Corvis Eralith
A year dissolved like mist under a morning sun, leaving behind only the stark, skeletal trees of memory and the chilling certainty of time's passage.
Twelve years. The phrase had become a morbid mantra, a heartbeat counting down to midnight.
Twelve years until the war that would test the foundations of this world, and one year until the ghost of a meeting that would now never be—the moment Arthur Leywin was meant to step into Tessia's life, a catalyst that had been erased from reality.
The absence of that event was a hole in the timeline I kept tripping over, a silence where there should have been narrative thunder.
My life settled into a precarious, tripartite rhythm.
There were the sunlit hours—time with Tessia, a whirlwind of energy and demanding affection that both drained and anchored me, and with Alwyn, whose quiet companionship was a refuge of mutual, unspoken understanding.
Then came the shadowed hours: secret, strenuous sessions with Alea within the heart of that ancient Watchful Willow, the Hallowed Hollow as she called it, my body straining to channel mana my mind already understood in theory.
And finally, the watchful hours: lingering near Grandpa in his study, or accompanying Dad on his less formal rounds, my ears straining to catch fragments of statecraft, to piece together the geopolitical puzzle of a Dicathen moving blindly toward a cliff.
I was a child-shaped spy in my own home, collecting crumbs of information, trying to map a future that refused to conform to any map I possessed.
But the bulk of my consciousness was a war room, and the primary objective was clear, daunting, and possibly suicidal: Sylvia.
Arthur or no Arthur, the dragon princess was a linchpin. Her survival, her knowledge, her very existence could alter everything.
I had to know if she still lived, if she had attempted her escape. She was was a library of Asuran secrets, a potential ally of unimaginable power, and a tragic soul I felt compelled to save.
The novel's clues were maddeningly vague: a cave near the Grand Mountains, within plausible distance of Zestier for Arthur to stumble upon.
I pored over every map and geographical scroll I could subtly access, marking potential sites—remote, rocky, hidden places, many in zones still considered dangerous due to lingering elf-traffickers from the war's bitter aftermath.
I didn't care about the traffickers. Finding Sylvia, or even a trace of her, was a mission that overrode all other concerns.
The planning, however, was a labyrinth of terrifying variables. The primary nightmare was Cadell Vritra. The name alone was a curse. Scythe of the Central Dominion, Agrona's blade, the being who had ended Sylvia in the story.
He was, barring the direct intervention of Asuras, the most potent force in this world. To encounter him was to be erased. My planning revolved around evasion, around being a ghost he would never notice.
But what if I succeeded? What if I found Sylvia, alive and in hiding? The question spiraled into more agonizing calculations. In the novel, Cadell tracked her after she expended catastrophic energy creating a portal for Arthur.
Her "selfishness"—keeping the boy with her, teaching him, bonding with him—had drained her reserves and painted a beacon for her hunter. If I found her, could I avoid that? Could I, perhaps, do the unthinkable and intentionally draw a different much more potent hunter?
Could I lure Windsom to her location?
The idea was a cold, brilliant spark in the dark. For all his monstrous power, Cadell was but an insect before the true might of an Asuran dragon like Windsom, one not weakened by childbirth and millennia of imprisonment and unthinkable tortures from Agrona.
If Windsom arrived while Cadell was present… the Scythe would be annihilated in a heartbeat. It was a clean, brutal solution.
But it was a house of cards built on a mountain of "ifs." If Sylvia was alive. If I could find her. If I could signal Windsom without also signaling every other horror in Epheotus. If the timing aligned with celestial precision.
And the foundational "if" was the heaviest: what if Agrona had already won? What if Sylvia's light had been snuffed out in the dungeons of Taegrin Caelum, her daughter's egg already a tool in the Vritra's hands?
The thought was a void. Rinia could not, or would not, tell me. And even if she would, she was a seer, not an oracle. Her visions were fragments, not a live feed of another continent. The helplessness was a physical ache, a constant pressure behind my eyes.
