Chapter 174 - 120 : Year 25 - 31 Haunted

Chapter 174: Chapter 120 : Year 25 - 31 Haunted

The castle continued to change as the years passed, but it never became a quiet place. Servants moved between the kitchens, storerooms, chambers, and courtyards, carrying out the daily work that kept the household running.

Guards changed shifts at the gates, messengers arrived with reports from the surrounding territory, and officials came and went as they attended to matters requiring the Count’s attention. On the training ground, the eldest son continued his martial lessons under the surviving veteran retainer, while his six-year-old brother often found ways to turn whatever free time he had into another adventure.

Their sister sometimes helped Lucy with small household matters, and the youngest needed the constant attention appropriate for a toddler. With their second son still travelling with his master, the household rarely lacked something to occupy its attention.

The castle also remained a seat of authority for the surrounding fief. Vassals and lesser nobles visited to pay their respects, discuss matters concerning their lands, and fulfil the obligations they owed House Veymont. Such visits brought their own activity, from the arrival of attendants and guards to meetings in the castle’s halls.

Occasionally, a noble brought a child whose martial potential had yet to be assessed, seeking an examination by the veteran Force Tempering martial artist still serving the family. His presence remained valuable for precisely this reason, offering neighbouring houses access to knowledge that few could easily obtain on their own.

These visits reinforced House Veymont’s standing, even as the family continued to recover from the losses of the war.

Within the household, however, the effects of its reduced means could be seen in small, practical adjustments. Rooms that were seldom used no longer needed to be heated throughout the winter, and some duties were combined where the remaining servants could manage them without being overworked.

Lucy continued to oversee the household’s arrangements, balancing the needs of the growing family against the cost of maintaining the castle. Hospitality remained part of the Veymont tradition, but visits were planned with greater care, and meals and accommodations were arranged according to what the household could reasonably provide. Expenses that had once passed without much consideration were now examined before money was committed.

Lucian took the same approach to the wider life of the castle. Meetings were arranged around the matters that genuinely required his attention, while officials increasingly handled routine business without bringing every detail before him.

Reports still arrived from the mines, roads, garrisons, and villages, and the demands of governing rarely allowed him to forget how much remained to be done. Lucy helped him consider the practical consequences of his decisions, while the household staff and officers carried out the work that kept daily life moving.

The castle’s activity depended not on one person overseeing everything, but on many people performing their duties and knowing when a matter needed to be brought to the Count.

These changes did not mean that House Veymont had surrendered its place or abandoned the customs that had long defined it. The castle still welcomed guests, trained the next generation, received its vassals, and served as the centre of the Count’s authority. What had changed was the care required to sustain it. There was less room for waste and fewer decisions that could be made without considering their longer-term cost.

Even so, the halls remained occupied, the training ground continued to echo with the sounds of practice, and the work of governing carried on. House Veymont was learning to maintain the life of a great noble household with fewer resources than before, preserving what mattered while adapting to what it could still afford.

The sealed chamber beneath Castle Veymont remained undisturbed, and the watch established by the previous Count continued under Lucian’s authority. The duty passed from one group of guards to the next, along with the same instructions: the passage was forbidden, and no one was to enter without the Count’s permission.

Lucian maintained the arrangement without allowing it to interfere with the ordinary work of the castle, but the unusual secrecy surrounding the place inevitably attracted curiosity. Servants noticed the guards stationed near a passage few people were permitted to approach, while younger soldiers sometimes wondered why such an important watch was maintained over a place no one ever seemed to enter or leave.

Naturally, whispers began. Among the servants, the passage gradually acquired a reputation of its own. Some claimed the lower chambers were haunted by a spirit that had never left the castle, while others insisted that something had been buried beneath the stones long before the current household came to power.

The stories became particularly popular among older servants who enjoyed frightening new arrivals. A young maid might be warned never to approach the lower stairs after sunset, while an inexperienced guard could be told that whatever waited below would recognise anyone who entered without permission.

The details changed with every telling. In one version, a former servant had entered and never returned. In another, a guard had seen a pale figure at the bottom of the passage and abandoned his post in terror. No two people seemed to agree on exactly what had happened, but nearly everyone who worked in the castle eventually heard some version of the tale.

There were a few older hands, however, who remembered an event that had occurred long before these stories took shape. When Lucian was still the heir, the household had once been ordered to prepare an extraordinary quantity of meat. Livestock was slaughtered in numbers far beyond the usual needs of the castle, and the blood was collected in barrels and carried down beneath the building.

Those involved had been given their instructions and expected to follow them without asking questions. They had not been told why the blood was needed or what lay at the end of the passage, and by the time the entrance was sealed, the matter had passed into the realm of things best left unmentioned.

Some of those who remembered the preparations were still working in the castle years later. An experienced cook, a butcher, or an old servant who had helped carry the barrels might occasionally recall the strange order when the subject of the sealed passage arose.

