Corvis Eralith
Alea's presence was a paradox.
Part of me cringed at the utter failure of my attempted stealth—the careful planning to slip away unnoticed, obviously unraveled by a White Core's vigilance. Yet, a larger, more pragmatic part felt a profound wave of relief settle deep in my chest.
Having Code Aureate herself—not just Alea Triscan, the quiet Baroness, but one of the two hidden blades of the Eraliths—walking beside us through the deepening shadows of the Elshire Forest felt like donning an invisible fortress. Tessia's safety, always paramount, felt exponentially more secure. My own vulnerability, the constant, humiliating awareness of my still manaless state, receded slightly.
With Alea here, the wild edges felt less like a potential tomb and more like… a manageable risk. Stealth failed. Security won. A worthy trade.
My mind flickered to the broader chessboard.
Whispers, carefully gleaned from Dad's preoccupied frowns and Virion's hushed late-night conversations, confirmed the Council of Dicathen was gradually taking shape in the shadows. Secret meetings between the Eraliths, the Glayders of Sapin, and even the Greysunders of Darv—the future traitors playing their opening moves unaware.
I also need to understand if Lance Olfred—and more importantly Rahdeas—are traitors as well, I reminded myself hoping that the plot changed in Dicathen's favour.
But for now Alea's discretion was another quiet victory. She had not breathed a word to Dad about the slave traders. That silence spoke volumes. It wasn't just loyalty to the Crown; it felt… personal. Directed towards me.
The why remained a tantalizing mystery, a flicker of warmth in the cold calculus of my plans, but it only intensified my resolve. The image of her broken form at Uto's hands, a brutal scene seared into my memory from pages long gone, flashed behind my eyes. Never. That future was unacceptable. I would rewrite it, whatever the cost.
I watched Alea move ahead, a silent specter gliding over roots and moss with preternatural grace. She was an enigma. More than anyone else I had encountered until now. In the narrative I knew, she was a footnote. Introduced, showcased briefly, then brutally discarded.
That lack of "screentime" now felt terrifyingly vast. It meant I didn't know her depths, her triggers, her hidden fears. She was a wild card in a game where I had memorized the deck at my disposal. The thrill of unpredictability warred with a chilling dread. If the story diverged too wildly, if characters developed beyond their prescribed arcs… my foreknowledge, my greatest weapon, could turn into a map leading me straight off a cliff. Understanding Alea felt crucial, yet frustratingly out of reach.
The silence between us grew thick, charged with Tessia's simmering displeasure. She walked slightly ahead, her back rigid, throwing periodic, dagger-sharp glares over her shoulder—aimed solely at Alea.
Suspicion? Of course. Tessia was perceptive, her senses honed by mana and a natural intuition. She would feel the absence—the deliberate suppression of Alea's colossal power signature. To Tessia, it wouldn't make sense.
Why would a Baroness, supposedly just a minor noble mage, need to cloak herself so completely? Especially around the royal children? The unnatural void where power should hum would scream deception to my sister's instincts. My own lack of core meant Alea's suppression was a kindness, sparing me the crushing pressure, but Tessia wouldn't know that.
She only saw the mask.
An idea sparked, a gambit to bridge the tension and maybe, just maybe, glean something about Alea. "Tessia," I said, my voice cutting through the forest hush. "Did you know Alea here is a plant deviant? Just like you?"
The effect was instantaneous. Tessia froze mid-step. Her head whipped around, eyes wide, the suspicion momentarily eclipsed by pure, unadulterated shock. Then, like the sun breaking through storm clouds, excitement ignited her entire face.
"Really?!" The word burst from her, bright and incredulous. She bounced on the balls of her feet, turning fully to Alea, her earlier wariness utterly forgotten in the face of this shared affinity. Her gaze was suddenly starstruck. I smiled at the sight.
Alea's reaction was more contained, but telling. A slight, almost imperceptible frown creased her brow. "Yes, although I am not very cap—" she began, her voice adopting that practiced, modest tone, the one meant to deflect attention.
U didn't let her finish. The secrecy felt unnecessary now, counterproductive—and I always wanted to see her reaction. Tessia was an Eralith. She deserved to know the caliber of protector walking beside her. More importantly, I wanted to see Alea's genuine reaction.
"She's a White Core mage," I stated, my voice flat, matter-of-fact hiding my own amusement.
The forest air seemed to crackle. Tessia's jaw dropped. A beat of stunned silence, then she burst into peals of laughter, clutching her sides.
"Oh, Corvis! That's terrible! A White Core? Here? You're getting worse at jokes!" Her disbelief was absolute, tinged with affectionate mockery. She saw it as another of my awkward attempts at humor, utterly divorced from reality.
Alea, however, didn't laugh. She turned towards me with unnerving slowness. Her lake-blue eyes, usually calm and observant, sharpened, piercing through me.
The playful Baroness vanished, replaced by Code Aureate trying to understand her target. She leaned in, her voice dropping to a whisper so low it was almost lost in the rustle of leaves, yet it carried the weight of stone.
"King Eralith told you, Your Highness?" The question was a blade wrapped in silk. Not anger, but cold, dangerous inquiry. The secret protectors of the royal families. The deepest secret of the Three Races.
Idiot. The curse echoed in my skull. In my eagerness to disarm Tessia's suspicion and probe Alea, I had forgotten the foundational secrecy. Virion and Dad wouldn't have told me. Not yet. Not at my age, without a core. Panic, cold and slick, coiled in my gut.
One misstep, and Alea's loyalty could curdle into suspicion. I met her intense gaze, forcing calm onto my face, the mask of the earnest prince firmly in place. "Yes," I lied, the single syllable tasting like ash.
