Corvis Eralith
The familiar, foreign facade of the Adventurer's Guild building loomed before me, a squat, angular insult to Zestier's graceful architecture.
This time, there was no Alwyn at my back, no buffer of innocent companionship. I was alone, with only the weight of stolen knowledge and a satchel of pilfered documents for company.
The papers on the Phoenix Wyrms—every map, every migration chart, every lethally dry assessment of the Red Gorge—felt like they were burning a hole through the leather.
I had devoured their contents, searing the coordinates, the dangers, the sheer suicidal folly of it all into my mind. Returning them was an act of closure, or perhaps penance, for a path that now seemed to dead-end before it had even begun.
Pushing open the heavy door, the same hollow silence welcomed me. The air was still and stale, smelling of dust, old paper, and the faint, lingering scent of human sweat—a scent that always seemed out of place among the clean, forest-tinged aromas of the elven city.
The guild hall was deserted, the notice boards as forlorn as last time. The guild leader, the fiery-bearded obstacle in my path, was nowhere in sight.
For a moment, I simply stood there, a small, stark figure in the empty space. Then, with a resolve that felt more like ritual than hope, I walked to the high reception desk.
The polished wood surface towered over me. I had to stretch onto my toes, my small arms straining, to lift the bound sheaf of documents and let them tumble back onto the blotter with a soft, definitive thump.
The sound echoed faintly. It was done. The stolen goods were returned.
But I didn't leave. Instead, I turned and hoisted myself onto one of the worn couches meant for waiting adventurers. My legs, too short to reach the floor, dangled over the edge. I would wait.
This wasn't just about returning property; it was the opening move in a new, desperate gambit. Alea's gentle, implacable refusal had slammed one door shut.
The other elven Lance, Aya Grephin—codename 'Phantasm'—was a wraith true to her moniker, a name without a face or presence in the palace shadows. Even House Grephin, the eyes of the crown outside the capital, seemed devoid of such a figure.
Moreover, I couldn't count on other elves, my parents' court was a web of loyalties that would snap directly back to the throne.
The guild leader, for all his crude hostility, existed outside that web. He was a neutral, if hostile, territory. A potential resource, however reluctant.
The back door finally creaked open, and he emerged, his broad frame filling the doorway. His eyes, sharp behind his glasses, went first to the returned stack on his desk, then swept the room, narrowing when they landed on me. A deep, exasperated sigh seemed to deflate him.
"Here to blackmail me again, little prince?" he grunted, not bothering with false deference. He didn't meet my eyes as he stalked to the desk, his thick fingers flipping through the pages, verifying their integrity with the distrustful air of a pawnbroker.
"I brought back what I took," I said, forcing my voice into a tone of calm reason, trying to lay the first stone of a bridge across the chasm of our last encounter. "It's been… informative."
"Pfft." The sound was a dismissal, a puff of air that carried more contempt than a shouted curse.
He finished his inspection and leaned against the desk, finally fixing me with a gaze that was equal parts annoyance and profound curiosity.
"Can I know your name?" I asked, clinging to the script of diplomacy. Names have power. Relationships start with names.
"Magnus Redson," he replied, his voice flat. He crossed his arms, the fabric of his tunic straining over muscular forearms. "They're all there. You didn't keep anything." It was a statement, not a question, tinged with surprise.
"I didn't," I confirmed.
A heavy silence hung between us, thick with his impatience and my gathering courage. Then, I took the plunge. "I need another thing."
His head tilted, a slow, deliberate motion. A humorless, sarcastic smile stretched his lips beneath the orange goatee.
"Oh, I can't wait," he drawled. "How can I possibly satisfy the curiosity of a child today?"
I drew a steadying breath, the air cool in my lungs. This was the pitch. The only one I had left. "I need to reach the Red Gorge." The declaration hung in the dusty air. "I've tried thinking of other ways. This… this was the only place I could think to ask."
Magnus stared at me. For a long moment, he said nothing, his expression unreadable. Then, he shook his head, a slow, ponderous movement of disbelief.
"Have you even read what was written in here?" He jabbed a finger toward the documents. "Screw that, you surely haven't." He gestured vaguely at my height, a blunt reminder of the body that imprisoned me.
