# VALEHART: OMEGA FACTION
## Chapter One — *The Weight of a Word You Didn't Learn*
Soryn knew this before he finished falling. Not the knowing you earn. The knowing that's already sitting in your chest when you arrive somewhere. Like the dream made the rules before he got there and wasn't interested in explaining them.
Not fast. Not panicked. Just constant. The kind of falling that stops feeling like falling after a while and starts feeling like this is just where you are now.
Then the throne appeared.
He couldn't say how far. Distance didn't work right here. It was there the way a memory is there — present without being close. Built from something that wasn't stone and wasn't light but existed in the space between the two. Old. Older than the word for old.
No warning. Just — ground. And before the relief of it could finish forming in his chest his knees hit it. Both of them. Hard. Not a choice. His body receiving an instruction his mind didn't write.
His head moved. That was it. That was all he had so he used it. Turned and looked at the space around him. Darkness that had texture to it. Depth. The kind of dark that isn't empty.
The throne was closer now. He hadn't moved toward it. It had just — decided.
Then the panther came out of the dark.
Black. The kind of black that absorbs light instead of reflecting it. Massive in the way that makes size stop being a useful measurement. A mantle of feathers across its shoulders — not decorative. Worn. Like authority that had been carrying itself for longer than anyone watching could calculate. It didn't look at Soryn the way animals look at things.
It looked at him the way outcomes do.
It reached the throne. Sat. And then it shifted — not transformed, shifted — the way a flame shifts when the air changes. What sat in the throne afterward was humanoid. Composed. Wearing stillness like a man who had been waiting so long that waiting had become his natural state.
The voice didn't come from a direction.
It came from everywhere that wasn't Soryn.
*"Vel'thar en solai… ven'kai drath."*
He didn't know that language.
He knew exactly what it meant.
Not in his head. In his chest. The way you know the smell of your grandmother's house the second you walk through the door even after years away. The phonetics just — settled. Like they'd been stored somewhere in him without his permission and were only now being retrieved.
*Welcome me… and I will bow.*
The silence after was heavier than the words. The kind of silence that means something was just offered and the clock is running on the response.
Sink. Cold water. Both hands.
He stood there and looked at himself in the mirror and did the thing you do when you're not completely sure the face looking back is operating on the same timeline as the room around it. That half-second where the dream is still more solid than the ceiling. Where you have to physically confirm things. The faucet. The tile. The hands that are definitely your hands.
Gripped the edge of the sink.
The room stayed the room.
He dried his hands and didn't think about the throne.
Kade was still in bed. Not asleep. Just horizontal, one arm behind his head, watching the ceiling process nothing. He had the particular stillness of a man who woke up an hour ago and decided the ceiling deserved consideration before anything else did.
She sat near the foot of the bed with her head slightly tilted. Watching Soryn cross the room the way she always watched him — like she was reading a page he hadn't written yet. Not worried. Not curious. Just aware. Deeply, quietly aware in that way that made people who didn't know her uncomfortable and people who did know her grateful.
Kade's eyes moved. One glance. Brief.
Something registered. He didn't name it.
Not really a question. More like an offramp offered without ceremony.
Soryn's voice came out even. "Yeah."
Kade was already sitting up. "Works."
Bella stood. Stretched from nose to tail. Looked at the door with the energy of someone who had already decided this conversation was over and they were leaving now.
Nobody argued with her assessment.
The city at that hour was the kind of quiet that isn't peaceful. Just early. Streets that exist but haven't committed to the day yet. A few lights. A truck somewhere. The specific grey of morning that hasn't decided if it's going to clear up or stay.
Kade drove. He always drove. It wasn't a discussion that had ever happened — it was just a fact about how they moved through the world together.
Bella rode in the back with her chin on the center console. Eyes forward. Watching the road the way she watched most things — like she was checking it for something specific that hadn't shown itself yet.
That was fine. Some silences between people are uncomfortable. This one was load-bearing.
Griddle and Spoon occupied the corner of a block that had been deciding for fifteen years whether it was declining or holding steady and still hadn't landed on an answer. The sign was weathered. The coffee was not. The waitress — mid forties, name tag said *Reese*, the kind of face that had seen enough to stop being surprised by most things — looked up when they walked in.
She gave them the nod. The specific one that meant *I know who you are and I have no interest in making it a thing.*
They respected that more than she knew.
Corner booth. Backs to the wall. Bella settled underneath without being told, her bulk taking up the floor space with the quiet confidence of someone who belongs everywhere she decides to be.
Reese dropped coffee without being asked. Set a newspaper next to Soryn's cup. Moved on.
