Corvis Eralith
The wind whipped past, cold and biting, yet I barely felt it thanks to the Lance. Cradled like an infant against Alea's armored chest—a humiliating posture, yet painfully fitting for this frail, five-year-old body of mine—the vast expanse of Elshire Forest blurred beneath us. Agony, sharp and corrosive, wasn't from the bruises on my arms and legs or the lingering taste of the gag. It was the future collapsing before my eyes, each beat of Alea's foliage wings. was carrying me further from any hope of salvaging destiny.
It was truly beautiful. However, I hadn't realized this was how Alea flew. I remembered that Olfred used a manta-like stone golem and Varay had ice wings, but I didn't recall Alea's method of flight.
What is waiting for us? The question wasn't idle; it was a scream trapped in the hollow of my skull, echoing with the finality of a tomb door slamming shut.
With those slave traders eradicated by Alea's efficient hand, the intricate clockwork of fate had shattered. Arthur wouldn't find them. He wouldn't rescue Tessia. He wouldn't be brought before Virion. The critical nexus was erased, gone. Because of me.
Despair threatened to swallow me whole. The vast forest below seemed like a metaphor for the tangled ruin I had made of this timeline—impenetrable, directionless, teeming with unseen threats. Panic, cold and slick, coiled in my gut.
Think. Think! The only frayed thread left: Xyrus City. Arthur had to reach the academy before Sylvia's untamed Beast Will devoured him from within. Could Cynthia Goodsky—the Alacryan spy disguised as the nurturing Director—step into Virion's role? She had shown interest in Arthur, saw his potential. It was a desperate, poisonous hope.
If Arthur became her apprentice… would he still cross paths with Tessia? In the halls of Xyrus Academy, not the wild heart of Elshire? The possibility felt thin, brittle. But it was still there.
Cynthia and Virion were friends, maybe she would ask him to help Arthur. It didn't seem so impossible.
And then, the chilling afterthought: Would that even be good? Agrona's grand design pivoted on Tessia becoming the Legacy's vessel. Her bond with Arthur was a vulnerability, a wildcard… but also her greatest source of strength and defiance.
Denying them that connection, even to potentially shield her, felt like another unforgivable manipulation. A selfish ploy by the interloper who had already broken too much. No. I couldn't dictate their hearts. Even in this wreckage, I had to believe their bond could find a way. I had to believe I could still mend something. I did want to be at least a good brother...
"Your Highness, we're almost there." Alea's voice, gentle as a summer breeze against the howl of the wind, pulled me from the spiraling abyss. She began her descent, the effortless grace of her flight a stark reminder of the chasm between her White Core power and my utter helplessness. The sight of Zestier's familiar spires in the distance should have brought relief.
It brought only dread.
A new, chilling realization struck like lightning. The Widow's Crypt! Alea's future and her encounter with Retainer Uto. Her gruesome end. If the Council formed… if she went there… No. Not her too. I couldn't bear another death on my conscience. The Council had to form. Dicathen needed unity. But Alea… she needed to survive.
"Alea…" The word escaped me in a trembling whisper, perfectly pitched for the traumatized child I was impersonating. Exhaustion wasn't feigned; the weight of my failures was crushing.
"Yes, Your Highness?" Her voice softened further, a protective warmth radiating from her despite the cold metal beneath my cheek.
I manufactured a small, choked sob. "C-Could you… not tell my dad? About… about the bad men taking me?" I let genuine tears fall on my cheeks—tears of frustration, of fear, of overwhelming guilt. "He… he gets so angry about humans…"
The lie tasted like ash, but the truth beneath it was vital. If my father learned his son was kidnapped by human slavers… his already simmering prejudice born after the second war between humans and elves would boil over. It could cripple the fragile diplomacy needed for the Council's formation, especially without Arthur's unifying presence making dad to change his mind. Grampa and the looming Alacryan threat had to be enough to sway him. They had to be.
As the words left my lips, another shock, far more personal, lanced through me. Dad. Grandfather. The terms had slipped out with terrifying ease. Not "Alduin." Not "Virion." Father. Grandfather. A cold wave of pure terror washed over me, colder than the high-altitude wind.
Attachment. Real, dangerous, visceral attachment.
