Corvis Eralith
The words, saccharine and sharp as a poisoned candy, cut through the muffled hum of polite conversation:
"What a cute boy you are, Your Highness!" Lady Elena Ivsaar's voice was a melodic coo, but her pinching fingers on my cheek felt like a brand, a claim staked on a curiosity.
I am not a doll, I screamed inwardly, a silent protest against the reduction of my entire being to a set of chubby cheeks and teal eyes.
But the scene rendered my internal defiance pathetic. Perched on my mother's lap like a treasured accessory, I was the living centerpiece of her royal tableau.
Mom's arms were a gilded cage, her proud, loving murmurs ("That my baby boy surely is") a soundtrack that only deepened the canyon between her perception and my reality.
Every stroke of her hand through my hair, every doting glance, felt like another layer of mortar in the wall separating the 'Corvis' she saw from the terrified imposter I was.
I was a specimen under glass, observed, commented upon, and delicately handled by a rotating array of perfumed nobles.
Their conversations swirled around me—talk of trade routes, border tariffs, the latest aesthetic trends in Zestier—a drone of adult concerns that felt cosmically trivial against the apocalyptic clock ticking in my skull.
I tuned it out, constructing mental fortifications against the assault of their attention.
My escape, as it often was, came in observing Tessia.
Across the sunlit salon, she was holding court. While I seethed in passive imprisonment, she had transformed her own captivity into a kingdom.
She was playing with the other children, but 'play' was too simple a word. This was statecraft in miniature. She directed a game involving elaborately carved wooden forest creatures, her voice clear and commanding, her teal eyes missing nothing.
Among her subjects was the energetic Feyrith Ivsaar III, practically vibrating with eagerness to be her lieutenant, his actions a transparent bid for favor.
Watching her, the novel's sparse descriptions exploded into vivid, heartbreaking life. This was the innate talent that would see her leading her own team through the hell the Beast Glades will become after the Alacryan invasion, the natural authority that would make her a student council president.
She was a leader being forged in the gentle fires of a drawing room, utterly unaware that history intended to melt her down entirely.
And then I saw him. A small island of stillness in Tessia's bustling sea. A boy with wavy, white hair falling in two careful bangs and eyes the warm, solemn brown of peat.
He leaned against the far wall, apart from the others, quietly manipulating a traditional elven puzzle-sphere.
His isolation was palpable, a mirror held up to my own desired state. The resemblance to Alea was unmistakable—the same sharp line of the jaw, the same quiet intensity in the eyes, the colour of their hair. This had to be him. Alea's brother.
His presence here, among the glittering offspring of ancient Houses like Ivsaar, Chaffer, and Aemaris, was an anomaly.
The Triscans weren't nobility; Alea's cover as a maid confirmed they were commoners. For a child like Alwyn, this gathering was a foreign ecosystem, a ritual of status and posturing he had no context for, a special kind of hell.
I recognized the species of his discomfort immediately. It was my own.
Sensing my gaze, Mom, with the subtle grace of a master diplomat, shifted her posture, drawing the conversational circle's focus back to herself with a well-timed question about Ivsaar timber commerce.
The spotlight mercifully moved off me, and she gently set me down on the floor, a silent permission granted. A glance passed between her and Alea, who stood poised near a service entrance.
They were complicit in this small emancipation. And though Alea was bound by oaths I could scarcely comprehend to my parents, I felt a strange trust that our new, secret pact would remain just that—a secret between us, hidden even from the queen.
Now came the true terror. Standing alone on the polished floor, I stared at Alwyn Triscan. This was uncharted territory.
Tessia was my twin, my responsibility, a character from my internal bible. Rinia, Alea, my family—I approached them all from a place of stolen knowledge, a cheat-sheet of their souls.
But this boy… he was a blank page. A person. My mind, cluttered with prophecies and plots, contained no manual for simple, honest friendship. The non-existent memories of my past life offered no guidance, only a yawning absence where childhood camaraderie should have been.
