Corvis Eralith
The Castle felt like a cage. Sunlight streamed through towering arched windows, painting geometric patterns on the polished marble floors, but the brilliance felt hollow, failing to reach the cold knot of apprehension tightening in my chest.
The Glayder family, desperate to appease the Asuras after General Aldir's stark declaration that I was Agrona's primary target—and thus under asuran protection—pushed for harsh reprisals against both Bairon and House Wykes.
While I had no sympathy for the Wykes bloodline—especially that slaver, rapist, cruel Otis Wykes—I couldn't condemn Bairon. Not truly.
Because in his place, I would have done far, far worse.
Looking back, Bairon—even at his most ruthless—was a better man than I could ever claim to be. If I had witnessed someone murder Tessia, I wouldn't have settled for mere violence.
No, I would have unraveled them from the inside out, made their own essence betray them.
Lucas Wykes had learned that lesson in the most excruciating way possible—his mana resistance rotted to nothing, his body and core turned against itself.
Romulos had called it the cruelest and most painful death imaginable for a lesser without a decay affinity.
So when the Council debated Bairon's punishment, I refused. If he even gained a single win for Dicathen that was far more than enough for me.
After all, if vengeance for a sibling was a crime, then I was the guiltiest of all.
Now, Xyrus Academy and the surrounding city laid in burnt ruins, its academic year suspended indefinitely. Rebuilding the floating city would take months, a monumental task overshadowed by the grim efficiency with which the Lances—Aya, Alea, and Varay—had mopped up Draneeve's scattered forces after Grey took down the architect of chaos.
Grey's capture of Draneeve… a debt I could never fully repay. It had cleared my name, exposed the Greysunders' treachery leading to their execution by General Aldir's hand, and saved Cynthia Goodsky from the comatose fate I remembered from the novel.
Yet, it couldn't dispel the chilling proximity of the war I had foreseen since childhood.
The Council's slow, grinding shift towards a war footing, with Grampa Virion named future Commander by Aldir's decree, was the drumbeat of an approaching storm. The stage was set. Agrona's shadow loomed, vast and inevitable.
I paced the bright, echoing corridors, my footsteps the only sound in the vast silence. My sanctuary felt like a prison. Aldir's 'protection' was absolute: no leaving the Castle grounds except for tightly controlled, heavily escorted visits to major cities.
The Beast Glades, the freedom of the open sky and the secrets they held—all were barred. Worse than the confinement was the persistent, gnawing wrongness inside me.
A week had passed since my reunion with my family at Grandaunt Rinia's cottage, and the ache in my chest hadn't faded; it had deepened, becoming a constant, low thrum of discomfort, a physical echo of the decay I had unleashed on Lucas Wykes.
It wasn't the sharp agony of Bairon's lightning strike—the Mourning Pearl had erased that—but a deeper, more insidious fatigue, a cold emptiness where vitality should reside, punctuated by sharp twinges that stole my breath. It felt like roots of ice were spreading through my marrow.
"Prince Corvis, how are you doing?" The voice, calm and familiar, cut through my brooding. I turned to see Cynthia Goodsky approaching, her grey hair neatly bound, her posture regaining its characteristic poise.
Freed from the Greysunders' clutches thanks to Grey's intervention and Draneeve's capture, she looked far better than the broken figure I recalled from the novel's grim path.
Grampa wouldn't lose his oldest friend. Tessia wouldn't lose her master. Grey wouldn't lose his 'aunt.' Small victories in the gathering dark.
"Director Goodsky," I began automatically, then corrected myself as she gently waved a hand. "Cynthia. Have your injuries healed fully?"
"I am more than fine, Prince," she assured me, a warm smile touching her lips. She reached out, patting my head with an unexpected tenderness that momentarily pierced my gloom.
"And thanks to you, and Grey, the regulars of the Academy aren't dead. That's the important thing." Her gaze, sharp and inquisitive despite the warmth, settled on me.
"Now, I have a magic lesson in the courtyard with your sister. I would truly like you to come too. I am intensely curious about your prosthetic magic—the Ineptrunes. The ingenuity… the sheer defiance of your corelessness… it's remarkable."
The invitation was a lifeline to normalcy, to the scholarly pursuit I cherished. But the thrum in my chest pulsed a warning. "I… am trying not to use magic," I replied, the words feeling heavy and inadequate. "For now."
Until I understood the source of this internal discord, pushing the Ineptrunes felt like poking a sleeping beast.
