Grey Vritra
Taegrin Caelum rose before me like a wound in the fabric of reality.
The fortress of the High Sovereign dominated the plateau at the heart of the Basilisks Fang Mountains, a sprawling monument to everything that Vritra represented.
No walls surrounded it—what fool would dare attack this place? What army would march willingly into the shadow of such power? The very absence of defenses was a statement, a proclamation carved into the landscape itself: a proclamation made to the Asuras of Epheotus.
Hundreds of towers and spires thrust toward the sky like the tentacles of some buried Leviathan reaching for escape. A Leviathan escaping depths not even their kind would dare to challenge.
They were uneven, asymmetrical, built to no pattern I could discern—black stone, dark steel, opaque glass that seemed to swallow light rather than reflect it.
They defied gravity and sanity both, leaning at angles that should have sent them crashing down, held aloft by nothing I could see and everything I could feel.
The wind howled across the plateau, a constant, keening wail that would have sent any normal lesser staggering, their balance destroyed by forces beyond their comprehension. The Basilisks Fang Mountains channeled gales from every direction, concentrating them here, at this place, as if the very elements paid homage to the power that dwelled within.
A thick fog blanketed everything, its particles heavy with decay magic that made something deep in my chest—something that had been planted there, grown there, bred there—sing with joy. My Vritra Blood rejoiced in this poisoned air, and the rejoicing made me want to vomit.
And above it all, the sun.
It was black. Not the black of night, not the absence of light—but the black of lead, of coal, of something that should glow but instead consumed.
It hung in the sky like a wound, casting eerie, sickly illumination across the plateau, painting everything in shades of ash and old blood. A warning to all who approached: this was the seat of power of the High Sovereign. This was the heart of darkness from which Agrona Vritra ruled.
My blood boiled.
Being this close to where he lived—where he existed, where his presence saturated the very air—had effects I couldn't control. My emotions tried to shrink, to make themselves small and insignificant. My subservience, that implanted need to obey, to serve, to worship, swelled in response.
I buried it all. Smothered it beneath layers of will and rage and the frayed memory of who I had been before.
I would not show weakness in front of Agrona Vritra. Not today. Not on my fifth birthday, when I had finally been deemed worthy to enter the Obsidian Vault.
The path ascended toward the main structure's entrance, a winding ribbon of black stone that seemed to move beneath my feet, alive with the same decay magic that saturated the fog. Walking beside me, silent as the grave, was Cadell Vritra.
Scythe of the Central Dominion. The strongest of Agrona's blades. The one whose very presence made lesser Vritra—even Scythes like Seris—tremble.
He had collected me from the Denoir Manor in Cargidan. I still remembered the looks on Lenora and Corbett's faces when he appeared—the fear, the terror, the way they had shrunk back as if hoping the shadows would swallow them whole. They were Highblood, powerful in their own right, but before Cadell they were nothing. Less than nothing.
And yet, for all his power, Cadell was a far more sufferable presence than Seris. She watched. She probed. She analyzed. Every word she spoke was a test, every glance an examination. Cadell simply... existed. Cold. Absolute. Unquestioning.
There was something almost restful about his silence, about the way he asked nothing and expected nothing but obedience.
I preferred him. At least with Cadell, I knew where I stood.
We arrived before a door of impossible size, framed by two figures I couldn't properly see. They were shrouded in long robes that covered them from head to toe, leaving visible only the markings on their backs—runes, complex and ancient, that seemed to writhe in the dim light.
My fist clenched. Today, I would receive those runes. Today, I would become truly Vritra.
"Scythe Cadell." The figure on the left spoke, its voice hollow, echoing. "The High Sovereign awaits."
The gates opened.
I stepped through alone.
The interior of Taegrin Caelum was no less oppressive than its exterior. A long corridor stretched before me, its floor covered by a runner of deep red that seemed to pulse with each heartbeat, with each breath, with each thought.
Candelabra lined the walls, their flames eternal, casting light that somehow made the shadows deeper rather than dispelling them.
And as I walked, a memory surged.
Not a thought. Not a fragment. A memory, clearer than anything I had experienced since my reincarnation.
I saw a man. Blonde hair—like mine, like the hair I still had before the Vritra Blood changed it. No horns. No runes. Just a man, young and tired and trapped.
A crown of steel rested on his brow, heavy with meaning he hadn't asked for. Armor clad his body, ceremonial rather than practical, designed to impress rather than protect. He stood in a palace that overlooked a sprawling city—a city I somehow knew was called something else, something I couldn't quite reach.
A council of men surrounded him. Old men. Powerful men. Men who smiled with their mouths and schemed with their eyes. They spoke, and he listened. They decided, and he obeyed.