I sank onto the edge of my bed, in the room that was finally, blessedly, my own—a concession granted when Tessia and I turned four.
This private space was my bunker. Here, I could finally succumb to the tears that seemed to be the only pressure valve for the cosmic dread inside me. Crying myself into an exhausted sleep had become a shameful, necessary ritual.
My training was a testament to stubborn desperation. Mana Rotation, the elusive technique, remained just out of reach. Without Sylvia's guided wisdom, I was fumbling in the dark.
But through relentless, painful trial—augmenting my small body, a process that burned through my red-stage core's reserves with alarming speed—I had stumbled upon a crude approximation.
By maintaining a constant, thin flow of mana through my veins, facilitated by my affinity for water magic and its concepts of flow and current, I could slightly accelerate passive absorption.
I called it, with no small amount of self-mockery, Pseudo-Mana Rotation. It was inefficient, a energy net with massive holes, but it was mine. It honed my control to a razor's edge, and I clung to the desperate hope that by the time Tessia awakened, I might have forged it into the real thing.
Other assessments were less kind. My attempts at swordplay were laughable, a clumsy dance of a body too young and a mind whose remembered expertise refused to translate into muscle memory.
Perhaps it was just my age. Perhaps it was something more fundamental, a disconnect in my soul. The fear that it was the latter was a quiet, persistent poison.
And then there was my magic. The truth was, I had achieved the theoretically impossible: I was a tri-elemental mage. Wind came most naturally, an inheritance from Grandpa's legacy thrumming in my blood. Earth was stubborn but responsive. Water flowed with a cool, intuitive grace.
I had even stumbled into a deviancy—sound magic, a faint whisper of vibration I could coax from the air. By any objective measure, it was historic, breathtaking talent.
But I felt no pride. Only fraudulence and insufficiency.
Because I had failed at plant magic, the birthright of my people, the deep, singing connection to the Elshire that was the hallmark of elven prowess. My attempts yielded only withering leaves and unresponsive seeds. And without it, I was unbalanced.
A tri-elemental freak, yes, but an elf without green magic was a bird without a song—a fundamentally broken thing.
Worse, the most obvious barrier remained: fire. The element of destruction and forge-fire, forever barred to me by my biology.
I stood at my window, watching my breath fog the cold glass. Outside, a winter gardener tended to frosted blossoms, his touch gentle on petals locked in ice.
If only, I thought, the yearning a sharp pang. A quadra-elemental mage could shift paradigms. A tri-elemental was just… a very talented soldier.
And talent was nothing. I had the ultimate cautionary story burned into my mind: Arthur Leywin. Quadra-elemental. Asuran Beast Will. Dragon bond. A lifetime of combat mastery. The favor of Fate itself. Training from the very gods. A sword forged from the greatest of craftsmen.
And even he… even he had failed. He hadn't stopped the World Eater from scouring Elenoir. He hadn't saved Alea from Uto. He couldn't stop the death of his father. The war was lost before it was won.
His was a story of catastrophic resurrection from total ruin. I had no such narrative guarantee. My story felt like a first draft, headed for a blunt, ugly end.
The crackle of the hearth drew me. The maids always kept the iron grate securely latched, a safeguard against a curious prince. But I wasn't curious; I was desperate. I needed to test my limits, to understand the prison of my own flesh.
Why? The question screamed in my head. Why couldn't elves touch fire? We weren't like Asuras, beings of pure mana. Our cores were formed, not innate.
Humans, dwarves, elves—we all started from the same blank slate. Humanity's Djinn ancestry granted aetheric sensitivity to Emitters, not a monopoly on elemental fire.
I knelt before the grate, the heat washing over my face.
Closing my eyes, I reached out with my senses. I tried to draw the ambient mana near the flames into my core. There was resistance, not an absence, but a profound inertness. The fire-aspected mana was there, a vibrant, chaotic energy, but it refused my call. It was like oil to water.
