Virion Eralith
The parchment decree felt heavy in my hand, the ink still damp. Xyrus Academy, open to all three races. A hard-won victory, brokered through gritted teeth and reluctant handshakes with Blaine and Priscilla Glayder.
Cynthia would be pleased—her relentless advocacy finally bearing fruit. A flicker of satisfaction warred with the far heavier thoughts pressing down on me.
But the political triumph felt hollow, distant. My mind kept snagging, like cloth on a thorn, on the other revelation—the shattered portal most surely coming from the unknown continent buried deep under Elshire Forest, and the chilling question it posed: How did Corvis know?
Chance? No, that was Impossible. Alea's report was meticulous, dispassionate, and damning: Corvis had moved with unnerving purpose. He had not stumbled upon that cave; he had navigated the foothills leading to it with the certainty of a homing pigeon, zeroing in on that hidden crevice as if drawn by an invisible thread.
"Deliberate and precise." she described him, the words echoed, cold and sharp, in the quiet of my mind.
I closed my eyes, not seeing the opulent room around me, but the stark memory burned onto my retinas: Corvis and Tessia returning that day. Dust-streaked, pale as moonlight, their eyes wide with a fear that was.not childish fright, but the dawning horror of glimpsing something monstrous.
Tessia clung to him, trembling—but that was expectable. Corvis… Corvis had looked haunted. The sheer relief that Alea had been their shadow that day was a physical ache. What would he have done alone? The thought was a blade twisting. Would he have tried to hide it? Investigate further? Put himself and Tessia in even graver danger?
"What am I doing?" I asked myself gritting my teeth in shame for myself.
The whisper rasped from my throat, harsh in the silence. I stared down at my hands—the hands that had cradled my son, tried to make Elenoir a better place, and now… now trembled slightly. Am I hunting shadows in my own grandson's eyes? Am I becoming suspicious of the boy I taught so many things, whose laughter once filled these halls?
Everything screamed that Corvis couldn't be involved.
He was a child. My blood. The fear in his eyes had been real. Yet… the knowing. That undeniable, inexplicable certainty about the cave's location gnawed at me, relentless as rot.
A suspicion, cold and unwelcome, coiled in the pit of my stomach—a suspicion tied to the legacy of his bloodline, to the fractured, painful gifts carried by his grandmother and grandaunt. Divination. The very thought filled me with icy dread. Had the visions already found him? Was he paying a price I couldn't see?
The fear wasn't of what he knew… but of how he knew it, and what it might be doing to him. The burden of that possibility felt heavier than anything else.
———
Corvis's voice was small, tentative, cutting through the heavy silence of the attic we were in.
"Are you angry at me?" His eyes, wide and shadowed with a worry far too deep for his eight years, darted between Merial, Alduin, and me.
We had agreed—no accusations, only understanding. Yet the air itself felt charged, thick with the unspoken specter of the ruined portal and the impossible knowledge that led him to it. We couldn't hide behind the comforting lie of coincidence being an option. Not anymore.
"No, honey. We aren't," Merial said immediately, her voice a gentle current trying to soothe turbulent waters. She reached out, her hand hovering near his arm, radiating warmth and reassurance. But the worry etching lines around Corvis's eyes didn't fade. It deepened, a silent acknowledgment of the gravity settling upon us.
I leaned forward, the polished wood of the table cool beneath my palms. My own voice, when I spoke, felt rough, carefully measured to avoid the storm raging inside. "Corvis," I began, meeting his gaze directly, willing calm into my own expression. "We would like to understand. How did you know? About the cave? About… what was inside?"
The golden ruin. The hidden dagger in Elenoir's heart.
He shifted, a flicker of profound conflict crossing his face—a look I couldn't decipher, layered with fear and something else… resignation?
"I… I just knew it," he whispered, the words seeming to catch in his throat. He looked down at his own small hands clenched in his lap. "I just… had the knowledge. Like… it was there."
Alduin, seated rigidly beside me, drew a sharp, audible breath. His knuckles were white where he gripped the edge of the table.
"Knowledge?" Alduin's voice was taut, strained. He turned his head slowly, his gaze locking onto mine. In his eyes, I saw my own dawning horror reflected, magnified by a father's primal fear.
Oh, Gods, no.
"Like… a vision?" Alduin asked, the word dropping into the silence like a stone into still water.
Corvis nodded, a single, jerky motion. "Sort of…" he murmured, barely audible. "I wanted to see… if what I saw was true."
The confirmation hit like a physical blow. Time seemed to fracture. The attic, the sunlight streaming through the tall windows, the scent of Merial's floral tea she had brewed for Corvis—it all receded, replaced by the choking darkness of memory. Lania.
Her face, pale and drawn in the flickering light, eyes wide with visions only she could see, whispering secrets that carved trenches of terror into her beautiful face that she continued to hide from me, refusing to tell me anything until it was too late. The desperate hope that flickered and died. The silence that followed.
The light leaving her eyes.
Divination.
Ice flooded my veins. My vision blurred at the edges. I couldn't move, I couldn't speak. The phantom scent of iron and despair filled my nostrils, the echo of a final, unanswered plea ringing in my ears. Lania. My brilliant, broken star. Killed not by blade or spell, but devoured from within by the very gift meant to guide her.
A gift that had become a curse, a parasite feasting on her life force until oblivion was the only result left.
Beside me, Alduin moved. Not with the measured control of a king, but with the raw, trembling urgency of a terrified father.
