ShadowBound: The Need For Power

Chapter 782: What Is The Severance Decree?

Commander Zion Ardent’s personal office was in the western command wing of the palace, close enough to the military chambers to serve as a working post, but removed enough to offer privacy when reports required careful handling.

Tharionson moved through that wing without slowing, passing two clerks and a patrol captain who immediately stepped aside at the sight of him. None of them spoke beyond formal greetings, and he did not stop to answer with anything more than a curt nod.

By the time he reached Zion’s door, his mind had already begun organizing what needed to be asked.

He knocked once, then opened the door without waiting for permission.

Commander Zion Ardent looked up from behind his desk, where several security reports were spread open beneath the glow of a desk lamp despite the afternoon light still entering through the narrow window behind him. He was not in ceremonial armor, but in the dark, fitted uniform of an active Solarian commander, the collar loosened just enough to suggest he had been at the desk for hours.

His dark blond hair was neatly kept, though slightly disturbed near one side as if he had run a hand through it while reading, and his blue eyes carried the alert steadiness of a man who had been trained to absorb bad news without letting it show too much on his face.

The reports before him appeared to cover the recent unrest across Zones 15, 16, and 17. Tharionson recognized several of the seals at once: casualty summaries, arrested suspect lists, noble dispute filings, movement records from military detachments, and reports from regional investigators who had been pulled between civil disorder and murder inquiries until both matters had begun feeding into one another.

"My Prince," Zion said, rising immediately. "I was not told you were coming."

"I did not send word," Tharionson replied as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Zion’s eyes moved across Tharionson’s face with restrained concern. He was too disciplined to comment on the visible exhaustion unless invited, but he noticed it. Zion noticed most things. That was part of the reason Tharionson still trusted him more than almost anyone else left inside the palace.

Tharionson did not sit. He stood in front of Zion’s desk, one hand resting near the back of the chair across from him, and asked, "Have you ever heard of something called the Severance Decree?"

The change in Zion was subtle, but it was there. He did not flinch, did not pale, did not make the mistake of looking toward the door or reaching for some instinctive denial. His face simply became still in a different way. The kind of seriousness that did not come from confusion, but from recognition. His hand, which had been resting near one of the reports, stopped moving entirely, and his eyes held Tharionson’s for a moment longer than ordinary conversation required.

Tharionson felt his own expression harden. "So you have."

Zion remained standing. "Where did you hear that phrase?"

"Mother repeated it during one of her episodes," Tharionson said. "Not once. Several times. Clearly."

Zion’s gaze lowered briefly to the reports on his desk before returning to Tharionson. "Then this is no longer something I can avoid explaining."

"I did not ask whether you could avoid it," Tharionson said, his voice quiet, controlled, and edged with something Zion knew well enough not to test. "I asked if you knew it."

Zion gave a slow nod. "Yes, my Prince. I know of it. Not in full, but enough." He remained silent for a breath, choosing his words carefully, then continued. "The Severance Decree was a joint decree established roughly twenty years ago between the Crescent Kingdom and the Solara Kingdom. It was created after a Crescent noblewoman was discovered carrying the child of a dark mage."

Tharionson’s fingers tightened slightly against the back of the chair. "A Crescent noblewoman."

"Yes," Zion said. "The matter was buried quickly, but not before it caused severe panic inside Crescent’s noble circles. From what little is still spoken in restricted channels, the woman belonged to a house close enough to court influence that the scandal was treated as more than personal disgrace. Crescent saw it as a political infection. A noble bloodline tied to a dark mage, a possible child born from that union, secret protection given to the mage or to the bond itself. The fear was not only moral or magical. It was dynastic. Bloodline paranoia, succession concerns, hidden heirs, noble contamination, dark mage sympathizers forming inside powerful houses. Those were the arguments used."

"And Solara joined them," Tharionson said.

Zion’s expression remained grim.

"Solara ratified it, yes. But from what I understand, the decree was born mainly from Crescent’s will. Crescent pushed for it, shaped the language, and forced the political urgency of it. Solara accepted because the fear was already present here too, and because rejecting it would have made Solara appear soft on dark mages at a time when both kingdoms were building their legitimacy around absolute severity.

"The decree stated that anyone found to have an intimate relationship, secret union, or protected bond with a dark mage would be executed without exception. It did not matter whether the person was common-born, noble-born, royal-born, coerced, pregnant, emotionally attached, politically useful, or repentant. No exemptions. No negotiated exile. No protection through rank."

For a long moment, Tharionson said nothing. He stared at Zion across the desk, but in his mind he was no longer seeing the commander’s office.

He was seeing Serah.

Not the public memory of her trial, not the official shame wrapped around her name, not the execution that had cracked something inside the royal family and then been sealed beneath duty. He saw her as his sister first, and then as a woman swallowed by language like the one Zion had just spoken.

