Alea Triscan
The Princess truly was a ray of sunshine, and teasing her brother alongside her was undeniably fun. Their bond made me smile—it reminded me of my own little brother.
"Miss Triscan, are you sad?" the Princess asked, her voice gentle. I must have grimaced subconsciously while thinking about him.
"Oh, sorry, Your Highness. I was just lost in thought," I replied.
We spoke about magic, and she was still astonished by the fact that I was a white core mage. In the end, revealing the truth had been the right decision—she was an Eralith, after all. But she was also a child, and children were rarely the best at keeping secrets, especially ones of great importance to the state. Still, if King Eralith had entrusted his heir with this knowledge, I had no grounds to object.
During our conversation, I made an unexpected discovery—the Princess possessed an extraordinary talent. Even as we spoke, she effortlessly drew mana to herself. It was truly remarkable. An eight-year-old girl whose mana core had only recently awakened, demonstrating an ability that neither I nor my much stronger colleague Aya had ever managed to achieve.
"How did you learn such an ability?" I asked, intrigued. "Was it Elder Virion?" It would have made sense—the former King and hero of our race—but from what I recalled, he had never shown a technique quite like this.
Princess Tessia shook her head, her expression brimming with pride.
"It was my genius brother! And this technique is called Mana Rotation," she declared.
The Prince? My gaze drifted toward Corvis. He was entirely lost in thought, scanning his surroundings as though searching for something unseen. He still lacked a mana core, yet he had devised such an advanced technique? What kind of force would he grow into with time? And Tessia, too—she had awakened at only eight years old.
The future of Elenoir, I realized, was in truly capable hands.
"I won't go inside that crevice, Corvis!" Princess Tessia's protest, sharp with genuine worry and indignation, echoed off the moss-slicked rocks. But her brother was already a silhouette swallowed by the cave's maw, his silver hair vanishing into the gloom like a wisp of smoke.
He moved with a single-minded intensity I recognized—the same unsettling focus he'd shown after bolting from the palace years ago. Tunnel vision, I thought grimly. Blind to everything but the objective, consequences be damned.
"Stay close behind me, Your Highness," I murmured, placing a reassuring hand on Tessia's rigid shoulder while simultaneously summoning a sphere of bioluminescent vines above my palm.
Their gentle glow pushed back the oppressive darkness, revealing damp walls and treacherous, uneven footing. My senses, honed to a razor's edge, stretched into the cave's depths—probing for hidden drops, unstable rock, or worse. First the slavers, now this.
Does the Prince court danger like a moth to flame? The thought was less judgmental, more weary concern. Protecting reckless royalty was part of my oath, but this boy tested its limits.
A sudden, choked cry ripped through the tense silence ahead—a sound of surprise, not pain, but it sent ice water through my veins nonetheless. Beside me, Tessia froze, then lunged forward. "CORVIS!"
My free hand shot out, gently but firmly restraining her before she could stumble into the unseen hazards. "Wait!" My command was low, authoritative, cutting through her panic.
Relief washed over us both a heartbeat later as his voice floated back, slightly breathless but steady: "Don't worry! Just almost slipped. Everything's fine."
"Fine?!" Tessia hissed, whirling towards the darkness, her small fists clenched. The fear had transmuted into pure, incandescent fury.
"That's exactly why I didn't want you charging in here! It's dangerous for you, you idiot! Albold always tells you not to try things beyond your reach! Now you wait for us!" It wasn't a request; it was a command issued with all the authority of a future Queen chastising her foolhardy brother.
She turned back to me then, the anger momentarily subsiding into a conspiratorial, exasperated smirk that reminded me painfully of her grandfather.
"Alea," she confided, her voice dropping to a whisper meant only for me, though it carried easily in the cave's acoustics. "Grampa and I have a running wager. What kind of mage will Corvis be when he finally awakens? We both keep landing on Conjurer." Her emerald eyes sparkled with affectionate mischief.
"Not for power potential, mind you. Purely because he trips over his own shadow half the time. Utterly hopeless without someone watching his step."
The teasing was laced with a fierce, protective love that warmed me even in the dank chill. It was a glimpse into the normalcy they fought for—a sibling bond persisting amidst the Prince's enigmatic burdens.
