Cynthia Goodsky
The revelation slammed into me, cold and razor-sharp, stealing the breath from my lungs.
A retainer. Here. In Dicathen. Not some lesser agent, not a disposable infiltrator, but one of Agrona's own elite hands, a being of power that could shatter kingdoms. Vechor's retainer.
How did Prince Corvis know? The question was a persistent, venomous insect buzzing at the edge of my consciousness, demanding attention. The boy's haunted eyes, the tremor he'd tried to hide when he spoke the forbidden truths… it hadn't just been defiance; it had been raw, bone-deep fear. Fear he had carried alone.
But that mystery, as vital as it was, had to wait. Survival came first. Dicathen's survival. Grey's survival and Tessia's survival. Against the crushing presence of a retainer? What shield could I possibly raise? What weapon could pierce that kind of darkness? A wave of helplessness, cold and sickening, threatened to pull me under. Decades of vigilance, of building networks, of rooting out shadows… and it hadn't been enough.
I had missed a viper coiled at the heart of the continent.
"Cynthia." Avier's voice cut through the suffocating silence, low and grave, the sound scraping against the raw edges of my nerves. His ancient eyes held a reflection of my own dread. "Speak of this to the Vritra boy. To Grey."
Of course. The simple, stark logic of it pierced the fog of despair. Avier was right. Four years ago, finding Grey… the memory was a fresh wound. The initial terror had been paralyzing—the dread that Agrona had already slipped one of his most lethal weapons into our midst, disguised as a lost child.
Discovering the truth had been a reprieve laced with its own profound horror: he was an escapee, yes, but one who carried the taint of High Sovereign's blood and a hatred for his creator that burned with the intensity of a volcano.
I had hidden him, crafting the fiction of my nephew with meticulous care, giving him sanctuary and a path—the Adventurer' Guild—where his unnatural strength could be honed. And when fate intertwined his path with Tessia's… a fragile blossom of hope had unfurled within me.
Her fierce spirit, her innate kindness—it was the grounding force the boy desperately needed. For all the Asuran power humming beneath his skin, for all the brutal conditioning under Taegrin Caelum's cold gaze, Grey was still, fundamentally, a child.
I turned sharply towards my companion, the movement fueled by a rising tide of frustration and fear.
"How," I demanded, the word sharp as broken glass, "is it possible that Virion's grandson knows about them?" The effort to speak around the cursed restraint was a physical agony. 'Them'. Such a pitiful, inadequate word for the existential threat festering on our shores.
Alacrya. The name screamed silently in my mind, a forbidden mantra, the magical gag tightening like invisible bands of iron around my throat, choking the vital syllables before they could form. The impotence was maddening.
Avier released a slow, measured breath, the sound like wind through ancient ruins. "I don't know," he admitted, his gaze distant, probing the depths of memory and possibility. "But knowing his family… knowing the elven heritage… I have a theory." He paused, letting the ominous weight of those words settle. "Divination."
The word struck me like a physical blow. Fragmented memories surfaced: Virion, years ago, his face lined with worry deeper than usual, confiding in hushed tones about his grandson. "He sees things, Cynthia. Flashes. Fragments. He's so young, it terrifies him… and us. We made him promise. No more." Virion's voice echoed in my mind, filled with a grandfather's desperate love and fear.
He had believed the promise given by a frightened child could hold back the tide of an unwanted gift. "Virion mentioned Corvis showed early signs," I murmured, the taste of ash in my mouth. "He swore the boy wouldn't use it anymore."
Avier's response was swift, brutal in its simplicity. "And what do you think a child does," he countered, his voice low and relentless, "when those unwanted visions show him catastrophe? When the faces twisted in agony, the cities crumbling to dust, belong to his mother? His father? His twin sister?" He leaned forward slightly, his owl eyes boring into mine.
"When the screams echoing in his dreams are the screams of his family? Do you think such a child, burdened with that horrific foresight, simply stays behind? Says nothing? Does nothing? No."