The very thing I had sworn to avoid, the vulnerability that could shatter my resolve. The Eraliths weren't just characters on a page anymore. They were… family. And that realization, more than any failed plan, more than any impending doom, frightened me endlessly.
It meant I had so much more to lose.
In that moment, clarity struck me like a bolt out of the blue. My mission—my desperate fight to keep this timeline from falling into ruin—was never about my own selfish need to survive. It wasn't driven by guilt, nor by the weight of self-loathing pressing down on me. No… I was fighting for something far greater. I was fighting for my family.
And with that realization came a flood of emotions. Shame, regret, the aching weight of all the foolish choices I had made. How blind I had been, how stubborn, how utterly unwilling to see the truth. Whether I accepted it or not, the reality remained: I was Corvis Eralith. No longer the person I had once been on Earth.
A new yearning surged within me—a longing that refused to be ignored. I needed to apologize. To mom, to dad, to grandpa, to Tessia. I needed them to know how sorry I was, how deeply I regretted running away and the pain I had caused them. For making them worry. For the fear I had placed in their hearts.
I wanted—no, I had—to make things right.
"A-Alea," I murmured, no longer lying.
"Yes, Your Highness?" She asked.
"I—Thank you, thank you for saving me." I said truthfully. For them, for my family and for fixing my mistakes I had to be Corvis Eralith. I had to be the perfect Prince of Elenoir.
Alea Triscan
"I—Thank you. Thank you for saving me."
The Prince's voice, small and muffled against the wind rushing past us, held a fragile sincerity that struck me profoundly.
It was a stark, almost jarring contrast to the raw, desolate sounds that had torn from him earlier in the carriage—those ragged, soul-deep sobs that had nothing to do with relief and everything to do with… devastation a kid his age.
I had held many more rescued elf slaves before becoming Code Aureate, this wasn't a first time for me. Relief was a common song, sung in trembling whispers or joyful cries. Terror, cold and sharp, was another familiar refrain. But what had poured from this child…? That had been the sound of foundations crumbling.
A profound, bewildering grief that seemed to swallow the very air around him. It had echoed in the sudden, awful stillness after the slavers' end, a silence more haunting than any scream. Why? Why would a child, bound and blindfolded in a slaver's cart, react to salvation with such world-ending despair?
I had found him trussed like game, treated with a casual cruelty that twisted my stomach. I had expected terror, yes. Perhaps numbness from the trauma it might have caused him—he was royalty an experience like that could have caused so many wounds both physical and psychological.
But when I had lifted the blindfold, peeled away the gag, I hadn't found the wide-eyed relief of a rescued prince. I had found eyes wide with something else entirely: a shattered, hopeless existential horror that seemed to look through me, fixed on some invisible catastrophe only he could see.
His tears hadn't been the hot, frightened tears of a child; they'd been the silent, scalding overflow of an anguish far too vast for his small frame. It was as if the rescue itself was the final, crushing blow to some intricate, desperate plan only he understood. The sheer, bewildering depth of it had threatened to crack my own composure. I bad mastered the tremor in my hands, the sting behind my own eyes, burying it beneath the practiced calm that was demanded by my position.
But the memory of that desolation lingered, cold and unsettling and I thought that it would haunt me for a long while.
However...
This… this quiet gratitude now? It felt like a tentative step back from an abyss. Fragile, yes. Perhaps even rehearsed. But the underlying note of sincerity? That felt real. And it offered a flicker of profound relief. He seems to be saying the truth. Thank the Gods.
"I only did my duty, Your Highness," I replied, my voice carefully modulated to match his newfound calm, letting the wind carry the words down as we began our descent towards the familiar, glowing spires of Zestier Palace.
Below, the lights were blossoming like earthbound stars against the twilight. King Alduin, Queen Merial—they would be waiting. Their heir, finally returned. The sheer weight of their impending relief was a tangible thing in the cooling air.
The balcony stones were cool and solid beneath my boots as we landed, a gentle touch dispelling the kinetic energy of flight. I carefully set the Prince down, his small form momentarily unsteady on legs unused to solid ground after hours of terror and flight. He turned, those large, haunted eyes meeting mine for a suspended moment. And then, unexpectedly, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms tightly around my armored waist, burying his face against the cool leather.