They could not explain what the blood had been used for, but they remembered the quantity, the unusual secrecy, and the care with which the work had been carried out. To them, the truth was no clearer than it was to anyone else. Still, their recollections gave the rumours something more substantial to cling to, allowing an ordinary account of animals slaughtered for an unexplained purpose to mingle with tales of ghosts, hidden deaths, and things that should never have been disturbed.

The stories might have remained harmless gossip had curiosity not eventually led someone to test them. During a change of guard, when attention briefly shifted between the old watch and the men taking their place, a young servant managed to slip past the post and descend into the forbidden passage.

He had barely made his way inside before an immense pressure settled over him. His legs gave way, and he collapsed on the steps, unable to move or call for help.

When the guards discovered that the passage had been breached, they followed him down, only to find that the same oppressive force weighed upon them as they approached the lower chamber. They could not understand what was happening, and none dared proceed farther. Their superior was summoned, and when he realised the seriousness of the situation, he sent word to Lucian.

The Count came himself. He descended far enough to reach the unconscious servant and brought him back, enduring the oppressive force that had driven the others to retreat. The man survived, though he had no clear explanation for what had happened to him.

When he recovered, he could remember little beyond the sudden weight that had overcome him and the terror of finding himself unable to move. Lucian asked no one to invent an explanation for the incident. He simply ordered the entrance secured again and made it clear that the restriction was not to be tested a second time.

The guards responsible for the lapse were removed from that duty and reassigned, while the servant who had broken the order was dismissed from the household. Neither was killed or subjected to some mysterious punishment, despite what later accounts would claim.

The incident gave the castle’s rumours new life. Some servants heard that a man had collapsed below the stairs, while others learned only that the Count had gone down himself and returned with someone in his arms.

By the time the story reached the younger workers, the servant had died at the entrance. Later, he became a man who had seen a ghost, then someone whose mind had been taken by the spirit that guarded the chamber. Each retelling supplied whatever the previous version had left unanswered, and the tale grew darker with every generation.

The older servants who had actually witnessed parts of the affair sometimes shook their heads at the newer versions, but even they could offer no explanation for the pressure that had overcome the intruder.

When the rumours eventually reached Lucian, he could not help laughing at what the story had become. He knew that the chamber was not haunted, and he understood far better than the servants why no one was permitted to enter. Yet he made no effort to correct every tale or identify what lay beneath the castle.

Doing so would have invited more questions, while the existing stories gave people a reason to keep their distance. The household staff might whisper about ghosts or hidden horrors, but they knew one thing with certainty: whatever lay below was under the Count’s protection, and the order against entering it was not to be challenged. Their concern was with the people they served and the duties expected of them. The mystery belonged to the Veymont family, and so long as Lucian treated those under his authority fairly and the forbidden passage remained undisturbed, few had reason to investigate further.

Beneath the castle, the man at the centre of it all remained submerged in his pool of blood, unaware of the stories that had begun to grow around him. The years passed above his sealed chamber, turning an unexplained act of recovery into a rumour, a rumour into a haunting, and a haunting into a warning repeated to every new servant and guard. None of them knew the truth, and Lucian intended to keep it that way until the day his friend could rise from his long slumber and answer for himself what had once seemed impossible to explain.

By the end of Year Thirty-One, House Veymont had made meaningful progress. More neglected fields had returned to cultivation, important roads had been improved, the fortified stations were better organized, and the mines were being managed with greater care. New soldiers had received training, while some veterans who could no longer serve in the field had found suitable duties elsewhere in the household’s service.

The fief had not regained the income it once produced, and House Veymont’s military strength remained below what Lucian remembered from his youth. Even so, the efforts of the past several years were beginning to bear fruit. Recovery was still slow, and setbacks remained possible, but the family was no longer merely struggling to contain the damage left by the war. It was gradually rebuilding the foundations on which its future would depend.

By the end of Year Thirty-One, Lucian was fifty-six and had spent nine years as Count. He had been a husband and father for much longer, and he had watched his children begin to reveal the different people they were becoming.

The years had taught him that rebuilding House Veymont was not a task that could be completed through one successful season or a handful of good decisions. Progress depended on choices made over and over, often without any guarantee that their benefits would become apparent for years.

Some of his efforts had brought the results he hoped for, while others had exposed flaws in his judgment or costs he had not fully considered. He had learned to recognise the difference between a promising plan and one the house could realistically sustain.

He still made mistakes, but experience had made him more cautious about committing the family’s resources and quicker to reconsider a course of action when the results fell short of his expectations.

There were still reasons for hope. The mines remained open, the city of Veymont continued to trade, loyal families still answered House Veymont’s calls, and people continued to live and work across its lands. Lucian had not restored his father’s house to its former strength, but he had kept it moving forward through years of difficult choices. With Lucy beside him, his children growing, and capable officials taking on greater responsibilities, he no longer had to bear every burden himself. The work of recovery could continue, even if its rewards would take years to fully emerge.

House Veymont remained respected, not because it had regained all it lost, but because it had continued to uphold the obligations on which its reputation rested. Lucian could not know what the coming years would bring, but he had given his family a steadier footing from which to face them. For now, that was enough to keep him looking ahead.