Corvis Eralith
The journey began with a simple question that felt absurdly formal in the predawn hush of the palace.
"Miss Alea, where are we going?" I asked the maid-Lance, my small voice echoing slightly in the vast, empty corridor as I trailed after her silver-trimmed figure.
She moved with an efficiency that was entirely un-maidlike, a silent, purposeful force cutting through the sleeping stillness.
"Call me Alea, Your Highness," she replied without breaking stride, her tone friendly but leaving no room for argument. "And we are going somewhere special."
"That doesn't sound reassuring at all," I lamented, the words slipping out before I could filter them through the lens of a timid prince. It was the honest gripe of a soul perpetually braced for the next cosmic shoe to drop.
"And that's not something a prince should say!" she retorted, a hint of playful chastisement in her voice. Yet, she quickly shifted, her tone softening into something more genuine. "Anyway, I am truly grateful for your attempt with Alwyn, Your Highness. He can be a bit difficult, but he is a good child."
I offered a noncommittal hum. Difficult wasn't the word I'd use. Alwyn was quiet, watchful, burdened by a silence that felt too heavy for his small frame.
Unlike Tessia and the other noble children, whose energies were noisy and demanding, Alwyn's presence was a still pool, reflecting back the anxiety I knew so well. He wasn't insufferable; he was a mirror, and that made it unsettling.
I desperately wanted to ask Alea about their parents, about the shadow that seemed to cling to them both, but the questions lodged in my throat. A three-year-old wouldn't pry so deeply, not with such specific empathy. That conversation would have to wait for an older and more believable version of myself.
"Your Highness, I need you to close your eyes, please," Alea instructed, her voice gentle but firm.
A flutter of apprehension stirred in my chest, but I
nodded and obeyed, squeezing my eyes shut. Darkness enveloped me, amplifying my other senses. Then, the world dropped away.
Not in a fall, but in a smooth, silent ascent. Strong, steady arms lifted me, and the familiar, solid feel of the palace floor vanished. We were flying. True, unaided flight, the domain of white-core mages, requiring monstrous mana reserves and exquisite control.
Yet, I felt none of the rushing wind, the gut-lurching momentum I expected. The air around us was still, placid. A spell, then—a sophisticated manipulation of ambient mana to create a bubble of stability, another proof to the immense power this 'maid' wielded so casually.
Time became meaningless in that silent, dark transit. It could have been minutes or an hour before I felt the subtle shift in momentum, the gentle pressure of descent. My feet touched something solid, cool, and slightly yielding—moss and soft earth.
"You can open your eyes, Your Highness."
I did, and my breath caught. The palace, Zestier, the entire ordered world was gone. We stood in a secluded clearing deep within the Elshire Forest's embrace, the air rich with the scent of damp soil, ancient bark, and dormant magic.
And before us, dominating the space, was a Watchful Willow. Not just any tree, but a true titan, its trunk wider than the grandest tower in the palace, its branches vanishing into the low-hanging mist that perpetually haunted these deep woods. It was a sibling to the other Willows that housed our cities, yet this one felt… wilder, untouched.
"How…?" I stammered, turning to Alea. "You really want me to believe a maid brought me here from the palace in what? Ten minutes?"
A knowing smile touched her lips, her winter-blue eyes glinting in the diffuse forest light. "You have your secrets, Your Highness. I have mine." She gestured toward the colossal tree. "This is a training place."
"I don't understand. It's a Watchful Willow…" I said, stating the obvious, my mind racing. This was no ordinary location.
"This one is particular they call it Hallowed Hollow,," Alea said, her voice dropping to a reverent hush. "Please, follow me inside."
Inside? I watched, baffled, as she approached the immense, gnarled bark. She placed her palm flat against it, not with force, but with a precise, gentle pressure.
Then, the impossible happened. The bark itself responded, not splitting, but flowing. It rippled like liquid wood, swirling inward to form a perfect, arched doorway leading into the heart of the giant. It was a seamless, living magic, utterly unlike the rigid, artifice-bound enchantments of the palace.
"You are a mage, this is obvious," I said, feigning wide-eyed curiosity while my heart hammered against my ribs. This was a chance, a tiny crack in the edifice of her secrets. "But how strong of a mage are you?"
