Chadwick Rye

Sir Aldric of Thornhaven knelt before the ancient weirwood in the monastery’s inner sanctuary, his armor carefully removed and laid upon the stone altar. After twenty-three years of bearing its weight, he found the absence of steel against his skin strangely disorienting, as though he might suddenly float upward like autumn leaves caught in a whirlwind. Moonlight streamed through stained glass, painting fractured constellations across the weathered floor where generations of knights had knelt before him.

The question posed by the Order’s chronicler lingered in his mind, deceptively simple yet profoundly complex: *What single word defines you?*

His calloused fingers traced the scar that ran from temple to jaw—a souvenir from the Siege of Ravencrest where he had held the eastern gate for seventeen hours against the Crimson Horde. Blood had filled his left eye, yet he had remained at his post until reinforcements arrived. Some called it heroism. Aldric knew it merely as duty.

Beyond the sanctuary walls, a storm gathered strength, its distant thunder like the drums of an approaching army. How fitting that even the heavens would mirror the tumult of introspection forced upon him by the chronicler’s innocent query. A single word to encompass five decades of existence, seven campaigns, three kings served, and countless scars both visible and hidden.

Valor? Too prideful.

Honor? Too abstract.

Loyal? Perhaps, though loyalty had proven a more complicated virtue than the ballads suggested. He had remained loyal to King Edric even as the monarch descended into madness, obeying commands that still haunted his dreams. Was blind obedience truly worthy of celebration?

The monastery bell tolled midnight, its resonance vibrating through stone and bone alike. Aldric closed his eyes, allowing memories to wash over him like waves upon a shore.

He remembered standing immovable before the gates of Silverkeep when plague ravaged the countryside, denying passage even to nobles who offered fortunes for safe harbor within the city walls. For forty days, he had maintained his vigil, unmoved by threats or bribes or heart-wrenching pleas.

He recalled the Winter Campaign, when supplies dwindled and younger soldiers began deserting under cover of blizzards. Seven weeks they had endured temperatures that froze breath to beards and cracked steel like pottery. Seven weeks while Aldric maintained discipline, sharing his rations, bearing the same hardships as the lowliest foot soldier.

Most vividly, he remembered the Tourney of Roses, when victory was within his grasp—the championship that would cement his legacy. His opponent’s saddle strap had broken mid-charge, a flaw no observer would have noticed had Aldric struck as expected. Instead, he had raised his lance, forfeiting his advantage, allowing Lord Renfrew to regain his seat. Aldric had lost the tourney but gained something far more valuable in the eyes of those who understood true knighthood.

Through triumph and disaster, through glory and disgrace, through battlefield carnage and court intrigue, one quality had defined his existence: steadfastness. Not the rigid immobility of stone, but the enduring presence of an ancient oak—roots deep, trunk unbending, yet branches flexible enough to weather storms that shattered more brittle beings.

“Steadfast,” he whispered, the word forming like a prayer upon his lips.

The chronicler would want elaboration, would expect tales of heroism to accompany his choice. But true steadfastness required no embellishment. It was manifested not in singular moments of spectacular bravery, but in the accumulated weight of countless small decisions to remain true when deviation would have been easier.

Steadfast in keeping his vigil when exhaustion clouded his vision.
Steadfast in honoring his oath when breaking it would have brought riches.
Steadfast in serving the realm when the realm itself seemed determined to collapse into chaos.
Steadfast in protecting those who could never repay him, whose names he would never know.

Lightning flashed beyond the sanctuary windows, momentarily illuminating the tomb effigies of knights long passed—men whose faces had been worn smooth by time, yet whose legacy endured in the Order’s continuing service. Aldric wondered if they too had struggled with such questions of self-definition, or if certainty of purpose had been their privilege in less complicated ages.

His own certainty had come at significant cost. Steadfastness had denied him lands and title when compromise might have yielded both. It had cost him the companionship of a wife and children, sacrificed to the demands of duty. It had earned him respect but rarely affection, for the steadfast man often stands apart, a reminder to others of roads not taken, of easier paths forsaken.

Yet regret found no purchase in his heart. The word he had chosen represented not what he had lost, but what he had become—a fixed point in a realm of shifting loyalties and convenient truths.

As dawn approached, Sir Aldric of Thornhaven rose from his vigil, joints protesting the movement after hours of stillness. He donned his armor piece by piece, each plate and mail link settling into its familiar position. The weight, burdensome to others, felt to him like a return to proper balance.

The chronicler waited in the outer chamber, quill poised above parchment.

“Well, Sir Knight? Have you an answer to my question?”

Aldric met the young man’s eager gaze, noting the unblemished hands that had never gripped sword or shield in earnest. How could such hands possibly transcribe the fullness of a life defined by unwavering perseverance? Yet perhaps they need not. Perhaps the single word would suffice.

“Steadfast,” he answered, his voice neither proud nor apologetic, but simply certain.

The chronicler paused, clearly expecting more—tales of glory, philosophical justifications, dramatic anecdotes that might enliven the Order’s historical record.

But Sir Aldric had already turned toward the doorway where morning light spilled across ancient stone, illuminating the path of duty that stretched before him as it always had—demanding, uncompromising, and entirely his own.

Steadfast, yesterday and today.
Steadfast, until the final sunset.

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