"How unfortunate," Cynthia sighed, genuine disappointment in her tone. She studied me for a moment longer, her perceptive eyes missing little, before nodding and moving down the corridor, leaving me once more with the oppressive silence and my phantom pain.
"Being constrained here is torture, I swear!" Romulos's voice erupted in my mind, sharp with restless energy, a stark contrast to Cynthia's calm.
"Can't we just run? Think of the experiments waiting! The data! And Uto… that mangy lessuran mutt is likely still skulking in Dicathen. We could hunt him down before he slinks back to Alacrya. Imagine the look on Dad's face when we deliver his head! I am sure he will praise me for how strong I am, and it's not like he cares about his lesser servants anyway."
The idea held a dark allure. Uto, spreading his corruption through the Beast Glades' mana beasts, was a festering wound. The Council was fortifying borders, but eliminating him preemptively… it was strategically sound, viscerally satisfying. I will think on something, I conceded silently.
But I need to understand what's happening to my body first. It feels… worse. Every day. The cold ache intensified as if responding to my thought.
Romulos fell silent. Not his usual contemplative quiet, but a dense, loaded absence. He did this when he was genuinely stumped and embarrassed by it… or when he was meticulously plotting. A trickle of unease joined the physical discomfort.
You know what's happening to me, right? I pressed, the mental question edged with a vulnerability I rarely showed him.
"Knowing is a bit excessive," he conceded after a beat, his voice uncharacteristically careful, almost… hesitant.
"But I have an idea. One that you… might actually like." The cryptic phrasing did nothing to soothe me.
Oh? And what's that? I asked, my mental tone flat, bracing myself. I instinctively clenched my left hand, the phantom limb responding to the thought of the hidden Acclorite shards—four precious pieces still needing discreet delivery to the Lances, a dangerous task under the Asuras' watchful eyes.
Is my Acclorite finally sprouting? A desperate, absurd hope.
"It's only been half a year, Corvis," Romulos chided, a flicker of his usual condescension returning. "Patience is a virtue, especially for world-altering weapons. No…" He paused, drawing out the moment.
"This… what you feel… it's not just decay backlash or stress. The Mourning Pearl… it didn't just heal Bairon's damage. It fundamentally altered something. It healed your… allergy to ambient mana. Completely."
My breath hitched. The world seemed to tilt slightly. The constant, low-level aversion I'd lived with since birth, the subtle wrongness whenever raw mana brushed my skin… gone? The Mourning Pearl was powerful, but that profound? Romulos continued, his voice gaining momentum, tinged with a strange excitement.
"And your Ineptrunes… Corvis, you've been channeling mana through them for months. Refining it. Manipulating it. Complex decay matrices, spatial folds for storage, kinetic redirection… your body, now suddenly receptive to mana, no longer rejecting it… it's been forced to adapt. To respond."
Another pause, heavy with implication.
"In simpler words. You're developing a mana core, Corvis. The Ineptrunes are catalyzing a late blooming—a very late blooming for an elf."
Silence.
Absolute, deafening silence, both within my mind and in the vast corridor around me. The sunlight streaming through the window seemed to freeze. The rhythmic thrum in my chest became a frantic drum solo against my ribs.
A mana core.
The words echoed, meaningless at first, then crashing in with the force of a collapsing mountain. Me. Corvis Eralith. The coreless prince. The boy defined by his lack, who built intricate machines to bridge the chasm where magic should reside.
The one whose very absence of a core was supposed to be his shield against Agrona's gaze. That shield was shattered now, Agrona knew me regardless… but this? This was the universe rewriting my fundamental code.
For a dizzying second, euphoria surged—pure, blinding, terrifying hope. A core. It solved everything! No more fragile dependence on the Barbarossa or the uniform. Innate resilience. The potential to wield magic directly, to augment the Ineptrunes beyond their mechanical limits!
With Meta-awareness granting unparalleled insight into mana's flow, I could become… what? A multi-elemental mage? A mage-engineer unlike anything Dicathen had ever seen? The possibilities exploded in my mind, dazzling, intoxicating.
Then, the cold dread crashed down, extinguishing the spark as swiftly as it ignited.
Why am I scared? The question screamed internally, louder than Romulos's voice ever could. This was everything I'd supposedly yearned for in secret, wasn't it? The validation? The power?
Bur Fate told me my corelessness had a motive. So why now? Was this Fate's cruel joke? A consolation prize offered just as the true monster arrived? Or… was it something else? A trap within a trap? Agrona's influence, somehow triggering this through the Pearl?
