One Year before Eve woke up
The Elven Continent
PRINCE ARIDEL POV
The air in the Throne Room of Aethelgard did not circulate. It clung to the skin like damp silk, heavy with the scent of ancient cedar and the sharp, metallic tang of repressed anxiety. Usually, the Hall of Whispers was a place of serene arrogance, where the only sounds were the soft rustle of silken robes and the melodic chime of fountain-water.
Today, it was a tomb.
I stood to the right of the High Throne, my hand resting habitually on the hilt of Star-Sliver. Beside me, my sister, Princess Luthien, was so still she could have been carved from the same moonstone as the pillars. Below us, the hall was packed. It wasn't just the Royal Officials or the High Mages; the Assembly of the People had been summoned. Thousands of Elven faces—pale, sharp-featured, and ancient—were turned toward the center of the room.
There, kneeling on the polished emerald floor, was the Chief Spy of the Konsu Intelligence. He looked... diminished. His traveling leathers were caked with the grey, ashen mud of the North, a stark, ugly contrast to our pristine halls.
"Speak again," my father, the Elven King, commanded. His voice was like a low cello note, vibrating through the floor. "Tell the Assembly what you saw in the Jorgen crater."
The spy didn't look up. "The sky was erased, Your Majesty. The skies of the North was torn open by the High Elder, Naram, and the one they call the Ascendant. We watched from the thermal ridges. It was not a battle of men. It was a friction of fundamental laws."
A murmur rippled through the Assembly. In Konsu, we pride ourselves on our mastery of the natural world, our refined control over the elements. To hear of "fundamental laws" being torn apart by the humans of the North was an insult to our very heritage.
"And the end?" my mother, the Elven Queen, asked. She leaned forward, her crown of living briar shimmering. "The reports mention a silver light. A child."
The spy shivered. I saw it—a genuine, physical tremor that traveled through his shoulders. "The child known as Eve. She was not part of the initial exchange. She had been sent away. But when the Ascendant launched a strike of terminal resonance—a needle of violet-black erasure aimed at the refugees—she returned."
"Returned?" Luthien whispered, her voice barely audible. "From the horizon?"
"She slingshot herself across the continent," the spy said, his voice cracking. "She moved at a frequency our sensors couldn't even map. She didn't just stop the god's strike; she caught it. And then, she entered the Time-Freeze. She moved through the stillness as if she were the one who invented it."
The Queen's eyes narrowed, her gaze flickering toward me and Luthien. We were the "Apex Generation" of Konsu. We had been trained since birth to be the pinnacle of Elven resonance. My own Star-Impulse was considered the most refined in the South Continent.
"Is she comparable?" the Queen asked, her voice turning cold and sharp. "Is this child, this Eve, comparable to the Elven Prince and Princesses? Does her power mirror the refinement of Aethelgard?"
The Chief Spy finally looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, haunted by the afterimage of a silver streak one I could tell belonged to this so called Eve. He looked at me—the Prince who had never lost a duel—and then back to the Queen.
"With all respect to the Bloodline, Your Majesty..." he swallowed hard. "In those very few seconds of the fight—between the moment she caught the blast and the moment she took the Ascendant's head—Eve in my opinion was the strongest person in the world."
The silence that followed was absolute. It was a vacuum.
I felt a cold, prickling sensation crawl up my spine. My grip tightened on my sword until the knuckles of my hand turned white. The strongest person in the world. Not "for a human." Not "for her age." But in the absolute sense.
"You suggest a human girl surpassed the High Elders?" the King asked, his voice dropping to a dangerous register. "You suggest she bypassed the limits of a normal human prodigy?"
"I suggest, Sire, that she was the the light of hope that very moment," the spy replied. "For five seconds, there was no hierarchy. There was only her. The Ascendant was 285 miles of celestial mass, and she made him look like a flickering shadow. She didn't just win. She ended the concept of his victory."
I looked out over the Assembly. The Elven people, who usually viewed the North as a messy, chaotic backyard of inferior biologicals, were pale with fear. If a single human girl could reach such a height, what did that mean for the South? What did it mean for our "refined" isolation?
Luthien reached out, her fingers brushing my arm. She was trembling. "Aridel," she breathed.
I didn't answer. I couldn't. My mind was racing, trying to visualize the movement the spy described. A slingshot across a continent. Moving through a Time-Freeze. It defied every manual of Elven combat I had ever studied. It was raw, unflinching, and terrifyingly efficient.
We in the South spent centuries perfecting the "Art" of the Impulse. It seemed the North had simply perfected the "Will" of it.
"The girl is unconscious," the spy continued, his voice regaining some stability. "The strain of the ascension has left her in a coma. Her core is shattered. It is unlikely she will ever reach those heights again."
A collective sigh of relief seemed to pass through the royal officials. They wanted to hear that. They wanted to believe that this Eve girl was a one-time anomaly, a firework that burned out the moment it lit the sky.
But I saw the Queen's expression. She didn't look relieved. She looked at the horizon, toward the North, as if she could see the silver glow still lingering over the Jorgen crater.
"She is still alive," the Queen stated. It wasn't a question.
"She is, Your Majesty. Under the protection of Naram and the Father, Kwame."
The King stood up, his robes of woven starlight cascading down the steps of the throne. "Konsu will not remain idle. If the North has birthed an anomaly, we must know if it intends to burn us or light our way."
He looked at me. "Aridel. Prepare the Envoy. You will lead a delegation to New Jorgen. Not to fight, and not to heal. You are to go there and see this Eve for yourself. I want to know if the spy speaks the truth, or if he has merely been blinded by the glare."
I bowed, my heart hammering against my ribs. "As you command, Father."
As the Assembly began to disperse, the air filled with the frantic, whispered conversations of a people whose world-view had just been tilted on its axis. I stood on the dais, watching the Chief Spy being led away.
I looked at my hand—the hand that was supposed to be the fastest in the world. It felt slow. It felt heavy.
The strongest person in the world.
The words echoed in my mind like a challenge. I had spent my life preparing to lead the South into a new era of Elven supremacy. But now, all I could think about was a girl, miles away, who had achieved in five seconds what my entire race had spent an eternity seeking.
I wasn't going to the North to represent the King. I was going to see the girl who had made a god bleed. I was going to see if the hope she had ignited was still there, waiting for someone to try and put it out.