Grey...
Another day bled into the next within the gilded cage of Denoir Manor, a procession of hours so regimented they felt inscribed on the very bones of the world.
My existence in Alacrya had settled into a rhythm of oppressive monotony, a silent opera performed within walls of polished stone and enforced deference.
I would wake in a bed fit for a visiting dignitary, eat meals meticulously crafted to nourish a body deemed more valuable than the souls of the servants who prepared them, and then submit to the day's purpose: study or training.
The food was the finest I could remember—rich, complex flavors that spoke of obscene wealth—but each bite was ash in my mouth, a reminder that every comfort was a transaction for my compliance.
The memories of what came before, of the taste of stolen bread in a rainy alley, of shared warmth in a drafty orphanage, grew fainter each day, not vanishing, but softening at the edges, becoming a ghostly imprint beneath the stark, vivid reality of now.
This new body, this vessel of marble skin and simmering power, was a constant, frightening marvel.
I was four years old, and yet I could perform feats of strength and agility that would have been the pride of a seasoned athlete on Earth. I could scale the manor's ornate bookshelves with spider-like grace, my small fingers finding purchase where none seemed to exist.
I could strike a training post with a force that shuddered up my arm and split the wood, a crack that echoed in the silent training yard. This was not mana. This was something more innate, more visceral.
It was the Vritra Blood.
It sang in my veins, a low, constant hum of potential, a dark lullaby of supremacy. It was the gift, and the curse, of my reincarnation. The blood of the god-king himself, Agrona, flowed through me, diluted but potent.
It made me feel… invincible. Not in a childish, boastful way, but with a cold, factual certainty. When I channeled that innate strength, a warmth spread through my limbs, a euphoric clarity sharpened my senses, and the world seemed to slow, yielding to my will.
It felt good. Terribly, addictively good.
It was the same primordial essence that powered the High Sovereign, the same Basilisk that had looked upon my newborn form with those calculating, star-drinking eyes. I was a scrap of divinity cast into mortal form, and the intoxicating rightness of it warred constantly with the screaming human morality trapped within.
Next year, the clockwork of my destiny would click forward another notch. At five, I would be taken to Taegrin Caelum, the obsidian heart of the Vritra empire, for my Bestowment. The fortress of my origin, as the trembling Denoirs never failed to whisper, their voices a mix of awe and terror.
They would gift me my first rune, engraving Agrona's power directly onto my soul. My worth would be measured, my future inscribed in magic.
Lessers. The thought surfaced, unbidden and coated in a contempt that felt both foreign and frighteningly natural. They were all lessers.
The servants who flinched when I passed, their eyes glued to the floor as if my gaze could scorch them. Even Highlord Corbett and Lady Lenora, my so-called guardians, moved around me with the cautious, elaborate politeness of zookeepers tending a prized and unpredictable beast.
Their fear was a palpable thing, a sour scent in the air. They were like the wogarts described in my books about the Relictombs' first layer—wretched, scurrying things of instinct, surviving in the shadow of titans.
The anger their cowering ignited was a hot, clean flame, but I doused it with practiced ease, banking it for a future where it might be fuel. Emotion was a liability and control was paramount. For the Bestowment, I had to be a perfect vessel—calm, empty, and ravenous.
Power. It was the only true dialect, the universal currency. On Earth, it had been Ki and influence, the silent rules that governed kings and beggars alike.
Here, it was magic and blood. My Vritra blood was my capital, and the coming rune would be my first investment. I would wield it not for glory, but for answers.
For in the quietest hours, when the manor slept and the relentless discipline of the day faded, the ghosts came. They were whispers, echoes on the edge of hearing: Nico. Cecilia.
Fragments of a conversation I couldn't recall, a plea in a voice that cracked my composed exterior. They were the last, fraying threads connecting me to the person I had been, a person drowning in this new, overwhelming identity.
The fog in my mind was thickest then, a swirling miasma of half-remembered pain and loss.
And in that fog, only one beacon shone with any certainty: High Sovereign Agrona Vritra. He, who had orchestrated my rebirth. He, who watched from his throne of conquest. He must know. He must hold the ledger of my souls, the reason for my translation from a human's end to a god's beginning.
The need to stand before him, to demand the truth of my own existence, was becoming an obsession, a quiet, screaming knot in the center of my being.
I was adrift in a sea of immense, unchosen power, and He was the only shore, however treacherous, in sight.
My past was a locked room, and He alone held the key. Everything—the training, the submission, the swallowing of pride—was a means to that end: to reach the source, and finally learn what, and who, I truly was.
For the Vritra was all-powerful, all-knowing, all-encompassing.
—
The heavy doors of the Denoir Manor's main hall yielded before me with a whisper, but the silence that followed was a physical wall. I moved through it, a small, deliberate force cutting through the opulent stillness.
