Corvis Eralith
I felt something warm and wet against my face, a slow, rhythmic pressure that pulled me from the darkness like a thread drawing a needle through cloth.
There was weight on my chest, too—solid, grounding, alive.
My eyes snapped open.
I wasn't dead.
I realized it with great shock, and for a moment I simply lay there, staring up at the grey winter sky through the canopy, waiting for the illusion to shatter.
But the warmth didn't fade. The weight didn't lift.
And when I turned my head, I found myself staring into eyes the color of new leaves in spring, of moss on ancient stone, of the Elshire itself waking after a long sleep.
The bear was watching me. Her great head was lowered to mine, and her tongue—that rough, impossibly gentle tongue—was still pressed against my cheek.
She licked me again, slowly, deliberately, and I felt the devotion in it. The desperation. As if she was trying to make sure I was real, that I was here, that I was alive.
Her paw rested on my abdomen, just over my mana core. The same paw that, moments ago, had been about to end me. Now it lay there with a protective intensity that made my chest ache with something I couldn't name.
I didn't move. I didn't dare. I simply lay in the snow, staring up at this creature that had killed me, but that had also fought off the corruption of the Vritra itself to lick my face like a puppy welcoming its master home.
"Can you..." My voice came out small, smaller than it had been in years. "Can you let me up?"
The bear growled—a soft, rumbling sound that vibrated through her chest and into mine—and did as I asked.
She sat back on her haunches, her paws folding beneath her, and watched me with eyes that held too much intelligence, too much awareness, to belong to any ordinary beast.
I pushed myself up slowly, my limbs trembling with exhaustion, and met that gaze.
"You fought it." The words came out as a whisper. "The Vritra's corruption. You fought it, and you won."
The bear growled at the name, a sharp, angry sound that made me flinch back, my hands rising instinctively. "I—I didn't mean to say it! I'm sorry, I—"
But she wasn't angry at me. She leaned forward, her great muzzle pressing against my face, and licked me again—softer this time, almost apologetic.
The anger in her growl had been for the name itself, for what it represented, for the poison that had tried to take her from herself.
This bear knew the Vritra. She knew their name, their corruption, their touch. And she had fought it with something deep. Something that had been forged into her very being.
A Guardian Bear. The thought crystallized in my mind with the clarity of absolute certainty. A mana beast created by the Titans themselves, one of the eight races of Asuras. Beasts meant to guard, to protect, to serve as bonds to the divine.
Like Boo, Eleanor Leywin's companion in the timeline that would never be.
"You're a Guardian Bear." I said it aloud, testing the words, feeling their weight. "Aren't you?"
She nuzzled against my side, and I couldn't tell if it was confirmation or affection or some impossible mixture of both. Her communication was strange, her gestures alien.
"Is that a yes?"
A shiver ran through me then, sharp and sudden, and I realized how cold I was. My clothes were torn, shredded by claws that had come within inches of ending me.
The winter air bit at my exposed skin, and the exhaustion that had been waiting patiently in the background surged forward, threatening to drag me under.
The bear saw. She pressed her side against me, and the warmth that radiated from her was like standing before a hearth after months in the snow.
I sagged into her without thinking, my arms wrapping around her massive frame, and when she growled I felt it more than heard it—a deep, resonant sound that vibrated through her fur and into my bones.
It was a purr, I realized. A Guardian Bear's purr.
"You're very comfortable," I murmured, my fingers finding their way into her thick hazelnut fur. The texture was dense, warm, alive in a way that made my eyes heavy.
I laid my head against her side, and she was so large, so solid, that I could have been lying on the softest bed in the Royal Palace.
Corvis, my mind whispered somewhere far away, this creature killed you. Not long ago. Not in a time that never was. She killed you.
But I couldn't blame her. I looked at those green eyes, at the intelligence behind them, at the way she watched me with something that might have been wonder, might have been hope, might have been the desperate need of a creature who had been alone for too long.
She had been under the yoke of the Vritra. She had been made a weapon against everything. And she had fought.
The bear who killed me was not this bear. That had been a different time, a different death, a different life. This bear had won.
But if she was a Guardian Bear, where was her Asura? The thought sent ice through my veins, colder than any winter wind. Guardian Bears were bonded to the divine. If she was here, alone, fighting off Vritra corruption in the forests of Elenoir—
"Hey." I tried to keep my voice steady. "Where is your bond? The Asura you were meant to protect?"
The sound she made was the saddest thing I had ever heard. A whine that seemed to come from somewhere deep, somewhere wounded, somewhere that had been waiting for someone to ask that question for a very, very long time. She looked at the ground, and I understood.
"Are they... gone?"
Another growl. Not angry this time. Affirmative. Final. The kind of sound that comes after grief has burned itself down to ash.
She moved then, shifting until she was facing me fully, and her paw rose again. It settled on my abdomen, over my mana core, and I felt something I had only felt once before.
When Cherry's Beast Will had reached for me, had touched me and then had been torn away.
"You want me to be your—"
Her tongue found my face again, and I laughed—a broken, exhausted, impossibly relieved laugh that surprised us both.
A Guardian Bear. A creature forged by the Titans themselves, meant to stand beside gods, wanted to bond with me.
But then the other thought came. The thought that had been with me since the moment I opened my eyes in this world and recognized it for what it was.
What would Epheotus think?
I almost laughed again. Good. Let them think what they wanted. In the timeline that was, Windsom Indrath had given Boo to Eleanor Leywin for one reason and one reason alone: to control.
To ensure that Arthur's family remained within the orbit of the Dragons' influence. If Epheotus thought the same of me, if they saw this bond as an opportunity rather than a threat, then I would be safer than I had ever been.