We ventured deeper into the cave, the air growing cooler, thick with the scent of damp earth and faint minerals. Shadows stretched along the jagged rock walls, flickering under the soft glow of bioluminescent fungi. Princess Tessia clung to Corvis' arm, her small fingers gripping tightly, preventing him from rushing ahead in his usual reckless fashion. Her presence was the only tether keeping him from hurtling blindly into danger—into the unknown.
I followed closely, my eyes ever watchful, listening to the rhythmic drip of water from the cave's ceiling and the hushed footfalls of the two ahead of me. It was a simple but fulfilling task—watching them, protecting them, letting them explore without fear.
There was something deeply comforting about seeing them just be.
Tessia's curiosity was a light in the darkness. She gazed wide-eyed at the cave's wonders—the fungi that clung to the walls like clusters of tiny lanterns, the delicate dripstones sculpted over centuries, and the peculiar glowing fruits that pulsed with an eerie, mesmerizing brilliance. To her, this was not a dangerous expedition—it was an adventure, a chance to marvel at the world without the weight of titles and expectations pressing down upon her.
Corvis, on the other hand, was utterly consumed by something else. His expression remained taut with focus, his movements deliberate, like he knew what he was looking for. It was more than curiosity—it was determination, a force that drove him deeper without hesitation. Without Tessia holding him back, he might have already stumbled into the treacherous howling pit beneath us, oblivious to the danger in his pursuit of whatever he believed laid ahead.
I felt no traces of active magic within the cave—no lingering energy, no pulse of foreign mana. If something had once dwelled here, it was long gone. The silence, the stillness, told me this place was abandoned. So I allowed myself to believe it was safe.
I held onto that belief—until the shadows stirred, revealing that we were not alone.
Corvis Eralith
The damp, earthy air of the cave closed around us like a shroud as we ventured deeper, the cheerful sunlight from the entrance shrinking to a distant, cold fissure.
My initial scan, sharpened by desperate hope, yielded only chilling certainty: Sylvia wasn't here. A dragon of her power, even weakened, would have sensed intruders—especially intruders radiating the mana signature of a white core mage wielding an asuran artifact—like a bonfire in the dark. The silence wasn't peaceful; it was the silence of profound absence.
The second realization followed like a hammer blow: Cadell hadn't been here either. No scorch marks from his devastating soul fire, no lingering stench of decay or corrupted mana, no telltale cracks spiderwebbing the walls from violent impact. The cave was pristine, untouched by the Scythe's signature brutality. Relief warred instantly with a deeper, colder fear.
If Cadell hadn't found her… where was she? And where was the one meant to find her first?
The gnawing void where Arthur Leywin should have been seemed to pulse in the darkness. The possibility—the catastrophe—of him never existing reared its head again, a monstrous shadow I had been desperately shoving away.
If he was never born… Agrona's entire anchor point is gone. The Legacy couldn't even come in this world… The implications were world-ending. I forcibly slammed the mental door shut. Don't go there. Not yet.
My thoughts spiraled, seeking any handhold. Even if I met Arthur now… would I recognize him? The unsettling possibility hit me. My own memories were a fractured mosaic. The intricate plot of The Beginning After The End? Crystal clear, etched with obsessive detail.
My life before? A faded watercolor. I remembered concepts: attending school, studying subjects whose specifics were clear; having hobbies whose visceral joy had however evaporated; being approximately twenty years old.
But the people? Faces dissolved into indistinct smudges. Names evaporated like morning mist. My family? A hollow ache where faces and voices should reside. My own name? Lost to the void between worlds. Most crucially, the bookend of that existence—how did I die—was a terrifying blank.
I was Corvis Eralith, haunted by the ghost of knowledge from a life whose essence had been scraped away, leaving only cold, hard facts about a fictional world.
Am I just a vessel for this information?
A chilling echo from the novel surfaced: Grey didn't died naturally.
Agrona had ripped his soul from his body, forcibly stuffing it into the infant Arthur Leywin. The violation of it sent a phantom shiver down my spine. Did something similar happen to me? But my Earth wasn't Grey's futuristic dystopia. Or was it? Was I from a distant future I wasn't understanding? If only I could remember my death!