My core could eventually after a slow and tiring process purify it, strip it of its elemental aspect through sheer, grinding force, but it would never be mine to command. It was a law written in my blood.
Then, standing there with the fire's warmth on my skin and the taste of ashes in my imagination, the idea struck. It wasn't a gentle realization; it was a lightning bolt of desperate hope.
Insight.
Arthur's myriad deviances weren't just natural talent; they were gifts from the profound Insight into mana's nature granted by Sylvia's Beast Will.
Grandpa's strength was magnified by his Shadow Panther's Will. It wasn't just extra power; it was a new lens through which to view the world, a new instinct grafted onto his soul.
A Beast Will was a teacher. A repository of a whole line of a creature's innate magic, its elemental affinity, its very essence.
My head snapped up, my teal eyes wide in the dim room. The frost on the window, the crackling fire, the deadness in my core when I reached for that flame—it all coalesced.
I couldn't use fire. My body refused it. But what if I didn't ask my body to learn it? What if I could… borrow the understanding?
What if I could find a mana beast, a creature born of flame and ash, and assimilate its Beast Will to let its innate, fiery Insight bleed into my own perception, to forge a neural pathway my elven biology had sealed shut?
Acquiring a Beast Will was a dangerous, violent process of dominance. The beast had to be fearsome, its will potent. And I was a four-year-old with a now solid stage red core and a head full of stolen knowledge.
But as I stared into the dancing flames the idea took root.
—
The classification system of the Adventurers' Guild was a cold, clinical taxonomy of terror. Eight tiers, from the manageable E-Class to the fearsome SS-Class, mapping a hierarchy of fangs, claws, and elemental fury.
My target existed in the rarefied air near the top. To pass on a Beast Will—that mystical inheritance of Insight and power—a mana beast needed to be at least A-Class.
These were not mere monsters; they were natural wonders, their very essence so potent it could be woven into the soul of another. The process was a sacred, generational transfer, a parent beast passing its hard-won understanding of the world's magic to its offspring.
This made Beast Wills not just powerful, but vanishingly rare. A dead A-Class beast without an heir meant a unique key to understanding an element was lost to the world forever, a library burned with a single death.
The beast I needed crystallized in my mind with terrible clarity: a Phoenix Wyrm.
The name itself, remembered from the pages of a story, felt both mythical and dangerously specific. In canon TBATE, they were S-Class creatures, their mana cores so potent and saturated with life-force that the genius artificer, Gideon Bastius, used them to craft pendants—artifacts of such staggering value they could cheat death itself.
One such pendant, gifted by Arthur to his sister Eleanor, had withstood the cataclysmic breath of the World Eater. The power inherent in such a creature, a being of flame and rebirth, was exactly the foreign Insight I needed to bypass the elven prohibition against fire.
The problem was access. In this era, Dicathen was still a collection of suspicious, walled gardens. The Beast Glades—the primary hunting ground for such creatures—were firmly under the thumb of the human kingdom of Sapin.
Multi-racial adventuring parties were the stuff of a future I did not know when it would come, not reality. Yet, a sliver of an idea, born of privilege and desperation, took root. The Adventurers' Guild, for all its human-centric bias, maintained branches even in elven lands.
They were bridges for trade, however uneasy. And where there was a guild, there were records.
"Your Highness, what is this place?" Alwyn's voice was a tense whisper beside me, his hand unconsciously clutching the back of my tunic.
I had brought him because venturing out alone would have raised alarms, and because, in some small, selfish way, his presence felt like a tether to a simpler reality.
No one in Zestier would dare threaten a prince of the Eralith line, especially not with a companion, but Alwyn's fear was a product of a different education—the wary lessons of a commoner child raised on tales of elven pride and human treachery.
"This is a branch of the Adventurer's Guild," I said, my own voice sounding strangely flat as I stared at the building before us.