She turned, opened her arms in a vague, all-encompassing gesture, and grinned. "Like this."
I rolled my eyes, the familiar, frustrating joke from the novel landing with a thud in this surreal context. It was a deflection, a playful barrier keeping the terrifying truth at bay.
Stepping through the living doorway was like crossing a threshold into another world. The air inside was cool, dry, and hummed with a palpable energy that made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
We stood in a vast, cylindrical hollow within the Willow, so spacious it could have housed the palace training grounds. And it was furnished. Weapons racks held elegant elven blades and bows, training dummies stood sentinel, and meditation mats were arranged in neat rows. But all of it was dwarfed, rendered insignificant, by the source of light.
High above, suspended in the very center of the hollow as if held by the tree's own will, was a glowing sphere. I squinted, my mind rejecting what my eyes were seeing. It wasn't the steady, manufactured glow of a light-formation artifact.
This radiance pulsed with a slow, rhythmic life, its color a shifting, mesmerizing blend of glacial white, deep amber, and verdant green. It was organic. It was alive.
My mouth fell open. "Is that… a mana core?!"
"That it is," Alea confirmed, her own gaze lifted toward the luminous orb, her expression one of solemn awe.
The scale was incomprehensible. "What kind of mana beast had such a beast core?!" I blurted, all pretense of childish ignorance shattered by sheer, staggering disbelief.
Beast cores were supposed to be fist-sized, perhaps as large as a human head for truly ancient creatures. The Elderwood Guardian's core Arthur gave Tessia was notable for its purity and strength, not its size.
Even Sylvia Indrath's dragon core was not described as being of this monumental scale. This… this was like a small moon hanging in a wooden sky.
"Honestly? It's a mystery," Alea said, her voice echoing softly in the chamber. "A theory among those few who know of this place is that it is an artifact left behind by the Ancient Mages. Like the portals at the hearts of our cities, or the floating island of Xyrus in Sapin."
No. The denial was instant and absolute in my mind. This was not Djinn work. If it were, it would be a ruin. Kezess Indrath, the annihilator of the Djinn civilization, was meticulous in his cultural genocide.
The structures that remained—the teleportation gates, Xyrus—were either tools he found useful or, like the Relictombs in Alacrya, beyond his reach.
He would never have left a relic of this sheer, radiant power intact. It was an affront to his control. Which meant this colossal core belonged to a being that predated even the Asuran purge, a creature of such primordial might it defied the current world's understanding.
The thought was terrifying. What manner of beast had this been? And what had felled it?
"What are we here for?" I asked, my voice small in the face of such ancient, silent power.
Alea finally looked away from the core, her focus returning to me. "As you can sense, this is a place saturated with mana. The residual energy from the core, filtered and gentled by the living wood of the Hallowed Hollow, creates an atmosphere optimal for cultivation and training. It accelerates growth and allows for finer control."
And it's optimal for white-core mages to maintain their edge without draining mana others could use, I thought, the practical, strategic part of my mind clicking into place. This was a Lance's private sanctum. The realization made me feel like an intruder in a sacred tomb.
"Come on then," Alea said, clapping her hands softly, the sound bouncing around the hollow. "Shall we begin?"
—
The moment of testing was upon me, and with it, a fresh wave of corrosive anxiety. Since my clandestine awakening, I'd never dared to explore my elemental affinities.
To do so in the palace risked detection, and the very act felt like claiming a weapon I was unworthy to wield. But here, bathed in the core's amplified mana, the energy practically sang to my own black-core spark, urging it to resonate.
Following the stolen knowledge in my mind, I drew a slow breath, trying to quiet the panicked static of my thoughts. I focused on the image of wind, of my grandfather's effortless mastery over the air.
I willed the ambient mana to gather, to purify through the grinding lens of my core, and to take on that specific, volatile property. It was clumsy, a child's fumbling imitation of a symphony.
But then, with a soft woosh, a gust of air erupted from my outstretched palm, scattering a pile of dried leaves across the mossy floor.
The spell was pitifully weak, a breeze where Virion could summon a gale. Yet, it was undeniably magic. My magic.
"You are a natural, Your Highness!" Alea complimented, her applause genuine.
