Corvis Eralith
I wasn't walking through the Elshire Forest; I was dragging a corpse. My own. This useless, five-year-old body—my body—was a betrayal. Every root snagged my feet, every uneven patch of moss threatened to send me sprawling. My lungs burned, muscles screamed protests they shouldn't even know yet. Pathetic.
A former teenager mind trapped in flesh that couldn't manage a woodland path. Each stumble was a fresh humiliation, a physical echo of the monumental failure that brought me here to this situation.
Where even am I going? The thought hit like a physical blow, staggering me more than any root which I stumbled on. Panic, cold and slick, coiled in my gut. I had run. Like a cornered animal, driven by pure, stupid terror. Run without a map, without a clue, into a forest I knew only from fragmented novel descriptions. Damn me. Damn my impulsiveness. Damn the desperate, flailing hope that anything I did could fix the ruin I had made.
The only anchor was brittle knowledge: Arthur falls near the border of Sapin. Sylvia saves him and makes a portal for him to reconnect with his family—four months passes during this. Then… Tessia's kidnappers. Zestier. A sequence I had recited until it was worn smooth in my mind. It felt like clutching at smoke. All I could do was push south, towards Sapin, praying against reason that I would stumble upon a four-year-old prodigy lost in this endless, suffocating green. Hunting a ghost, with a child's body and a broken compass for a plan.
Hours bled into the rustling canopy overhead, filled with the frantic drumming of my own heart and the relentless churn of my thoughts.
"What do I say when I meet him?" The whisper scraped my raw throat. Confess? 'Hello, Arthur. I'm also reincarnated. From another world. Please don't kill me.' The laugh that followed was harsh, brittle. King Grey, at this stage, was pragmatism forged in blood and betrayal. Mercy wasn't his default. If I slipped, if I called him 'Grey'… his blade would find my throat before the name finished echoing.
And my death? It wouldn't just end me. It would be a spark in dry tinder. The Eraliths finding their supposed prince slain by Arthur Leywin? War. Chaos. Another catastrophic deviation I would have authored. My hands flew to my temples, fingers digging in as if I could physically claw out the impossible choices. Stupid, stupid child! If only… If only I had managed the most basic feat in this world. Formed a core. Had a sliver of power. Instead, I was defenseless. Powerless. A liability wrapped in skin too young.
I forced my hands down, clenched them into tiny, impotent fists. Focus. Crying on spilled milk wouldn't find him. Every wasted second was another grain of sand falling in an hourglass counting down to oblivion. South. Keep moving south. Towards the border. Towards the cliff. Towards the faintest, most desperate sliver of possibility.
I adjusted the rough pack biting into my shoulders—stolen goods, a final act of betrayal against the palace that housed me. Against the guards who would have died for me... I scrolled my head.
Slipping into the guards' quarters, heart hammering like a trapped bird, grabbing dehydrated rations like tasteless cardboard, basic poultices I barely understood, miscellaneous gear whose purpose eluded me. Supplies for an odyssey I was grotesquely unprepared for.
How many days? Weeks? Would this meager haul outlast my strength, or the forest's indifference? The specter of death—exposure to the weather, wild mana beasts, sheer exhaustion—flickered at the edge of my vision. I shut it down violently. No. Dying here solved nothing. Condemned everyone. This frail body had to hold. This fractured mind had to find a way. Failure wasn't an option. Not anymore. Not after everything I had already destroyed.
When I will have Arthur to be in Zestier I will convince Virion to train me and then I will disappear forever.
Resolve, cold and sharp as the forest air, cut through the fog of despair. Brittle, yes. Probably foolish. But it was all I had left. I took another step. Then another. Dragging the corpse of my hopes forward, into the deepening shadows of Elshire Forest.
———
Time blurred into a haze of aching muscles, thirst like sandpaper in my throat, and the manifold bruises blooming across my too-small limbs. All things considered? A bitter, hollow laugh almost escaped. Surviving, barely. Avoiding elven settlements meant plunging deeper into the wild, untamed heart of Elshire Forest—a calculated risk that scraped my nerves raw with every snapped twig or distant bird cry.
Yet, it served a grim purpose: increasing the odds of crossing paths with the very scum who had taken Tessia in the original timeline. My only lead. My fragile, fraying lifeline to Arthur. So, yes. Exhaustion, pain, and the gnawing fear of discovery were my constant companions, but I was faring… decently. Until the universe decided to stop merely mocking me and deliver a punchline.
