Ser Aerek,

Imagine my surprise upon discovering that your quill has not, in fact, gone missing, nor has your parchment been consumed by some errant flame. Your recent writings confirm that neither calamity nor captivity has befallen you, and yet, the questions I presented to you over a year ago remain unanswered - a genuine challenge to the convictions and doctrines you so passionately espouse.

I recall your encouragement of discourse, your confidence in the merits of your Asterian Code. Yet, your silence has endured, conspicuous in its weight, a shadow cast over the gilded veneer of your chivalric proclamations.

To remain silent in the face of honest questioning is one way to avoid challenge, but it is a dishonourable one. Honour, as you have defined it, demands accountability. It calls for the courage to defend one's ideals, even when they are under scrutiny, especially when the questions demand answers that are not easy or convenient.

Your avoidance, however, speaks volumes. It does not read as the stoic patience of a noble Knight, awaiting the right moment to strike. No, Ser Aerek, it reads as evasion, an unwillingness to engage with uncomfortable truths. Such silence reeks of corruption, the kind that festers in a body too afraid to examine its own wounds lest it finds rot at the core.

What, I wonder, would the Knights of old make of this? Those who swore oaths to ideals greater than their own pride? Those who met their challengers on the field of honour, whether the weapon was steel or word?

Perhaps I misjudged the Knights' modern iteration. Perhaps the Asterian Code is no code at all but rather a pretence, a performance meant to dazzle the naive while its practitioners shrink from real accountability.

So I ask again:
Will you meet the challenge of these questions, or will you allow your silence to stand as your answer? Or perhaps you'll take the craven's way out with some excuse about how you're too lofty to answer the questions of those so far below you or that I'm not genuine enough in my inquiry so don't merit an answer. Will you defend the Code you claim to uphold, or will you confirm that it is little more than a relic - a hollow echo of what the Knights once stood for?

The world remains ever watchful. Know that your silence has already spoken more than you may realise.

Respectfully,

~II

[X] Overseer Grandue Xeh'ria, Keeper of the Iron Crown

[A small octagon encircles a raised "II" here, inscribed in thick, amethyst ink]


Penned by my hand on the 19th of Miraman, in the year 966 AF.