Chapter 451. Buildings Don’t Simply Choose to Die

Chapter 451: 451. Buildings Don’t Simply Choose to Die

"William." Her voice was terrifyingly small.

It wasn’t the voice of a princess or a warrior; it was the sound of someone who had just glimpsed the abyss and realized how thin the floor beneath them really was.

Slowly, she lifted her head from his shoulder, her neck stiff as if it might snap. She didn’t look at him.

She looked past his shoulder, past the dust clouds still settling, to the gray, jagged heap of stone, splintered oak, and pulverized mortar that now occupied the space where she had been standing seconds before.

The wreckage was steaming slightly from the friction of its fall, smelling of ancient dust and raw earth.

"That was where I was," she whispered.

The words were hollow, stripped of all inflection. "I was right there."

"I know." His throat felt like it was full of glass.

"I was bending down, Instructor Wade... I was reaching for the flask. I would have..." Her voice cracked. "I would have been crushed... I would have been gone."

"I know," he said again, his voice dropping to a low, steady murmur, the kind he used when he was trying to anchor someone drifting out to sea. "But you’re not."

"You’re here. You’re not hurt, Kaela. Nobody is hurt."

But she was shaking. It wasn’t the tremor of exertion from their training; it was something far more primal.

It was the delayed, violent shudder of a body that had been pushed to the precipice of death and had only just begun to process the near miss. Her muscles spasmed against his chest, a rhythmic, uncontrolled rattling that made his own bones ache in sympathy.

William didn’t pull away. He didn’t offer empty platitudes.

He simply held her with a crushing certainty, acting as the anchor she needed, while his own eyes remained fixed on the wreckage. His panic had transmuted into something else: a cold, razor-sharp focus.

His mind was already cataloging the damage, analyzing the trajectory of the collapse, and asking the single most dangerous question: ’Why?’

Buildings don’t simply choose to die. They are murdered.

After what felt like an eternity of silence and shaking, Kaela spoke again. Her voice was muffled against the fabric of his shirt, wet with something that might have been tears or just the grit of the air.

"I want it on record..." she started, then swallowed hard. "...that I did not punch that one."

A short, breathless laugh escaped William before he could strangle it. It wasn’t a sound of joy; it was a ragged, hysterical noise that shook his entire frame.

It was the laugh of a man who had looked death in the eye and found it absurd.

Kaela made a small, choking noise, something between a sob and a giggle, and for several seconds, they simply lay there in the dirt, clinging to each other. They laughed at nothing at all, a desperate, broken sound that filled the silence because the alternative—the screaming, the crying, the raw terror—was too much to bear.

Then, the palace woke up.

The moment the hammer struck, chaos erupted, resembling a beehive in disarray. Within minutes, the serene courtyard was transformed into a hive of panicked activity.

The gallery gates were suddenly swarmed: guards in polished steel, gardeners clutching trowels, and cooks in flour-stained aprons who had come running at the sound of the crash.

A footman appeared seemingly from the ether, draping a heavy wool blanket over Kaela’s shoulders without waiting for her consent.

"Physician! Fetch the Royal Physician immediately!" someone bellowed.

"The Captain of the Guard needs to see this! This is a breach of security!" another shouted.

A young maid stood at the periphery of the crowd, her hands pressed so hard against her mouth that her knuckles were white, her eyes wide with terror as she stared at the rubble as though the stones might suddenly animate and begin hunting them.

The chaos swirled around them, but William remained in his own bubble of hyperawareness. He reluctantly handed Kaela over to two palace healers who descended upon her like vultures.

They moved with practiced efficiency, their hands probing her ribs for fractures, checking her ankles for sprains, and wiping at the angry red scrapes along her forearms. Kaela submitted to them with a dazed, ghostly patience, her eyes still fixed on the ruins.

William stepped back, needing air and distance to think. He turned his gaze toward the collapsed gallery, expecting to see more guards or perhaps the Commander.

Instead, his eyes landed on something far more unsettling.

Standing at the very edge of the debris field, untouched by the panicked crowd, was a man. He was stooped, his shoulders hunched as if carrying an invisible weight, wearing an ink-stained coat that seemed centuries out of date.

He wasn’t shouting and he wasn’t helping. He was simply standing there, a ring of iron keys clutched white-knuckled to his chest, staring at the destruction with eyes that saw far more than the destruction itself.