A harsh voice shattered the oppressive forest quiet: "Let's go! We're just a week from leavin' this damned green hell!"
A week. The word struck like a gong. Hope, sharp and treacherous, flared. I melted into the dense undergrowth, heart hammering against my ribs like a frantic bird. Peering through a veil of leaves, I saw them: the gnarled wooden carriage, the hulking forest hounds straining in their harnesses. They were Tessia's kidnappers. It had to be. Relief warred instantly with icy dread. Follow them. Shadow them. Stay unseen. That was the plan. Simple, but necessary.
My mind raced, dredging up brittle knowledge. Arthur hunted them. For the anger built up inside him. For a guide out.
He found and killed them. He saved Tessia. Could I… manipulate that? Lure him to me instead replacing Tessia with me? "What's the best course of action?" The whispered question, born of frantic calculation, slipped out.
Idiot. Stupid, reckless child!
One of the slavers—gaunt, with eyes like chips of flint—snapped his head around. Our gazes locked through the foliage. Time seemed to freeze. The blood drained from my face, leaving me cold and numb. Instinct screamed run, but my traitorous legs only managed a few clumsy steps backward before my foot caught, sending me crashing onto the damp forest floor.
Humiliation burned hotter than fear.
"Boss!" the gaunt man barked, a predatory grin splitting his face. "Looks like fortune finally smiled! We found ourselves some prime goods wanderin' loose." His gaze raked over me, calculating, greedy. Not seeing a child. He was seeing currency.
Another man, broader, scarred, and radiating a cold authority—the Boss—stepped forward. He didn't grin. His assessment was colder, more clinical. "An elfling. Alone?" His eyes narrowed, sharp with sudden, unpleasant interest. "You know? I've heard the noble Houses back in Sabin pay a king's ransom for young ones like this. Strong bloodlines. Elves have a lot of maguc potential." The word 'potential' sounded like a death sentence.
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK. Panic was a physical weight crushing my chest. Four grown men. Hardened. Cruel. At least two likely bore mana cores—I could remember them using magic against Arthur. Against them? I was less than nothing. A leaf before a storm. My pathetic escape attempt had delivered me straight into the jaws of the beast.
"Easy now, little sprout," the gaunt one crooned, taking a step closer, his voice dripping false honey. "Behave nice, and we won't have to rough you up. Promise." His smile didn't reach his flint-chip eyes. His eyes seemed to ask me to fight back so he had an excuse to beat me up.
The lie was obvious, vile. Yet, amidst the terror, a horrifying, twisted logic sparked. A week. They'd said a week before leaving the forest. The timeline… it could still align. Arthur would come. He hunted them. If I was their captive… If I was the "goods" in that damned carriage…
This is it. This is the only path left. The realization was a shard of ice piercing my gut. I couldn't fight. I couldn't run. But maybe… maybe I could be the bait. The catalyst. I must replace Tessia's role. Let them take me. Endure whatever hell came next. Arthur would find them. He'd save me. I'd lead him back to Virion. To the training he desperately needed. And then? Then I would vanish. Disappear into the background noise of the story where I belonged. A silent, insignificant sacrifice to fix the ruin I had wrought.
Self-loathing curdled, thick and acrid, in my throat. Pathetic. You ran only to willingly walk into chains. But the alternative—failing the world, failing the Eraliths, failing Tessia—was unthinkable.
The cage… it was my purpose now. My only desperate, degrading shot at redemption. Resolve, cold and sharp as a blade, formed amidst the despair. I stopped struggling. I meet the Boss's calculating stare not with defiance, but with a terrifying, hollow acceptance.
Alduin Eralith
What kind of father was I?
The question echoed in the hollow chamber of my mind, a condemnation sharper than any sword. An excuse. A failure. My son—my heir, my blood—had been drowning in a silence I had mistaken for quietude, building walls I had been too blind or too preoccupied to see.
And now? He had vanished. Slipped through the cracks of my neglect and fled into the wilds. Corvis. Just a child. Five mere years old. Alone. In the Elshire Forest.
A cold, greasy wave of nausea rolled through me. How long could he survive? The images assaulted me: a small form lost beneath ancient trees, stumbling over roots, trembling in the damp dark, facing beasts or worse… humans without scruples.
