CHAPTER 1. THE LEGACY OF THE GRAY LION (Part 2)

  Inside the central keep, the air was heavy, as if compressed by years of silence. It smelled not of habitation, but of wet lime, mold, and cold stone. It was the smell of a crypt where, by someone's cruel joke, life still lingered.

  The Small Drawing Room on the second floor—the only inhabited room in this part of the castle—presented a surreal sight. Walls once paneled in precious bog oak had dried out and blackened. Moisture oozed through cracks in the panels, leaving whitish streaks on the wood like snail trails. Heavy velvet drapes, once the color of Burgundy wine, had turned into gray, rotting rags stirred by an icy draft.

  In the corner, with the methodical nature of Chinese water torture, it sounded: *Drip. Drip. Clink.* Water from the roof had forced its way through three floors and was now falling into a positioned copper basin. The sound was ringing, rhythmic, counting down the seconds of the castle master's fleeing youth.

  In the center of the room, behind a massive desk cluttered with scrolls and ledgers, sat Baron Cohen Prust. He was only twenty-three years old. In this dim light, by the trembling flame of a single tallow candle, his face seemed carved from marble—pale, with sharpened features and dark circles under his eyes. It was the face of an aristocrat bred over generations: a high forehead, a thin nose, a capricious curve of the lips. But in his eyes, dark gray as the autumn sky, froze an expression not typical of youth. There was no excitement or hope. There was the dull, desperate anguish of a cornered beast.

  Cohen shivered and wrapped himself tighter in the object that formed the main, screaming contrast to the room's squalor. On his shoulders lay the skin of a Snow Lion. A magical beast killed by his grandfather half a century ago in the Northern Wastes knew no decay. Time held no power over this fur. The hide was blindingly, unbearably white, like fresh snow shining in the sun. In the gloom of the dirty room, it seemed to radiate a soft, ghostly light of its own. It smelled neither of dust nor age—it breathed frosty freshness and ozone. It was softer than eiderdown and warmer than any stove. This artifact was worth a fortune. In the capital, one could buy an estate with vineyards for this skin. Or pay the castle's debts for five years in advance. But it lay here, on the shoulders of a beggar baron, like a royal mantle on the shoulders of a prisoner. A symbol of past greatness turned into a mockery.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Cohen hated it and loved it simultaneously. It was the only thing in this cursed place that gave real, living warmth. The warmth his father had lacked so much.

  The Baron looked at his hands. Thin, musical fingers were stained with soot and ink. He remembered his father. The Duke—still a Duke back then—had died just three years ago. Burned out by consumption in a single winter. Cohen remembered that terrible, barking cough echoing through the corridors. Remembered his father spitting blood into a lace handkerchief while sitting in this very chair, and how the dampness slowly killed him, creeping into his lungs. Now, that same dampness was creeping toward Cohen.

  He dipped the quill into the inkwell.

  “Debt to the miller...” he whispered. His voice was young but lacked resonance. “Three silvers. The deferment expired yesterday.”

  Cohen closed his eyes. Images from childhood floated before his inner gaze. Not here, not in this hole. In the Capital. The bright lights of the ballroom. Music. The laughter of beautiful women in silks. The taste of candied fruits and sparkling wine. He, a six-year-old boy, running across the parquet, and his father scooping him up and spinning him, and everything around shining with gold. All of it vanished overnight. The Coup. Disgrace. Demotion. Exile to the ancestral nest, which turned out to be ruins.

  “A curse,” Cohen threw the quill onto the table with force. Ink splattered across the paper like black stars.

  He looked at the fireplace. The wood hissed and wept resin, refusing to burn. Smoke stung his eyes.

  “I can't even make fire,” he smiled bitterly. “The Duke's heir. Lord of Rotten Hill.”

  He raised his gaze above the fireplace. There hung the portrait of his grandfather, the very one who had taken the skin. Duke Pavus looked down from the canvas, imperious and proud.

  “You left me a legend, Grandfather,” Cohen whispered, looking into the painted eyes. “And Father left me debts and weak lungs. What am I supposed to do? Sell your trophy? Eat through your memory to prolong the agony for another year?”

  He ran his hand over the perfect, magical fur. “I am the last. After me—only silence and moss.”

  The wind outside howled, slamming against the shutters with such force that the candle flame danced, casting ugly shadows on the walls. Cohen felt infinitely lonely and small in this stone sack. He was twenty-three, but felt a hundred. He wasn't living. He was finishing his father's life, slowly sinking into the same swamp of hopelessness.

  *Clink.* Another drop hit the basin.

  The door creaked.