Corvis Eralith
Sleep was a distant country, its borders totally sealed to me.
I lay rigid on the too-soft mattress of the guest bed in Rinia's secluded home, the weight of the world—now revealed to be a wrong and broken world—pressing down on my chest.
Tessia, oblivious in the way only the truly innocent can be, had sprawled in her slumber, one small foot coming to rest squarely on my cheek.
The pressure of it was a grounding, mundane annoyance, a stark contrast to the cosmic vertigo tearing through my mind. I didn't push her away. Her presence, even as a careless foot, was a tether to a reality I felt rapidly disintegrating.
My eyes were nailed open, staring unseeingly at the intricate grain of the wooden ceiling above. Each whorl and knot in the timber seemed to map the tangled, impossible paths of a future unmoored.
Arthur didn't exist.
The thought was a seismic event in my brain, an internal cataclysm that had left everything in ruins. Or, a more treacherous voice whispered, if an Arthur Leywin walked this earth, he was a stranger.
He was not the quadra-elemental prodigy, the king reborn, the unbreakable fulcrum upon which the Fate of continents would turn. The Arthur I had built my entire desperate strategy around was a phantom, a character from a story this world had never bothered to tell.
But that made no sense.
It unraveled the fundamental logic of the nightmare I thought I understood. Without Arthur, how would Agrona, the god across the ocean, reincarnate the Legacy? The entire apocalyptic plot hinged on that specific soul, on the dynamic between the anchor and the vessel.
The dynamic between Nico, Arthur and Cecilia through my sister.
I turned my head slightly, looking at Tessia's sleeping face, softened and peaceful in the moonlight filtering through the window.
Did this mean she was safe? A fragile, desperate hope flickered, only to be snuffed out by colder logic. Even if the Legacy's descent was thwarted, Agrona remained. His ambition, his hatred for the Asuras, his vast, engineered armies—they didn't vanish with one absent soul.
And on the other side, Kezess Indrath, with his celestial arrogance and genocidal piety, still gazed down from Epheotus.
The war was a storm gathering on two horizons. Arthur's absence didn't dissipate the clouds. It simply meant there was no one prophesied to stand in the lightning's path.
Rinia had told me the words meant for him. You seem to be at the centre of it all. The horror of that misplacement choked me. An anchor for Cecilia? It was laughable.
Not only was the mechanics of it—the required emotional tether, the specific roles—completely wrong for me, reborn as her twin brother, but the very idea was absurd.
Why would Agrona, a being of meticulous, ruthless design, waste his grand scheme on… me? A soul who couldn't even remember his own past, who trembled at the sight of a cat? I was no chosen weapon.
I was a cosmic typo, a soul slipped into the wrong slot, alive by a bureaucratic error in the machinery of Fate.
My hands clenched into fists at my sides, nails biting into my soft palms.
Sylvia.
Her Fate was another variable now thrown into chaos. In the story, her flight was sparked by knowledge of Arthur, gleaned from Ji-Ae, the Djinn remnant serving Agrona.
Without that knowledge, without that specific hope, would she languish and die in the pits of Taegrin Caelum? Or would some other spark of defiance drive her out? I had no way to know.
Rinia held the answers, glimpsed in the costly kaleidoscope of her visions, but she'd sealed her lips. To ask more of her was to demand she bleed her life away for my clarity. I couldn't.
If someone had to be spent as currency for this world's chance, it should be a mistake like me.
A bitter smirk twisted my lips, unseen in the dark. The solution, then, was to see for myself. To learn divination, to stare into the river of fate and fish for my own answers. The ambition was staggering, a toddler aspiring to split the atom.
I hadn't even practiced basic mana manipulation beyond forming my core; I was a theoretical physicist who didn't know how to light a match.
This spiraling doubt led to the most terrifying question of all: how much of the knowledge I clutched like a sacred text was now obsolete? The future I feared was a sculpture shaped extensively by Arthur's presence.
Remove the sculptor, and does the clay even hold the same form?
Tessia.
Her entire character, her strength, her flaws, her tragedy, were all reactive to him. He was the benchmark, the rival, the unattainable ideal, the rescue and the heartbreak. Who was she without that gravitational pull? I didn't know. I only knew the brilliant, mischievous, frustratingly alive girl who put her feet on my face.
Dicathen.
Here, the static emptiness of this continent's history, which I'd passively absorbed, now screamed at me. Arthur had been a seismic event in a land where tectonic plates had been locked for millennia.
My juvenile research, my furtive peeks at historical scrolls, revealed a stunning inertia. The two Sapin-Elenoir wars were the only notable conflicts in centuries.