Kade lit a cigarette. Exhaled slow. Watched the smoke climb and then — almost lazily, like his hands needed something to do — shaped it. A ring. Another inside it. Then a curve at the top that closed into something.
Soryn looked up from the paper.
Kade shrugged one shoulder. "Bored."
"That's actually impressive."
*"He practiced it."* Bella's voice floated up from under the table. Dry. Completely unbothered. *"Two weeks. Kitchen table. Every morning."*
Kade looked down at her. "I will leave you at this diner."
*"You'd miss me in twenty minutes and come back. We both know it."*
He took a long drag. Looked out the window. Decided the street was more interesting than continuing this.
Soryn almost smiled. Got about halfway there before something pulled it back.
He turned back to the paper. Scanned. Stopped.
"New release. Cardivex." He turned the page slightly so the light hit it better. "Arterial inflammation treatment."
Kade tapped ash into the tray. "Another death sentence in a bottle."
He folded the paper. Set it down.
"Nothing from Seraphine. Two weeks now."
Kade didn't move. Didn't react visibly. Just took another drag and held it a second longer than necessary before letting it go.
"She's careful," Soryn said. Quieter. More to the window than to Kade.
"Yeah." Kade set the cigarette down. "She is."
They left it there. Some things don't need more words than that. The ones that matter least get the speeches. The ones that matter most get the silence and a second cup of coffee.
Reese came back with her notepad.
Kade ordered without looking up. Full platter. Eggs over hard. Bacon. Toast. The order of a man who has made this decision enough times that it stopped requiring thought.
Soryn. Steak. Eggs. Hash browns. Coffee refill.
Reese looked down at Bella.
Bella looked up at Reese with the patient dignity of someone accustomed to being taken seriously.
*"Salisbury steak. Gravy on the side. One biscuit."*
Reese wrote it down without blinking. "Coming up."
Kade watched her walk away. Looked back at his coffee. "Normal Tuesday."
*"You say that every time,"* Bella said.
"Because it's always Tuesday somewhere."
*"That doesn't mean anything."*
They were most of the way through the meal when the two men came in.
Soryn clocked them at the door. Not a dramatic moment. Just the way a certain kind of person enters a room — loud enough to be heard, deliberate enough to be noticed, with the specific energy of men who have decided in advance that this space belongs to them.
Kade didn't look up. His jaw shifted slightly. A millimeter. The tell he'd never fully trained out.
Bella's head came off her paws. She didn't move otherwise. Just recalibrated. Updated whatever internal calculation she was always running.
The men sat at the counter. Ordered. Got louder. The volume climbing in increments designed to draw attention without technically demanding it.
One of them said something to Reese.
She didn't answer. Just turned and walked back toward the kitchen with her eyes forward and her shoulders straight. Professional. Practiced. The posture of a woman who has handled this before and will handle it again and has made peace with both facts.
Soryn set his fork down. Didn't pick it back up.
Kade finished his coffee.
Bella went still in the specific way she went still when she was running the numbers on whether something required action or just patience. The distinction mattered to her. She didn't spend force where patience would do.
Time passed. Eventually it was time to go. Soryn paid. Left a tip that meant something — not a gesture, an actual statement. The kind that says *I see how you carry this and I respect it.*
Reese came back with a small container. Set it near Bella without ceremony.
Bella looked up at her with something that wasn't quite gratitude and wasn't quite recognition but existed in the space between them. *"Thank you, Reese."*
Reese nodded once. Looked at Kade. "Store two blocks down opens in two hours if you wanted something for yourself."
Kade stared at her. Then at Bella. Then at the container.
The parking lot was cold and flat and Kade's car sat exactly where they'd left it except for the man leaning against the hood like he owned it and the second man positioned six feet behind them.
Amateur hour. But amateurs still had hands.
Kade stopped walking. Not dramatically. Just — stopped. The way a door stops when it hits the frame.
Soryn stopped a half step behind him.
Bella moved left without instruction. Forward. Low. Positioned between them and the second man in a way that looked casual and wasn't.
"Nice car," the one on the hood said. His eyes said he wasn't talking about the car.
Kade looked at him. At the hood. At him again.
What happened next happened fast. Faster than it should have. The man came off the hood with a swing already committed and Kade wasn't where the swing expected him to be — he was inside it, past it — and the sound the man made when the pavement introduced itself was brief and final and left no ambiguity about how the conversation had ended.
The second one moved toward Soryn.
Soryn moved less than seemed like enough.
The result was disproportionate.
