Norheim Defence League: When the Wind Remembered. Chapter 7 Part 1

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⚜️ Chapter 7: The Heart That Remembers (Part I)

Recap — The Forgotten Wind: Reforged

The storm that had stalked Norheim did not merely pass; it lingered in walls and words.

After the Defence League's midnight convocation, the city had fallen into uneasy silence.

The sigil of the Dragon Treaty lay fractured, the seventh shard — Zephyr's — flickering like a conscience caught between worlds.

Merlin, the architect of the Treaty itself, was missing.

A clerk was dead, without a blade or bruise.

A whisper-vial had cracked.

And someone, somewhere, was stirring the wind that had once been erased from memory.

As she awoke that morning, the scent of wax and blood lingered in the hall's floor. In her dreams thousands of feathers drifted across the sky, only to catch fire.

Scene One — Ashes of Order

The Defence League reconvened at dawn.

No trumpets this time; no ceremonial banners. Just seven chairs around the broken sigil — a wound upon the floor that refused to heal.

Charles the Great slammed his gauntlet on the table. "I'll say it plain. Someone among us is a murderer, and it's not the sort of problem we can file under 'pending inquiry'."

Zenobia sighed, folding her arms. "Your subtlety, Charles, continues to astound. Perhaps you might also declare that water is wet and gnomes are untrustworthy while you're at it."

A thin chuckle emanated from the corner, Loki lounging as if the world around them was crumbling.

"Don't discount the gnomes too quickly," he said, twirling a silver coin. "One of them sold me a fine whisper-vial last week. Rather a shame it turned up beside a corpse."

Wu's eyes, dark as obsidian, fixed on him. "You admit it so casually."

"Admit? Hardly. I said it was a shame, not a confession. There's a distinction, Empress."

Charles leaned forward, growling, "Try humour again when the gallows are ready."

"Now, now," Loki said, smiling thinly. "Let's not hang me before we've had tea."

Scene Two — The Four and the Fifth

Empress Wu raised her hand. "Enough. The night's chaos has birthed more shadows than answers. Himiko and I have compiled four names —" she paused, eyes drifting over the room, "— but the air smells of a fifth."

Lucasta, pale but proud, lowered her gaze. "If you mean me, say it plainly."

"No," Himiko replied softly. "You're one of the four, not the fifth."

That earned a flicker of dark amusement from Zenobia. "How reassuring."

Himiko continued, her tone as even as snowfall. "The four we watch — Lucasta, for concealing the Heart-Plume; Loki, for the whisper-vial and his… habit of convenient timing; Charles, for sealing access to the archive ledgers; and Zenobia, for her former dealings with the Scarab Syndicate."

"And the fifth?" Wu prompted.

Himiko's gaze turned distant. "That's the problem. The ledger, the resin, the ley surges — they trace to a mind far beyond petty ambition. Someone is engineering the sigil's collapse, not merely exploiting it."

Loki raised an eyebrow. "What, you suspect ghosts now?"

"Something older," Himiko said, barely above a whisper. "Or something newer pretending to be old."

The torches hissed as a faint, deliberate breeze coiled through the chamber, and the broken sigil gave a single pulse — subtle, mocking, as though it still remembered how to breathe.

Scene Three — The Halls Below

They descended into the under-halls, where the candlelight sank into centuries of dust. The smell of parchment and regret hung thick.

Zenobia walked ahead, blade drawn; Charles brought up the rear, muttering that "archaeology should never require armour."

Loki whistled softly, voice echoing against stone.

"Trust Norheim to build a vault that can outlast empires yet can't keep its own clerks alive for a week."

Zenobia shot him a look that could freeze magma. "Careful, Loki. Some of us still believe the gallows an excellent motivational tool."

They reached the Hall of Whisper Vials — a cathedral of glass and echo, where rows of crystal spheres lined the walls like bottled ghosts. Some lay shattered, others shimmered faintly, each pulsing with a voice still too proud to die.

Himiko slowed, her hand brushing the air as if afraid to disturb it. The silence in the hall was not empty — it listened. She paused before a faintly blue vial, lifting it from its cradle with the caution of a priest handling relics.

The light inside spiralled once and then unravelled into sound — Merlin's voice, soft, worn thin by time:

"The wind remembers more than the Treaty allows.

If the Heart-Plume returns, so does the truth."

Merlin's voice.

The air seemed to fold inward. For a long moment, none of them spoke.

Then came another voice — distorted, half-drowned in static.

"He knows. Bring him below the Scarab lines."

Charles cursed under his breath. "That's the same tone the guard described — the one who heard the resin smell."

Wu's lips thinned. "So the murderer's orders came through the ley communication channels."

"And someone," Zenobia murmured, "wanted us to think Merlin was complicit."

Loki clicked his tongue. "Frame the man who wrote the Treaty, make him look like the traitor, break the public's faith. It's elegant, in a revolting sort of way."

Scene Four — The Scarlet Feather and the Silver Tongue

They reached the Treaty Sanctum, its walls inlaid with serpentine lines of light — the ley veins themselves, pulsing weakly.

At its centre lay a table covered in burnt runes. Among the ashes glimmered a fragment of something red.