For a landmass the size of Africa, with three distinct races and magic, it was a historical desert. On Earth, three-four millennia saw empires rise and fall, philosophies born, technologies invented, continents discovered.
Here, there was a quiet, profound stagnation.
The novel had Arthur blame magic for stifling progress. But I knew the deeper, uglier truth. It wasn't magic. It was the silent, oppressive hand on the scale, the watcher in the shadows.
Kezess Indrath, for all his despising of Agrona's direct manipulation, was a gardener who pruned his garden ruthlessly, ensuring nothing grew too tall, too wild, or too independent lest he annihilated everything in that garden that dared to stare at the heavens.
The difference between the two gods was one of method, not morality. One used chains and brands; the other used an invisible cage of ignorance.
This realization led to the final, gut-chilling conclusion. Arthur had been discovered by the Asuras precisely because he started to change things.
The steamship designs, the new magic techniques, the very ripple of unconventional thought—they drew the eye of Epheotus like a flare in the silent night.
If I, Corvis Eralith, truly intended to alter Dicathen's course, to arm it, to warn it, to try and fortify it against the coming storm, I would inevitably do the same.
I would paint a target on my own back, and on the backs of everyone I loved. There was no hiding.
The only relief I'd ever felt was being born here in Dicathen and not in Alacrya, under Agrona's direct gaze.
Now, I wondered if I'd simply traded one panopticon for another. Alacrya had the Relictombs, a place beyond even the Vritra's sight.
But Dicathen? If the asuras decided a meddlesome elf prince was a threat, no dungeon in Dicathen would be deep enough, no forest glade hidden enough. They could pluck me from my bed as easily as I might pluck a berry from a bush.
I turned my gaze from the wooden ceiling to the window, to the slice of night sky visible between the curtains. It was a vast, cold tapestry of indifferent stars.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. All that remained was the terrifying, boundless void of uncertainty, and the echoing, deafening silence where Arthur Leywin's name was supposed to be.
—
The farewell to Rinia was a quiet, sun-dappled affair that felt cosmically insignificant after the seismic revelations of the night before.
Tessia, of course, was the vibrant center of it, wrapping her small arms around our great-aunt's legs and imploring her to visit the palace in Zestier.
Rinia's refusal was gentle, a soft but immovable wall of polite determination. Her final gesture to me was not another whispered secret I braced for, but another simple ruffle of my hair, her gnarled fingers lingering for a moment with a tenderness that seemed utterly devoid of ulterior motive.
The absence of further cryptic warning was its own kind of torment. It left me adrift, unsure if I should feel spared or more terribly alone.
Now, ensconced in the familiar, towering silence of the Eralith Palace, the disorientation had hardened into a low-grade panic.
I had sought refuge in the one place that felt both intimidating and infinitely safe: Grandpa's study.
The room was a testament to elven craftsmanship and Virion Eralith's stature. Located high in the western wing, it was an oval chamber built within the convergence of three massive branches from the ancient Watchful Willows that formed Zestier's foundation.
The air smelled of aged parchment, polished wood, and the faint, clean scent of the forest that seeped through the very walls. It was a place of bureaucracy and profound peace. And I felt like a ghost haunting it.
Perched on one of the plush, high-backed armchairs that faced his monumental mahogany desk, my legs dangled pathetically, unable to reach the intricate rug below.
The desk itself was a continent, its surface a landscape of organized chaos—neat stacks of parchment, an ornate inkwell, a few weathered artifacts—that seemed to emphasize my own ludicrous smallness.
"Grandpa," I said, my voice disproportionately loud in the quiet. I watched the elegant quill dance in his weathered, steady hand. "What are you doing?"
He looked up, the stern lines of his face dissolving into a fond, familiar smirk. The transformation never failed to send a pang through me—this was the smile he reserved for family, for the simple, uncomplicated love of grandchildren. It was a smile I felt I stole every time I saw it.
"Just replying to some correspondence," he said, setting the quill down. "To you it might not seem so, little one, but your Grandpa is still quite famous across Dicathen."
Yeah, I certainly believe you, I screamed silently into the void of my own mind. Virion Eralith is a legend.
You don't get named Commander of the entire Tri-Union forces in a war against existential annihilation for nothing. He earned the begrudging respect of Aldir Thyestes himself. The cognitive dissonance was dizzying. Here was this living, breathing titan, reduced to explaining his paperwork to a toddler he believed to be his shy, odd grandson.
I needed to steer this, to glean something, anything, that could help me map this altered world. "And… who are you writing to?" I asked, layering my tone with what I hoped was the artless curiosity of a child leaning into a grandparent's world.