The logic was sound. It was devastating. It painted a portrait of Corvis Eralith that shattered the image of the composed, slightly detached prince. It revealed a boy haunted, driven by a terrifying knowledge no child should bear, forced to break a sacred promise to his family out of sheer, desperate love. The pieces clicked into place with horrifying clarity: the unnatural focus, the isolation, the constant preparation, the way he seemed to carry the weight of the world on his too-young shoulders.
A wave of cold fury, directed at my own monumental failure, warred with a crushing sense of shame. I had prided myself on my network, on my vigilance. I had believed, truly and utterly believed, that I was excising the Alacryan rot from Dicathen, thread by poisonous thread.
That I was protecting them all and giving them a chance. But I hadn't. I had been blind. And the thing I had missed wasn't just a spy. It was a retainer. A harbinger of the doom Corvis had foreseen.
The fury subsided, leaving behind a profound, aching sadness. That fleeting glimpse of Corvis's eyes when he spoke… it hadn't just been fear of me, or of punishment. It had been the bone-deep terror of a child who knew, who had witnessed the end in his dreams, and who had finally dared to speak the unspeakable, hoping against hope someone would listen, someone would believe.
The sheer, isolating horror of his burden washed over me. Poor, brave, terrified child, I thought, the empathy a sharp sting piercing my heart. He hadn't just carried the secret of Alacrya. He had carried the visions of his world ending, alone. And I, the former spymaster, the protector, had missed it all.
Corvis Eralith
The crunch of gravel beneath our boots marked the path back towards the Palace, the setting sun painting the sky in bruised hues of violet and amber through the trees of the city.
Ahead, Tessia skipped alongside Grampa, her hair catching the dying light like spun moonbeams. The air smelled of pine and damp earth, a comforting scent that did little to soothe the relentless churn of my thoughts.
Today… today had been a victory, fragile and hard-won, yet undeniable.
Frankly it was... better than I could ever expect. The understatement echoed hollowly in the quiet space of my mind. The two anchors of my nascent strategy—Gideon's brilliant, chaotic genius and Cynthia's razor-sharp, shadowed mind—were now tentatively secured.
Foundations laid for structures that could, must, alter Dicathen's grim trajectory. Plans for communication grids and intelligence webs felt like delicate threads spun against an oncoming hurricane, but they were threads I now held. Yet, overshadowing even these critical gains, was the seismic shift of meeting him.
Grey.
The echo of his name sent a fresh pulse through me, a mixture of awe and profound, terrifying relief.
His plan—taking on S and SS-Class dungeons—wasn't mere adventure; it was honing a blade for the darkness I knew was coming. And Tessia's relentless, wonderful insistence… he had agreed. He would come to our birthday. The significance wasn't lost on me. It was more than a social courtesy; it was a crack in the formidable wall around him, a tentative step towards… connection? Alliance? A real step forward.
One thread led to Gideon's workshop. The image of the rough communication device prototype I had made surfaced—crude, promising, yet fundamentally flawed.
The dream was vast: a network replacing the rare, expensive scrolls and clunky projections, linking cities, garrisons and outposts in real-time. A nervous system for a continent that didn't know I preparing for war.
But the bottleneck was the repeater I had yet to design. The maximum radius of the current radio was ten kilometers. A laughable distance strategically. Without a solution, the device was a clever toy, not a weapon.
The frustration was a physical knot between my shoulder blades. Unacceptable. The technical puzzle gnawed at me, demanding attention I couldn't fully give it, not with the other specter looming.
Cynthia. The memory of her reaction to my warning about Uto was etched sharp and cold. The flicker of disbelief, swiftly consumed by dawning horror. A Retainer. Not just an infiltrator, but one of Alacrya's chosen blades, already sheathed within our borders, poison dripping unseen. The sheer, suffocating weight of that reality pressed down.
