Chapter 35: The War That Broke the World

MELUAN SPOKE FOR hours.

We sat in her private study, a room I had never been permitted to enter before. Shelves lined the walls, heavy with ledgers and leather-bound volumes. On the desk between us lay a scatter of documents—letters, maps, fragments of text so old the ink had faded to the color of dried blood.

She told me of the Creation War—not the fragments I’d pieced together from songs and stories, but the real history. The truth that had been carefully excised from every archive, every library, every collection of knowledge in the Four Corners.

She poured wine — old vintage, dusty bottle, hands that trembled slightly as she filled two cups.

“You know the outlines,” she said. “The Creation War. The Shapers and the Knowers. Iax stealing the moon. The Doors of Stone built to seal the rift.” She set the bottle down. “But you don’t know what really happened. What the doors actually are. Who guards them.”

The story she told was not the story I’d expected.

I had imagined heroes and villains. Clear sides. Noble purposes.

What she described was messier. More human.

“The Amyr were created after the war,” Meluan said. “Not as warriors, but as guardians. Their purpose was to ensure that the mistakes of the past were never repeated.”

“To protect the doors.”

“To protect everything. The doors, the seals, the bindings that keep the worlds separate.” She set down her wine. “But purpose corrupts over time. The Amyr who exist now—if they still exist—are not the Amyr who were created. They’ve become something else.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. The records become confused after a certain point. Deliberately obscured.” Her eyes met mine. “But I know this: the Chandrian were once part of the same order. Before they became what they are now.”

The words hit like a blow.

“That’s not possible. The Chandrian destroyed—”

“The Chandrian destroyed cities. Killed thousands. Did terrible things in the name of a cause they believed was right.” Her voice was steady. “But so did the Amyr. So did everyone who fought in the Creation War. The difference is that the Chandrian lost.”

“Lost what?”

“The argument. The war. The narrative.” She stood, walked to the window. “History is written by the victors, Kvothe. And the victors made very sure that their version of events was the only one that survived.”

I tried to make sense of what she was telling me.

“So the Chandrian… what? They were trying to do something good? Something they believed was necessary?”

“I don’t know what they were trying to do. The records don’t say.” Meluan turned from the window. “But I know they weren’t simply monsters. They were people who made choices. Terrible choices, perhaps. But choices driven by reasons.”

“And now?”

“Now they’ve been bound to the doors for three thousand years. Guardians who can never rest, never die, never be released from their duty.” Her voice softened. “What would that do to someone, Kvothe? Three millennia of isolation, of purpose, of watching the world change while you remain the same?”

Haliax. The empty darkness. The voice that had spoken my parents’ deaths.

“It would break you.”

“It would break anyone.” She returned to her seat. “The question is what happens when broken guardians decide they’re done guarding. When they want to open the doors they’ve been protecting.”

“You think that’s what’s happening. You think the Chandrian are trying to open the doors.”

“Someone is. The song, the weakening seals, the patterns I’ve seen in the historical record—something is moving toward an opening.” She picked up the box, held it in her hands. “And if the doors open completely…”

“What? What happens?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was barely audible. “No one knows. The records speak of ‘the silence that waits’ and ‘the ending of all things.’ But what that actually means…”

She set the box down.

“I think we’re about to find out.”

We talked until dawn.

She told me about the Lackless family’s true history—how they’d been charged with guardianship of one of the doors, how that duty had passed from generation to generation for millennia. “The old bloodlines aren’t just political, Kvothe,” she said quietly. “Some carry… resonance. A connection to the seals themselves. The Calanthis line. The Lackless. A handful of others. When the doors were sealed, certain families were bound to them—not just as guardians, but as anchors.” How her sister—my mother—had run away from that burden, only to die trying to protect it.

“Netalia was always the stronger one,” Meluan said. There was no bitterness in her voice now. Only sadness. “She knew things I didn’t. Understood the danger better than anyone. When she ran, I thought she was being a coward. Now I think she was trying to lead them away.”

“Lead who away?”

“The ones who were hunting the box. The ones who wanted what it contained.”

“The Chandrian.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps others. There are more factions in this war than you know, Kvothe. More players than even I understand.” She looked at me with something that might have been respect. “Your mother kept the box safe for years. Kept its secrets hidden. And when she knew she couldn’t run anymore, she sent it to me.”

“Why you? You hated her.”

“She knew I would protect it. Hate doesn’t matter when duty calls.” Meluan’s jaw tightened. “I’ve spent fifteen years honoring that trust. And now, with the doors opening, with everything she feared coming true… I need to decide what to do next.”

“Seal the doors. Reinforce the bindings.”

“I don’t know how. The knowledge was lost centuries ago.”

“Then find it. The Archives, the Amyr, someone must know—”

“The Amyr are gone. Or hidden so deep they might as well be gone. And the Archives…” She hesitated. “There may be something there. In the sections that have been sealed. But accessing them would require resources I don’t have.”

“I have access to the Archives.”

