A naval lord fixated on a cavalry weapon?" Bennett snorted. "Subtle as a siege engine."
He traced the sword's pointed tip to a shelf of leather-bound star charts. Seventh star. The Big Dipper's handle. His fingers danced across spines until they closed on a frigid metal tome—Celestial Cartographies, Vol. VII.
The book refused to budge.
Grinding his teeth, Bennett twisted it sideways. Gears groaned deep within the walls. The entire shelf pivoted, exhaling centuries of trapped air into a stairwell choked with cobwebs.
"Oh, Grandfather," Bennett whispered, candle raised. "You sentimental fool."
Chapter 15: The Starlit Labyrinth
(Where Blood Ignites the Forgotten)
The Boy and the Shadows
Bennett gripped the candlestick tighter, its flickering flame painting jagged shadows across the stone walls. He hesitated, then snatched a dagger from its ceremonial mount—its hilt cold against his palm. A child's blade for a child's quest, he thought bitterly, stuffing spare candles into his tunic.
The hidden passage swallowed him whole. Dust erupted with every step, clawing at his throat. His sneezes echoed like gunshots in the tomb-like silence.
Thirty steps. Fifty. A hundred.
The spiral staircase groaned underfoot, its rough-hewn stones whispering of centuries buried. At the bottom, a rusted door mocked him with its stubbornness.
"The spoon is the key."
His gaze snapped upward. There, etched into the vaulted ceiling, the Northern Dipper gleamed in candlelight—a celestial sneer.
"Too damn high," he muttered. Yet his mind raced: If brute force could breach this, why the riddle?
The dagger became a stepping stool. Balanced precariously, Bennett's fingers traced the constellation's grooves. A twist, a click—and the floor yawned open.
Another staircase. Deeper. Darker.
The Crypt of Whispers
The chamber reeked of iron and forgotten vows. Rusted cabinets lined the walls, their locks ossified with age. At its heart, an obsidian dais pulsed with carvings—star maps older than empires.
Bennett ignored the cryptic glyphs. His prize lay in the lone unlocked drawer: a stone casket crowned with the Roland falcon.
Inside, parchment crackled as he unrolled it. A green crystal tumbled out—six-edged, humming with latent power.
"To the reader: I am Seraphina Quill-Roland, Seventh Matriarch and Starseeker. What you awaken tonight may damn or exalt our bloodline…"
His pulse quickened. Seraphina—the genius who'd leapt from her tower rather than outlive her lord. The woman who'd etched "Through love, we become infinite" in her own blood.
Now her ghostly instructions glowed in candlelight: "Place the crystal. Bleed for it. Claim your inheritance."
The dagger bit his thumb. A crimson drop kissed the gem.
The Woman in the Stars
Light erupted—blinding, searing. When Bennett dared blink, a figure coalesced atop the dais:
A woman robed in sunset crimson, hair like liquid moonlight. Her eyes—obsidian voids rimmed with starlight—locked onto his.
"Greetings, child of Roland." The voice shimmered, brittle yet imperious. "I am Seraphina, bound here by grief and geometry. What you seek is not treasure, but a curse dressed as salvation."
Bennett's breath hitched. A preserved soul? A memory spell?
"The crystal you hold is no mere stone. It is a Starscourge Shard—a key to realms where time fractures and gods go mad. My husband's death… was no accident. They silenced him for daring to see."
The projection flickered. Dust rained as her form destabilized.
"Listen well, heir. The Crown fears what we Roland's unearthed. Our bloodline carries a… affliction. A hunger that devours stars. My suicide? A farce. I was hunted. This vault? My final trap for the hunters."
Her image frayed at the edges. "Beware the white tower. They left a watcher there—something that wears my face but knows no mercy. And child?" A spectral hand brushed his cheek. "Tell my love… I kept our vow."
Darkness reclaimed the chamber. The crystal crumbled to ash.
Chapter 16: The Celestial Heretic
(Where Stars Defy Divinity)
Part 1: The Phantom's Revelation
The spectral figure of Seymel flickered like a dying star, her voice echoing through the vaulted chamber as if pulled from the throat of eternity itself. Bennett stood motionless, dust motes swirling in the amber light of his candle, though his mind raced.
"What I leave behind," Seymel's ghost intoned, her translucent fingers brushing the air where constellations might have been etched, "is both gift and curse. For centuries, astromancers have wallowed in ignorance—parlor tricks for nobles, parables for priests. They are all wrong."
Her phantom eyes blazed. "Stars are not divine parables scribbled in the sky. They are power—raw, unyielding, older than the gods who claim dominion over them."