The man was Overseer Marrick, the ancient custodian who held the keys to every secret corridor and foundation stone in the palace. In the hour since breakfast, he looked as though he had aged a decade.

His skin had taken on the sickly, translucent pallor of candle wax, and his hands trembled so violently that the ring of keys clutched to his chest rattled like teeth in a skull.

He moved with the mechanical, unthinking gait of a man in shock, circling the fallen pillar as if hoping that by walking around it enough times, he might undo the catastrophe.

He kept opening his mouth as if to scream, then closing it again when nothing came out but a dry, wheezing sound.

"This should be impossible," Marrick finally croaked.

His voice was thin, reedy, and directed at no one in particular. "This is impossible..."

"This pillar was inspected five days ago!"

"Every support beam, every archway in this gallery—I personally oversaw the inspection!"

"There was no report of stress! No hairline fractures. No settling. Nothing! The stones were solid."

William didn’t answer. His attention was already drawn to the wound where the pillar had died.

He crouched beside the severed lower half, his knees cracking in the sudden stillness. Up close, the destruction looked less like an accident and more like an execution.

A load-bearing pillar of this magnitude, when failing under natural stress or age, should have exploded outward. It should have been a chaotic spray of granite shards and spiderwebbed cracks spreading up toward the ceiling.

But this was different. The stone had parted along a flat, unnaturally clean seam.

It looked as though a giant had taken a chisel to the heart of the palace and sliced through it with surgical precision.

William leaned closer, his nostrils flaring. Beneath the smell of pulverized limestone and ancient dust, there was something else—something chemical.

Near the outer edge of the fracture, he spotted a thin, suspicious band of pale grit embedded in the seam. It didn’t share the speckled, mineral texture of the gray stone.

"Overseer," William called out, his voice cutting through Marrick’s rambling. "Come here... Look at this."

Marrick stumbled over, his boots scraping against the rubble. He bent down, peering through fogged spectacles at the spot William was pointing to.

With a shaking fingertip, Marrick touched the pale substance and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger.

William watched the last vestige of color drain from the old man’s face. Marrick’s eyes went wide, pupils contracting until they were pinpricks of terror.

"That is mortar," Marrick whispered, the word carrying the weight of a death sentence. "Fresh mortar..."

"Someone didn’t just break this pillar; they prepared it."

"Explain," William commanded, his own blood beginning to run cold.

"Someone cut into this stone weeks ago," Marrick said, his voice cracking. "They carved out a section of the core, weakened the structural integrity, and then packed the gap with fresh mortar to hide the damage."

"To the naked eye, to any casual inspection, it would look like solid stone."

"You would never see it from the outside." He swallowed hard, a wet, clicking sound in his throat. "You would only find it if you were looking for the deception..."

"You would have to be looking directly at the lie."

"Who inspected it?" William asked, his hand instinctively drifting toward the hilt of his blade.

The implications were spiraling into something far more sinister than a structural failure. This wasn’t bad luck; this was sabotage.

This was an assassination attempt.

Marrick fumbled at his coat, producing a small leather ledger with hands that refused to stay still. The pages fluttered frantically as he flipped through them, his breathing coming in shallow, panicked gasps.

"I—I have to find it... I have to—" His finger stopped abruptly on a line of cramped handwriting. "Tobin Hale! That is the name on the inspection sheet."

Marrick looked up at William, his eyes glassy with confusion. "I do not know this man!"

"That is not one of my men! I know every mason, every apprentice, every stone cutter in this district."

"Then whose is he?" William pressed, stepping closer, his shadow falling over the broken stone. "Whose name is on your roster?"

"He was part of the temporary maintenance crew," Marrick said slowly, the realization beginning to poison his words. "We were short-handed; the wedding preparations have been consuming every available soul in the castle."

"The Delmore delegation offered to send some of their own skilled craftsmen to assist with the renovations."

"They arrived with the delegation last week."

Marrick shook his head, a look of profound horror crossing his features as the pieces clicked together. "The steward folded them into the rota."

"I signed the roster myself! I saw the names, I saw the seals..." He trailed off, staring at the severed pillar. "I never asked where they had learned their trade!"

"I never asked who they served."