A servant—Nessa? The names of these lessers were ephemeral, meaningless syllables—flinched into my path, her eyes wide with a terror that was both gratifying and dull.
"Lord Gre—" she began, a title that felt both alien and fitting on her tongue.
"Step aside," I commanded, my voice not loud, but layered with a resonance that was not entirely my own.
It was the tone of expectation, the absolute certainty of being obeyed. She parted like water before a ship's prow, pressing herself against the cold marble wall.
In that fraction of a second, a ghost of sensation flickered—the weight of a different crown, not of bone and obsidian, but of cold iron and bloody velvet.
A man with wheat-colored hair and eyes holding a kingdom's weariness stood in my mind's eye, his gaze both mine and a stranger's. I was that man. The certainty was a cold stone dropped into the murky well of my memory.
That was the authority I remembered, the royal imperative that now, amplified and refined by Vritra blood, flowed just as effortlessly.
I entered the hall, and the scene crystallized. Corbett and Lenora Denoir were prostrate, their forms etched into the polished floor in a posture of absolute supplication. Their fine silks pooled around them like spilled paint, ridiculous and demeaning. But their obeisance was not for me.
It was for the woman who stood between them, a study in monochrome power. Her hair was the white of sun-bleached bone, stark against the rich tapestries. Her eyes were pools of pure onyx, absorbing the light without reflection.
And rising from her temples were two sweeping, elegant horns—the color of devoured night, the mark of the Vritra. Scythe Seris of Sehz-Clar. A name and title I had absorbed from the tense, hushed lessons on Alacrya's brutal hierarchy. A Scythe, an enforcer of a Sovereign, a blade approved by Agrona himself.
What was a blade from the distant Sehz-Clar dominion doing here, in the heart of Denoir territory? The question was a cold spark in my mind, even as I refused to lower my gaze. Corbett and Lenora may grovel.
She was a Scythe, but I… I was a project of the High Sovereign. My blood, however diluted, sang a purer song. In the silent machinations of this empire, that made me superior.
"Grey," Lenora's voice was a strained thread of sound, a desperate attempt to normalize the abnormality. Seris gave a minute, permissive nod, and the two Highbloods scrambled to their feet, their movements stiff with shame and fear. I ignored them entirely, my focus a laser on the Scythe.
I walked forward, the click of my boots the only sound in the cavernous room, until I stood directly before her. I had to look up, a child to an adult, but I made the angle one of assessment, not submission.
I felt the Denoirs' shock like a wave of heat at my back—their horror at my audacity. They were right to be afraid. For them, such disrespect meant a death sentence. But I was not them. The rules were different for what I was.
"Did the High Sovereign send you, Scythe Seris?" I asked, my voice cutting the quiet. I stared straight into those bottomless onyx eyes, searching for a reaction.
Her expression was a masterpiece of neutrality, but the very lack of outrage was telling. No flicker of offense, no crack of anger. This was not an official visit. This was something else.
"I am here on a visit, Grey," she said, her voice smooth, cool, like stone worn by a deep, cold river. "You are… peculiar amongst the Vritra-blooded foster children, after all."
"Scythe Seris, pardon Grey," Corbett interjected, his voice a jarring, paternal intrusion. He stepped slightly forward, playing the part of the apologetic guardian. "He has never been outside the Manor. His manners…"
"No offense taken, Highlord Denoir," Seris replied. Her gaze never left mine. "I would like to have a talk with your foster son privately, if that is possible."
"Certainly, Scythe Seris," Lenora said, her voice tight. She took Corbett's arm, and they retreated, a portrait of noble obedience.
At the threshold, they both cast one final, searing look back at me—a messy tangle of fear, duty, and a twisted, genuine concern that curdled in my stomach. Parents. The concept was a relic, an insult. I was not their child.
I was a living question mark awaiting an answer from god. The doors sealed shut again.
—
A/N:
If you are wondering why Grey is like this, well... take Arthur and remove Alice, Reynolds, Eleanor and all his family and friends alongside the influence they had on him.
Remove Sylvia who we could consider the character that killed King Grey definitely and finally concretised the birth of Arthur Leywin in his place.
Take all of that away and put in its place Alacryan society, Agrona and his mind manipulation.
With Nico Agrona just fueled his anger and hatred for Arthur sealing the memories of his time as Elijah Knight. With Grey right now it's completely different. We know from the novel that Agrona wanted to recruit? Arthur. With Grey Agrona is playing seriously. He will prostrate himself in front of the High Sovereign by his own will.
Moreover there is a great difference between canon Agrona and this one. He is not a fraud. So yes. The true divergence between TBATE and Re: Corvis Eralith is that Agrona Vritra lives up to his name and does not fuck around.
Everything else is a direct consequence of this.