THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS VIOLENCE THAT MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR SOME READERS
After a few days of testing the waters and attending the towering hell Damon called "School," he walked into the throne room. He was still in his uniform, the dark fabric feeling stiff and rigid against his skin—a constant reminder of the dual life he was currently leading.
He saw his mother sitting there, not on the throne but at a table, the weight of the crown seeming to pull at the very air around her. Damon stepped forward and bowed, a silent greeting to start the morning.
"Good morning," he said.
"Good morning, Damon," she replied. Her voice was steady, but it carried a trace of fatigue she usually managed to bury deep. "I'm sorry, but I won't be able to follow you to school today."
Damon looked at his mother, his expression a mix of admiration and worry. She looked busy—too busy. "You look busy," he noted, his eyes scanning the scrolls and maps surrounding the throne.
"Yes, I am, Damon," she admitted. "Since we've recently found out the water has been contaminated, we have to find out how and if the Atlantians plan on fixing it. The only reason we aren't even affected is because even though the water isn't bad at all, those who live I the castle still get theirs cleaned"
She shifted her posture in the chair and closed an envelope, seeming to wax it. "Also... we lost about fifty men, with a hundred who were injured in Velmira's war. We don't normally lose that much in a war of such a small scale. The Brothers were the real problem, and they were handled better than I predicted."
Damon's brow furrowed in genuine confusion. The math of war didn't seem to add up in his head. "We don't normally lose fifty men in a war against a hundred thousand? Isn't that a good number?" He questioned.
"Perhaps," the Queen said, shifting slightly in her seat. "But the men we have now are a new generation of soldiers, so they are less experienced. This means I also need to contact all the Generals to help with training. The death of those men means grieving families from different countries on Woewyn, and that means I also need to send settlements to them. The Monarchs of those countries have already sent me messages."
"Countries?" Damon asked, tilting his head. The word sounded foreign in a kingdom he thought he understood.
"Oh... this is common knowledge, so I guess school didn't explain this to you yet," she said with a faint, wry smile. "But Woewyn is one-third of Eternum. We have over fifty billion citizens alone, Damon. We have to divide the land into countries just to manage the scale."
"Ohhh," Damon murmured, the sheer weight of fifty billion souls hitting him all at once. "I get the gist of it. So they are sending you the message because if you pay the settlements, it proves that the Crown actually cares."
The Queen looked at her son, her sapphire eyes steady and unwavering. She told him that "I do care, which is exactly why I intend to give the families a lot more than what was officially required."
"Okay. Good luck, Mom," Damon said, straightening his jacket. "I'm going to be late. I'll give Nyra a lift. Rika's slowly becoming a 'goody two shoes' so I suppose she's already there."
As he turned to leave, his mother's voice stopped him in his tracks. "Damon… I love you. Always remember that."
Damon saw the raw genuineness in her eyes, the "Prince" mask slipping for a heartbeat. He smiled back, a real, human smile. "I love you too, Mom."
The Queen's smile lingered as he walked away.
The Aethersprint Runner hummed as it cut through the crisp morning air. Nyra sat in the passenger seat, watching the landscape of Woewyn blur into a streak of sunlight, buildings and people.
"Nyra," Damon started, tapping his fingers against the glowing dashboard. "Why does Woewyn have all this enhanced tech but, like, it's not everywhere? Why is every other thing mostly normal?"
"Woewyn mostly prioritizes use of tech like that for things that are actually," Nyra explained, her eyes on the horizon. "Like battles and transport. Efficiency where it counts if you get what I mean."
Nyra sounded more mature to Damon, his look lingered for a bit before asking "Well, what about stuff like medicine and farming?" Damon asked. "Aren't those useful too?"
"Ermm… Think of it like this," she said, gesturing with her hands as she looked at him. "On Earth, you guys have got natural fruits and kind of enhanced ones. Right? Which tastes better?"
"The natural ones," Damon answered instantly.
"Exactly," she said. "The people of Woewyn prefer to use our Eterna-based methods of farming because everything feels better that way. Even taste's better too."
"And medicine?"
"Well, only a few people can't use Eterna, so they heal each other with it. We do have some tech in hospitals, integrated with Eterna, of course." Nyra explained.
"Hmm. Makes sense," Damon muttered.
They arrived at the school gates, the Runner coming to a smooth, silent halt. Damon spotted Cythera and stepped out of the vehicle. Then tapped the Runner and it folded into a card. "How are you feeling now?"
"I'm fine." she said, her voice quiet.
"Don't forget—no drinking sea water for a while," Damon teased, a small smirk playing on his lips.
Cythera let out a soft, rare laugh. "The water is normally perfect. The only reason I got sick is because I took in such large amounts during the training."
Damon let out a soft laugh of his own. As they began to walk toward the main building, Damon noticed a group of female students. Their uniforms were a sharp departure from the norm—their thighs were quite visible, and the top part of their outfit only seemed to cover their "assets" and a tiny portion of their stomach, finished with a short jacket.
He leaned slightly toward Cythera. "Why are some female students dressed like that?"
One of the girls noticed him staring and blew a malicious, playful kiss. Damon's head snapped forward instantly, his face going neutral as if he had physically dodged the gesture.