Lucasta froze. "The Heart-Plume's binding wax."

Wu stooped to examine it. "And you didn't put it here?"

"No," Lucasta whispered. "I sealed it in the cedar case myself."

Zenobia tapped the table's edge. "Then someone unsealed it to perform a ritual — and failed halfway through."

Loki crouched beside the burn pattern. "Failed, or succeeded just enough. Look — the scorch marks follow the Wind glyph's curvature. Someone was trying to redirect the ley flow."

Charles frowned. "Redirect it where?"

"To Frostborne," Himiko said quietly.

All eyes turned to her.

"The Veil opens soon," she continued. "If the sigil cracks fully before then, the Frostborne currents will merge with ours. That would give them access to Norheim's ley network — and the dragons tethered by it."

Wu's expression hardened. "Then this is not simply treason. It's an invasion."

Zenobia muttered, "How very festive."

Scene Five — The King and the Mage

Far below, the Scarab King sat in his dim cavern, the air heavy with incense.

Merlin hung in the same bronze shackles, though the light around them had softened. The scarabs crawled lazily across the stone.

"Why am I still alive?" Merlin asked, voice rasping.

"To answer my questions," the Scarab King said. "And to prove whose side you're on."

"I wrote the Treaty. That should answer both."

The masked man leaned forward, tone oddly gentle. "You also amended it, didn't you? Added clauses that no one remembers."

Merlin looked away. "They were safety measures."

"Or loopholes?"

A long silence.

"You think I betrayed Norheim," Merlin said.

"I think," the King replied, "you're the only one who can tell me if the Treaty was meant to hold the dragons… or free them."

Merlin laughed, brittle as frost. "You've a poet's talent for paranoia."

"And you've a politician's for lies."

Yet beneath the accusation there was curiosity — even pity.

The King poured water over the stone flute, letting its ghostly hum fill the chamber. "If you're loyal to Norheim, you'll answer me truthfully when I ask the last question."

Merlin closed his eyes. "Ask."

The King hesitated. Then, quietly: "When Zephyr was erased… who ordered it?"

Merlin's eyes opened, weary and knowing. "You wouldn't believe me."

"Try me."

"Ask Himiko."

Scene Six — Veins of Wind

Back within the citadel, Himiko stood alone before the fractured sigil — its light fading and flaring like a wounded heart that refused to die. The hall was silent now, stripped of council and chaos alike, save for the faint hum of the ley lines whispering beneath the stone.

She watched the cracks trace their slow geometry across the floor, spreading like veins under strain. Every pulse echoed faintly in her chest — an answer to a question she hadn't dared to ask.

The doors opened with a whisper of silk. Wu entered, her shadow long in the torchlight.

"Four suspects," she said, her tone crisp and unyielding. "And yet you look like a woman counting five."

Himiko didn't turn. "Old habits. The wind always leaves one truth unspoken."

Wu came closer, her voice softening but never losing command. "You think this fifth one hides in Frostborne?"

"I think Frostborne is only the smoke," Himiko replied quietly. "The fire started here."

Wu regarded the pulsing sigil — its green shard trembling like a memory trying to wake. "Then our enemy wears a familiar face."

"Not a face," Himiko murmured, her gaze still fixed on the fractured light. "A mask."

The cool breeze stirred once more through the broken hall, its deliberate movements sending shivers down the torches. A single, mocking pulse emanated from the sigil, as if the wind had been listening.

The wind stirred again — faint, deliberate — and for the first time, it seemed to laugh.

As dawn broke over Norheim, the storm clouds finally tore apart, revealing a sky of tarnished silver — beautiful, but deceptive. Beneath that quiet light, the Defence League stood fractured in purpose, each carrying secrets heavier than armour. The sigil still trembled, whispering a name none dared speak aloud, and somewhere deep below, the ley lines pulsed like veins remembering an old wound. Himiko watched the fractured light play across the stone floor and felt the weight of what was coming: the Veil of Frostborne would open within days, and with it, the thin peace between realms would splinter.

A peek at Part 2

Part II would not be about questions and suspicions anymore, but survival — a race against the rising winds, the reawakening of Zephyr, and the truth that even those sworn to protect Norheim might be serving the storm itself.

As night fell over the fractured north, Norheim stood on the edge of itself. The Defence League had crossed from reason into myth — from dusty archives and cracked sigils into the realm where truth wore shadows. The Frostborne Veil had opened early, whispering the names of the forgotten, and the wind no longer obeyed. In the south, citizens watched their weather vanes spin aimlessly while priests whispered prayers that tasted of dust. In the north, Himiko and her council faced a mirror world where the air was too still, the light too green, and the silence too deliberate. They had uncovered four suspects, perhaps even a fifth, but suspicion was fast becoming a luxury; the storm no longer cared who was guilty, only who would endure.

Beneath the desert, Merlin sat bound yet unharmed, listening to the Scarab King's questions shift from accusation to confession. The man's mask might hide a spy's heart, but trembled with something deeper — fear, maybe faith. The ley lines shivered; Zephyr's pulse could now be felt in both worlds. The dragons were stirring, and the Treaty that had once bound gods and men alike was beginning to remember its price.

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