Corvis Eralith
The silence that had stretched between us since leaving the Chaffer estate was a thick, palpable thing, charged with everything left unsaid.
The elegant spires of the palace were coming into view, a promise of sanctuary and secrecy, when Alwyn's voice finally broke through, tentative yet charged with a determination I'd never heard from him before.
"Y-Your Highness," he started, the honorific catching in his throat. "How did you… well… you know…"
"You mean that?" I asked, though confirmation was unnecessary. The single, aborted syllable from Albold hung in the air between us like a ghost. Mage.
Alwyn nodded, his usual deference hardened into something more urgent.
"Yes," he said, the word clipped. "How? I need to know."
I looked at him then, truly looked. The afternoon light caught in his peat-brown eyes, and within them, I didn't see the starry-eyed wonder of childish fantasy. I saw a fire, clear and desperate.
This wasn't about the abstract prestige of magic, the daydream of power. This was a need as fundamental as breath. He wanted to become something more, to forge himself into a shape that had weight and purpose in a world determined to render him weightless.
To become… worthy.
The mirror of my own desperate yearning was so stark it stole my breath. We were two sides of the same cursed coin: he, battling upward from obscurity; I, drowning in the dreadful knowledge bestowed by my station.
And yet, the chains of my promises and paranoia held me fast.
"I… I can't tell you," I forced out, the words ash on my tongue. I bit my lip, the sharp pain a minor punishment for the greater betrayal I was committing against his hope.
I felt lower than I ever had, a liar standing before pure, unfiltered need.
"Your Highness." He took a step forward, closing the respectful distance he always maintained. Then, his hand came up. His fingers grasped the fabric of my sleeve, a touch so unprecedented, so intimate in its breach of protocol, that it jolted me more than Albold's almost-revelation. "Tell me."
My mouth opened, a dry, hollow cave. No sound emerged. I was paralyzed, caught in the crossfire of his intense, unwavering gaze. I had never seen this Alwyn. The shy shadow was gone, burned away by this ferocious, singular want.
In his eyes, I saw the reflection of my own secret self—the part that screamed to act, to prepare, to fight back against the looming tide. To fight back against that clock approaching midnight.
I couldn't voice my reasons. To say I promised your sister would be to unveil Alea's hidden, monumental role, to expose the Lance who moved in silence.
Worse, it would plant a poisonous seed in Alwyn's heart. Would he then believe our entire friendship were nothing but a royal obligation, a sop thrown to the sibling of a useful asset? That thought was a blade to the gut.
It might have begun that way, a calculated, lonely boy's outreach, but it wasn't that anymore. He was my friend. In the labyrinth of my terror and pretense, he was one of the few real, uncomplicated points of light.
Tessia's love was a given, a glorious, overwhelming force of nature. Alwyn's was earned, and that made it terrifyingly fragile.
"Alwyn…" I managed, my voice a threadbare whisper. I tore my gaze away, focusing on the cobblestones beneath our feet, as if they could offer an answer.
"I won't tell anyone, I swear it!" he proclaimed, his voice trembling. And I believed him. His loyalty was a stark, unadorned thing, more solid than the palace walls.
"Alwyn…" I repeated his name, a useless mantra, a shield against the decision crashing down on me.
"I need this, Your Highness. I want this." His voice didn't break into a child's cry; it hardened, like cooling steel. In his place, faced with such denial, I would have been a waterfall of frustrated tears. His composure was more devastating. "I must do this."
"Alwyn…" The third time his name left my lips, it was a surrender I hadn't yet authorized.
The logic I'd clung to—the cosmic watchers, the risk of drawing attention—wavered. Windsom Indrath, with his galaxy-chip eyes, wouldn't deign to notice a single commoner elf boy's awakening.
It was Agrona who was the meticulous collector, the harvester of potential. And Alwyn… Alwyn would be a prime specimen, a commoner with drive, untainted by noble complacency. I would be painting a target on his back far brighter than any guard's uniform.
Then he said the words that shattered my last defenses.
"Your Highness," he said, his gaze locking onto mine with an intensity that felt physical. "I pledged my entire existence to you. Let me help you properly."
What? The question screamed in the silence of my own mind, a disbelieving echo. A pledge? An existence?
"What do you mean?" I asked, baffled, the political and personal calculations scattering before this raw declaration.
"That I will always be by your side. Or behind you. Or in front of you. Or wherever you need me to be." He stated it as simple, geological fact. "So please, let me help you at the best of my abilities."
It was a knight's vow, uttered not in a grand hall, but on a quiet street with the palace looming ahead.
He wanted to become a weapon, yes, but one sheathed in my service. The staggering weight of that trust, that self-assigned destiny, collapsed my resistance.
