Olfred Warend
The fight stretched, an eternity measured in shattered rock and the bear's guttural roars. Too long. If not for this monstrous bear mana beast, the elven prince would already be bound. Clever, yes—frighteningly so, weaving traps within traps like some infernal puppeteer. But beneath the artifice and the towering steel beast, he fought like prey.
Skittish. Defensive. Hiding behind his creations. Naive. Or so I'd thought.
My Magma Knights held the crimson giant at bay, a searing bulwark against its brute force. My focus narrowed to the bear—the true, primal threat and only obstacle to the capture of Corvis Eralith.
Eliminate it, and the prince's steel shell becomes a coffin. I channeled mana from my core, molten fury gathering in my palms, ready to end the ursine menace. Then, the shift. A jarring ripple in my connection.
One of my Magma Knights—wrenched from my control, hurled towards me like a discarded toy. Instinct flared. A flick of will, and the molten construct dissolved into harmless slag before it struck. A necessary diversion.
It was just enough. The bear, a terrifyingly intelligent predator, seized the sliver of distraction. I pivoted, stone flowing up my arm into a spiked gauntlet, bracing for the inevitable impact. Its claws slammed home, the force shuddering up my bones, cracking the conjured rock. Predictable. I braced, ready to counter, to turn its momentum against it. But it didn't press. It leapt back. Disengaged.
Why?
Cold dread, colder than any mountain peak, doused the fire in my veins even before I saw it. Beyond the bear's retreating bulk, framed by the crimson horror of its master, a massive point of pure, annihilating light blossomed. A silent scream locked in my throat. Trap. Perfectly sprung. Prince Corvis hadn't been hiding. He'd been aiming at me. He had been luring me into his trap.
The beam hit.
"AGHHHHHH!"
The sound tore from me, raw and primal, shredding my throat. It wasn't just sound; it was the shattering of a White Core's invincibility. Pain. Words fail. It was everything.
Every nerve ending screamed as if dipped in molten lead, then frozen and shattered. My skin wasn't burning; it was unmaking, cell by cell. My bones weren't breaking; they were vibrating into dust. My vision exploded into white-hot static, then plunged into absolute, searing agony. It dwarfed the gnawing emptiness of childhood starvation in Vildorial's gutters.
It eclipsed the brutal, body-breaking drills at the Earthborn Institute before I became a royal guard. It made the soul-deep ache after receiving the Lance artifact feel like a gentle ache. This was existence itself being flayed. Bairon's Thunderlord's Wrath? A spark compared to this sun of pure dissolution. How? How did a child forge this?
Seconds stretched into eons. My life flashed—not memories, but sensations: the cold cobbles, Rahdeas's first gruff kindness, the weight of the artifact, the fleeting camaraderie of the other Lances… all consumed by this white fire. Then, silence.
The beam vanished. I collapsed. Not fell. Folded. Hitting the scorched rock felt like landing on feathers. My body was gone. A numb, ruined husk. Nerves severed, flesh charred and weeping, the stench of my own cooking meat thick in my nostrils.
Breathing was a ragged, wet torment.
He knew. The realization cut through the haze of agony, sharper than any physical pain. Prince Corvis… Outis. He knew about my treason. Knew my loyalty was solely to Rahdeas, my savior, my father in all but blood, who walked the path with the continent beyond the sea.
And yet… he'd spared Tristan Flamesworth. Spared his soldiers. Reports spoke of no lasting injuries other than mana deprivation. I had dismissed it as weakness. The soft heart of a boy playing soldier, only ruthless with true vermin like bandits. I was wrong.
So catastrophically wrong. The mercy shown to Tristan wasn't weakness. It was calculation. A choice. For me, he offered only annihilation. Because he knew Rahdeas's path was poison. Because he knew I was poison.
Rahdeas's promised future… a world where dwarves stood tall, unchained from human or elven scorn… it flickered in my mind.
Did I ever truly believe in it? Or did I only cling to it because it was his dream? The dream of the only person who hadn't thrown me away. The dwarves who abandoned me? I despised them. My loyalty wasn't to a people, or a future. It was to the hand that pulled me from the gutter. To Rahdeas. Only Rahdeas.