Intimate relationship. Protected bond. No exemptions. Royal blood included. Pregnancy included. Emotional attachment irrelevant. The legal coldness of it made his stomach turn because he knew, suddenly and with sick clarity, that this was the machinery that had killed her.

"You are telling me," Tharionson said slowly, "that my sister was executed under a decree created because of a Crescent scandal."

Zion did not soften the truth. "Yes."

"I knew the charge," Tharionson said. "I knew the judgment. I knew Father and Crescent both moved under anti-dark-mage authority. But I did not know the legal instrument behind it was tied to something this ludicrous."

Zion’s jaw tightened. "Most people were never meant to know. The decree was officially used only twice. The first time was against the Crescent noblewoman whose case caused its creation. The second time was against Princess Serah Magna. After that, dark mages were believed to have gone extinct, and the decree became politically inconvenient to keep alive in visible law. It was removed from active systems, buried, and treated as obsolete. Not repealed in a public ceremony, not debated, not cleansed. Just removed from reach."

The room seemed to grow smaller around Tharionson. His mother’s voice returned to him, broken and trembling.

The Severance Decree. The decree was not dead. The glass remembers. The blood remembers.

His fingers slowly released the chair before he broke the wood beneath his hand.

"I want to see the archives," he said.

Zion’s eyes sharpened. "My Prince."

"Now."

"The records connected to the Severance Decree are restricted," Zion said carefully. "Politically dangerous as well. Some of them may involve Crescent documents that were never meant to be handled outside approved review."

"My mother repeated the name during an episode that nearly tore her mind apart," Tharionson said. "For four months, we have had bodies, forged records, dead witnesses, court fractures, and no proper lead. Now a hidden decree tied to Serah’s execution and an older Crescent scandal emerges from the queen’s own mouth. I do not care if the archive door has Valemir Granger’s blood seal burned into it. We are looking."

Zion held his gaze. For a moment, the old discipline between them was clear, not just commander and High Marshal, but two men standing at the edge of a truth neither fully understood. Then Zion stepped around his desk and reached for the dark military coat hanging from a side hook.

"Yes, my Prince," he said. "Then we go quietly."

The restricted royal archives lay beneath the eastern administrative wing, below the public records halls and far away from the decorative libraries noble guests were occasionally allowed to admire. Getting there required passing through two guarded checkpoints, one mundane and one marked by old royal authority rather than visible magical spectacle.

The first was a reinforced ironwood door watched by senior palace sentries who recorded the names of everyone entering. The second was a narrow stone passage ending in a sealed chamber where authorization was confirmed by signet, written rank, and the approval of the archive warden.

Tharionson’s presence removed most obstacles, but not all. The old warden, a stooped man with cloudy eyes and a mind still sharp enough to be annoying, hesitated when Zion named the category of record they wished to access. He did not refuse the High Marshal, but his fingers paused over the ledger long enough for Tharionson to notice.

"Is there a problem?" Tharionson asked.

"No, my lord," the warden said, lowering his head. "Only that the section has not been requested in years."

"Then your ledger has had enough rest."

The warden swallowed, signed them through, and had two archive attendants unlock the inner doors. They entered without escort after Zion made it clear that no one else would be joining them.

The restricted archives were not beautiful in the way palace rooms were beautiful. They were built for preservation, not admiration. Long shelves of dark-treated wood stretched into a low, wide chamber of stone, each section marked with brass plates, date ranges, jurisdiction tags, and small classification symbols used by clerks trained in royal recordkeeping.

The air smelled of dust, old parchment, leather binding, lamp oil, and the faint dry bitterness of preservation herbs. Stone pillars divided the chamber into orderly rows, and heavy tables sat beneath hanging lamps whose flames had been lowered to avoid heat damage. There were no grand murals or dramatic relics, only boxes, ledgers, sealed folios, bound decrees, court summaries, trial records, inter-kingdom correspondence, military orders, and the kind of paper kingdoms used to make violence look clean.

The mood settled over Tharionson almost immediately. This was not a battlefield, but he understood battlefields better. Battlefields had bodies, terrain, enemy movement, fear that showed itself honestly. Archives had the aftermath of decisions written by men who could order death without ever smelling blood.

Zion moved first, heading toward a section marked for joint decrees and bilateral security law. Tharionson went to the royal domestic trial records, reasoning that Serah’s case would have drawn from both.

For a while, they found nothing. Shelves produced anti-dark-mage provisions, post-war containment policies, inheritance restrictions concerning corrupted bloodlines, and several emergency cooperation agreements between Crescent and Solara, but not the Severance Decree itself.

They searched separately, opening boxes, scanning index leaves, checking dates, and comparing classification numbers that should have led somewhere direct but instead turned them in circles.