Bennett's breath caught. This woman—his ancestor—spoke with the same irreverent fire that had driven him to dissect ledgers and challenge stewards.
The vision gestured, conjuring the image of a charred stone in her palm. "This fell from the heavens. Not celestial decoration, but foreign matter—unlike any ore in our world. It resisted analysis. Absorbed magic. Proved the stars are not of divine making."
As Seymel's form dimmed, Bennett's pulse quickened. Here was a mind that had clawed past dogma into forbidden truth—a kindred spirit trapped between epochs.
Part 2: The Cracks in Creation
Seymel's ghost paced spectral circles, her words tearing at the fabric of Bennett's understanding:
"Stars govern their own laws—cycles indifferent to gods or mortals."
"Their light persists by day, veiled only by the sun's arrogance."
"The 'divine night sky' is a lie. We orbit truths older than worship."
Her contempt for神殿 doctrine mirrored Bennett's own suspicions about House Roland's curated histories. When she revealed the enchanted canvas—"a guide bound to starlight, awake only when mortal eyes sleep"—he nearly laughed.
Of course. The sentient portrait from Chapter 14 wasn't merely a trapped soul—it was Seymel's failsafe, a librarian for her heresies.
"The chant," Seymel whispered, her form dissolving into stardust. "Astris ligare, noctem vocare." Her fingers traced sigils that burned themselves into Bennett's memory. "Free the guardian… and learn what gods fear most."
Darkness reclaimed the chamber.
Part 3: The Paradox of Power
Back in the study, Bennett faced the portrait of Seymel's "guide"—the same naval admiral whose eyes had tracked him in Chapter 14. The painted figure leaned forward, desperation etching its brushstroke features.
"She overestimated her bloodline," Bennett muttered, pressing a dusty palm to the canvas. Seymel's chant lingered on his tongue, potent yet useless—like a key to a lock his hands couldn't turn.
His magical impotence, laid bare in Chapter 13's ledger battles, now mocked him anew. All that brilliance, those world-shattering truths… and he was the illiterate heir, staring at a lexicon he couldn't read.
Then—
A memory sparked. The captive mage. The simpering spell-for-hire he'd strong-armed into auditing grain reports.
Bennett's grin split the gloom. "If I cannot wield the flame," he whispered to the
portrait, "I'll own the hand that does."
Chapter 17 (Part 1): The Alchemist's Gambit
(Where Ambition Wears a Scholar's Robe)
Dawn's Chessboard
The first rays of sunlight clawed through the library's stained glass, painting Bennett's shadow long across the star charts strewn like fallen constellations. His boots—still caked in last night's crypt dust—left smudges on a 200-year-old maritime ledger.
Old Steward Hill nearly dropped the silver breakfast tray.
"My lord! You've… occupied the night," he managed, eyeing the ancestral dagger repurposed as a paperweight. A maid stifled a gasp at the boy's disheveled state—tunic wrinkled, hair wild, eyes burning with the manic gleam of someone who'd outwitted both sleep and physics.
Bennett descended the ladder with a conspirator's grin. "Hill, be a lamb and fetch me marmalade. The bitter orange kind. It's frightfully hard to plot world domination on an empty stomach."
Of Prisoners and Power Plays
By midmorning, scrubbed clean but still vibrating with restless energy, Bennett stalked the battlements. Below, his twenty imported knights drilled with the Roland garrison—their帝都-forged armor glaringly out of place among the rust-pitted local plate.
Mad trailed him like an anxious shadow, his newly minted "Chief Retainer" title clashing with the stablehand's gait. "My lord, about the prisoner in the oubliette—"
"Ah yes! Our pet mage." Bennett's smile turned razor-edged. "The man who casts fireballs like a baker kneads dough. Tell me, Mad—what do you get when you cross a heretic spellcaster with a bored aristocrat?"
Mad blinked. "Er… a very short-lived heretic?"
"No, you cretin. You get progress."
White Tower Whispers
The forbidden spire loomed over lunch—a needle of pale stone piercing the autumn sky. Hill's warning ("No Roland has breached its heights since Lady Seraphina's… incident") only made Bennett's fingers itch.
"Seraphina's tower," he mused, sketching a telescopic lens design between bites of venison pie. "Tell me, Hill—did our suicidal ancestor leave behind any… scientific apparatus? Glass prisms? Celestial orreries? Journals written in blood?"
