Corvis Eralith
I moved through the branches with the silence of falling snow, Vaelmora long since swallowed by the mist behind me.
The forest had deepened, the familiar paths giving way to wilder lands where the trees grew closer together and the undergrowth clawed at the light.
Somewhere ahead, a bear mana beast lurked—a real bear, not Master Kamiel's fanciful Beary Bear, but something flesh and blood and dangerous.
The distinction mattered.
Master Kamiel had taught me many things about sound magic, but the most valuable was how to use it as a second pair of eyes.
Sound magic interacted with mana in ways no other element could match—it was the interaction itself that created those rich, complex vibrations that set it apart from mundane noise.
A note struck through mana carried differently, resonated deeper, revealed more. It could be harmonious or cacophonous depending on the wielder's intent, but it was always, always informative.
I extended my awareness outward, sound magic rippling from my core like the first tremor of an earthquake.
The technique was delicate—too much force and I would announce my presence to everything within a kilometer; too little and I would sense nothing at all.
I had learned to walk that edge through months of practice, months of failure, months of slowly understanding that subtlety was its own kind of power.
When those sound waves encountered something with a mana signature—something whose internal energy was discordant compared to the ambient mana of the forest—the feedback would tell me.
Unless, of course, my target could suppress its signature entirely. Unless it could harmonize with the ambient mana so completely that it became invisible to this kind of detection.
Like Mirage Walk.
The thought surfaced unbidden. The Thyestes Clan's secret technique was more formidable than I had ever imagined. To hide not just your body but your very existence from mana-based perception... it was the difference between camouflage and invisibility, between concealment and erasure.
I closed my eyes and focused entirely on the vibrations.
Behind my eyelids, the world dissolved into concentric circles, rippling outward from my position like stones dropped into still water. Each wave was a question, and the forest answered with every tree, every branch, every drifting snowflake.
The ambient mana hummed with the quiet music of winter, a low, sustained note that was the breath of the Elshire itself.
Then—a fracture.
One of my waves encountered something that broke its perfect circumference. A discord. A wrongness. The feedback was faint, but unmistakable.
I opened my eyes.
Something was there. Probably just a lesser mana beast, but maybe—maybe—it was something that could lead me to my target. Predators followed prey. Hunters watched the hunted.
I adjusted my course, leaping to the next branch. Snow cascaded from the wooden limb I had been crouched on, falling in a silent curtain behind me. The mist swallowed my passage as if I had never been there at all.
The problem with my sonar technique—Manasonar, I called it, a name far more dignified than Master Kamiel's suggested "Hyper-Resonant Mage Finding Spell"—was that it required stillness.
I had to stop, to concentrate, to let the waves propagate and return. I couldn't do it while moving, while tracking, while hunting. So I moved in bursts: silent flight between branches, then a pause, a breath, a pulse of sound, then another flight.
The mist helped. It always helped, shrouding me in the same white silence that cloaked the forest, making me just another shadow among shadows.
When I finally reached the source of the discordance, I found not one mana signature, but four.
Forest Hounds. Of course. I had thought I'd learned to recognize their signatures by now, but Manasonar was still teaching me new lessons every day.
Their mana resonated in patterns I hadn't quite memorized, the difference between individual packs as distinct as accents in a language I was still learning to speak.
I narrowed my eyes, studying them from my perch. One of the hounds was injured—a deep gash across its hind leg, the fur around it matted with frozen blood. The wound was fresh. The bleeding had only recently slowed.
Something had done this. Something fast, something strong, something that had caught a Forest Hound—a creature that knew these woods better than any elf—and hurt it.
My target.
The injured hound limped in a tight circle, its packmates pressing close, their bodies forming a protective ring. They were afraid. Forest Hounds were not easily afraid.
I should do something. The thought was automatic, instinctive, the part of me that had been raised in the Verticil's shadow asserting itself before I could calculate cost or benefit.
Forest Hounds held a unique place in elven culture. They they were guardians, protectors, living analogues to the Chinese guardian lions of Earth.
Beloved by my people, respected by my ancestors, considered as much a part of the Elshire as the trees themselves.
From my storage ring—a gift from Grandpa—I retrieved bandages and a small round bottle. The balm inside was my own creation, born from late nights in the palace's herbarium and quiet experiments with the rich healing traditions of Elenoir.
Disinfectant, painkiller and wound-closer. Tessia had helped with the plant magic, coaxing the active compounds from the herbs with her deviant affinity. Alanis Emeria, our pediatrician, had provided the medical knowledge, never knowing what I was using it for.
