Virion Eralith
Thump-thump.
The rhythm of my heart was a war drum against my ribs, a frantic counterpoint to my measured, useless pacing. This hallway, with its serene tapestries and sun-bathed stone, had become my entire world—a pristine cage of anticipation.
From beyond the carved door came only muffled sounds, each one pulling my heart into my throat. I, who had stood unflinching before armies, who had felt the cold breath of a Shadow Panther on my neck as I plunged a dagger into its heart, was utterly dismantled by the silence of a birthing chamber.
I had led Elenoir through seven years of blood and fire. I had carved my magic into a silver core, had known the exquisite pain of merging with a Beast Will.
I had endured the searing loss of my Lania, a wound that time had scabbed over but never healed. I believed I had mapped the full spectrum of human sensation—triumph, agony, endurance.
I was wrong. This trembling suspension, this raw, terrifying hope, was a country I had never visited. I was to be a grandfather. The title felt foreign in my mind, a role for older, wiser, settled elves, not for a king whose hands still remembered the grip of a sword.
A father? Yes. I remembered the dizzying joy of holding Alduin, a squalling, perfect bundle, Lania's smile a sunbeam beside us. That was a chapter of vibrant light. The decades that followed had been written in starker ink.
Now, this. A new page, trembling as it turned.
The door opened. The world snapped back into focus. Alanis Emeria, her face etched with professional calm, began to speak, but I was already moving, my legs unsteady as a colt's. I stumbled past her, the threshold feeling like a passage between realms.
And then, I heard them. Two distinct, vibrant cries—not of sorrow, but of life announcing itself with furious, beautiful insistence.
The air in the room was charged, golden with late afternoon sun streaming through the silk, illuminating the motes of dust that danced like celebrants. There, amidst the linen, was my son. Alduin, whose smiles had become so rare and precious since his mother left us, was weeping openly.
The severity that usually armored his face had melted away, leaving behind a wonder so pure it stole my breath. He was looking at Merial, at the two tiny beings she cradled against her chest, as if gazing upon the world's first dawn.
My feet carried me forward, drawn by a gravity greater than any spell. "Meet your grandchildren, Father," Alduin said, his voice thick with emotion. With a tenderness I scarcely remembered him possessing, he carefully gathered the two swaddled infants from Merial's weary arms.
"Tessia and Corvis Eralith," Merial whispered, her face radiant with exhausted joy.
I looked down. Two tiny faces, flushed and perfect, eyes screwed shut against the newness of light. Tessia. Corvis.
My heart, that battered, veteran thing, swelled until I thought my very chest would crack open. A love so fierce and immediate welled up in me that my eyes ached with the pressure of it. It was a love untempered by duty or fear, a love that arrived not as a seed, but as a full-grown tree, roots plunging deep into my soul.
My smile felt strange on my face—an unused muscle stretching, breaking free from years of grim restraint. I was smiling as I hadn't since Lania's voice still filled these halls.
In that too-perfect moment, a sliver of movement caught the edge of my vision. On the broad windowsill, beside a pot of fragrant herbs, a cat sat composedly.
It was pitch black, with two white tufts on its ears, and eyes that held the glimmer of countless stars. A jolt, soft and deep, went through me. That cat… I had seen it, had played with it as a princeling in these very gardens, a lifetime ago.
A silent, watchful companion from a forgotten time. Before I could truly grasp the impossibility, Alduin pressed a warm, tiny bundle into the crook of my arm, and all thought fled.
The weight of my granddaughter was nothing, and everything. The spectral cat on the sill was forgotten, a half-seen mystery swallowed whole by the luminous, breathing truth in my arms.
Heaven, it seemed, was not a distant realm, but this—right here, in this room, with the sound of my son's quiet joy and the scent of new life, sweet and profound, filling the air.
———
Tessia was a burst of incandescent joy, a sunbeam given elven form. From the moment she mastered the art of crawling, the silent, stately palace of the Eraliths became her vibrant, chaotic kingdom.
Her laughter, a sound like chimes caught in a breeze, echoed down hallways that had forgotten such music. She was a master of mischievous inquiry, pulling tapestries askew, "rediscovering" precious heirlooms in unlikely corners, and turning formal gardens into arenas for glorious, mud-streaked adventure.
Merial and Alduin chased after her with a mixture of exhaustion and adoration, their scolding always melting into helpless smiles. She was chaos, but she was our chaos—a radiant, life-giving force.
Her most profound bond, however, was not with the world she explored, but with the quiet shadow who shared her cradle. She was inseparable from Corvis.
Her first purposeful word, after the obligatory "papa" and "mama," was a determined, "Covis!" The 'r' eluded her, but the intent was a command, a summoning, a statement of unity.
Where Tessia led, Corvis was inevitably found, a silent satellite to her blazing star.
And that was the mystery of my grandson. Corvis. While Tessia exploded into every new experience, Corvis observed, his large, thoughtful eyes seeming to hold a weight beyond his months.
He was, in a word I hesitated to apply to one so young, intense.
He seemed perpetually braced, a tiny soldier in a world he found overwhelmingly vivid. His development was a perfect, if disconcerting, echo of his sister's.