This was a negotiation with no intelligence, a diplomatic mission to a country whose language I'd never learned.
The weight of it felt immense. My palms grew clammy. I took a single, tentative step, then another, immensely grateful Tessia was too engrossed in her miniature governance to notice my defection. Each step echoed with the silence of my own social ineptitude.
I reached his island by the wall. He didn't look up, fully absorbed in coaxing a hidden segment of the wooden sphere to slide into place.
My voice, when it finally came, was a traitorous, squeaky thing. "H-Hi…"
I cringed, the sound hanging in the air between us, pathetic and small.
His head snapped up. Peanut-brown eyes widened, first with recognition, then with a flood of panic. He looked around frantically, as if expecting to see a trap or a courtier coming to scold him for attracting royal attention.
"Your Highness!" he breathed, the title a wall he instantly erected. "W-why is His Highness speaking with me?"
The question was a landmine. How could I answer? Because your sister is a legendary warrior and we made a deal? Because I'm desperately lonely and you look like you might understand? Both true, both impossible.
"Just… talking?" I managed, the statement rising into a question at the end. I fumbled forward, grasping for the most basic social script I could imagine. "Ehm, yeah, just that… I am Corvis. Corvis Eralith."
The introduction was absurd. Thr Eralith name was emblazoned on banners, woven into the very history of the room. Announcing it felt like pointing at the sun and saying, 'That's the sun.'
He stared at me for a long moment, the puzzle-sphere forgotten in his hands. "Alwyn… Triscan," he said finally, the surname given with a slight hesitation, as if testing its worth in this opulent air. "I am honoured, Your Highness."
"Call me Corvis," I blurted, wanting to dismantle the formal barrier, to meet on whatever neutral ground existed.
"But you are His Highness!" he protested, more forcefully than I expected. There was a protective rigidity there, a sense that obeying this rule was his only safe conduct in a dangerous world.
I sighed inwardly, the brief hope of easy camaraderie evaporating. "Ehm… fine," I conceded, my shoulders slumping slightly. I wasn't here to debate protocol or deconstruct the fiction of my own status. "Call me however you want."
Silence descended again, thicker now, charged with the awkwardness of a failed overture. The giddy laughter and shouted rules of Tessia's game swirled around us, a stark contrast to our frozen little bubble.
Think, Corvis. Say something. Anything.
The connection, the only one I had, surfaced. "I met Miss Alea," I said quietly.
The effect was immediate. His guarded expression fractured, replaced by a flash of pure, unguarded emotion—a mixture of longing and relief.
"Sister?" he whispered, his gaze dropping to the toy in his hands. "I miss her…" He took a shaky breath, his small voice gaining a surprising edge of conviction. "I hate being here."
Four simple words. They bypassed all titles, all pretense, all the intricate architecture of my fears and secrets. They were raw, honest, and utterly familiar. The resonance was so profound it pulled a genuine, weary sigh from my chest, deflating the last of my performative anxiety.
"I do too," I confessed, the truth of it so vast it could have swallowed the whole palace. Even if it's for completely different reasons, I added silently, the weight of worlds left unspoken.
But in that moment, the 'why' didn't matter. We stood there, two three-year-old boys leaning against a wall in a gilded prison, united by a shared, simple truth: we hated the party.
—
The familial chaos of the residential dining hall was a symphony of normality that felt both desperately precious and utterly surreal.
The scent of roasted root vegetables and herb-crusted river fish filled the air, a humble, comforting aroma at odds with the vaulted ceiling and intricately carved table we sat around. This was the heart of our home, a space where crowns were meant to be left at the door.
Dad, King Alduin Eralith, finally shed the mantle of sovereignty for the evening, sat at the head, his stern features softened by the firelight. The rigid posture he maintained in court had eased into a weary, paternal slump.
Then, the hurricane that was my sister made landfall.
"Dad! Dad! Corvis made a friend!" Tessia's declaration was a triumphant shout, punctuated by her small hands seizing my shoulder and shaking me with an enthusiasm that rattled my teeth. I was a ragdoll in her grip, a prize to be presented.