The key to this cosmic kidnapping, the nature of my displacement, might lie in that final moment. The frustration was a physical pressure behind my eyes, a scream trapped in my chest.
Remember Corvis!
"Corvis! Corvis!" Tessia's voice, sharp with alarm, cut through the suffocating fog of my thoughts. Her small hands gripped my shoulders, shaking me with surprising force. I blinked, disoriented. The damp cave walls, Alea's steady bioluminescent light casting long, dancing shadows from the sphere of vines on her left hand, Tessia's worried face inches from mine—it all snapped back into focus.
I had been walking on autopilot, lost in the labyrinth of my own fractured past and an uncertain future. "Corvis!" she repeated, her emerald eyes wide.
"Yeah?" I managed, feigning nonchalance, my voice sounding strangely flat in the enclosed space.
She scoffed, releasing my shoulders but staying close. "You spaced out. Again. I was half-convinced you were sleepwalking right off a ledge!" Her attempt at lightness couldn't mask the genuine concern beneath.
"Are you alright?"
"I am fine," I lied, forcing a tight smile. "Just… thinking. We're almost there." I gestured vaguely ahead, then glanced back.
The entrance was a distant sliver of grey light, far above us now. We had descended significantly, the air growing colder, damper. This had to be it. The chamber Sylvia used. My pulse quickened, a mix of residual dread and flickering hope. Something. There has to be something.
We rounded a final, jagged bend in the tunnel. Alea's light flared, pushing back the darkness to illuminate the cavern beyond. My breath hitched, catching in my throat like shards of ice.
It wasn't Sylvia's majestic, weary form. It wasn't Cadell's frightening form. It was ruin. A ruin that sent paralyzing shivers cascading down my spine, colder than the cave's deepest chill.
Dominating the far wall of the cavern stood the remnants of a structure that screamed Alacrya from its every part.
Two massive pillars, crafted from a smooth, unnaturally luminous stone the color of tarnished gold, soared towards the shadowed ceiling. They were impossibly tall, radiating an ancient, alien power that hummed faintly against my skin, even dormant.
But between them… devastation. Where a grand, arched gateway should have connected them, there was only shattered wreckage. Huge fragments of the same golden stone laid scattered across the cavern floor like broken teeth, some half-buried in the damp earth, others leaning precariously against the intact pillars.
The arch itself was obliterated, its destruction violent and absolute. Jagged edges on the pillars' tops bore witness to whatever catastrophic force had ripped the gateway apart.
An Alacryan portal. This was an Alacryan portal!
Here. Not deep within the Beast Glades, hidden from prying eyes. But here, buried under the border mountains between Sapin and Elenoir. In my homeland. The sheer audacity, the terrifying implication, slammed into me. This wasn't just a relic; it was an active breach, a dagger aimed at the heart of Dicathen.
When? How long has it been here? Who built it? And who… or what… destroyed it? They must have been friends of Dicathen, Cynthia maybe? No, it didn't make sense.
My breathing turned ragged, shallow gasps that echoed too loudly in the stunned silence. Panic, cold and sharp, clawed its way up my throat. I whipped my head around, my gaze locking onto Alea. Her usual composure was fractured. Her eyes, wide and fixed on the shattered portal, held pure, unadulterated shock. She didn't know.
This wasn't a relic guarded by Elenoir, nor was its destruction their doing. This was an unknown. A secret buried deep, now violently unearthed.
"Your Highnesses," Alea's voice was low, tight, stripped of its earlier casual warmth. It was the voice of Code Aureate, assessing a dire, unforeseen threat. Her posture shifted subtly, no longer just a chaperone, but a shield poised to deploy. "We should head back."
"Corvis," Tessia whispered, her hand finding mine, her fingers cold and trembling. Her voice was small, frightened—a tone I rarely heard from my bold sister. "Please. Let's go."
The sight of the alien ruin, my own fear, the palpable tension radiating from Alea, had shattered her adventurous bravado.
No. The refusal was a silent roar in my skull. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. This wasn't just a clue; it was the first tangible, horrifying piece of the puzzle I had been desperately searching for.
The future wasn't just altered; it was unfolding right here, in this cursed cave, and walking away felt like surrendering to the encroaching darkness.
I can't go now!