"Rise and shine, Corrin."
Corrin woke up and looked at Lukas. He was making his bed on the other side of the room.
Corrin rubbed his eyes and was confused for a moment before remembering he was in that abandoned tower where Lukas had brought him. Corrin had tried not to fall asleep, but he was too tired not to; Corrin did not trust Lukas.
"How did you sleep?"
Lukas went to a mirror and fixed his hair. Corrin began to make his bed, making sure he was looking at Lukas at all times.
"I slept fine."
Lukas sighed and pulled on a fur coat. The coat went down to Lukas's hips and had a hood.
Corrin hadn't realized just how cold it was in the room before Lukas did this.
"You don't trust me. It's because of what Omna said to you, isn't it?"
Corrin nodded his head.
"Yeah… it is."
Lukas shook his head.
"They're liars. They said I killed six people while trying to steal documents to find where the shard of realms was hiding. That… is their story, right?"
Corrin gave a skeptical look.
"Yeah… that's their story."
Lukas grabbed his broadsword and attached it to his belt. He grabbed another and threw it to Corrin. Corrin clutched it in his hands for a moment, feeling slightly strange.
"Do you want to know the truth?"
"How do I know it's really the truth?"
Lukas took a deep breath.
"How do you know if what they said was the truth? You blindly believe them but not me?"
Corrin clutches his hands into fists. Why did he want to believe them? Because there were more of them? Because Omna seemed wiser? He didn't have a good excuse to believe them. It's because they were the only story he had seen so far, and he had no reason not to trust them. Actually, he did have a reason not to trust them; they locked him up.
Lukas sat on his bed.
"Let me tell you the truth of what really happened."
Lukas took another deep breath, clearly slightly nervous.
"When I was born, something was different about me. My parents didn't want me. They, somehow, threw me into this realm. I was found by a patrol as an infant. I was hardly alive and had serious frostbite all over my body."
Lukas raised his fingers, showing that his fingers had chalk-ish pink spots all over. It didn't look too bad now, but Corrin could imagine what it was like before.
"It's not just on my fingers. It was on my hands, arms, feet, legs, and ears. I was lucky enough to have a cloth around my head. The frostbite kills the hair around it, and it won't ever grow again. If it had hit my head, I never would have grown hair in my life."
Corrin could only imagine how awful that must have been.
"They treated me the best that they could at my age. But I was the only Shem in the entire city. Nobody wanted to take me in, aside from Keris, my stepfather. He was a swordsman and led an academy of sorts. Through my early years, he trained me to fight using a broadsword."
Lukas set his hand on his broadsword as he spoke.
"Another student training there was Tutsoi. He was… an incredible student. Surpassed me in nearly everything. About three years ago, I told him I wanted to go back to the Holy Realm and learn what it looked like. Tutsoi told me that everybody did. I believe that's where the story of me stealing documents comes from. A year and a half-ish ago, I was training by myself after dark. Tutsoi came in and drew his sword on me."
Lukas sighed.
"During our training there, we learned to unlock a Resonance and use it at a fundamental level to help protect Avitou City. Tutsoi had learned this much faster and had even learned to integrate it into combat more effectively. His Resonance is the ability to compress the air around his feet while walking to essentially walk on air. My Resonance, at least at that time, was still blooming. I hadn't learned how to really harness it."
Corrin stopped Lukas.
"Where is this going? Tutsoi didn't seem like the kind of person to just attack someone like that."
Lukas nods his head.
"You're right, he isn't. But the reason he attacked me was because he was threatened. Somebody had his older sister captive and ordered him to attack me. He told me this. He told me that I had to die to protect his sister."
Corrin gives a skeptical look and stands from the bed, which he hadn't even realized until now that he had sat in to listen to the story.
"That's a real stretch, you know. They also mentioned that half a dozen people were killed by you."
"I didn't kill anybody. Everybody except Tutsoi thought that I did; in reality, it was the man who threatened Tutsoi into attacking me. You have to believe me, alright? Look, you're the only person who can help me get home; nobody else would."
Corrin gives a slight nervous laugh.
"And maybe I shouldn't either. You did attack me when I first came here. Remember? You shattered my katana."
Lukas bowed his head slightly.
"I'm very sorry about that. I thought you were going to attack me. Most of the soldiers outside the walls instantly attack me. It looked like you were swinging your sword at me."