"The Red Gorge is an SS-level dungeon. It's not your average kingly breakfast." His voice took on a mocking, instructional tone. "To take on a single one of those wyrms, you need entire parties of seasoned, talented adventurers. The kind who've stared down death and only blinked second."
Yeah, I can do two plus two, I sighed inwardly, the patronizing tone grating against my nerves.
"And with that?" I pressed, keeping my voice level.
"And with that?!" he bellowed, the sudden volume making me flinch. He pushed off the desk, taking a step forward, his presence suddenly filling the room.
"Kid, you don't understand the world you're living in! Those adventurers I'm talking about are elite mages. We're talking dark to light yellow cores. The best of the best Sapin—hell, Dicathen—has to offer! They're adults with decades of experience, not toddlers with a death wish!"
He wasn't wrong. Not about the facts. Silver-core mages like my grandfather were legends, rarities. The yellow-core adventurers he described were the pinnacle of mainstream people's capability. His fear was rational, born of a lifetime in this guild, of seeing broken bodies hauled back from lesser dungeons.
But his fear was also my cage. It was a cage built on a profound, terrifying ignorance of the true scale of the nightmare.
The Red Gorge he trembled before was a picnic grove compared to the Relictombs where Agrona's Ascenders plundered for power. Those Ascenders, if unleashed, would have turned the war into a swift, brutal slaughter.
And above them stood Retainers, Scythes, Wraiths… and above them all, a god who viewed our continent as a Petri dish.
I not understanding the world? The irony of it, the sheer, blinding gall of his assumption, struck a spark that quickly flared into a genuine, white-hot anger. It was the first true, unadulterated fury I'd felt since my rebirth.
It wasn't the petulant anger of a child denied a treat; it was the rage of watching an illiterate man burn the only existing copy of a sacred text. I was the one drowning in the understanding of this world!
Its past, its hidden machinations, its doomed future—that knowledge was my cross, my curse, and my only weapon.
To have this human, this lesser bound by his small, provincial dangers, dismiss me because of the size of my body… it was an injustice that cracked the careful, fearful control I'd maintained for four years.
"I just said I want to reach the Red Gorge," I repeated, my voice dropping, each word measured and icy, a desperate attempt to dam the flood of anger. I didn't need a lecture. I just needed a path.
"And you expect me to help you?" he asked, a cruel, knowing light entering his eyes.
He saw my tension, my clenched fists, and he misinterpreted it as stubborn childishness. He leaned in, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial, brutal whisper.
"Let me play the same game you did with me last time. Best-case scenario? You're caught by the palace guard before you even make it past the city gates. Your little 'adventure' ends with a scolding and a locked door. Worst-case scenario?"
He paused, letting the dread build.
"I get accused of kidnapping the Crown Prince of Elenoir. Of smuggling you out for ransom, or for slave-trade, or for some political scheme. My head would be on a spike before sunset, and this guild would be ashes. So tell me, Your Highness," he spat the title, "why in all the hells would I do that?"
The fire of my anger met the cold water of his logic and died with a hiss. He was right. Absolutely, pragmatically, devastatingly right.
My status, which I'd wielded as a blunt weapon against him, was also the chain that bound me to Zestier. I couldn't vanish without causing an uproar that would ensnare anyone even remotely connected.
The current fragile peace, the deep-seated elven distrust of humans—he had painted the consequences with stark, brutal clarity. He was protecting himself, and his guild, from a political firestorm.
The fight drained out of me, leaving behind a hollow, cold exhaustion. The clever reincarnate, the secret savior, had been outmaneuvered not by a dragon or a basilisk, but by simple, mundane reality.
I slid off the couch, my feet hitting the floor with a soft tap. The room seemed to tilt slightly. Another door had slammed shut, this one locked from the inside by the very consequences I should have foreseen.
"Thanks for telling me," I said, my voice quiet, stripped of all pretense. There was no sarcasm, no bitterness. Just a stark acknowledgment of defeat.
I turned and walked back toward the door, the empty guild hall seeming larger and more silent than ever.
As I stepped back out into the too-bright sun of Zestier, the most terrifying thought wasn't the impossibility of my task, but the ticking clock it underscored.