A throne stood in the middle of that room, and he sat on it—but he was not the one who ruled.
Names echoed in my mind, carried on currents of memory I hadn't known existed. Cecilia. Nico. Cecilia. Nico. Cecilia. The syllables pounded against the inside of my skull, demanding recognition, demanding acknowledgment.
I had never seen anything so vividly. Not in dreams, not in flashes, not in the quiet moments between sleep and waking. This was real. This was truth.
And the High Sovereign had all the answers. He had always had them. He was the key to everything—to my past, to my purpose, to the aching void where my former self should have been.
The corridor ended at a central tower, its interior soaring upward into darkness. Stairs spiraled along its walls, dozens of them, hundreds, climbing toward a summit I couldn't see.
"The High Sovereign awaits you in the uppermost chamber." Cadell's voice came from behind me—I hadn't heard him follow. His red eyes pierced me, seeing everything, revealing nothing.
I didn't answer. I simply began to climb.
The stairs were endless, each step identical to the last, yet I never doubted my direction. Something deep in my chest—that same something that had rejoiced in the decay fog—pulled me upward like a lodestone drawn to true north.
The High Sovereign's influence on the world around him, the sheer weight of his existence, was a beacon in the darkness.
I could no more miss my destination than I could stop breathing.
As I climbed, I passed door after door, window after window. Each portal offered a view of the surrounding towers and spires, and each window was decorated with scenes of impossible detail.
Basilisks against Pantheons. Basilisks against Leviathans. Basilisks against Hamadryads. Basilisks against Phoenixes. Basilisks against Titans. Basilisks against Sylphs. Basilisks against other Basilisks. And finally, climactically, Basilisks against Dragons.
All of them showed the same thing: Vritra triumphant. Vritra victorious. Vritra ascendant.
The propaganda was blatant, almost laughable in its obviousness. And yet, looking at those images, feeling the power that saturated this place, I couldn't entirely dismiss them as lies.
My blood continued to boil. My heartbeat remained steady—I would not show fear, would not show anxiety, would not show weakness—but my blood, that cursed gift of Vritra, reacted to the High Sovereign's proximity whether I willed it or not.
I reached the top.
A throne dominated the chamber, massive and ornate, carved from the same black stone that formed the fortress's bones. And before it, rising as I entered, stood a figure that made everything else in the room seem to dim, to fade, to become background.
"Grey."
Agrona Vritra's voice was smooth and sweet, far more gentle than anything emerging from a being of such power had any right to be. It coiled around me, invited me, welcomed me. It made me want to let down my guard, to open myself, to be vulnerable before him.
But that was not how Vritra thought. That was not how I thought.
He rose from his throne and walked toward me, his movements deliberate, almost theatrical. His horns were so black they hurt to look at—not because they were bright, but because they were absence, voids in reality that drew the eye and repelled understanding.
"How good it is to see you."
"My High Sovereign." I forced the words out, forced my voice to remain steady. "It is an honor to—"
"Ah!" He laughed, cutting me off with a gesture that was somehow both dismissive and affectionate. "You aren't a man of words, Grey. You are a man of actions. Am I mistaken?" His smile widened, revealing teeth that were impossibly white against his greyish skin. "No. Of course I am not."
He turned his back on me—a gesture of supreme confidence, of absolute certainty that I posed no threat—and walked across the chamber, his hands clasped behind him. His gait was exaggerated, deliberate, each step a performance.
"You, Grey, are here for great things." He stared up at the ceiling, and I followed his gaze.
A giant painting dominated the dome above, depicting Vritra in its true form—a massive, serpentine creature of impossible scale—battling something I couldn't quite make out. The details were obscured, deliberately vague, as if the artist hadn't dared to give the enemy clear form.
Agrona's eyes returned to me, and in them I saw depths I couldn't fathom. Intelligence. Amusement. Hunger.
"You have been waiting five years for this moment," he said, his tone unreadable. "Since I reincarnated you, you have waited. And now it is here."
He was mocking me. Praising me. Both at once, in the same breath, with the same smile.
"Come." He gestured. "Follow me, Grey."
I didn't move. "High Sovereign."
He paused, one eyebrow rising slightly. A flicker of something crossed his face—interest, perhaps. That I had dared to speak before being spoken to.
"Who am I?" The words came out before I could stop them, before I could consider the wisdom of demanding answers from a god. "Who was I?"
Agrona's chiseled features settled into something that might have been contemplation. His smirk remained, but something shifted behind his eyes.
"I have the perfect answer for that, Grey." He paused, letting the silence stretch. "You were nothing. No—below nothing. Less than nothing. A puppet dancing on strings held by men who feared your power even as they exploited it. A king in name only, crowned to serve, enthroned to obey."
