Chapter 39: The Briand Manor
Iskander Briand
The door of Seris's villa clicked shut behind me, the sound a definitive period at the end of a sentence written in blood, pain, and revelation.
The air outside was different—crisp, sea-salted, and free of the oppressive weight of the Scythe's direct attention.
Before me stood a coachman, his posture ramrod straight, his expression a mask of deferential neutrality. He gestured silently to a waiting carriage, a vehicle that seemed to have rolled straight out of an antique illustration.
"How long will it take for us to arrive in Aedelgard?" I asked, sliding onto the plush velvet seat inside.
The interior was dim, lit only by a single, softly glowing artifact set into the ceiling—a pale, magical bulb that chased away the shadows without ever truly illuminating them.
The smell of polished leather, aged wood, and the faint, musky scent of the beasts outside filled the space. It was all so… archaic. The velvet seats, the coachman's cockpit, even the two creatures hitched to the front—they looked like horses but with hides of a deeper, almost obsidian black and eyes that glowed with a faint, unsettling crimson.
It was a scene from a history book, a snapshot of a past Earth I had only ever read about while confined to my bed.
"Six hours, Highlord," the coachman replied, his voice a respectful monotone. "Lady Scythe's villa is situated in Aedelgard's countryside."
With a flick of the reins, we began to move, the carriage lurching into a smooth, rolling rhythm.
So, the Briand Manor was in the city itself. A city by the sea. The imagery was almost laughably poetic. Here I was, Iskander Briand, with a secret identity, a hidden power, and a mission to dismantle the god-like dictators of this world, about to take up residence in a manor in a city that felt like a ghost from another time.
If Aedelgard was my Gotham City, then who was my Batman? The thought was absurd, but it stuck. Or perhaps it was my old New York City, and I was a very different kind of Spider-Man, swinging on threads of aether instead of webs.
The memories of those old stories, of the cities they were set in, sparked a darker chain of thought. I remembered the history texts about Earth's End Wars, the near-destruction of humanity.
And through it all, King Grey, the pragmatist, the monster, had clung back to traditional warfare. He had rejected the civilized, if brutal, efficiency of Paragon Duels and chosen wholesale slaughter that just a century before me being reincarnated almost wiped out humanity from the face of Earth.
The sheer, stupid waste of it all was a cold fire in my gut.
The thought of that man—that monster—having spoken to Sylvia, having earned some measure of her care… it was a poison.
Crack.
The sound was sharp, final. I looked down. In my hand was the polished brass handle of the carriage door, now sheared cleanly in two, the metal deformed under the unconscious, white-knuckled grip of my anger.
"My Lordship!" the coachman exclaimed, a note of genuine alarm breaking through his professional veneer.
Heat rushed to my cheeks. "Sorry, sorry," I mumbled, the words feeling utterly inadequate. I was deeply, mortifyingly ashamed.
This was the problem.
King Grey wasn't just a ghost in my past, haunting my memory, he was a trigger. A weakness. If the mere thought of him could make me lose control like this, then Agrona wouldn't even need to fight me.
He could just dangle Grey in front of me and watch me unravel. I was a weapon with a hair trigger, and that made me dangerous to everyone, especially myself.
My cover as Highlord Briand depended on anonymity and normalcy. A nobleman couldn't be seen casually bending steel or moving with the speed of a thought.
I needed to become two people: the public face of a possibly disgraced Highblood heir now Highlord, and the private aether-wielding superhero.
And that meant separation, even in my own body—yes, just like Batman.
Sylvia, I called inward, my mental voice tight with resolve. I need your help.
'Tell me, Child.' Her response was immediate, a steady presence in the storm of my frustration.
I need you to seal off about seventy-five percent of my aether, I said, the decision crystallizing as I spoke the words. I need to maintain my cover, and I can't do it alone.
If I try to suppress it myself, my core just… rebels and slaps me. It hungers for more.
Being a natural conduit for aether was a blessing in a fight, but a curse in everyday life. It was like trying to hold back a tidal wave with a sieve.
'What do you mean by 'seal'?' she asked, her tone cautious.
I can't change my Asuran body, I explained. It's been modified, strengthened. That's a permanent change. But the aether that fuels it, that amplifies it to those insane levels… you can wall that off. You can dam the river. My base strength will still be superhuman, but it'll be… manageable.
It'll bring me back to where I was before the Crucible. Before I became a demigod in a pressure cooker.
'I see,' she said, and I felt her presence shift, focusing inward, examining the brilliant, sun-like core of my being. 'I will try to do something.'
There was a moment of intense, internal concentration. I felt a strange, cool pressure building around my aether core, not hostile, but firm, like a master craftswoman gently placing a lid on a simmering pot.
The constant, humming buzz of immense power that had become my new normality began to recede, fading to a distant murmur. The world didn't change, but my perception of it did.
The grain of the wood on the carriage seat seemed less sharp, the muscles in my arms felt merely strong, not world-breaking. It was a profound and sudden diminishment, like going from high definition back to standard definition. A necessary cage.
The mental effort, the emotional toll of the day, and now this physiological shift, crashed over me all at once. A deep, soul-weary exhaustion I hadn't truly felt since gaining my aether core finally penetrated the constant buzz of energy.
My eyelids grew heavy. For the first time in over a year, I allowed myself to truly, utterly relax.
The rhythmic clop of the beasts' hooves and the gentle rocking of the carriage became a lullaby. I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window, closed my eyes, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
———
"My Lordship, we have arrived."