Or worse… Kezess Indrath's machinations, forging me into a more useful weapon for his war?
The physical discomfort flared, a sharp twist beneath my sternum, a visceral counterpoint to the mental maelstrom. It wasn't just pain; it felt like growth, but growth forced, unnatural, violating. Roots of ice, yes, but also… something pushing, straining against the confines of my being.
The birth pangs of a power I never asked for, born from a healing I didn't anticipate and technology I created to defy my nature.
How long? The question was a rasp, scraped raw from the turmoil within. How long until it… manifests?
"Seeing the previous conditions of your body… the chronic mana rejection, the strain of the Ineptrunes…" Romulos mused, his tone shifting back to analytical, though a thread of that strange excitement remained.
"At least another week. Perhaps less, if the process accelerates." He paused, and I could almost sense his phantom head tilting. "You don't seem as… happy as I thought you'd be. This is the key, Corvis! The missing piece!"
Happy? The word felt alien, grotesque. This wasn't a gift; it was an upheaval. It was the shattering of the identity I'd painstakingly built—the clever, coreless prince who outmaneuvered fate with wit and machine.
Who was I if that defining lack was gone? Would the Ineptrunes, my creations born of necessity, become mere tools instead of lifelines?
———
The polished marble halls of the Castle felt vast and echoing as I wandered, the silence amplifying the low, persistent thrum of discomfort in my chest.
Sunlight streamed through th windows, painting bright rectangles on the floor, but it felt disconnected from the tension coiling within me. Turning a corner, I nearly collided with Curtis Glayder.
"Corvis," he said, his voice slightly stiff but carrying a note of genuine relief. He looked… different. Less of the royal heir, more grounded, perhaps even weary. The events in Xyrus had etched themselves onto everyone. "I'm glad to see you uninjured."
"Curtis…" My response felt awkward, hanging in the air. We weren't enemies, but we weren't friends either—just figures thrown together by circumstances.
The realization struck, sharp and lonely: I really need to make more friends.
The ghost of Albold's easy friendship, untouched for nearly a year, drifted through my mind.
He shifted his weight, his gaze dropping for a moment before meeting mine again, a flicker of something uncharacteristically vulnerable in his eyes.
"I… I have to thank you." The words seemed difficult, forced past a barrier of ingrained pride. "Not just for saving the Academy… but… Lucas…" He swallowed, the memory clearly raw. "He would have killed me. If you hadn't intervened…"
He left the grim outcome unspoken, but the stark truth of it hung between us—the charred wall, his crumpled form. His gratitude, however awkwardly delivered, held a weight I hadn't expected.
"There's no need to thank me," I said, my voice quieter than intended. The memory of Lucas's agonized convulsions flashed, unwanted.
"I did what needed to be done." The phrase felt inadequate, almost hollow, covering the cold calculation and terrifying power that moment had demanded.
"But still…" Curtis began, then cut himself off abruptly, his jaw tightening as if biting back more words he couldn't find or felt he shouldn't say. The silence stretched, heavy with unspoken acknowledgement of debts and horrors.
It was broken by the soft whisper of fabric on stone. A figure approached with measured grace—Kathyln Glayder. A year younger than me, she possessed a stillness Curtis lacked.
Long, straight black hair framed a face of striking composure, her dark eyes intelligent and assessing. We had only exchanged formal pleasantries at state functions before the Tri-Union, but her presence now felt significant.
"Prince Corvis." Her voice was clear, respectful. She offered a precise, shallow bow, the picture of royal decorum. Yet, beneath the polished surface, I sensed a deliberate intent.
"My most sincere thanks," she continued, her gaze steady on mine, "for saving my brother." She paused, the weight of her next words settling deliberately.
"But more than that, as Princess of Sapin, I wish to apologize." The word hung in the air, potent and unexpected. "I apologize in the name of my family for how you have been treated."
The impact was immediate. Curtis visibly stiffened beside her, his eyes widening in surprise, perhaps even shock at the bluntness of her admission. My own breath caught slightly.
This wasn't the expected diplomatic deflection; it was a direct acknowledgment of the Glayders' complicity through silence, through association with the Vritra, through the political machinations that had branded me a criminal.
"I hope," Kathyln added, her voice softening almost imperceptibly, yet losing none of its sincerity, "that in time, the relationship between our families can be mended."
It wasn't a plea, but a statement of hope, offered with a dignity that commanded respect. In that moment, she wasn't just Curtis's sister; she was the future of Sapin, attempting to cleanse a stain with clear-eyed courage her elders had lacked.