"Approval from the boys," Cythera said flatly.
"So you don't want approval?" Damon asked.
"Well, there are hearts on Woewyn that will only love one soul, you know if you have the mark on you." she replied.
Damon's hand went to his chest. "Oh, this mark?" He shifted his shirt slightly to reveal the star soul-mark on his chest.
Cythera stopped. She stared at the mark for a long while, her eyes seeming to lose their brilliance, the greenish sapphire light dimming into a duller shade. She turned and continued walking. She explained "Since I have lots of Eterna, I'll be living for a very long time before I ever age, so I'm just being careful, because I'm was also one of those hearts.
"Wow…" Damon said, watching her back. "But you're getting the approval anyway."
"What do you mean?" she asked, glancing back.
"Take a look," Damon said, gesturing with his finger.
Cythera looked toward a thick tree near the path. A group of boys were huddled behind it, staring at her with wide eyes. When her eyes met theirs, she turned away sharply, her pace quickening as she left them behind.
When they reached the classroom, the atmosphere shifted from the morning air to the sterile, pressurized environment of Higher Intellect academics. Kael stood at the front, leaning against his desk with an air of casual superiority.
He didn't wait for everyone to sit before dropping the first stone. "What is the difference between invention and innovation?"
Lior raised his hand, his voice confident. "Well, in simple terms, and invention is what you create, and an innovation is the idea of it."
Lior sat back down. Kael rested his palms on the desk, crossing his legs at the ankles. He scanned the room, his eyes lingering on faces that were supposed to be the brightest of their generation. "Well... any more answers?"
Damon stayed silent and so did Cythera beside him. They sat with their elbow on the desk and palm pressed against their cheek, watching Kael's body language. They weren't in the mood to overshadow others so letting things play out seemed to be a logical conclusion.
"C'mon," Kael sighed, sounding genuinely disappointed. "This is supposed to be the Highest Intellect class, and you can't even answer a simple question right."
A female student from the middle of the C frowned. "Well... was he wrong?"
"He wasn't wrong," Kael replied, "but he wasn't right either."
Murmurs rippled through the desks until Kael's voice cut through the noise, demanding silence. "Raise your hand if you think inventions cannot be innovations?"
"Huh?" a student muttered. "Isn't it the other way around?"
"No," Kael said, a sharp grin tugging at his lips. "You heard me right. Lior said inventions are created, right? So from his definition, an innovation is an invention because I created it..." He paused for unnecessary dramatic effect, leaning forward with a finger to his head. "...in my mind."
"Where exactly are you going with this?" someone asked, sounding frustrated.
"Well, I told you: every morning I would find something at random to ask you idiots in relation to the topic of the day. You failed your first test. Look, you guys are the highest intellect group of your year. Can you please start thinking outside the freaking box? Every year has its rankings, and it goes without saying—people from this group are expected to do more and better. I'm sure even the Sisters of Woewyn might be picked from an intellect group, considering the weight of their duties."
Kael turned around and pulled a small capsule from his desk. With a sharp pinch, he threw it into the center of the room. A 4D bluish hologram bloomed in the air, shimmering with data.
"Eterna is emotional energy, as you've all been taught since you were embryos," Kael said. He pinched the hologram, pulling out a secondary layer that displayed a mosaic of shifting emotions—anger, joy, sorrow—all represented by color-coded frequencies. "It can also be a biological enhancement."
He swiped again, and a third hologram erupted, showing a cosmic web of constellations and planets. "And it is cosmic. Eterna itself is a hybrid of these three."
The class watched, mesmerized by the glowing maps.
"As you all know, most of our tech is powered by our Eternum's never-ending Eterna, which links to the cosmic energy part of it. But..." Kael's eyes turned cold. "What if I told you someone with little Eterna output, like our army of Suited Ones, could draw from our plane itself into their bodies based on what emotion they are feeling? Depending on what stage you're on, it might be hard, but it's possible."
Damon's mind raced, connecting the imagination of him doing it and the tech Nyra had explained in the Runner. That's using the hybrid of Eterna itself in action, he thought.
Kael's finger snapped toward Damon. "Yes, Chosen One. You are exactly right."
Damon stiffened. Ugh, can he read minds too?
Kael didn't miss a beat. "Yes, I can read minds. And yes, this would be the hybrid of Eterna itself—in—action."
As if the word 'action' was a trigger, a violent explosion rocked the classroom. The heavy reinforced door buckled inward, flying across the room with the force of a missile. It slammed into Kael, the impact sending him flying backward, cracking the wall and knocking him unconscious instantly.
A girl screamed at the sight, but her voice was quickly drowned out by a deafening, high-pitched wail that seemed to vibrate inside the students' skulls. It was the sound of inner eardrums buckling under the pressure—a sharp, piercing ring that made several students including Cythera and Damon clutched their heads, their faces contorted as they tried to block out the internal screaming of their own nerves.
Damon placed a hand on his pocket to cover Daichi's ears.
Dust and smoke filled the air. Through the wreckage, a figure in a specialized suit stepped into the room. The intruder adjusted his gauntlet, the visor of his helmet glowing with a predatory light.
"Oh," the Suit said, his voice modulated and metallic. "How I love action."