My hand, resting on the cold arm of the throne-like chair in this antechamber, clenched until my knuckles bleached white. I forced a ragged breath. Calm. Find calm, Alduin. Panic won't bring him home. The King's mantle felt leaden, suffocating, but it was the only weight that might anchor me against the storm of a father's terror. Find him. Find him.
The ancient ways offered a sliver of hope, a thread I'd never imagined needing to grasp. Since the dawn of Dicathen, the royal families had been guarded by a covenant forged in blood and divine artifacts. Every race had mages. Two White Cores. Bound by unbreakable oaths sworn on relics gifted by the gods themselves to the first kings.
Shadows of immense power, sworn to shield the throne and its bloodline. A power reserved for existential threats to the crown… wielded now for a father's shattered heart.
I waited in the oppressive silence of the small council room adjacent to my study. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass, painting fractured colours on the floor, mocking the darkness within me. Each tick of the ornate clock on the mantle was a hammer blow to my resolve. Then, a subtle shift in the air pressure, a presence materializing from the shadows near the bookshelves.
"You called for me, My King?" Her voice was calm, clear, resonant with contained power. Alea Triscan. Code Aureate. One of the two living pillars of that ancient oath.
She stood tall, her posture impeccable, blue eyes sharp and observant beneath the hood she now pushed back. She had been named to this sacred duty shortly after my own ascension, a legacy passed from my father's reign. Seeing her now, this paragon of elven strength and loyalty, only deepened the chasm of my shame.
"Yes, Alea," I replied. My voice sounded alien to my own ears—dark, stripped bare, devoid of its usual regal timbre. I met her gaze, the weight of my failure pressing down. "What I am about to ask…" I swallowed, the words thick as tar. "It is not a command from your King. It is… a plea. From a father."
The distinction felt vital, humiliating, necessary.
Alea's composure flickered, just for an instant. A slight widening of those perceptive blue eyes, a subtle tension coiling in her shoulders. "My King?" Confusion, carefully controlled, coloured her tone.
How could she not be? Their purpose was the defence of kingdoms, the thwarting of assassins, the safeguarding of dynasties against threats unseen. Not… this. Not the frantic search for a lost child, a failure of my family and my family only, not a battlefield.
Yet, in this moment, there was no one stronger, no one whose loyalty was more absolute, than Alea Triscan. Or her colleague, Aya Grephin, Code Phantom. They were the unseen strength.
"My son," I forced the words out, each one a shard of glass in my throat. "Corvis. He has… disappeared. Sometime during the night. He vanished from the palace grounds." The admission felt like tearing open a wound. "I… I need you to find him, Alea. Find my boy."
The request hung in the air, raw and desperate. Asking a White Core, one of the guardians of my nation, to track down the son I had let slip away through my own inadequacy. The shame was a physical burn.
Alea's reaction was instantaneous and profound. Her eyes widened fully, a flash of genuine shock breaking through her professional reserve. The air around her seemed to crackle faintly with suppressed mana.
"The Prince… disappeared?" Her voice, though still controlled, held an edge of disbelief and immediate, fierce concern. She drew herself up even straighter, her golden gaze locking onto mine with unwavering intensity. "Your Majesty," she stated, the title imbued with a new gravity, "consider it done. I will find Prince Corvis. I swear it upon my name."
Solemnity radiated from her, a vow etched in the light of the sun filtering through the painted windows of the palace.
"Thank you, Alea," I breathed, the words barely a whisper, laden with a gratitude that felt pitifully small against the nature of the task and the depth of my failure.
With a bow that was both deeply respectful and charged with purpose, Code Aureate turned. One moment she was there, a figure of power; the next, she was simply… gone. Vanished back into the shadows from whence she came.
The silence rushed back in, heavier than before. Alone again, the fragile dam holding back my terror and blame shattered. I slumped forward, elbows on my knees, face buried in trembling hands. "I hope she finds you soon, my son," I choked out into the empty room, the sound muffled and broken. "I am so… so sorry."
Excuses? There were none. Only the crushing memory of Corvis's quiet detachment, the walls I hadn't known how to scale, the loneliness I hadn't seen festering until it drove him to flee the only home he knew. We'd let him drift into that silent abyss. I had let him.
What a wretched, ridiculous father I had been.