Seconds. Both men on the ground. Breathing — that part was a choice, not an accident. Kade straightened his jacket. Rolled his shoulder once.
Soryn looked at his hands.
Not long. Just a moment. The kind of look that isn't about the hands.
*"That was fast,"* Bella said.
"They were sloppy." Kade's voice was flat. Already moving on.
"Yeah." Soryn's voice came out even. "Sloppy."
Neither of them said anything else about it. There wasn't anything else to say. Or there was everything else to say and none of it had language yet.
The drive home was quiet in the way that follows something that changed the texture of the air without changing anything you could point to.
The city moved past the windows like it always did. Like nothing had shifted. Like this was just two men and a wolf-dog coming back from breakfast on a Tuesday.
Clara's car was in the drive.
Kade noticed. Sat with the engine running an extra second before he cut it. Something in him doing a small quiet calculation before he was ready to go inside.
Clara was in the boardroom doing the thing she always did — moving through the space like she had already solved it before she arrived. Efficient. Unhurried. Like the next four tasks were already sequenced and she was simply executing them in order.
She didn't look up immediately.
Her eyes went straight to Soryn's hand. The split knuckle. The kind of thing that looks like nothing until someone who notices things notices it.
Not quite a question. Not quite an accusation. Just — Clara knowing something before she was told.
Soryn glanced down at his hand like he was just now remembering it. "Nothing."
Clara held her gaze on it for exactly one more second. Then went back to what she was doing.
One syllable. But the *mm* had weight to it. The *mm* knew things it wasn't saying. Soryn had learned not to pull that thread. Clara's silences were load-bearing in ways you only understood after you'd already said too much.
He moved toward the stairs.
He could hear them behind him as he climbed. Kade's voice doing the low dry thing it did when he thought something was funny and had decided not to fully commit to the laugh. Something about Reese and the food bag and the specific injustice of Bella eating better than he did.
Clara's response was short. Four words maybe. Possibly three.
It shut it down completely.
Soryn was already at the top of the stairs.
The bathroom was the same as he'd left it that morning.
He stood at the sink and ran the water cold and looked at the knuckle the way you look at something when you finally have a moment alone with it. Clean split. Not deep. The kind of injury that communicates more through sting than blood. He opened the medicine cabinet. Peroxide. Triple antibiotic. A few steristrips.
He worked through it without theater. His hands knew the process. They'd known it for years.
The mirror gave him back his own face.
And in the glaze of the reflection — just past his own eyes, in the space behind him — the silk screen moved.
Not wind. Not fabric settling. Something slower than both. A shift across the panels like the image on them had taken a breath. There and gone in under a second.
The screen stood exactly where it always stood. Six panels in accordion fold against the window. The grey morning light filtered through it into something dim and amber and old. The embroidery sat still. The colors — black and gold and the deep iridescent blue-green of the feathers — sat exactly as they always sat.
Nothing moved. Nothing was different.
Got close enough to see the individual threads. The texture of the lacquered wood frame. The detail in the embroidery that rewarded closeness — the jeweled adornments, the layered feathers, the faint circular patterns in the background that looked almost like they were designed to be read rather than seen.
A panther. Massive. Adorned. Staring from a darkness rendered so deeply it seemed to have actual depth.
Just a screen. Just something Kade had brought home three hundred dollars lighter because he liked how it looked and Soryn liked how it looked and that had been reason enough.
Soft. Barely registerable. The kind of thing that happens at the edge of sensation where you're not completely sure your nerve endings are reporting accurately. It crossed the left side of his face and was gone before he could turn toward it.
Not the HVAC. He knew exactly what that felt like. This wasn't circulation. This was something else. Something from a direction that didn't have a name.
The air settled back into the room like it had never left.
Then — low. Faint. So far under the threshold of sound that he almost categorized it as imagination and moved on.
Not the house. Not pipes. Not anything with a mechanical explanation. Something that existed below the register of normal sound and above the register of feeling. It lasted less than three seconds. Dissolved into the quiet of the room like smoke into air.
He knew what it reminded him of.
He didn't finish that thought.
He stood there one more moment. Then turned and walked out.
Stairs down. One hand on the rail. Even pace. The pace of a man who is fine and knows how to perform fine and has been doing it long enough that sometimes he can't locate the seam between the performance and the thing underneath it.
Looked up toward the hallway. The bathroom door still open. The dark rectangle of the room beyond it. The filtered amber light from the screen visible even from here — warm and old and patient.
He turned back around and took the last two steps down.
*VALEHART: OMEGA FACTION — Created by Desmon Raynard Antoine Sanders*