Tessia would struggle to crawl on a Tuesday; by Wednesday, Corvis would be moving beside her, his movement deliberate where hers was exuberant. She would triumphantly declare, "Juice!" on a morning; by the next dawn, Corvis would utter the same word, with the same inflection, but his tone was one of clinical acquisition, not delighted demand.
He was a child of profound stillness. He did not throw the magnificent, floor-pounding tantrums that Tessia occasionally wielded as a tool of state.
He never wailed from minor bumps or frustrations. In crowds of cooing adults or at social gatherings, he would grow rigid, his small face a mask of polite endurance, his eyes silently screaming.
At times, I confess, I harbored a dark, unwelcome thought: he seemed cold. Did he feel the fierce, enveloping love we all held for him? Or was he merely a spectator in our family?
Oh, how gravely I misjudged him. The truth was not an absence of feeling, but a torrent of it, so deep and overwhelming he had to build walls just to navigate its current.
The revelation came when he was barely three years old. I was reading when I felt a small pressure against my leg.
Looking down, I saw Corvis, having clumsily navigated the room, simply leaning his forehead against my knee, his arms wrapped in a loose, earnest hug around my calf.
It was not a dramatic gesture, but one of profound, quiet seeking. Then he looked up, those star-filled eyes meeting mine, and in a voice flat from the sheer effort of containing emotion, he said, "I love you, Grandpa."
The words were simple. Universal. Yet, coming from him, they were not a casual phrase learned by rote.
They were a confession, a hard-won truth pushed up from the depths of his being and offered to me like a sacred gem.
In that monotone declaration, I heard the strain of years of feeling too much, of observing, of loving so fiercely it threatened to silence him. My heart shattered and reformed in an instant. All my foolish prejudices evaporated.
From that moment, I ceased to simply be a grandfather to a vibrant girl and her strange twin. I became, truly, his grandfather, learning to speak the language of his odd love.
Their differences blossomed further in company. Tessia, even at three, possessed an innate, regal grace with other children. She would bestow a glittering smile, share a toy with magnanimous flourish, and then, mission of diplomacy accomplished, would invariably drift back to Corvis's side.
Her socializing was a performance; her truth was her twin.
Corvis, however, regarded other children as bewildering, noisy forces of nature. The social gatherings Merial hosted for noble families were his particular torment. He would sit stiffly on a settee, enduring pats on the head with the stoicism of a prisoner of war, his gaze constantly seeking an escape route.
He cherished solitude, finding peace in the silent company of books he couldn't yet read or in long, watching sessions at the garden window. Yet this same child who shunned crowds would, without fail, be found nestled against his mother's side during her afternoon rest, or sitting in solemn contentment at his father's feet in the study.
He loved loneliness, but he loved his family more—a contradiction that was the very core of his being.
And he possessed his own childish oddities, the most pronounced being his strange, unwavering phobia of cats. A palace mouser strolling past would freeze him in his tracks, his small face paling.
Once, the elegant feline companion of a visiting dignitary brushed against his leg; Corvis recoiled as if scalded, a rare, sharp gasp escaping him, his eyes wide with something akin to primal recognition and dread.
Corvis Eralith
I was reborn in The Beginning After The End.
It wasn't the pointed ears I felt beneath my fumbling infant fingers, nor the regal, worried faces of Alduin and Merial Eralith leaning over my crib that confirmed it.
It wasn't even the tear-streaked, joyous grin of my grandfather, Virion, a legend made flesh. Those were just facts, data points slotting into a pre-existing, horrific framework.
The true, stomach-dropping confirmation was a specific, dreaded presence that was not there in the room with us.
My newborn vision was a blur of light and shadows, shapes swimming in and out of focus. Yet, instinct—a deeper, more primal memory than any from this new life—made me turn my head toward the source of the streaming sunlight.
I looked right and left, up and down, with a frantic, internal searching no infant should possess. And I saw him. Or rather, I saw it. Perched on the windowsill, a stark silhouette against the bright sun, was a cat.
Pitch black, with two white tufts on its ears. And its eyes… they were not the eyes of an animal. They held galaxies, cold, swirling depths of stars and endless space, and they were fixed not just on the room, but on me.
Windsom Indrath.
I didn't know who I was yet, or who the tiny, crying girl beside me was. But I knew him. The hand of the kimg of the Asuras. His presence in this intimate, mortal moment was a violation so profound it stole my first breath.
My new life was already a cage, and a dragon in a cat's skin was the warden. Paranoia, cold and thick, took root in my infant heart that day, and for three years, it had been my constant, nursemaid.
Now, I was three. The world had solidified into heartbreaking beauty—the sun-dappled forests of Elenoir, the warmth of the palace, the loving, exasperated faces of my family.
I could walk, could speak, had painstakingly learned to read the elegant script of Dicathen.
Every skill was acquired with the grim determination of a soldier preparing for a war only he knew was coming. I was building my arsenal, and it consisted of language, geography, and stolen moments of historical study, all aimed at preparing for the inexorable march of 'canon.'
I had about one or two years. Precious, fleeting time before a boy named Arthur Leywin would stumble, bleeding and destined, into a certain cave in the Elshire Forest and meet a dying dragon. Sylvia.