"Some old friends," he replied, the smirk returning as he picked up the quill again. "But it's just some talk between old people. Boring stuff."
Old friends. The phrase was a flare in the fog. My mental index flickered: Hester Flamesworth. Buhndemog Lonuid. Camus Selaridon. Silver-core masters, mentors of Arthur in a lost timeline…
Then, I saw it. Grandpa's hand paused as he took a new letter from a pile. From the corner of my eye, the seal was unfamiliar—a stylized, geometric imprint I couldn't place. My internal alarm, always set to a quiet shriek, grew louder.
With deliberate care, he used a small letter-opener to slit the parchment. His expression shifted from routine to focused puzzlement, his brows drawing slightly together as he read.
"What's that?" I chirped, the innocent act feeling more like a grotesque pantomime with each passing second.
He didn't answer immediately, his eyes scanning the lines. The silence stretched, filled only by the distant whisper of wind through the Watchful Willow's leaves outside. Finally, he looked up, his gaze momentarily distant before refocusing on me.
"A missive from Darv," he said, his voice carefully neutral. "Not stuff for kids! Now, weren't you meant to be with your Mother and Tessia?"
My blood ran cold, and I knew my face paled. He'd seen right through my flimsy pretext. My presence here wasn't some masterstroke of intelligence gathering; it was a coward's retreat.
The thought of being ushered into one of Mother's glittering, suffocating salons, a menagerie of perfumed noblewomen cooing over the "quiet prince and the sunny princess," was a particular kind of hell.
The social chess was as terrifying as any battlefield, and I was a pawn who knew the game was rigged for annihilation.
Grandpa stood, his chair scraping softly. He reached for my hand, his intentions clearly benign. A reflexive, desperate energy surged through me. I scrambled sideways, shaking my head with a vigor that was only half-feigned.
"I… I have absolutely no idea of what you are talking about!"
"Come on, Corvis!" he exclaimed, but his tone held no real anger. If anything, it was threaded with a faint, almost imperceptible relief.
He made another grab, and I evaded again, not through skill but because his movements were slow, theatrical—a game. My heart hammered against my ribs. I needed a diversion, a credible piece of childish chaos.
The idea was born of pure panic. With a small, calculated leap, I swiped at the edge of his desk, sending a cascade of harmless items—a paperweight, a few loose sheets, a blank scroll—tumbling to the rug with a satisfying clatter and rustle.
"Corvis! What's gotten into you?" Grandpa's voice was a performance of sternness, but it was a hollow shell.
I saw it plainly: the spark of amusement in his eyes, the way the corners of his mouth fought not to lift. He was enjoying this. This normal, frustrating, lively interaction.
My deceitful, cowardly rebellion was giving him a moment of pure, uncomplicated joy. The realization was a nail of guilt driven straight into my soul.
As he bent, chuckling under his breath, to retrieve the fallen ink bottle (securely stoppered, I'd been careful), I saw my chance. My small hand darted out and snatched the letter from the desk where he'd laid it.
From Rahdeas Warend… my eyes scanned the opening line. Rahdeas. The name hit me immediately, resounding like a bell in my head. Elder Rahdeas? The future traitor.
He was writing to Grandpa now of all times? This was too early. This was a deviation. My mind raced—was this a friendly correspondence of a time before Agrona Vritra's machinations were set in motion, or the first thread of a future betrayal being woven?
Before I could absorb another word, the parchment was plucked from my grasp. Grandpa stood over me, the letter in his hand, but his expression was unreadable.
"Is this what all this tantrum was for?" he asked, his voice low. Then, to my utter devastation, he reached out and ruffled my hair. The gesture was full of a weary, boundless affection. "What a dutiful little prince."
I looked away, heat flooding my cheeks—a mix of genuine childish embarrassment and profound, soul-crushing shame.
Prince... The title echoed in the silent study.
He said it with love, with a teasing pride. But all I heard was the weight of a crown I had never earned and a throne I could never rightfully occupy.
In a peaceful world, this would be my future: another Eralith king, another well-meaning puppet in a line of puppets, his strings pulled by unseen, celestial hands in Epheotus.
The thought was suffocating. And even that twisted future was a fantasy. The war was coming. And if by some miracle we survived, I knew, with absolute certainty, that I would abdicate.
The crown belonged to Tessia, to a true and legitimate Eralith. Not to a shadow, am imposter, a mistake hiding in plain sight, whose greatest achievement to date was a successfully faked tantrum that brought a flicker of happiness to his grandfather's eyes by sheer, pathetic accident.
Edit (19/02/2026):
Changed the name of the "load-bearing" trees of Zestier and the other elven cities from Forest Giants to Watchful Willows.