I had to check Sylvia's cave. I had one year before the timeline of her potential escape. And I couldn't even begin my own preparation without first knowing if that thread of hope still existed.
Every path led to a wall. Every plan dissolved upon contact with reality. I was a general without an army, a spy without a network, a child with the world's end in his head and no way to shout a warning.
—
The question was a hammer beating against the inside of my skull, a frantic, useless rhythm with no answer.
What can I do? I slammed backward onto my bed, the plush mattress swallowing my small frame without a sound, which felt like its own kind of mockery.
The world was ending, and my despair made no more noise than a feather falling. I had even brushed past Tessia in the hallway, a blur of gunmetal hair and indignant protest I didn't even register, before closing the door to my room and throwing the lock with a definitive, satisfying click.
Solitude was my only remaining council chamber.
"What can I do?" The words escaped my lips this time, a raw whisper into the empty air. I was trying to jumpstart my mind, to force the rusty, dust-choked gears of strategy to turn. But every possible path ended in a wall.
Alea and Aya, the Lances—the kingdom's most powerful weapons—were inaccessible, one by duty and the other by ghosthood.
The Adventurer's Guild was a political minefield I'd already blundered through, leaving only resentment in my wake. My parents, Grandpa… the thought of confessing my apocalyptic knowledge to them was a special kind of terror, worse than facing a Phoenix Wyrm alone.
I couldn't do it alone. The reasons were a hydra—for every one I mentally severed, two more grew in its place. My age, my strength, the distance, the politics, the sheer, suicidal insanity of the attempt.
Other characters? My mental index of the novel's living grimoire flipped uselessly. Camus Selaridon. The name surfaced—a silver-core master, a friend of Grandpa's, a teacher of Arthur's. He lived in Elenoir. But reaching him meant going through Grandpa, which was just a slower, more intimate route to the same dead end of exposure and disbelief.
What can I do? What can I do? The mantra was a spiral, pulling me down into a vortex of impotent rage and cold, clutching fear. I was drowning in knowledge, and it was anchors, not life preservers.
Then, a sound punctured the spiral. The rattle of the door handle, followed by a firm knock. "Corvis!" My mother's voice, sharp with maternal authority and a thread of real concern, sliced through the door. "Open this door! You know you shouldn't lock yourself in!"
The command was a bucket of ice water. Every grand, desperate plot, every vision of flames and war and stolen Beast Wills, evaporated.
In an instant I was a four-year-old boy who had done something he knew would disappoint his mother, and the instinct to appease was older and more powerful than any foreknowledge.
The fear of a god's wrath was abstract. The fear of my mother's disapproval was immediate and visceral.
I scrambled off the bed, my heart pounding for an entirely new, mundane reason. I fumbled with the key, my hands suddenly clumsy, and pulled the door open.
There stood Mom, a silhouette of gentle power and mild exasperation. And behind her, peeking around with her arms folded and her best impression of a stern judge, was Tessia. The architect of this intervention for sure.
A flicker of annoyance tried to spark, but it died instantly. This, this petty sibling squabble, this normal, trivial conflict… it was what she deserved. It was the life I was fighting for her to keep. How could I begrudge her this?
"Mom…" I mumbled, my eyes dropping to the polished floorboards, a flush of genuine, childish shame heating my cheeks. I wasn't acting.
"Corvis, you know the rules," Mom began, her tone firm, the prelude to a proper scolding. But then she stopped. Her eyes, always so perceptive, scanned my face—not the defiant pout she expected, but the hollowed-out look of utter defeat I hadn't been able to mask.
"Sorry…" I whispered, the apology encompassing far more than a locked door.
"It's your sister you should apologize to," Mom said gently, steering the situation back to manageable, domestic shores. "Tessia was very saddened by your behavior."
I lifted my gaze to meet Tessia's. Her performative sternness wavered, confusion replacing it. This wasn't the dramatic standoff she'd envisioned. "Sorry, Tessia," I said, the words thick with a sincerity meant for all my future failures to protect her.
She blinked, then shrugged, the gesture suddenly small and uncertain. "Fine. I forgive you."
"Good kids," Mom said, her voice warm, her hand coming to rest on my head in a brief, comforting stroke.