"Sorry for troubling you, Miss Alea." The words were muffled against my gear, spoken with a startling, archaic politeness that seemed utterly incongruous with the famously withdrawn, reclusive prince I had heard stories about.
The formality, layered over the child's impulsive hug, created a strange dissonance—vulnerability armored in courtesy.
Surprise held me rigid for a heartbeat before instinct softened my posture. I crouched down, bringing myself level with him, the stone cool against my knee.
Gently, I rested a hand on his messy hair. "It's quite alright, Your Highness," I murmured, my voice dropping to a near whisper, imbued with a warmth I rarely allowed to surface. "It has been my genuine pleasure to bring you home."
The words held more truth than formalities demanded. Seeing that shattered look begin to recede, even slightly, was a pleasure.
Rising, I felt the familiar constraints of my role settle back upon me like a second skin. I cannot linger. The animosity was my domain, not witnessing the warm, tearful reunions of the royal family. As I stepped back onto the balcony's edge, preparing to take flight once more, a quiet, personal thought slipped through the cracks of duty:
What a shame I must vanish. If fate allows… if I still stand when the time comes… I will look forward to the king you will become, Your Highness.
I pushed off silently, the air catching me just as Elder Virion, he must have sensed my presence despite my attempt to be quiet, burst onto the balcony, his weathered face etched with decades of worry momentarily erased by pure, unadulterated joy.
Princess Tessia, King Alduin and Queen Merial were close behind, their movements frantic with relief. As I ascended, a final glance back showed the Prince engulfed in their desperate, loving embrace.
This time, the tears streaming down his face as he clung to his grandfather, his sister, his father, his mother… these looked different. Brighter. Cleansing. Tears of homecoming, finally.
It was a sight far more precious than any duty fulfilled. It was really a good sight.
Corvis Eralith
Seeing them—Grampa Virion's face etched with lines of worry I had put there, Dad Alduin's usual regal composure fractured by raw relief, Mom Merial's eyes red-rimmed from endless tears, and Tessia vibrating with pent-up energy—was like staring into the heart of a sun.
Beautiful, but terrifying at the same time. The weight of my betrayal crashed over me anew. I ran from them. I abandoned them. The fear was a cold serpent coiling in my gut: would they see me differently now? The ungrateful burden? Would their love curdle into resentment for the silent son who vanished without a word and needed a Lance to be brought back?
Then Tessia moved. Not walked—she launched herself at me. A small, furious comet of gunmetal hair and desperate love. She slammed into me with a force that knocked the air from my lungs, tiny arms locking around my ribs like iron vines.
"CORVIS!"
Her shout wasn't just my name; it was an accusation, a welcome, a sob, all tangled into one seismic cry. The sheer, unadulterated force of her embrace—the pure, uncomplicated need in it—shattered the last dam holding back the flood in my eyes.
I didn't just cry. I broke. Great, heaving sobs tore from my throat, shaking my entire frame. But for the first time since waking in this world, adrift and terrified, the tears weren't born of despair, failure, or cosmic dread. They were scalding rivers of release, of a joy so profound it felt like pain.
It burned away the lingering ghost of my old life, the detached observer who saw only plot points and pawns. In that crushing, breath-stealing hug from my sister, as Grampa's strong arms enveloped us both, Dad's hand settled heavily on my shoulder, and Mom's gentle touch smoothed my hair, I drowned… and was reborn.
I am Corvis Eralith. The realization wasn't intellectual; it was cellular. This wasn't a foreign body I was occupying or a role to play. This was my heart. My family. My home. The fear of changing the timeline evaporated like mist. Trying to be a ghost had nearly doomed everything.
My only path now was to be a force. To stand with them, not apart. To wield every scrap of knowledge, every ounce of love, to forge a better future, not just preserve a broken one.
I clung to Tessia, burying my face in her hair, trying to pour a lifetime of silent apologies and fierce, newfound devotion into that hug. Words choked in my throat—I'm sorry, I'll be better, I'll protect you—lost beneath the torrent of tears and the overwhelming press of their love.
Mom's voice, soft as a sigh against the storm of my weeping, finally reached me: "Shh, my darling. It's okay. It's all over." But it wasn't over.
It was just beginning. My beginning. As Corvis. Truly.