A piece on their board, ready to rebel.
I accepted the contract.
It was not like the stories I had read, not like the simple words of binding that lesser mages used for lesser beasts.
This was an equals contract, the kind that only A-Class mana beasts and above could offer, the kind that tied two souls together in a way that neither could break.
As I felt it settle into my core, into my self, I understood something I had never understood before: this was not ownership. This was family.
And with that understanding came a name. It surfaced from the bond like a bubble rising through deep water, fragile and shimmering and there. I caught it, held it, tried to shape it with my tongue—
It vanished. The sound slipped away before I could grasp it, leaving only the echo of something that had been, something that was no longer.
"What?" I blinked, confusion cutting through the haze of exhaustion. Through the bond, I felt her—my Guardian Bear's—response.
"You want me to give you a new name?"
The growl that followed was happy. Unmistakably, undeniably happy. She pressed her head against my chest, and I felt the warmth of her through my torn clothes, through my aching muscles, through the exhaustion that was threatening to pull me under again.
A new name. For a new life. For a creature who had been alone, who had fought, who had won.
"Then..." I thought of the forest, of the honey that had saved her, of the sweetness that had called her back from the edge of madness. I thought of her fur, the color of hazelnuts in autumn, the color of the earth after rain. I thought of the name that had slipped away, and the one that would take its place.
"Berna."
She—Berna—growled her approval, and the sound was the warmest thing I had ever heard.
I slumped against her side, and she shifted to catch me, her body curling around mine like a wall of fur, warmth and the steady, reassuring thrum of her breathing.
—
I woke to the familiar creak of wooden beams and the distant crackle of a hearth.
The bed beneath me was the same one I had slept in during every visit to Great-aunt's chalet—the quilt scratchy against my chin, the pillow thin but soft, the frame old enough to remember hands that had long since turned to dust.
I knew it before I opened my eyes, knew the weight of it, the smell of it, the way the morning light always found the same crack in the shutters.
Then I opened my eyes, and the world tilted.
Berna was in the bedroom. She was crammed into the room, her massive frame taking up space that should have been impossible for her to occupy.
Three meters long, at least, maybe more—I had never seen her standing, had never seen her still long enough to measure, and now she filled the space between the bed and the door like a mountain that had decided to squeeze itself into a valley.
She was chewing on one of Great-aunt's iron pots.
How she had gotten it, I had no idea. How she had fit it between her jaws, how she had carried it through the chalet without knocking down every wall, how she had decided that this was the object that required her attention—these were mysteries I did not have the energy to solve.
She turned when she felt my gaze, the pot forgotten. It clattered to the floor with a sound that should have woken the dead, and then she was moving, her great head lowering, her tongue finding my face with the same desperate devotion she had shown in the forest.
"Berna." I tried to push her away, laughing despite myself. "Haven't you licked me enough?"
She growled her answer, and through the bond I felt it: no. The answer was no. It would never be enough.
The door opened, and Great-aunt Rinia stood in the threshold, her hands on her flanks, her old eyes sharp despite the early hour. She looked at me, at Berna, at the dented pot lying on her floor, and for a long moment she said nothing.
"Your poor old great-aunt," she said finally, "was very, very worried for her little grandnephew when she saw him being carried here by the largest bear she had ever seen."
I wanted to ask her everything. The questions rose in my throat like a tide—did you see? Did you know? Did your visions show you the river, the threads, the way I drowned and surfaced and drowned again?—but I swallowed them down.
She didn't know. I could see it in her eyes, in the slight confusion that lingered behind her sharp gaze.
Rinia Darcassan, who was never confused, who had seen my soul the moment she first laid eyes on me, who had kept my secret for years without ever fully understanding it—she did not know that I had died.
And that meant she did not know that I had come back either.
Fate was behind that. Fate, and something I was only beginning to understand. REtrocurrent—something Fate bestowed on me.
So I smiled. Lazy, tired, the smile of a boy who had spent too long in the cold and was finally, finally warm.
"This girl was behind all those sightings." I reached up to stroke Berna's snout, and she pressed into my hand like a cat seeking affection. "The mysterious beast terrorizing Vaelmora. All her."
"And you decided to make a bond with her." Great-aunt's tone was dry, but I heard the warmth beneath it. "How quaint."
She looked at the pot, at the dent in its side, at the way Berna's eyes followed it with the hungry attention of a creature who had found something she wanted and did not intend to give up.
"A bear with a taste for metals," she observed.
I looked at Berna. Through the bond, I felt her attention shift—not to the pot, but to something deeper, something that hummed in her bones. Guardian Bears were forged by Titans. Masters of earth, of stone, of the deep magic that ran through the veins of the world.
Metals were earth's blood, solidified, waiting to be shaped. If Berna had a taste for them, it was not hunger. It was memory. Or so I thought.
"I think I will rest." I sank back into the pillow, the quilt pulled up to my chin, my eyes already closing. "Until we return to Zestier."
Great-aunt's hand found my forehead, cool and dry, and I felt her hesitate. The confusion was still there, the flicker of something I couldn't quite name.
"Sure," she said, and I heard the question she didn't ask. "Resting will do you only good."
She left. The door closed. Berna's weight settled beside the bed, her warmth a wall against the winter cold.
I lay in the dark, and I thought about the road ahead. A Guardian Bear at my side, bound to me by a contract that tied us soul to soul. A power I was only beginning to understand, a secret I was only beginning to uncover, a war that was coming whether I was ready or not.
But for now, there was this: a room, a bear, the slow, steady rhythm of breathing.
I closed my eyes, and I slept.