He lurched from his chair, the wood scraping harshly against stone. He dropped to his knees before Corvis, his own hands— were shaking violently as he grasped his son's small shoulders. His face was ashen, drained of all blood, etched with a terror that mirrored the abyss opening inside me.
"Corvis," Alduin choked out, his voice cracking, barely recognizable. He pulled his son closer, his embrace fierce, almost desperate. "Listen to me. You don't have to do this. You don't have to listen anymore. No matter what whispers, what shows itself… promise me. Promise me you won't try to see those visions again!"
His plea was raw, stripped bare, trembling with the unspoken terror: I will not lose my son to the same darkness that took his grandmother. I cannot.
The fear radiating from Alduin wasn't just his own; it was mine. A legacy of grief and helplessness passed down. I watched, paralyzed by the ghosts of the past, my hatred for the accursed magic that stole Lania and ruined my relationship with my sister-in-law warring with the crushing dread of history repeating itself.
Not him. The plea was silent, screamed into the void of memory. Please, not my grandson too. The weight of two generations of loss pressed down, suffocating. I couldn't bear it. Not again. After so many years I have come to terms with Lania giving her life for saving me, but she was an adult. She perfectly knew what she was going against and accepted it—for me.
But Corvis was a child, if he began now... I didn't want to finish the thought. The only thing I had to do was to ensure my grandson wouldn't use Divination.
Corvis Eralith
Their stares were physical things—cold, heavy weights pressing against my skin.
Grampa Virion's weathered face was etched with a grief so profound it seemed carved from ancient stone. Mom's eyes, usually warm and sweet as summer and honey, held a sheen of terrified tears she was desperately blinking back.
Dad… Dad looked like he had seen a corpse. His shoulders, always so regal and steady, trembled with a fine, uncontrollable tremor. His knuckles were bone-white where he gripped the armrest. Why? The question screamed silently in my skull. Why are they looking at me like I'm a ghost? What did I forget?
"D-dad?" My voice was small, alien in the suffocating silence. The tremor in his frame intensified at the sound. What piece of this puzzle am I missing?
Mom moved then, a flutter of desperate reassurance. She knelt beside me, her hand cool and trembling slightly as it covered mine. "Everything is alright, honey," she whispered, the forced calm in her voice cracking at the edges. "You couldn't know. Of course you couldn't." Her gaze searched my face, pleading for understanding I didn't possess. "What you saw… those visions… they might have felt exciting. Especially seeing how brightly Tessia shines." Her voice hitched. "But it's very dangerous, my love. More dangerous than any of those things you are seeing."
This is a misunderstanding! The denial roared through me, a tempest locked behind clenched teeth. This isn't about envy! I knew Tessia's brilliance wasn't a threat; it was a beacon.
She was extraordinary—perhaps the most naturally gifted mage Elenoir had seen in centuries, Arthur or no Arthur. The only white core forged purely by her own will and the world's mana, unaided by Asuran relics—again, ignoring Arthur. Her light wasn't something to covet; it was something to shield. But this fear radiating from my parents… it wasn't about her. It was anchored in a past I hadn't fully grasped.
"Corvis…" Grampa's voice was a rasp, scraped raw from a well of sorrow decades deep. He didn't look at me; his gaze was fixed on some middle distance, haunted. "Your grandmother… my Lania…" He swallowed thickly, the name hanging heavy in the air like incense at a funeral. "She… passed because of that. What you're experiencing. Divination."
The word dropped like a tombstone. "The visions… they aren't just glimpses. They're leaks. Every one… every moment spent chasing them… it steals from you. Drains the life force itself. Like sand slipping through an hourglass you can't seal."
Oh. The memory slammed into me—a detail, small yet fundamental, in the novel's lore, a tragic detail about Lania Eralith's fate. Forgotten because it wasn't my reality. I'm not using Divination! I'm not draining my life! The truth burned on my tongue, desperate to be spat out.
But the raw terror in Dad's eyes, the shattered look on Mom's face, the abyss of grief in Grampa's—they were walls I couldn't breach. Confessing now would only shatter them further, painting me not just as a bearer of a cursed gift, but a liar who'd led them into a nightmare.
Silence stretched, thick and suffocating. I stared at the intricate pattern of the rug, feeling the weight of their fear, their love, their shared history of loss pressing down, threatening to crush my carefully constructed facade.
"It's okay, Corvis." Dad's voice was a broken thing, stripped of all kingly authority. It wasn't a command; it was a raw, ragged plea scraped from the depths of his terror. He leaned forward, his eyes begging. "Just… promise. Promise me you won't use it again. Don't look for them. Don't listen. Please. It's… it's for you. For your sake."
He was begging his son to reject a phantom power, bargaining with a future he couldn't bear to lose me to.
My plan hadn't just failed; it had detonated in my face. Was this cosmic irony? Punishment for lying to the people who loved me most? The guilt was a physical ache, sharp and sour. I have to be more careful. So much more careful. Every scrap of future knowledge now carried this terrible weight—the potential to ignite this fear anew.
I met Dad's desperate gaze, the lie forming on my lips a necessary shield, a burden I chose to carry to spare them. "Yes, Dad," I whispered, the words tasting like ash, yet laced with a strange, protective resolve. "I promise."
It wasn't a lie about the magic—I truly wouldn't use Divination. But the promise to ignore the "visions," the knowledge that was my only weapon… that was the half-truth.
It is necessary to lie to them, I told myself.