The Forest Hounds tensed as I dropped from the branch, my fall softened by Ars Ariamorph. Four pairs of eyes fixed on me, and for a moment, I saw the wildness in them—the part of these creatures that had nothing to do with elven legend and everything to do with survival.
Then they relaxed.
Forest Hounds were like sharks in some ways, I had learned. Feared by those who didn't understand them, respected by those who did. They never hunted elves, never attacked unless in extremis.
Tessia had learned this years ago, when a pack had accepted her as one of their own in the Verticil's temple. I had learned it more slowly, through patient observation, through offering help without asking for anything in return.
I approached slowly, hands visible, making no sudden movements. The injured hound's pack watched me, their bodies still tense but no longer poised to flee. They knew me, I realized. Or at least, they knew what I represented.
The Eralith name carried weight even among the creatures of the Elshire.
I crouched beside the wounded animal. Its breath came in sharp, pained gasps, but it made no move to bite.
I could repay, in some small way, the debt I owed from another timeline—the debt for Forest Hounds who had helped Tessia return home, in a story that had never happened, in a world that had never been.
They weren't the same hounds. But they were of the same forest, the same blood, the same ancient compact between elf and beast.
The Verticil taught that all who wandered the Elshire deserved aid. It was one of the few precepts I had embraced without reservation.
The Asuras would never be my gods—I would carry that rejection to whatever grave eventually claimed me—but the Verticil itself? The reverence for life, for cycles, for the sacred duty to protect what grew? That, I could follow.
I opened the bottle. The balm's scent filled the air—sharp with herbs, sweet with honey I had infused, clean with the alcohol that would prevent infection. I spread it on a bandage, my movements slow, deliberate, letting the hound see every motion.
"I'm here to help," I said, and the words were not for the injured beast but for its pack, for the eyes watching my every move.
They listened.
It was something Tessia and I had discovered years ago, during those rare, precious afternoons when we escaped the palace together—Tessia bragging about how she would defend me from everything, me pretending to need defending.
The mana beasts of the Elshire, or at least those considered harmless, were inexplicably friendly to us. More friendly than they were to any other elves. More friendly, even, than to our own family.
I didn't know why. But the result was the same: we were welcome here, in a way our parents were not.
It made every kill harder. Every Carnetil felled, every mana beast hunted for food or practice, left a weight in my chest that no logic could dispel. I was in debt to this forest. Deeply, profoundly, perhaps irredeemably in debt.
I cleaned the wound with water conjured from the mist—Ars Aquamorph, gentle as rain, precise as a surgeon's tool. The hound flinched but did not pull away.
Then I applied the bandage, wrapping it tight enough to hold but loose enough to allow movement. The balm's effects were immediate: the hound's panting eased, its muscles relaxed, its eyes lost that desperate, hunted look.
"Yeah." I allowed myself a small, satisfied smirk. "I'm proud of this concoction."
The hound licked my hand once, a rough tongue against cold fingers, and I felt something loosen in my chest.
I stood, ready to climb back into the branches, to resume my search. The hounds would be safe now, at least for a while. I had done what I could.
The world had other plans.
The roar came from nowhere and everywhere—a sound that didn't so much break the forest's stillness as shatter it. The Elshire had been holding its breath, and now it screamed.
The Forest Hounds tensed as one, their fur rising in stiff bristles. The injured one whimpered, pressing close to its packmates. Leaves trembled on branches that had been still for weeks. Snow fell in silent cascades from the canopy above, great white curtains that briefly obscured the world.
I moved without thinking. My bow vanished into my storage ring, replaced by my dueling wand-cane—a length of polished Watchful Willow wood, resonant with mana, balanced to perfection.
Ashton Auddyr had taught me the stance I now fell into, feet planted, weight forward, the cane held at an angle that could block or strike with equal ease.
Albold Chaffer had drilled me in the transitions between forms until they were muscle memory.
Grandpa had refused to spar with me—he always held back too much with Tessia and me—but Ashton and Albold had been less gentle.
The wand-cane was the perfect weapon for someone like me. Light enough for my nine-year-old frame, sturdy enough to parry blows that should have shattered it, long enough to keep enemies at distance while I shaped the magic that was my true strength.
Another roar. Closer this time, I heard something in it beyond rage. Something that might have been pain. Something that might have been grief.
I vaulted onto a branch, taking the high ground, my heart hammering against my ribs. The mist swirled around me, and through it, I saw a tree fall.
This tree was ripped from its base, its roots torn from the frozen earth like a child pulling weeds from a garden. It crashed through the canopy, taking lesser trees with it, and the sound of its descent was a avalanche of wood and snow and ancient, splintering life.