It stood out in the elegant, organic architecture of Zestier like a scar. Where elven structures flowed with the lines of the trees, this was angular, built of sturdy, imported timber and grey stone, its sign featuring a stylized sword and scroll that screamed human practicality.
It was an outpost of a foreign world, tolerated for the goods and rare monster materials it funneled into the elven economy.
"Aren't they from Sapin?!" Alwyn exclaimed, his peanut-brown eyes wide with alarm. He took a half-step back, pulling me with him. "Your Highness, we should get away. Humans are evil."
The irony of his statement, delivered to a human consciousness crammed into an elven prince's body, was a bitter pill. I sighed, the sound carrying a weight far beyond my four years.
"That's not true, Alwyn," I said, the correction feeble. How could I explain the complex tapestry of greed, fear, and history that divided our races? To him, it was a simple, stark equation.
"I still don't think we should enter," he insisted, his voice firmer now. This, at least, was progress. The timid boy who would only whisper "Your Highness" was now voicing dissent. He trusted me enough to argue.
"We are in the middle of Zestier," I reasoned, forcing a calm I didn't feel. "There is no safer place."
The words were for him, but also a mantra for myself. This was a calculated risk, a move on a board only I could see.
Pushing open the heavy wooden door, we were met with the familiar, generic interior I recalled from the novel's descriptions, just on a smaller, shabbier scale.
A reception desk, a few worn benches, notice boards with faded parchments. It was empty, devoid of the bustling, gritty energy of the guild halls near dungeons. The silence was oppressive.
Behind the desk loomed a man. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a physique that spoke of past adventuring rather than desk-bound administration. Glasses perched on his nose, but they did nothing to soften a face dominated by a fiery orange goatee and a perpetually skeptical expression.
This was undoubtedly the guild master of this lonely outpost.
"Good morning," I said, my voice echoing in the quiet space.
The man, engrossed in a ledger, didn't look up.
"Who's there?" he boomed, his voice too large for the room.
I felt Alwyn shift closer behind me, a small, warm pressure against my back. "We are here," I said, stepping further into his line of sight.
He finally glanced over the desk, his eyes scanning the empty space at adult height before dropping. His brows furrowed in confusion, then shot up in recognition and immediate, poorly-concealed irritation.
"P-Prince of Elenoir? To what do I owe your presence here?" His attempt at formality was a thin veneer over clear annoyance. I was an unexpected, inconvenient complication in his day.
Heart hammering, I pushed forward. "I would like to consult the information the Adventurer's Guild has on a mana beast called a Phoenix Wyrm."
The man stared at me for a beat, then let out a short, derisive scoff. "Oh, sure," he said, his voice dripping with false cheer. "Let me go fetch that immediately for you." He made a theatrical motion to rise.
A flicker of foolish hope sparked in my chest. "Than—"
He cut me off with a harsh, genuine laugh. The sound was ugly in the quiet room. "Those are classified archives, kid. Available only to registered adventurers of a certain rank and clearance. I'm certainly not going to hand them over to a… a child playing at being a scholar."
He waved a dismissive hand, already turning back to his ledger.
"Your Highness…" Alwyn's whisper was a warning and a plea from behind me. I felt my face grow hot. I had anticipated resistance, but the blunt, contemptuous dismissal stung more than I expected. It was a reminder of my physical reality—a small, pampered prince in a world of hardened adults.
I bit my lip, the metallic taste of frustration sharp on my tongue. Of course it wouldn't be easy. I just needed a location, a sighting, a migratory pattern. Anything.
"I am sure we can find an accord," I said, forcing my voice to remain level, parroting phrases I'd heard in political discussions between my parents.
The man didn't even look up this time. "You're talking big, little prince. You're aiming at the clouds from your palace gardens. This," he thumped the ledger, "is the real world. We don't just hand things over to royal brats on a whim."
The hypocrisy was galling. I knew from the story how the guild in human territories kowtowed to noble houses like Wykes or Flamesworth.