The words should have hurt. They should have cut. Instead, they settled into me like keys fitting locks, like answers I had always known but never spoken.
"But now?" Agrona continued, turning and resuming his walk. "Now you are more. You feel it yourself, don't you? The blood of Vritra courses through your veins, and it makes you feel good. Powerful in ways you have never been. Right?"
His voice coiled around my mind, squeezing, testing. And he was right. He was absolutely right. The power I had gained in this life—the strength, the speed, the certainty—was unlike anything my previous existence had offered.
"You feel it," he repeated, almost crooning. "You were powerless in your previous life. A tool. A weapon. A thing to be used and discarded. And now? Now you have a chance. A chance I have bestowed upon you."
The memories came again, unbidden but clearer now. An arena, vast and crowded. A girl—Cecilia, always Cecilia—standing across from me, her eyes empty, her body moving with a grace that wasn't her own. My blade through her chest. The sound it made. The way her eyes cleared for just a moment before going dark.
I had been powerless to free her from... from what? From whoever controlled her, whoever used her, whoever turned her into a weapon. My only choice had been to free her from life itself.
And then I had taken her role. I had become the puppet, the weapon, the thing. A king in name, powerless in truth, forced to fight in the Paragon Duels, forced to be displayed like a trophy, forced to obey.
"Oh, Lavinia has brought him, finally."
Agrona's voice pulled me from the memory. Footsteps sounded behind me, and I turned.
A figure stood in the doorway of the throne room, and recognition hit me like a physical blow.
He was my age—our age, the age we shared, the age that bound us across lifetimes. His hair was black, his eyes black, his very presence black with the Vritra Blood that had changed us both. And in his gaze, I saw the same shock, the same disbelief, the same impossible recognition that must have been mirrored in my own.
"Nico..." The name fell from my lips like a prayer.
"Grey..." His voice cracked on the word.
For a moment, neither of us moved. Two souls, ripped from one world and planted in another, standing face to face in the throne room of a god.
Agrona's hands settled on our shoulders—his left on mine, his right on Nico's. The touch was gentle, almost paternal, despite the power it contained.
"The Obsidian Vault awaits you both boys," he said, his voice warm, reassuring, loving. "Come."
And like sheep—like the puppets we had always been—we moved. Guided by Agrona Vritra as if he were the one who would save us from our past pain. As if he were the one who would bring justice to our stolen lives.
The Obsidian Vault rose before us.
A door. Just a door—but a door like nothing I had ever seen.
It rose like a monolith, vast and oppressive, dwarfing manifold even the High Sovereign who stood before it. Forged of dark, burnished metal, its surface was divided into heavy panels, each one alive with carvings so intricate they seemed to move in the corner of my vision.
Twisting figures. Writhing forms. Scenes that shifted between reverence and suffering, between worship and agony. The reliefs felt ancient beyond measure, deliberate beyond comprehension, as if they recorded myths too terrible to speak and warnings too late to heed.
At its summit, a sculpted figure crouched, looming over the threshold like a silent judge. It watched with empty eyes, an embodiment of authority, of judgment, of finality.
The colors of the world bled into that door. Deep reds and violent crimsons washed across its surface, as if the air itself were saturated with ash and embers. The light from the candelabra seemed to bend around it, to avoid it, leaving it shrouded in shadows that moved with purpose.
This was a door not meant to be opened lightly.
This was a door not meant to be opened at all.
And yet, here I stood. Here we stood. Nico beside me, Agrona behind us, and beyond that threshold—answers. Power. Purpose.
My blood boiled. My heart remained steady. And I stepped forward ready to become whatever Vritra had designed me to be.
Vol 1. [RE: Mariner of The Fraying Fates] END.
A/N:
As you've seen, this first volume was very much slice-of-life in nature.
It was built around the idea of what if the first volume of TBATE—especially Arthur's time after arriving in Elenoir—had been longer and more detailed.
Like Arthur, Corvis was reborn into the world of TBATE. He developed his mana core and obtained one of his signature abilities—Sylvia's Beast Will in Arthur's case, and REtrocurrent in Corvis's.
Arthur began as King Grey and became Arthur Leywin, even though most of that development happened off-screen. Similarly, Corvis started as someone completely lost and ended the volume by fully accepting himself as Corvis Eralith.
Starting from the next volume, there will be a significant timeskip—the longest in the story so far.
And more importantly thanks for reading the first volume—words truly cannot express how much I appreciate it. Next chapter will be published on the 30th of March.
Until then I will re-read the volume and correct any mistakes I have done or edit names/lore/details if needed.