But I couldn't see what had done it. Whatever this creature was, it was stealthy. Impossible stealthy.
A Shadow Panther? Grandpa's Beast Will came from such a creature, and they were masters of concealment. But Shadow Panthers didn't have this kind of strength. They were assassins, not siege engines.
Manasonar. I closed my eyes, sent out the waves, listened—
Nothing.
For one terrible moment, I heard nothing at all. The ambient mana was undisturbed, the forest's song unbroken. Whatever was out there had such perfect control over its own signature that it simply... didn't exist.
But something was wrong. The feedback—or rather, the lack of feedback—was wrong. Every mana signature had a sound when touched by Manasonar.
I wasn't experienced enough to distinguish individual signatures, not reliably, but I could tell the difference between beast and elf, between elf and plant, between plant and nothing.
This was nothing. A void where something should have been. A drum with a hole in its skin, producing a sound that was dead, flat, corrupted.
A shiver traced down my spine like a cold finger.
The Forest Hounds were gone. I hadn't seen them leave, hadn't heard them flee. They had simply... vanished, taking their wounded packmate with them into the mist.
They knew. They had known what was coming before I did.
Then I heard it: heavy steps, coming toward me. It was a charge, a avalanche, a force of nature given form and purpose.
The roar came again, and this time it was a war cry.
The tree beneath me exploded.
The trunk shattered, split, disintegrated as something massive slammed into it with the force of a battering ram. The whole world lurched, and I was thrown—airborne, spinning through a cloud of splinters and snow and my own shocked breath.
How fast is this thing?!
The thought was a scream in my head, but my body was already moving. Years of parkour with Alwyn, years of learning to treat the forest as terrain to be conquered rather than obstacles to be avoided—it all came together in a single, desperate sequence.
I kicked off the falling trunk, using it as a springboard. Air magic cushioned the launch, reduced the drag, let me fly for just a moment.
My hand caught a branch, my arm screaming at the sudden weight, and I pulled myself up, up, onto a new perch just as the old tree crashed into the earth below.
The impact shook the ground. The roar that followed shook my bones.
I didn't wait. I was already moving, leaping to another branch, then another, my feet finding holds that shouldn't have existed, my body doing things it had no right to do.
The creature below was already charging again, its target the tree I had just abandoned, and I saw it—
A bear.
Hazelnut fur, massive shoulders, claws that could tear through ancient wood like paper. It was a bear, a bear, the kind of creature that had no business moving this fast, hitting this hard, existing with this kind of impossible strength.
Its eyes found me. Green. Bright. Wrong.
The eyes were wrong. They held something dark, something that didn't belong in the face of any natural creature. Saliva drooled from its fauces in thick ropes, the foam at its lips suggesting something rabid, something sick.
It charged again.
I leaped before it hit, but I was too slow, too tired, too human despite everything I had become.
The tree shuddered, and my grip failed and I was falling—
My wand-cane found the trunk of another tree, the wood singing with mana as I drove it deep, using it as an anchor, as a pivot, as the only thing keeping me from the ground and the jaws that waited there.
My body swung in a wild arc, momentum carrying me around the trunk, and for one impossible moment I was weightless, suspended between the forest and the sky, between survival and the end.
Then I pushed. I pushed with everything I had, launching myself away, retrieving my cane as I flew, and behind me the tree was already falling, already dying, already gone.
I hit the ground. No branch beneath me, no perch to catch me, just the cold, hungry earth.
"Damnit!"
I turned.
The bear was already there.
It loomed above me, massive, impossibly large, its shadow swallowing the light. Its green eyes—those wrong, terrible eyes—stared down at me with something that might have been hunger, might have been rage, might have been something I didn't have a name for.
Its claw came down.
I rolled. The blow missed by a finger's width, carving a trench in the frozen ground that would have taken my head.
I rolled again, Ars Ariamorph carrying me further, faster, until I was on my feet, cane raised, breathing in ragged gasps.
The bear opened its jaws. It moved them side to side, a strange, almost convulsive motion, and then it raised its claws and began to scratch. At itself. At its own fur, its own flesh, as if trying to tear something out of its own skin.
I didn't understand. I didn't need to understand. I leaped, found a branch, pulled myself up as the bear lunged—
Its jaws closed centimeters from my foot. I felt the wind of its passing, felt the heat of its breath, felt the wrongness of it in the air.
And in its green eyes, I saw tears.
The shiver that went through me had nothing to do with cold.
Corrupted. The word was a stone dropped into still water. Alacryan poisons. The same thing they had done in the novel, sending maddened beasts against Elenoir and Sapin, turning the Beast Glades's own children into weapons.