The thought of her was a knot of hope and desperation in my throat. If I could save her… if I could somehow intercept that moment, prevent her sacrifice, wouldn't that change everything?
I clung to the idea, chewing absently on my thumbnail, a nervous habit whose origin—Earth or this relentless anxiety—I could no longer distinguish.
But the "how" was a void that swallowed my hopes. I was a three-year-old elf prince. My sphere of influence extended to the palace gardens and the willingness of nannies to fetch an extra sweet. I couldn't command troops, couldn't journey alone, couldn't even send a letter.
I was intelligence without agency, a general trapped in the body of a toy soldier.
So, I turned inward. Sitting cross-legged on the plush rug of the nursery I shared with Tessia, I tried to remember the basics.
Mana core awakening. In the novel, it started with breathing. A conscious, deliberate drawing in of the ambient mana, a sensitization of the body to the energy that permeated everything. I didn't remember the specifics—was it a rhythmic pattern? A visualization?—but I reasoned that intent and repetition had to count for something.
I had been deliberately cautious with magic for two reasons.
First, and towering above all else, was him. Windsom. If he was watching, any anomalous development—a prince awakening his core years ahead of schedule—would be a flashing beacon. My greatest weapon was my perceived normalcy. To be forgettable, to be the quiet, unremarkable twin.
Drawing on spatium, the edict of space, he could be anywhere, watching from a fold in the air I couldn't perceive. My every private moment felt like a public performance for an audience of one god.
Second, there was Tessia. My brilliant, vibrant, doomed sister. In the story, her insecurities were a slow poison, fed by Arthur's blinding, unnatural prowess. I had seen the seeds of it already.
She was fiercely competitive, a born leader even at three, but what if I, her twin, her mirror, became another benchmark she could never meet? What if my own desperate grasping for power cast a shadow that stunted her light?
Yet, the inertia was killing me. The fear was a constant, sour taste. I had to move, to push against the tide of destiny, even if my efforts were futile. Even if I only succeeded in rocking the boat.
So, I breathed.
In. I imagined drawing in the light, the very air, pulling it past my lungs, down into a center of gravity in my lower stomach.
Out. I pushed out doubt, pushed out fear, pushed out the image of galactic eyes.
In. The scent of sun-warmed wood and polished stone. The distant murmur of the palace.
Out. The memory of a dragon's cat-shaped spy.
In. The hope of saving a family I wasn't even truly part of.
Out. The crushing weight of my own insignificance.
I cycled this way, minute after minute, my toddler's body feeling absurd in its solemnity. I felt nothing. No tingle, no warmth, no gathering of energy. Just the slow burn of frustration in my chest and the ache of muscles unaccustomed to such stillness.
The mana of this world remained aloof, indifferent to my frantic, internal summoning. It was like shouting into a soundproof vault.
Then, the spell of my futile concentration shattered.
Fast, light footsteps pattered down the corridor outside, a rhythmic tattoo of pure, uncomplicated energy.
"Corvis! Corvis! Corvis!" The voice was a bell, clear and brimming with eager joy. Tessia.
A familiar, complex guilt twisted inside me, sharper than any frustration over failed magic. Being near her was a special kind of torment. It wasn't just the foresight of her tragic fate—the theft of her body, the erasure of her will.
It was the daily, intimate betrayal. She loved me with a fierce, uncomplicated totality that only a child could muster. She saw a brother, a playmate, a part of her own soul.
And I… I was a fraud.
An imposter wearing her brother's skin, a refugee from another world clutching a script of disasters, too terrified of cosmic reprisal to speak my truth. I offered her a hollow version of brotherhood, my responses always measured, my play always cautious, my love always filtered through a pane of glass of dreadful knowledge.
"Princess! Slow down!" Another voice, breathless and fond—one of the long-suffering maids whose existence Tessia turned into a joyful, chaotic adventure.
This was another divergence from the 'canon' that haunted me. The Tessia I remembered was described as cold, aloof, detached. The girl who bombarded my days with relentless affection, who turned hiding into a shrieking game of tag and story time into a dramatic performance, was neither cold nor detached.
Was she different because of me? Had my presence altered her somehow?
I let my attempted meditation fall away, the posture dissolving as I awaited the inevitable. I heard her outside the door, a small grunt of effort as she undoubtedly tried and failed to reach the ornate handle herself.
There was a soft click, a murmured admonition from the maid, and then—
The door flew open, and a missile of pure life launched across the room. A tangle of gunmetal hair, a flash of teal eyes identical to my own, and then the solid, warm impact of her hug.
"Corvis!" she exclaimed, her voice muffled against my tunic, arms locked around my neck with a strength that was surprising for her size.
As I slowly, awkwardly brought my arms up to return the hug, feeling the small, sturdy frame of my sister, my twin, the guilt crystallized into a sharp, permanent ache in my heart.
Her pure, unearned love for the fraud I was made me feel, more than any Asuran gaze or failed breathing exercise, like the most wretched creature in all of Dicathen.
I held her and my silent apology was a scream that filled the vault of my soul. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't know how to save you.