The Hidden Son

The grinding of stone roared in their ears. Dust curled from behind the wall and into the room. Figures moved in the shadows—dark shapes pressing rocks and stones into place with swift, deliberate strength.

“Stop!” Gregor and Luxa shouted at the same instant, their voices cutting through the rumble like blades.

The workers froze. For a heartbeat, only the scrape of falling pebbles echoed back. Then another voice rang out, deep and commanding:

“Stop the work! At once!”

Gregor’s stomach clenched. The voice sounded eerily familiar—rasped with authority, sharp with the kind of weight only one creature ever carried. Ripred. It had to be. Yet something was different, an undertone that unsettled him. And he knew Ripred was dead.

From the shadows, a massive rat thrust his head through the opening, the torchlight flickering across his scarred muzzle and powerful frame. His eyes, though narrowed, gleamed with a strange fire.

Luxa stiffened, her blade half-raised. “Ripred?” she demanded.

The rat shook his head slowly. “No. My name is Redson, his son.”

Gregor blinked, disbelieving. “That’s impossible. Ripred’s whole family… they’re dead. He told us himself.”

Luxa’s voice cut like steel. “Do not toy with us. All of his bloodline perished. He has no son or daughter alive.”

Redson’s ears twitched. “He had one son who was saved.”

The air in the tunnel grew heavy with silence. Even the dust seemed to hold its breath.

Redson continued, his voice steady but edged with something raw. “When my mother and my brothers and sisters were slaughtered, Vikus and Ripred saved me at the risk of their lives, but they could save only me. Actually, Vikus saved me and gave me a hidden place to live safely under the palace. They swore no one could know—not the Council, not even Solovet, but someday I would come forth. Only those two ever knew. They hid me in the depths of this palace, where no one dared to look. My home is still there and safely hidden. My father visited me each day, teaching me how to survive, how to fight, how to think like both warrior and peacemaker. And Vikus… he ensured I did not starve. He placed food where I could find it, tucked into the cracks of palace tunnels. No one suspected. And if I were seen, no one suspected I was Ripred’s son, because they knew his whole family was dead.”

Gregor’s throat tightened. He remembered Ripred’s biting words, his relentless training, the sense that the rat always carried burdens too heavy for one creature. “He never said…”

“He could not,” Redson replied. “It was too dangerous. The Bane hunted every thread of his blood. The gnawers have always had some who were enemies of peace, who wanted to conquer all in the Underland. My survival was our secret.”

Luxa lowered her sword a fraction, though her eyes blazed. “Then why reveal yourself now? Why here, at this wall? Are you breaking in or repairing a broken wall?”

Redson explained “The day before my father died, he told me that if anything ever happened to him that I could entrust our secret to Queen Luxa and Prince Gregor. He always said Prince Gregor because he said you fought and sought peace as a Prince and you too could be trusted, even as I could trust our queen.”

Gregor whispered to himself, “I’m not a prince.”

Redson overheard and answered back, “Not by blood... by choice.”

Redson turned, gesturing to the workers gathered behind him. Gregor’s beam swept over them, and his breath caught. Rats, yes—but also crawlers, their antennae twitching; bats, wings folded tight against their backs; even two fireflies, their abdomens glowing faintly in the dim light to give all the workers light to do their work.

“These are peacemakers,” Redson said firmly. “Creatures who believe as my father believed—that strength must serve peace, or all our wars are for nothing. Since Gregor brought peace and then left maybe three years past, we have met in secret. Small circles at first, then more. We have listened, learned, built trust. And when we found this breach in the wall, we began to seal it so no one could find it. For what lies beyond is not ready to enter your world—or you are not ready for it.”

Gregor’s heart pounded. He remembered the whispers, the wings brushing the dark, the rush of cold air. “You were sealing it off?”

“Yes,” Redson explained. “Any breach into your world, the human world, is dangerous. We had to close it. We had to breakdown parts of the wall to rebuild it so our enemies would not see the gap and break into the palace unknown. So we worked here, night after night, stone by stone. Not for conquest, not for glory. For peace. Peace for your world and ours.”

Luxa’s violet eyes narrowed, suspicion and wonder warring in their depths. “You expect us to believe that Vikus hid you from even his own kin? That Ripred, a rat despised by most of his kind, raised a son in secrecy beneath my very palace?”

Redson met her gaze without flinching. “Could anyone but Ripred’s son look as I do? Do you think Ripred would not work for peace even through his last son? He lived for peace even when no one else would. He knew the Underland needed voices beyond selfishness and old grudges. I am proof of that. Proof he was not alone. Proof that neither you nor Prince Gregor were ever truly left alone by my father. Vikus understood this, though his wife never would, so she was never told.”

For the first time since the wall had begun to collapse, silence filled the chamber. With his flashlight, they could see that the strange assembly of creatures stood together in quiet strength outside the wall with their eyes fixed on Luxa and Gregor.

Luxa and Gregor looked at one another, the same unspoken questions burning in both their minds: What do we do now? Do we need more proof?