The ease of the falsehood scared me almost as much as Alea's scrutiny. She couldn't know the truth—the impossible knowledge gleaned from pages of a story. But the fragile trust between us, the unspoken bond I had felt, now felt perilously thin. The path ahead, towards Sylvia's cave, suddenly seemed fraught with more dangers than just mana beasts.
"W-what do you mean a white core mage?! That's—Grampa himself is only silver core!" Tessia shouted before turning to Alea like she was seeing some kind of messianic figure.
Alea shook her hands in embarrassment.
She isn't a people kind of woman, I noticed—from my memories I knew she did not have any family left, but that deep down she ached for connection as it was showed when she died crying hugging Arthur.
I grimaced as the memory resurfaced. If I'm being completely honest… when I first read about her death in the novel, I barely reacted. She had seemed insignificant to the plot, nothing more than an expendable character whose demise served as mere shock value. I hadn't thought twice about it. But now—now that Alea was standing before me, real and undeniable—I felt a deep, crushing shame.
How could I have been so blind? So dismissive? She wasn't just a name in a book; she was a person, just like me. Just like Tessia, Mom, Dad, and Grandpa. And I had reduced her existence to nothing. The weight of my own apathy stung like a slap I wished I could have given myself.
What would she think if she knew? No—I couldn't let that thought take root. I swore to myself, I would never tell anyone about my… situation.
Maybe it was wrong. Maybe it was unfair to my family—to the people who had welcomed me as their prince, the one who loved me. Keeping the truth from them might have been a betrayal, but I couldn't risk it. I couldn't allow anything to fracture the fragile bonds I had with them.
The issue wasn't my reincarnation itself. Whether I had been eighteen or nineteen or whoever I had been when I died didn't matter. What mattered was that, before all of this, before I found myself here—they had been nothing more than fictional characters to me.
Their joys, their struggles, their tragedies… I had read about them from the safe distance of a spectator—a reader. Their suffering, their deaths—it had all been for my entertainment. They weren't figures of history, nor names I had studied to expand my knowledge. They were characters from a fantasy webnovel.
So what would they think of me if I told them? That their son had gone utterly mad? Or something far worse—that I was a monster?
———
Tessia and Alea's chatter faded into a pleasant, indistinct hum behind me—the rhythmic chirping of unseen birds, the rustle of leaves in the gentle breeze, the low murmur of their voices weaving a tapestry of normalcy that felt almost jarring against the thrumming urgency in my veins.
My gaze was a laser, scanning the familiar-yet-alien contours of the southern Elshire foothills. Every moss-covered boulder, every gnarled root system, every shift in the light filtering through the dense canopy was cross-referenced against the meticulous map etched in my mind. Where is it? It has to be here.
"Corvis!" Tessia's voice, sharp with exaggerated impatience, sliced through my concentration. I turned to see her pouting dramatically, gesturing towards a sun-dappled clearing carpeted with soft moss and wildflowers.
"Are we there yet? My feet are tired! Can't we just sit down and have a picnic? I brought everything!" She beamed, hoisting the large wicker basket she'd insisted on carrying… before promptly thrusting it into Alea's surprised hands. Of course.
Alea blinked, looking genuinely perplexed as she adjusted her grip on the basket. "What's… a picnic?"
Tessia lit up, seizing the opportunity to shine. "A meal outdoors! It was Corvis's brilliant idea!" she declared, puffing out her chest slightly. A flicker of warmth warred with annoyance. My idea? Well, technically, introducing the concept here was mine, but the credit-grabbing was pure Tessia. It was harmless, usually charming, but today it felt like sandpaper on my nerves.
"Oh?" Alea's gaze shifted to me, a playful glint in her deep blue eyes that felt far too knowing. "I didn't realize His Highness was such a soft boy. Planning these picnics?" Her tone was light, teasing, but it landed with a sting. Soft. The word echoed the vulnerability I fought so hard to conceal.
Tessia, predictably, pounced. "He is!" she crowed, looping an arm through Alea's. "Total lovey-dovey mushball underneath that grumpy face! Especially when it comes to his favorite sister!" She grinned triumphantly at me.
Alea's resulting giggle was melodic, joining Tessia's laughter. I forced myself to tune them out, my eyes finally catching on the distinctive formation I had been searching for—a jagged cluster of dark, weather-sculpted boulders nestled against the steep hillside, half-hidden by cascading ferns and thick vines. It looked utterly ordinary. Unremarkable. Perfect for hiding an ancient dragon… or her tomb.
"We're here, Tessia," I said, my voice flat, cutting through their merriment. The words felt heavy, final. "Happy?"
She blinked, scanning the dense foliage and rocky slope. "Huh? Here where? It's just… more forest and rocks."
Alea stepped forward, her expression shifting subtly to one of professional assessment. "We're quite far from the deep Elshire mists, Your Highness," she observed, her gaze sweeping the area. "I see no unusual fog or mana signatures."
Ignoring her implied question, I pointed a steady finger towards the seemingly innocuous boulders. "There. Behind those rocks. There's a system of caves." Sylvia's refuge. Or what's left of it. The air suddenly felt thick, charged with the terrifying potential of what lay beneath. I was three years late.
What ghosts, what failures, what desperate hope awaited us in that darkness?
Tessia stared, dumbfounded. "A… cluster of rocks? Corvis, did you drag us all the way out here because you suddenly want to be a cave diver?"
Alea, ever the picture of composed amusement, tilted her head. "Oh, spelunking is a fascinating, if somewhat… damp hobby, Your Highness. Quite adventurous if I can say." Her smile was back, but her eyes were watchful, fixed on me, not the rocks.
Those two were definitely having fun. At my expense. And I was standing on the precipice of answers I might not be ready to face. But... it was better this way. If Tessia was having fun and Alea didn't suspect anything, I could do my job in peace.
We stood in front of the crevice and we went inside.