“You have access to the public sections. The truly dangerous knowledge—the information about the doors, the seals, the original bindings—that’s kept separate. Protected.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know.” She met my eyes. “But I think you might be able to find out. You’re already looking for answers. Already asking questions that make powerful people uncomfortable.”

“You want me to be your spy.”

“I want you to be what you already are.” She stood. “A Lackless. A guardian. Someone who understands that some doors need to stay closed, no matter the cost.”

I left her chambers as the sun rose over Severen.

My head spun with revelations. The Chandrian as broken guardians. The Amyr as something other than heroes. My mother as a woman who’d given her life to protect a secret.

And underneath it all, a growing suspicion I couldn’t shake.

Meluan had mentioned a visitor—Lord Brendan, who didn’t exist. White hair, silver cane, studied the door for three days. Bredon, using a false name.

Why would a man dedicated to keeping the doors closed need to study them in secret? Why use an alias? Why ask about Lackless inheritance, unless he was planning for a future where the current heirs had… failed?

The Amyr were known for doing terrible things in service of the greater good. The phrase itself had always troubled me. Who decided what was greater? Who measured the cost?

What if Bredon wasn’t fighting to keep the doors closed? What if he was fighting for his own version of what should happen when they opened?

But there was another possibility, one that made my blood run cold.

The Cthaeh had spoken of Denna’s patron. Of the man who hurt her. Of someone whose anger burned like white-hot iron. It had described Cinder—or someone very like him.

Master Ash. The patron who demanded secrecy, who taught Denna dangerous songs, who appeared and disappeared like smoke.

Could Bredon be Master Ash?

The pieces fit. The knowledge, the connections, the interest in young women with exceptional voices. But they also didn’t fit—Bredon’s cultured warmth seemed nothing like the cruel figure Denna sometimes hinted at.

Unless he was that skilled at wearing masks.

I remembered his words: “Very few people are what they appear to be. Including, I suspect, yourself. And most certainly including me.”

Had that been a warning? A confession? Or just another move in a game I didn’t fully understand?

And Denna’s song, threading through all of it. Changing how people thought about Lanre, about the Chandrian. If enough people believed her version, the conceptual seal would crack.

I needed to stop the song. But force wouldn’t work. Persuasion had failed. Our last conversation had ended in disaster.

What was left?

Stapes found me in the gardens, pacing among roses I didn’t see.

“You look unwell,” he said carefully. “The meeting with Bredon—”

“I learned things.” I kept walking. “Things that change everything I thought I knew.”

“About the doors?”

“About everything.” I stopped, turned to face him. “I need to get back to the University. There’s information there—hidden information, in the restricted sections of the Archives. If I can find it—”

“The Maer’s poisoner,” Stapes reminded me. “You haven’t found them yet.”

“The poisoner can wait. This is more important.”

“More important than saving the Maer’s life?” His voice was ice.

I hesitated. He was right—I couldn’t just abandon Alveron. The man had saved me from the Vintas courts, had given me resources and protection when I needed them most. I owed him.

But the doors…

“I need to do both,” I said finally. “Find the poisoner quickly, then return to the University.”

“Quickly.” Stapes’ voice was skeptical. “You’ve been here three days and haven’t found a trace.”

“Then I’m not looking in the right places.” I resumed pacing. “The poison is too sophisticated for ordinary means. Too precise. Whoever’s doing this has access to knowledge that shouldn’t exist—old knowledge, the kind that was supposed to be lost.”

“Like the knowledge you’re looking for in the Archives.”

“Exactly like that.” I stopped again. “Which means the poisoner might be connected to whatever’s happening with the doors. The same people, the same resources, the same ancient secrets.”

“You think the Chandrian are poisoning the Maer?”

“I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”

That afternoon, I did something I should have done from the beginning.

I spoke the name of the wind.

Not to call it, not to command it—just to listen. To let the wind show me what it knew about Severen, about the Maer’s estate, about the poison that was slowly killing one of the most powerful men in Vintas.

The wind doesn’t think like people do. It doesn’t have memories or intentions. But it touches everything, carries particles from everywhere, knows the shape of the world in ways no human can match.

I asked it about death. About the slow seeping of poison into flesh.

And the wind answered.

It came from the east. From the old Lackless estate. From the door that was slowly opening, leaking something into the air that made everything around it sick.

Not poison, I realized. Not in the traditional sense.

Corruption. The same corruption I’d felt from the Cthaeh’s tree. The same wrongness that had surrounded Cinder when he killed my parents.

The door wasn’t just opening. It was bleeding. And everyone close to it—including the Maer, who had visited at Meluan’s request—was being slowly infected by what leaked through.

The answer was simple. Obvious. And utterly useless.

To save the Maer, I needed to close the door. To close the door, I needed knowledge hidden for three thousand years.

I looked toward the horizon, toward the University waiting beyond weeks of travel.

No more time for caution. No more time for careful investigation.

I needed to get back. Now.