The despair, the betrayal of my broken body, the terrifying finality… it coalesced into a final surge. A denial screamed not with voice, but with the dregs of my white core. I slammed my ruined hands—blistered, bleeding, bone showing in places—into the fractured earth.
"NO!"
The mountain answered its dying master. Not with focused power, but with a final, chaotic spasm. The ground erupted. Not dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Every stone, pebble, boulder buried fragment for meters around ripped free in a cataclysmic, 360-degree hailstorm. A whirlwind of screaming rock, my last, desperate roar against the dying of the light.
I won't die like this! Not after all I sacrificed! Not for him!
The barrage hammered the crimson giant, forcing it back, shielding me in a momentary maelstrom of dust and debris. Maybe… maybe he fled? Scared by the dying beast's thrashing? A pathetic hope.
Maybe Varay, or Aya… maybe they'd sense this… come… The thought of my fellow Lances—comrades I'd have discarded for Rahdeas without a second thought, yet whose presence suddenly seemed a profound, missed comfort—was a fresh, surprising ache.
Then, the dust parted. Not retreat. Not rescue. Light. That same, terrible, annihilating white light blossoming once more from the steel monster's fist. Pointed directly at my broken form. It filled my world, cold and absolute. No more rage. No more defiance. Only exhaustion, and the hollow echo of Rahdeas's voice promising a future I'd never see.
Father… forgive me.
I closed my eyes. Not in fear, but in weary acceptance of the end. The light consumed everything.
Corvis Eralith
The sound cut through the ringing silence left by the Mana Wreath's final, annihilating shriek. Not the hiss of cooling rock, not Berna's heavy panting as she clawed her way free, not the ominous creak of stressed metal from the Barbarossa.
It was clapping. Slow, deliberate, echoing strangely in mind in the sudden stillness of the shattered mountain pass.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
"That," Romulos declared, his spectral form shimmering into existence beside the cracked Dark Visor, "was phenomenal, Corvis! I am so proud of you!"
His voice wasn't the usual sardonic drawl, the veiled mockery. It was… bright. Vibrant. Filled with an unnerving, genuine fervor.
His spectral red eyes gleamed, not with amusement, but with something terrifyingly akin to pride. "Precision! Ruthlessness! A perfect execution of overwhelming force! You didn't just defeat a Lance; you erased him!"
He wasn't lying. He wasn't manipulating. The raw, unsettling delight radiating from him was palpable. He was… proud. Happy for me. The realization hit like a physical blow, colder than the mountain wind now whistling through the devastation.
A wave of visceral revulsion washed over me. What a disgusting monster. His joy was a desecration, a stain on the ashes scattered before me.
I triggered the cockpit release. Hisses of escaping pressure and the groan of damaged hydraulics filled the air as the sealed hatch unseamed. The smell hit me first—ozone, yes, but overpowered by the thick, choking reek of vaporized rock, scorched earth, and something else… something sickeningly organic and final. Burnt hair. Crisped flesh. Gone.
Stepping out onto the Barbarossa's broad shoulder, the scale of the destruction unfolded. The exoform itself was a testament to the punishment it had absorbed. Deep gouges scarred the crimson carapace where Olfred's rock storm had hammered it. Sections of the black exoskeleton were warped, glowing faintly from heat transfer. Stress fractures webbed across reinforced joints. But the core structure held. Repairable. A shell that had weathered a White Core's fury and won. A hollow victory.
Nearby, the earth heaved. Berna's massive head emerged from the deep trench she'd dug, coated in dust and grime. Her fur was matted, singed in places, and a deep gash ran along one shoulder where Olfred's stone gauntlet had clipped her.
Her green eyes, usually bright with fierce loyalty, held a deep weariness as she scanned the devastation, finally settling on me. A low, questioning rumble vibrated in her chest.
I jumped down, boots crunching on the glassy, fused rock where Olfred had stood. Where the concentrated fury of Sylvia's core, channeled through my sword, had struck.
I walked towards the epicenter. Nothing. Not a scrap of cloth, not a fragment of bone, not even the distinctive, mana-resistant alloy of a Lance's nameplate.
Only fine, grey-white ash, already swirling and mingling with the settling dust and the blackened remnants of incinerated foliage. Utter, absolute negation. A White Core Lance, a pillar of Dicathen's defense… reduced to this.