Corruption was a universal language. The thought of those same houses—Wykes, Clarell, Ravenpoor—future traitors who would sell Dicathen for Agrona, sent a spike of cold anger through my anxiety.
They were a rot within, a cancer that would need to be cut out, with medicine or blade. But that was a war for later. Today, I needed information.
I cleared my throat, the sound too loud. "As I said, I am sure an accord can be found." I repeated the phrase, a shield against his disdain.
He groaned, a sound of profound exasperation.
"Listen, kid," he said, leaning forward, his elbows on the desk, his orange goatee bristling. "I greatly respect the Eralith family for allowing the Guild to operate here. It's good for business. But that doesn't mean I run a library for curious toddlers."
"You said it right," I interjected, seizing on his words. My voice didn't waver, though my knees felt weak. "Eralith."
I clenched my fists at my sides, hoping the tremble was invisible. This was the precipice. The tactic forming in my mind was ugly, born of political cynicism I'd absorbed like poison. It felt like putting on a suit of armor made of thorns—it might protect, but it would also wound the wearer.
"If I'm correct," I began, each word carefully chosen, alien in a child's mouth, "this branch turns a significant profit by selling adventurer proceeds—materials, beast cores, rare herbs—to the elven populace. A lucrative market, I'd imagine. One that pays your wages and your Guild's dues quite handsomely."
The man's eyes narrowed. "What are you trying to say, kid?"
"It would be a shame," I continued, the words tasting like ash, "if this establishment were to be… closed. If the Adventurer's Guild were to find its license to operate in Elenoir permanently revoked. Such a profitable market, gone forever. A real blow to the 'real world,' wouldn't you say?"
I was threatening economic warfare. It was a hollow threat—I had no idea if I could even influence such policy—but it sounded plausibly devastating.
He stared at me, then burst into another laugh, this one colder, more incredulous. "Oh, and please, do tell. How exactly would a toddler in a fancy tunic accomplish that?"
This was the moment. The final, dirty play. I forced my features into a mask of cold seriousness, imitating the most ruthless negotiators I'd observed. Inside, I felt sick. This was the method of a schemer, a blackmailer… a Vritra.
"If I were to shout right now," I said, my voice dropping to a low, deliberate murmur. "If I were to scream. To cry. How long do you think it would take for the royal guard to reach this building? Seconds? A minute?"
I paused, letting the image form.
"And what would they find? Their young prince and his friend, alone and distressed, in the presence of a large, angry human in a Guild he has no business being in. A human from the kingdom that bled us dry not so long ago."
The color began to drain from the guild master's face. His smug certainty cracked.
I pressed on, the script of a villain flowing from me.
"And who do you think they would believe? Their poor, little, defenseless prince, terrified by an intimidating outsider? Or you? A human whose people have already taken so much from mine?" I delivered the final blow with a chilling simplicity, echoing the very prejudices I was pretending to weaponize. "The optics, as they say, would be… catastrophic."
The silence that followed was absolute. The only sound was Alwyn's sharp, indrawn breath behind me. I couldn't look at him.
The guild master's jaw worked. The fiery defiance in his eyes guttered and died, replaced by the hard, pragmatic glint of a man who knows he's been checkmated.
The political reality, the deep-seated elven distrust, the power of the Eralith name—my threat, however delivered by a child, was brutally effective. He saw the scandal, the immediate shutdown, the end of his career.
His shoulders slumped in defeat. The fight left him in a weary exhalation. When he spoke again, all the bluster was gone, replaced by a flat, resentful compliance.
"I would… be happy to immediately provide you with the information you seek, Your Highness."
The victory was absolute. And as I stood there in the sudden, hollow quiet, the scroll with the Phoenix Wyrm's details suddenly within reach, I felt no triumph.
Only a deep, corroding shame. I had won by acting like the monsters I feared. I had used the very divisions I was supposed to heal.