The praise was a shard of ice in my gut. A natural fraud, the voice in my head hissed. It's only because I've read the instructions. I'm cheating at a test everyone else has to learn from scratch.
I pushed on, driven by a desperate need to know my own limits. The reason Arthur became a quadra-elemental was his youth and Sylvia's guided, Asuran-level tutoring.
As an elf, fire was biologically closed to me—our attunements lay with wind, earth, and water. A tri-elemental mage was a rarity bordering on myth. Could I…?
Tentatively, I reached for earth. I visualized roots, stability, unyielding stone. The mana responded, but sluggishly, like mud. A few pebbles at my feet trembled.
Then, water. I thought of the palace fountains, of morning dew. A faint mist coalesced above my hand before dissipating. It was there. The affinity was present, however faint. Not the immediate, intuitive grasp I had with wind, but a possibility.
Every ounce of talent was another deviation from the 'normal' I was trying to project, another risk of casting a shadow over Tessia.
My thoughts spiraled, touching on deeper, more dangerous techniques. Mana Rotation.
The constant, subliminal cycling of mana through the core and body, dramatically increasing efficiency and growth rate. Arthur learned it from an Asura, but Sylvia claimed even mana beasts did it instinctively.
Yet, no mage in recorded Dicathian history had ever developed something resembling it independently. The coincidence was too glaring. This wasn't an overlooked technique; it was a suppressed one.
Another leash, woven into the very fabric of our magical education by our unseen draconic overseers. The Lances, empowered by their artifacts, were capped at white core. Even Agrona's forces, for all their prowess, never reached for Integration.
Was Mana Rotation, this fundamental engine of growth, one of the first things Kezess secretly pruned from the lesser races' potential?
"Your Highness, you need to concentrate if you want to meditate!" Alea's voice, sharp with concern, sliced through my turbulent thoughts.
I jolted, realizing I'd been standing rigid, my mana absorption having stuttered to a halt. The rich energy of the chamber now felt oppressive, a thick soup I was failing to digest. "S-sorry…"
"For what?" Alea sighed, not with annoyance, but with something akin to empathy. She walked over and sat cross-legged on the moss beside me, the regal poise of the Lance and the deferential hunch of the maid both melting away.
"Seeing that you are a conjurer, I don't want you to damage your nascent core by overreaching. The ambient mana here is potent. It's a boon, but for a black stage, it can also be a flood."
"I… fine," I mumbled, the fight leaching out of me. She was right. My core already felt strained, humming with unprocessed energy.
We sat in silence for a moment, the only sound the faint, eternal hum of the giant core above. The core cultivation process was often likened to strengthening a muscle—consistent, gradual effort leading to expansion and refinement.
But that was only half the truth, the Dicathian half. The complete picture, the one I feared, included Insight.
Understanding the nature of the magic you wielded on a profound, almost philosophical level. It was the key that separated true masters from simple spell-slingers.
It was why the Djinn, with their obsessive study of aether, were exterminated. And it was the fundamental difference between our continent's organic, practice-based magic and Alacrya's runic system, which Agrona stole and perverted from the Djinn.
There, power was literally inscribed through insight into specific, granted runes. Here, we had to find our own way, blindfolded and with someone deliberately muddying the path.
"Come on," Alea said softly, her voice pulling me back. She settled into a clear, relaxed posture, her hands resting on her knees, palms up. "Let's begin again. Copy me."
I watched her, this woman who held enough power to level a small town, who carried the fate of a kingdom in her sworn oath, who mourned lost parents and worried for a quiet little brother.
She closed her eyes, and her breathing slowed into a deep, rhythmic pattern. The frantic, vibrant energy that always seemed to buzz just beneath her skin stilled, becoming a deep, placid lake.
Tentatively, I mimicked her posture. I closed my eyes, shutting out the awe-inspiring, terrifying sight of the ancestral core. I focused on my breathing, on the dull ache of my overfull mana core.
I tried not to think about Arthur's absence, about Rahdeas's letter, about Tessia's future, about the thirteen years ticking down to midnight. I tried to silence the screaming strategist and the terrified child both.
Just breathe. Just absorb.
Edit (19/02/2026):
Changed the name of the Lances's Sanctum to Hallowed Hollow.