But this one—this one was fighting. Whatever it was, whatever it had been, it was trying to claw the corruption out of its own flesh, trying to be itself again even as the poison burned through its veins.
I had no time to think. The bear's head slammed into my tree, and I was falling, falling directly toward those waiting jaws—
No.
I pointed my cane downward and pushed. Every scrap of mana in my core, every ounce of will I possessed, everything I had learned in nine years of this life and twenty-something of another—I poured it into a single spell.
A torrent of air, a hurricane compressed to a column, a force that should have been impossible for a boy my age, with a core my size, with anything less than absolute, desperate need.
The blast propelled me upward. I flew, truly flew, for seconds that stretched into years. The world shrank beneath me, the bear became a speck, the trees became a carpet of white and green.
I grabbed a branch. Steadied myself. Gasped for air that tasted like copper and victory.
I turned.
The bear stood where I had left it. Disoriented, yes, its massive head swinging as it tried to locate me. But unharmed. The hide that had turned aside its own claws had turned aside my magic without effort.
My breath came in ragged gasps. My hands were shaking. My core felt like a furnace that had been emptied of fuel, nothing left but ash and fading heat.
But I had my bow. I had my stone darts. I had hope.
The first dart shattered against its hide. The second. The third. Splinters of stone rained down like useless confetti, and the bear's green eyes—those sad, wrong, terrible eyes—turned toward me.
And they changed.
Green to red. Deep and rich, the color of fresh blood, the color of wounds that never heal.
I didn't need Realmheart to see it. I felt it in my bones, in my blood, in the very core of what I was. The taint of the Vritra.
The bear roared, and the world answered.
The sound was beyond sound—it was presence, a force that flattened the air, that made the trees bow, that drove into my ears and my chest and my mind with the weight of an avalanche. I felt my ears ring, felt blood trickle from somewhere, felt the world tilt.
I jumped. I had to jump, had to move, had to—
It was faster. So much faster.
The claw caught my leg, and the world became pain. White, blinding, absolute pain. I felt my flesh part, felt bone crack, felt something in me break in a way that had nothing to do with my body.
I fell like a stone. The ground rushed up to meet me, and I met it with a scream that was swallowed by the snow.
Above me, the bear breathed. Heavy, labored breaths that fogged in the cold air. It loomed, a mountain of fur and rage and sorrow.
I looked into its eyes. The red was fading, I thought.
Green was pushing through, struggling to reclaim what had been lost. And in that green, I saw pain. Not the pain of corruption, not the pain of the poison eating at its mind—but the pain of knowing. Of being trapped in a body that wasn't its own, of watching itself become something it hated, of fighting even when the fight was already lost.
The bear grinned. The expression was grotesque on its animal features, a rictus that had no place in nature. It was enjoying my suffering, I thought. It wanted me to hurt, wanted me to die, wanted—
No. It wasn't the bear that wanted. It was the poison. The corruption. The thing that had taken root in its soul and was using it, wearing it like a skin, wearing its pain like a mask.
I raised my cane. Struck its side. The blow was nothing, less than nothing, and the bear didn't even flinch. My cane splintered on impact.
Panic took me. Pure, animal panic, the kind that erases thought, that reduces everything to a single, burning need: run.
I tried to run.
My leg wouldn't hold me. I stumbled, fell, crawled. The snow was red beneath me, my own blood painting the ground in patterns I didn't have time to read.
I needed Master Kamiel! I needed someone—anyone—to be here, to save me, to make this not be happening!
But there was no one. There was only me, and the bear, and the forest that had become a tomb.
Its jaws closed around my neck.
I heard the bone break before I felt it. A sound like ice cracking, like branches snapping, like something that should never, ever be heard from inside one's own body.
Then came the pressure. The squeeze. The terrible, patient closing of teeth that had been designed to crush, to kill, to end.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't scream. Couldn't do anything but hang there, suspended between the bear's jaws and the ground that was receding, fading, becoming something I could no longer reach.
The river was coming. I felt it in my bones, in my blood, in the darkness that was closing in from all sides.
The same river that had claimed me once before, when another monster's beak had taken my head, when another death had been the end of everything.
I thought of Tessia, of her smile, of the way she hugged me like she was afraid I would disappear.
I thought of Alwyn, of his quiet strength, of the friend who had followed me into darkness without ever asking why.
I thought of Alea, and Grandpa, and Mom, and Dad. Of all the people I had tried to save, all the futures I had tried to prevent, all the battles I had fought before I was old enough to hold a sword.
The bear's jaws tightened, and the river rose, and I—