The voice pulled me from the depths of a true, restful slumber. I blinked, disoriented for a moment, the remnants of sleep clinging to me. Pushing myself upright, I looked out the window.
And my breath caught.
We were stopped before a manor that looked less like a residence and more like a fortress of melancholy grandeur.
It was a masterpiece of baroque and gothic architecture, all soaring spires, intricate stonework, and looming, multi-paned windows that seemed to watch my approach like dark, judgmental eyes.
It was imposing, beautiful, and utterly sorrowful, a monument to a family's faded glory.
Stepping out of the carriage, the full scope of Aedelgard unfolded around me. The manor was not an isolated relic; it was part of a district of similar estates, each a testament to wealth and power, but the Briand Manor stood among them with a uniquely grim dignity.
The sky above was a vast, seamless dome of grey cloud, the sun a pale, diffused smear behind the veil, casting the entire city in a soft, silvered light.
It wasn't the sunless, artificial sky of the second level of the Relictombs I remembered. This was a natural, weather-born gloom, and it suited the city's character perfectly.
The comparison that sprang to mind wasn't Relictombs City; it was the London of old history books, the early Victorian era just before industry and electricity began to reshape the world into something recognizable to my old life.
This was a world that had chosen a different path, embracing magic over machinery, and the aesthetic was breathtaking.
The path to the manor's entrance was a work of art in itself, a curated garden of hardy, elegant plants that thrived in the sea air. For a supposedly "crumbling" Highblood, the Briands were maintaining a formidable facade.
But I knew the truth. This wasn't the Briands' doing. This was Seris. This upkeep, this preservation, was her work. A question began to form in my mind: what was her connection to this place, to this family?
Perhaps my time here would reveal more about the enigmatic Scythe than any strategy session ever could.
My first stop would be the Ascenders' Association, to see if any word had spread about my… activities. But first, I had to face my new home.
I stood before the main door. It was massive, constructed from dark, age-stained wood and reinforced with bands of blackened steel that spoke of a need for defense.
Had this place been besieged? Attacked? Seris had mentioned a war with Vechor. The door itself was a history lesson, a silent testament to a family that had known conflict and prepared for it.
My hands touched the imposing door, the ancient wood cool and rough beneath my palms, textured with the scars of decades of use.
When I pulled the handle and the massive oak swung inward on hinges that groaned like waking giants, the ambiance of Briand Manor crashed over me like a wave.
The smell hit me first: that particular mustiness of places long unoccupied, dust motes dancing in the slivers of grey light, mingled with something deeper.
The entrance hall that welcomed me was cavernous, its shadows pooling in corners where light from the overcast sky outside couldn't reach. Everything I saw suggested this had been the residence of a once-powerful Highblood, and the emphasis was painfully, achingly on once.
Barren. That was the word that crystallized in my mind as I stood there, taking inventory. The hall retained its bones—magnificent bones, to be sure—but the flesh had been stripped away.
Where portraits might have hung, only darker rectangles remained on the wallpaper, ghosts of ancestors now completely vanished.
Where decorative artifacts should have stood on plinths and tables, only empty spaces remained, the dust forming perfect negative images of objects long removed.
From what little I understood about Alacrya's brutally competitive society—not so very unlike the cutthroat corporate powers of Etharian nobility—I was genuinely surprised this manor still stood at all.
That it hadn't been seized, stripped, repurposed, or simply razed to the ground.
Especially considering my "predecessor," Stephane Briand, was now dead.
Seris, I repeated to myself the reason this place still held.
The entrance hall opened into what I could only describe—drawing from the architectural vocabulary of my first life—as a breathtaking fusion of gothic grandeur and modernist sensibility.
Soaring ceilings with exposed beams that must have been hand-hewn many decades ago. Tall, narrow windows with stone tracery that filtered the grey sky into patterns on the floor.
And yet the proportions, the clean lines beneath the ornamentation, the way space flowed—it all spoke to something almost contemporary, a timelessness that transcended any single era.
From the entrance hall, I drifted into the main hall, and there I stopped.
A gigantic room unfolded before me, its scale almost absurd for a single residence. A double staircase wound upward to the second floor, its banisters curving in elegant sweeps that invited the hand to touch, to trace, to claim.
The stairs created a frame for the space beyond, drawing the eye upward and inward simultaneously. I could imagine this hall filled with people once—nobles in their finery, servants weaving through crowds, music spilling from somewhere unseen.
Now, only shadows populated it. Only ghosts danced here.
'Child,' Sylvia's voice filtered through my reverie, warm with observation, 'you seem very... giddy.'
I really think I am, I admitted, and as I began walking up those stairs, my fingers trailing along the banister with something approaching reverence, I felt the truth of her words settle into my chest.
Each step I took upward was a small claiming, a declaration of presence in this place that had waited, empty and patient, for someone to fill it again.
A smile broke across my face—huge, delirious, utterly unguarded in a way I hadn't permitted myself to be in what felt like forever. The grin stretched my cheeks, felt foreign and natural all at once, a muscle memory from a self I'd almost forgotten.
The Iskander who just awoke in the Office Zone with a demigod's body and a dragon echo as companion.
This is—I paused mid-step, looking up at the heights of the manor, at the shadows and light playing across surfaces that held centuries of secrets—this is my own Wayne Manor!
I felt Sylvia's mental sigh ripple through our bond, equal parts happiness for me and complete bewilderment at my incessant superhero references.
And with that awareness of her presence cradled within me, I continued upward. I began exploring my new home in earnest.