SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Caelvyrn led him deeper into the castle.

The halls changed as they went. The gardens and open galleries gradually disappeared behind them, replaced by older stone, heavier doors, and corridors where the mana-lights burned lower along the walls. Trafalgar had thought the place ancient before. This part felt older still, as though the mountain had closed around something Caelvyrn had stopped showing people a very long time ago.

Rhosyn and Dravok hadn’t followed.

”How much of this place have you actually filled?” Trafalgar asked as they descended another broad staircase. ”Every time I think I’ve seen the size of it, you find another wing.”

”A great deal.” Caelvyrn ran one hand along the stone railing as he walked. ”When you’ve lived as long as I have, you either collect things or start throwing centuries away. I chose the first.”

That answer did nothing to settle the obvious question.

They reached the bottom and entered a gallery twice as wide as the corridor behind them. Weapons covered the walls from one end to the other, but there was no order Trafalgar could immediately understand. Spears blackened with age rested beside polished swords. Broken axes had been mounted with the same care as intact legendary-looking blades, while armour from races Trafalgar couldn’t name stood inside glass cases along the opposite wall.

None of it looked decorative.

Trafalgar slowed in front of a sword with half its blade missing. The steel had turned almost white with age, and unfamiliar characters ran down what remained of the fuller.

”That one’s older than House Morgain,” Caelvyrn said.

Trafalgar glanced at him. ”By how much?”

”Enough.”

Trafalgar followed, his attention moving from one relic to the next. Farther down hung banners whose colours had faded into dull browns and greys, their crests belonging to ancient powers that no longer existed anywhere outside old history books.

At least one he recognized.

A black crown stood over three crossed spears on a ruined crimson banner. Trafalgar stopped beneath it and searched his memory before the name surfaced.

”I studied this one a long time ago.”

Caelvyrn looked back.

Trafalgar continued, his voice measured. ”They were one of the major powers that existed before the current order. They expanded west, burned three border cities, then the coalition formed and wiped them out.”

Caelvyrn laughed.

It wasn’t mocking. If anything, he sounded genuinely entertained.

Trafalgar looked at him. ”What?”

”That’s what they teach now?”

”More or less.”

Caelvyrn walked back and stood beneath the banner. For a moment he looked up at it instead of Trafalgar.

”That power didn’t begin that war.”

Trafalgar’s expression shifted. ”The Academy texts are fairly clear about it.”

”I’m sure they are.”

Caelvyrn reached up and brushed two fingers across the edge of the old cloth. ”The coalition crossed the eastern border first. They wanted the river routes and the iron beneath the plains. Veyr answered badly, I’ll give you that. They burned cities, killed prisoners, and by the end there wasn’t much innocence left on either side.”

He lowered his hand.

”But they didn’t start it.”

Trafalgar looked again at the banner.

”Then why does every book say they did?”

”Because they lost.”

Caelvyrn said it simply.

”History belongs to whoever still has enough people alive to write it afterward. Winners preserve records. Winners build monuments. Winners decide which dead men were heroes and which were monsters.” He started walking again. ”The losing side gets a paragraph explaining why they deserved what happened.”

Trafalgar fell into step beside him.

”So you don’t trust history.”

”I trust pieces of it.” Caelvyrn’s tone stayed calm. ”Recent history is easier. Enough records survive. Enough witnesses disagree with each other that you can usually find something close to the truth. Go back thousands of years and things become uglier.”

They passed another set of cases.

Inside one rested the skull of a creature larger than a horse, its jaw split into four separate sections. Beside it lay a curved horn with writing carved around the base, and farther along stood a suit of bronze armour built for something with four arms.

”Documents disappear,” Caelvyrn continued. ”Languages die. Families rewrite embarrassing parts of their own past. A family wins a war and suddenly the first attack belonged to the enemy. Give that version a thousand years and nobody remembers there ever was another.”

Trafalgar looked across the collection.

”And you’ve been collecting both.”

”For a very long time.”

Caelvyrn stopped beside a display filled with cracked tablets, old journals, and rolls of darkened parchment.

”I had the time, and I had access most historians never could. Whenever there was a war worth remembering, I collected what remained from both sides. Orders. Letters. Weapons. Personal records, when they survived. The winners always kept theirs. I made sure the losers weren’t erased entirely.”

There was no pride in his voice this time.

”Our bloodline has always been difficult to remove from the board,” he continued. ”Dragons were there before most modern houses had names. Primordials were much the same. Between our two bloodlines, there aren’t many parts of history where someone like us wasn’t watching from somewhere.”

Trafalgar considered that.

”That’s a strange way to put it.”

”It’s the truth. When you’re stronger than most of the people fighting the war, you have the luxury of surviving long enough to remember who lied about it afterward.”

That one stayed with Trafalgar.

They continued deeper until the gallery narrowed and ended before a pair of dark metal doors. Unlike the others they’d passed, these had no handles and no visible lock. Dust had gathered thickly along the floor around them.

Caelvyrn placed his palm against the centre.

The doors groaned open.

Cold air moved out from the chamber beyond, stale enough that Trafalgar could almost taste how long it had been sealed.

”How long has this been closed?”

Caelvyrn stepped inside. ”A few centuries.”

Trafalgar gave him a look.

”You say that too casually.”

”You’ll get used to it with time.”

The room beyond was smaller than Trafalgar expected. Shelves lined three walls, carrying objects that didn’t fit anywhere else in the collection. Strange pieces of black metal. Crystals clouded from within. A mask with no openings for eyes or mouth. A broken chain whose links were thicker than Trafalgar’s wrist.

Trafalgar moved farther inside, his attention passing from one object to the next. Unlike the weapons and banners outside, most of what filled this room meant nothing to him. He couldn’t place the cultures that had made them, much less the periods they belonged to.

”These are different,” he said.

”They are.” Caelvyrn stopped beside one of the shelves. ”Most of what you saw outside still has a place in recorded history, even if that history is wrong. These are harder. Civilizations disappear. Sometimes so completely that all you’re left with is whatever somebody happened to save.”

Trafalgar looked over the shelves again. ”And you saved all of this.”

”What I could.”

There was something quieter in Caelvyrn’s answer this time. He studied the room for another moment before turning back toward Trafalgar.

”Since we’re already talking about things the history books don’t quite understand...”

Trafalgar waited.

Caelvyrn’s expression grew a little more serious.

”Do you want me to tell you about me?”