Corrin thought that was a fair excuse. If Lukas's story was true and Corrin had been in his shoes, he wouldn't have trusted somebody moving the same way Corrin had in that moment.
Lukas looked up, his hair flopping slightly.
"I never wanted to hurt anybody, honestly."
Corrin sighed. Lukas turned to the stairs.
"Okay… look. I'm going to bring you upstairs, okay? Up there is something that is… very important. If you agree to help me, we can leave this forsaken place."
Corrin shook his head.
"No, I can't."
He hadn't told anybody out of distrust, but both Axel and the shard had fallen into this realm also. That meant that the shard was somewhere here, and Corrin had to get it back.
"You don't trust me."
Corrin shakes his head.
"Well, actually, I don't know what to think. Your story is… pretty convincing. But I can't leave. There's something in this realm I can't leave behind."
Lukas nods his head slowly.
"What is it?"
Lukas stands from the bed. Corrin sighs.
"I… never mind."
Lukas grits his teeth.
"Okay, fine. Will you believe me if we go to Tutsoi while he's alone and speak with him? He'll tell you everything you need to know."
Corrin looks skeptical, but does needs to know if what he's saying is true.
"Alright. But all I have is a broadsword. I've never used a broadsword before, and Tutsoi is in an impenetrable city right now."
Lukas nods his head and smirks.
"Come with me."
Lukas walks over and up the stairs. Corrin follows him eerily.
As they walk over, the light from the room is apparent; a yellow-golden light. Corrin knows this light all too well. Sitting on a pedestal in the middle is a glowing yellow shard. Corrin's jaw drops.
"You found the shard?!"
Corrin couldn't believe that, while Corrin had only been here for a few days, Tutsoi had already managed to find Corrin's shard.
"Yeah. Turns out, it's been here this whole time. Some guy from when the Anees were first banished to this realm must have left it here hundreds of years ago."
Corrin looked confused for a moment before realizing what Lukas had really found. He found the shard of realms that everybody seemed to talk about, which made Corrin seem a little foolish. But Corrin didn't say anything about the matter. Still, he was impressed and dumbfounded by viewing the Shard of Realms. Lukas walked forward.
"It can shift in and out of realms in an instant. It's likely how you got here… I tried to use it before, but failed. I'm only half Anees… even though it doesn't feel like it."
Lukas was right, he didn't look half Anees at all. The only thing hinting at him being half Anees was his name. He turned to Corrin.
"But you're fully Anees, probably. You can use the shard. You can bring us inside Avitou City, and we can look for Tutsoi. When we find him, you can ask him about what really happened. Our stories will match up."
Corrin nods his head and walks forward. Lukas grabs his arm for a moment.
"But be careful. I've heard it hurts a lot to use a shard like that."
Corrin nods his head.
"Yeah… I've heard that also."
Corrin knew firsthand how it hurt. The scar on his left cheek had burned and blistered like hell on earth when he was fighting the queen before.
Corrin shakily reached for the shard and grabbed it. He lifted it. It wasn't the same shape as Corrin's was. While Corrin's was pointy and sharp at the end, this one looked like a hollow half-circle attached by a string.
Corrin set it around his neck. Corrin wasn't sure how it would work. He had never had to use the shard before, just out of nowhere. He always pushed himself to activate it. He was always in the heat of battle.
Corrin closed his eyes and concentrated. He imagined a black hole like before forming, and that it would bring them inside the Avitou castle.
He could feel his scar trembling and searing slightly. When he opened his eyes, a small fizzling hole appeared, about the size of a single coin. Lukas put his hand on his hip.
"Well, that's underwhelming."
Corrin moved forward and touched the black hole, hoping that upon touching it, he would be transported to Avitou Castle.
In an instant, he felt the world going upside down and flipping all around. His body seemed to rotate and flip, change directions, and split apart all at once.
In a moment, he appeared in the halls just outside of his jail cell from before. Where he had been chained.
The hole behind him disappeared. Lukas had not appeared. Corrin knew it wasn't to trick him, because then he would have just given up his ace in the deck. Lukas had to trust Corrin enough. Or was desperate.
Either way, Corrin was now alone in the Avitou castle dungeons with a shard he never thought he would be wielding. In the distance, Corrin could hear footsteps and talking.