The forest around us was a nightmare landscape. Trees sheared off halfway up their trunks, others reduced to smoldering stumps. The ground was cratered, littered with shattered rock, some still glowing faintly red.
A swathe of mountain slope looked like it had been scoured by a god's wrath. How long until the Council noticed Olfred's absence? Until the ripples of this act reached Xyrus City, reached Grampa? Panic threatened, cold and sharp, but it was smothered beneath a heavier, more pervasive numbness.
Berna limped towards me, nudging my side gently with her muzzle. She whined softly, the sound thick with pain and exhaustion. She needed rest. Healing. Barbarossa needed repairs. Sylvia's core, though vast, had poured immense power into the Mana Wreath; it needed time to stabilize, to replenish. We were vulnerable.
We had to move. Now.
Yet, my feet felt rooted to the scorched earth. A different weight settled on me, not physical, but deep within my chest. A gnawing, unfamiliar sensation amidst the numbness. Guilt. Olfred. He hadn't been a bandit, reveling in cruelty. He hadn't been a corrupted beast.
He'd been… a son.
A fiercely loyal son, following the only father he'd ever known, blind to the poison in Rahdeas's promises. He'd fought for a future he didn't even truly believe in, solely because it was his father's dream. In that terrible, twisted loyalty… I saw a reflection.
In a certain sense he reminded me of…
"Don't look at me," Romulos snapped, his earlier cheer evaporating into icy hauteur. He materialized beside the patch of ash, staring down at it with distaste, then back at me. "I never blindly followed Dad's words. Our relationship is one of mutual respect. Of love."
He puffed out his spectral chest, radiating wounded pride. "We are partners in destiny. Destined to rule together, not a master and a dog like this disgusting lesser."
I ignored him. The comparison wasn't about Romulos and Agrona. It was about the shape of loyalty. The willingness to drown your own conscience in the service of someone you loved. Olfred's fatal flaw hadn't been malice; it had been devotion. And I'd extinguished that devotion utterly.
"Berna," I murmured, my voice sounding flat, hollow, even to my own ears. "Let's head back." The words tasted like ash. Retreat. Again. Always retreating deeper into the mountains, carrying the scars of violence.
The flicker of guilt persisted, a small, cold ember amidst the numbness. Was it truly mine? Or was it Romulos's influence, seeping through the cracks in my resolve, twisting my perception? The thought was chilling.
"Those feelings," Romulos stated, his voice unnervingly calm now, devoid of its earlier theatrics, "are unequivocally yours. And even if they were mine…" He drifted closer, his spectral gaze boring into mine. "...what difference would it make? We share the same soul, Corvis. The same fractured vessel. Deny it all you like, but the blood of the Thwart binds us. Your guilt, your remorse, your cold calculation… they are facets of the same diamond."
He gestured vaguely towards the devastation. "The diamond that just cut down a Lance."
I gritted my teeth, the sound loud in the sudden quiet. The urge to deny him, to scream that he was wrong, was a physical pressure in my throat. But the denial wouldn't come. The truth of his words, however vile, resonated with the cold certainty settling in my bones. We were bound. His presence, his power, his perspective… they were woven into the fabric of my being now nore than ever.
My left hand clenched into a fist. Beneath the glove, beneath the skin, the sliver of Acclorite laid inert. I hadn't fed it much—just the dregs absorbed from Tristan and the ambient mana. It felt cold. Silent. Offering no answers, no comfort. Just a reminder of the power source, the burden.
I looked up, away from the ashes, away from Romulos, away from Berna's wounded gaze. The sky above the ravaged pass was achingly bright, a vast, indifferent blue.
One Lance was dead. By my hand. If the Council discovered it… if they didn't believe the truth of his treason… I wouldn't just be a fugitive prince. I'd be a monster. A traitor who murdered a defender of the continent. The dwarves would demand blood. The fragile peace would shatter.
Grampa… The thought was a silent, desperate plea, cast into the void. I really hope you received my letter. It felt like the only lifeline left, the only fragile thread connecting me to the boy who once dreamed of peaceful forests, not fields of ash.
The weight of the diamond Romulos spoke of—cold, sharp, and stained with blood—pressed down heavier than any mountain. We turned our backs on the devastation and began the long, silent climb back to the workshop, carrying the ashes of victory and the crushing weight of what it had cost.