Alea will never forgive me for this, I thought, the sentence a dark ribbon winding through my acceptance.
"Fine," I said, the word leaving me like a stone dropped into a still pool. "I will."
The transformation in his face was immediate and breathtaking. The fierce tension dissolved, and in its place bloomed a radiant, disbelieving joy so pure it was painful to witness. Then, he did the unthinkable. He moved forward and wrapped his arms around me in a tight, impulsive hug.
Physical contact from anyone outside my family was a violation, a sensory assault that set my nerves alight. I stiffened, a jolt of pure annoyance and discomfort shooting through me.
"Alwyn! Don't touch me!" The rebuke was sharp, automatic, a retreat into the shell of my royal and personal barriers.
He sprang back as if scalded, the joy on his face wiped clean, replaced by mortified horror.
He bowed deeply. "S-sorry, Your Highness."
Grey... Vritra?
The silence of my wing in the Denoir manor was a thick velvet hush that settled into my bones after the screaming rigor of the training grounds.
I returned to it now, my body a symphony of muted aches and humming magic, another seventy-two-hour session etched into my muscle and mind.
There was progress. My control was tightening, my mana channels and veins widening, the raw power that was my birthright answering my summons with less resistance each time.
I was climbing the "ladder" of core stages with a speed that would be alarming anywhere but here, in this crucible of engineered supremacy. It was the blood, of course.
The blood singing in my veins, the gift—or the curse—of the horned sovereign who had first looked upon me with those eyes of spilled life.
My hand rose, almost of its own volition, my fingertips seeking the crown of my forehead. There, small and jagged and defiant, the twin protrusions had sprouted.
They were not yet the majestic, obsidian curves of the High Sovereign, but they were unmistakeable.
Nubs of power, of otherness. I traced their rough, warm texture and a complex, sourceless pride surged through me—a pride that felt implanted, a reaction wired into this new blood.
If only I was like this back on Earth... the thought was a fleeting ghost, instantly dismissed.
I scowled, the motion pulling at the tender skin around the nascent horns. Earth, Cecilia, Nico—they were phantoms in a fog, their faces blurred, their meanings tangled in grief and a betrayal I could feel in my marrow but not understand.
Those questions were luxuries for a future self, answers to be demanded from the one being who might hold them: the High Sovereign. Agrona Vritra.
My… creator? Patron? Warden. That was the safest term.
Now, there was only one directive: strength. Ten months. Ten months until my fifth birthday, until I was delivered to Taegrin Caelum, the heart of the Vritra's power.
My primary smith was Scythe Seris. I hated her. Hated the cool, assessing obsidian of her gaze. Hated the effortless grace with which she dismantled my best efforts, her corrections delivered in that mellifluous, utterly cryptic voice.
Yet, my hatred was a petty, foolish flame next to the glacier of her power. I was a spark; she was the frozen heart of a star long gone dead.
So, I swallowed my pride like a bitter, daily pill. I accepted her "guidance," as she termed it with that faint, mocking courtesy. Every session was a lesson in both combat and chilling politics. As she drilled forms and mana manipulation into me, she wove another lesson: a deep, pervasive wariness of the very Vritra I was meant to join.
She spoke of their ambitions, their rivalries, their casual, millennia-spanning cruelties. The Scythe of Sehz-Clar was an enigma wrapped in shadow, her loyalty to Agrona unquestioned yet her methods uniquely her own.
She was often compared to Cadell, the Sovereign's right hand in potency and favor.
I pushed open the door to my rooms. Silks, rare woods, enchanted baubles that glowed with soft light—the Denoirs lavished me with every comfort, a ceaseless river of gilded appeasement.
I saw it for what it was: a narcotic. Every cushion was a potential softness, every luxury a thread in a snare of complacency. With a cold fury, I had stripped it all back. A bed, a desk, training equipment. Comfort was a weakness I refused to cultivate.
The ghosts permitted no softness.
And they were here, now, in the stark emptiness. Cecilia. Nico. What happened? What did I do? What did they do? The not-knowing was a torture more exquisite than any Seris could devise.
The anger came then, hot and annihilating, a torrent that broke through my icy control. My blood roared, a seismic vibration of power and fury that resonated in my whole body. A guttural sound tore from my throat, and my fist lashed out, connecting with the unadorned stone wall.
The impact was a dull thunder, pain radiating up my arm: clean, clarifying pain. The wall held, unmoved. I did not.
I slumped, forehead pressing against the cool stone, breath coming in ragged gusts.
I needed answers. I needed the power to demand them. I needed to be so strong that not even the ghosts of a dead king could haunt me.
I pushed off the wall, shaking out my hand, the knuckles already blooming with color.