Dad's gaze, the color of deep forest shadows, shifted from Tessia to me. A faint, almost imperceptible warmth touched his eyes.
"That's very good," he said, his voice the calm, steady bedrock beneath Tessia's whirlwind. Then, with the unshakable authority of a king and a father, he added, "Now stop shaking your brother."
Tessia released me with a theatrical huff, flopping back into her chair, her excitement momentarily chastened but far from extinguished. The silence she left was quickly filled by Mom's arrival. She swept into the room, the scent of night air and diplomacy still clinging to her gown.
She had personally seen off every noble lady, a gesture of genuine grace that cemented the Eraliths' bond with the aristocracy. Her smile as she took her seat was tired but content, her eyes scanning her family with a love so tangible it felt like another presence at the table.
It was her presence that highlighted an absence.
"Where is Grandpa?" I asked, the empty chair beside Dad suddenly conspicuous.
Dad's sigh was a small, weighty thing. "Father won't be able to make it for dinner tonight."
Tessia's dramatic gasp was followed by a wail of protest. "Whaaat? What happened to Grandpa?"
"Nothing, sweetheart," Mom intervened smoothly, her hand coming to rest on Tessia's arm. "Elder Virion is just very busy."
Her tone was placating, but I caught the subtle glance that passed between her and Dad.
My mind instantly flew to the letter, to the name Rahdeas Warend burning in my memory. Was Grandpa's 'busyness' connected to that missive from Darv?
"Weren't you talking about this new friend of Corvis?" Dad asked, deftly steering the conversation away from Grandpa's absence and back to safer, domestic shores.
Ah, betrayal! I thought, shooting him a look he didn't see. Mom, however, did, and her resulting smirk was knowing and infinitely amused.
Emboldened, Tessia launched back into her narrative, her earlier pout forgotten. "Corvis thought himself invisible, but I perfectly saw him in his attempt to make a friend!" she proclaimed, puffing out her chest with the pride of a master strategist who had uncovered a brilliant secret.
"And what is their name?" Dad asked, playing his part in the ritual.
"Alwyn Triscan," Mom answered before I could even open my mouth.
Her response was immediate and casual, but I saw the minuscule shift in Dad's expression—a slight, acknowledging nod, a deepening of the thoughtful crease between his brows.
Of course. The name 'Triscan' meant something entirely different to him than it did to Tessia. It was the surname of one of his two Lances, his hidden dagger and sworn shield.
In his mind, my interaction with Alea's brother was no longer just a childhood milestone; it was a tangential brush with the machinery of state security.
The thought pulled me down another rabbit hole. How does the Lance ritual work? The novel had treated it as a given, a prestigious title bestowed, without exploring the sacred oaths, the arcane bindings, or the physical and spiritual cost of wielding a relic artifact to artificially reach the white core stage.
Would Alea ever explain it to me? Could she, even if she wanted to? I'd have to tread with extreme caution, feigning a slow, natural curiosity, never revealing the scaffold of foreknowledge I climbed. I didn't even know when, or if, Dad would officially introduce me to the concept before I was to become king.
To him, to all of them, I was still three. A child to be coddled, protected, and ushered through a serene, untroubled childhood.
Serenity. A luxury as distant as the moon. I was living on borrowed time, feasting in a brightly lit room while outside, a clock of unimaginable scale ticked down toward midnight.
Thirteen years. Originally the war began in earnest when Arthur was in Epheotus, which gave me roughly thirteen years to prepare, to strengthen, to plant seeds of resistance and unity, all while moving with such delicate precision that I didn't attract the gaze of the god across the ocean or the dragons above.
Thirteen years until the fragile porcelain of this dinner scene—the clinking cutlery, Tessia's exuberant storytelling, Mom's smile, Dad's pride—would be tested against the hammer of war.
I looked around the table, at the faces illuminated by warm candlelight, and felt the chill of the future seeping into my bones. This was a countdown. And I was the only one who could hear the clock approaching midnight.