Who could stand against such a being? The Lances… brave, powerful, but pitted against a Retainer? It wouldn't be a battle; it would be a sacrifice. The thought of Alea, Aya… broken and lifeless… No. The refusal was absolute, visceral. I refused that calculus.
But Grey… Grey could be the counterweight. His Vritra heritage wasn't just a simple lineage; it was power, honed in ways his original self never possessed at this age.
A power that could meet a Retainer's darkness. If I could equip him—not just with Uto's known weaknesses, but with context, strategy, the understanding of what they faced… Then. Then, perhaps, the scales could tip. Casualties weren't inevitable.
Yet, intertwined with this fragile hope was another, colder fear. The Asuras. My coreless state, coupled with the unnerving meta-awareness, had made Grey's Vritra bloodline as obvious as a beacon to my senses. A beacon that Sylvie, was irrevocably bonded to.
How would Kezess Indrath, architect of order built on cruelty and dominion, view this? Would Grey be dismissed as just another potent lesser, beneath their celestial control? Or would his very existence—a Vritra-blooded vessel bonded to an Indrath—be seen as an abomination, a threat to the fragile, tyrannical truce?
I hope they don't care. The thought felt pathetically thin, a whispered plea against the potential for draconic wrath. Sylvie's safety, Grey's survival… they hung in a balance I couldn't influence, watched by eyes older than kingdoms.
The dense forest path opened slightly, revealing Tessia and Grampa further ahead, bathed in the last golden rays. The weight on my shoulders… it all pressed down, a crushing avalanche of responsibility and fear. My steps slowed unconsciously, the physical drag mirroring the mental burden.
"Corvis!"
Tessia's voice, sharp and bright as a shattering icicle, cut through the suffocating fog of my thoughts. She'd turned, hands planted on her hips, her silhouette framed by the sunset.
There was her usual, irrepressible energy, the eagerness to see our parents radiating from her like warmth. But beneath it, sharp eyes caught mine—eyes that held a new depth, a quiet, hard-won maturity she was trying fiercely, almost comically, to hide from us.
"You're a turtle!" she declared, pointing an accusatory finger, her nose scrunched in mock outrage. "I want to see Mom and Dad, but you're slowing us down! Come on!"
The sheer, mundane absurdity of it—being chastised for walking too slowly by my sister while contemplating continental survival and celestial politics—struck me with a sudden, almost painful clarity.
"Alright, alright. No need to shout, Tess."
———
The moment we stepped into the palace, Mom's voice rang out, filled with relief and overwhelming affection.
"Tessia!"
She barely gave her the chance to respond before pulling her into a tight embrace, her arms wrapping around her as if she had been gone for years.
"How have you been? Are you injured? Did something happen to you?"
She showered Tessia with hugs, kisses, and gentle fussing, her hands smoothing over her hair, checking for any signs of harm as if she needed to confirm for herself that her daughter was truly safe.
Dad let out a chuckle as he joined the embrace. "And here I thought I was the one who didn't want her to leave." His teasing was lighthearted, but the way he pulled Tessia into the hug showed just how much he had missed her.
Standing slightly off to the side, Grampa and I watched the reunion unfold.
That was when I noticed Grampa's smirk—a telltale sign that he was about to stir trouble.
"Do you think we should tell your father about Gr—"
I cut him off instantly, elbowing him before he could say something that would embarrass Tessia in front of our parents. Unfortunately, without mana to enhance the impact, he barely seemed to notice.
But at least he stopped.
I shot him a look. "After seeing how you reacted, I don't even want to imagine what Dad would do."
I already knew how dramatic Dad could be. In the original timeline, he had accepted Arthur only because he had saved Tessia. Even though Grey had kept her safe during her time as an adventurer, I wasn't eager to test his reaction now.
But despite the playful tension between Grampa and me, my eyes kept drifting back to the sight before us.
Tessia, safe in our parents' arms.
The warmth, the joy, the way she melted into their embrace—it was a moment of pure love.
And watching it, I couldn't help but smile.