The steward's teacup rattled. "My lord jests. The White Tower's seals remain intact by royal decree since—"
"—since someone feared what truths might float down from the stars." Bennett licked jam from his thumb. "Relax, old crow. I've no intention of officially ascending."
His gaze drifted to the grooms polishing carriage wheels below. A plan crystallized—rope, pulleys, and a moonless night.
The River's Secret
By dusk, Bennett stood knee-deep in the翡翠河's icy embrace, six bewildered knights holding lanterns aloft.
"Here," he declared, thrusting a stick into the mud. "My Alexandria. My Bletchley Park. My sanctum."
Mad squinted at the mosquito-infested swamp. "A… fishing lodge, my lord?"
"A laboratory, you Philistine! We'll divert the tributary here—hydro power for grinding lenses. Those oaks"—he pointed to century-old sentinels—"will become distillation coils. And that clearing…" His voice dropped reverently. "That's where we'll bury the lightning."
The knights exchanged glances. Their liege's madness had a certain… method.
As frogs began their twilight chorus, Bennett pressed a gold coin into Mad's calloused palm. "Find me glassblowers. Alchemists. A locksmith who asks no questions. Oh, and Mad?"
"My lord?"
"If Hill inquires, we're building a duck blind."
Chapter 17 (Part 2): The Ledger and the Labyrinth
(Where Gold Bends the Heir)
The Arithmetic of Shadows
Bennett's boots crunched over frost-stiffened leaves as he circled the eastern woods, breath steaming in the dawn air. Behind him trailed a gaggle of puzzled servants—gardeners clutching shears, stablehands muttering about "ghost hunts."
By noon, his whims crystallized into demands:
For the greenhouse: Golden-scale flower seeds (volatile when crushed).
For the cellar: A smelting furnace, twenty polished mirrors, and a wagon of blackstone coal.
For the forest's edge: A two-story lodge with reinforced foundations.
When old steward Hilgard intercepted him at dusk, the parchment list in his gloved hand might as well have been a writ of bankruptcy.
"Your orders are fulfilled, young lord," Hilgard intoned, monocle glinting like a sniper's scope. "Though I regret to inform you… your allowance cannot withstand such enthusiasm."
The Cage of Coppers
The study's fire spat embers as Hilgard dissected the fiscal corpse:
"300 gold crowns monthly—untouched by your father's treasury."
"420 spent today. Next month's coin already pledged to creditors."
"The lodge alone would beggar you until spring."
Bennett's jaw tightened. This was the true shackle of exile—not guards or isolation, but a ledger's tyranny. His mother's smuggled 1,000 crowns (Chapter 10's parting gift) now seemed both lifeline and insult.
"Perhaps," Hilgard added silkily, "my lord might… simplify his pursuits?"
The boy's glare could have frozen the brandy decanter. Simplify? As if star-metal alloys and prophetic pollen were trifles. As if the dungeon's captive mage weren't begging to be exploited.
The Vault Beneath the Vault
Alone with loyal Mad (whose trembling hands clutched the emergency coin purse), Bennett paced before the hearth. Flames warped his shadow into something jagged and desperate.
"The decoy treasury," he murmured.
Mad blanched. "But sir! The traps! The—"
"—are designed for thieves, not blood heirs." Bennett's smile mirrored Seymel's ghost in Chapter 16—heretical and hungry. "Besides, what's a few missing gems against this?" He flicked Hilgard's list into the fire.
As parchment curled to ash, Bennett's mind raced with alchemical conversions:
Seymel's false door (Chapter 15's climax) → A trove of "expendable" heirlooms.
The captive's spellcraft (Chapter 14's interrogation) → A mage-forged counterfeit operation.
Power, he realized, wasn't in gold or titles—but in bending systems meant to break him.
The Dungeon Gambit
Torchlight pooled like blood around the iron cell. The captured mage slumped against chains, face gaunt from two days without food or flattery.
Bennett crouched, voice velvet over steel: "I've reconsidered your… employment terms."
A wheezed laugh. "No torture today, little lord?"
"Torture's for amateurs." Bennett unrolled a scroll—blueprints for a mirror furnace. "You'll craft star-metal lenses. In return, I'll ensure Hilgard 'discovers' your corpse washed upriver next week. A fresh start… funded by my family's excessive caution."
The mage's eyes narrowed. "And if I refuse?"
Bennett leaned closer, shadows hollowing his cheeks into a skull's grin. "Then I'll deduct your failure from Mad's salary. He's grown quite attached to his wages."
Outside, winter winds screamed. Somewhere beneath their feet, a hollow door awaited its heir's betrayal.