The morning arrived not with sunlight, but with the heavy, rhythmic clack-clack of the guard shift. In the windowless depths of the Edger dungeon, time was measured by the changing of the brutes who held the keys.
Through the dim torchlight, Jin-ho watched the mother and daughter elf return to their usual place. They moved like ghosts, hollow-eyed and silent. The daughter collapsed into a dreamless sleep on her mother's lap, while the woman, Verra, simply stared at the damp ceiling. Her expression was a void where a soul used to be.
A sharp, phantom pain stabbed at Jin-ho's chest. It wasn't a physical wound; it was the residue of the original Eon's memories, a lingering sense of gratitude and grief for the woman who had shared her meager rations with him for years.
'I can't do this alone', Jin-ho realized, his golden eyes narrowing. 'I can bend metal, but I can't be in ten places at once. I need eyes outside. I need allies who can move when I can't.'
His gaze landed on Elsa. The former White Knight was the perfect candidate, disciplined, knowledgeable, and currently fueled by a flickering spark of curiosity about him.
But how to explain his powers? Telling her he was a science major from another world would get him branded as a demon or a lunatic for sure.
He needed a story they would not only believe but follow.
"Elsa," he whispered, gesturing to the far corner of the cell, away from the prying ears of the other broken prisoners.
She crawled over, her chains dragging across the stone. "Eon? Are you alright? Did the fever return?" Her voice was thick with genuine concern, the kind of warmth that felt out of place in this tomb.
"I'm more than alright," Jin-ho said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial hum. "Last night... after we talked about the war... I had a vision. A dream so vivid it felt like reality."
Elsa tilted her head, her long ears twitching. "A dream?"
"I saw her, Elsa. Our Goddess." Jin-ho kept his face solemn, projecting the "commanding aura" he'd observed from CEOs and managers back in Seoul. "She told me she hasn't abandoned us all this time. She said the time of the Elven silence is over. She gave me a gift, a fragment of her own authority over the world, and told me to seek your counsel."
Elsa's face was a mask of skepticism. "Eon, I know you're traumatized, but the Goddess hasn't spoken to an elf in three centuries. To say she chose you, a boy who could barely hold a spoon just some years ago, is..."
Hearing Elsa's elven term of judging people by their elven longevity, made Jin-ho a little uncertain about his plan. But he didn't stop. He thought about demonstrating it to her might be better. "Here, Look at the shackle, Elsa."
He didn't wait for her to finish. He focused his mana, visualizing the iron atoms as a fluid lattice. With a faint, violet hum that only his High Elf's senses could detect, the thick iron ring around his ankle softened and expanded, sliding off his foot like a loose silk ribbon.
Elsa's breath hitched. She lunged forward, grabbing his ankle, her fingers tracing the miraculously widened iron. "No...how can this be, this is impossible. You have the slave collar on! Any attempt to channel mana should have fried your brain!"
Hearing the brain frying part made him a little offended, but he continued explaining with the little plan he plotted earlier night, "The Goddess doesn't follow the rules of Dwarven blacksmiths," Jin-ho lied smoothly. 'Actually, I'm just bypassing the 'spell' requirement the collar looks for,' he thought,' but 'Divine Grace' sounds much cooler, I guess. I am not lying completely. Wherever gave me this power might be a goddess too. Who know.'
After seeing the evidence with her own eyes. the skepticism in Elsa's eyes died, replaced by a terrifying, blinding hope. "Goddess... she really came back for us?"
"She did. And She us to be smart," Jin-ho said, catching her wrists. "If the humans find out, they'll kill us all before I can grow strong enough to fight back. We need a plan."
Elsa instantly suggested, "Then we need Verra."
Jin-ho looked toward the broken mother in the corner, with a sadness in his eyes. "Verra? But she's... she's barely there, Elsa. How can she bear this huge responsibility?"
"No," Elsa countered. "She knows this house. She knows the layout, the guards' habits, and the 'outside' better than anyone. If we're going to build a network, we need her."
Jin-ho didn't argue at that.
Elsa goes over to Verra's side to explain everything to her. It took ten whole minutes for Elsa to convince Verra. The woman approached like a sleepwalker, her daughter left in the care of another prisoner.
"Eon, show the thing that you did before to her," Elsa whispered, her voice trembling with excitement.
Without a word, Eon held out his hand. He didn't just bend metal this time; he reached into the moisture of the room's air, condensing the humidity into a swirling, crystalline ball of water the size of an orange. It hovered above his palm, glowing faintly.
"You can drink it," he moved the water-ball toward her.
Verra's hand shook as she reached out. The water was unnaturally cold and sweet, tasting of mountain springs and ancient forests, nothing like the stagnant, metallic sludge the guards provided. As the water hit her tongue, the blankness in her eyes shattered. A single, heavy tear carved a path through the dirt on her cheek.
She let out a choked sob, and Elsa immediately moved to cover her mouth. "Quiet! You'll bring the guards!" poor woman couldn't even cry properly.
Verra nodded frantically, her gaze fixed on Eon as if he were a sun that had suddenly appeared in the middle of the night.
"Listen to me," Jin-ho said, his voice cold and authoritative. "As of this moment, the three of us are the foundation. We are the 'Goddess's Hand.' But until I give the word, we will still be slaves. We will eat their slop, we will endure their insults, and we will hide our strength. Stability is our main weapon for now. If you break, the entire mission fails."
Both women bowed their heads instinctively. The transformation in Eon was so complete that they didn't even think to question his leadership. The timid boy was gone; in his place stood a man who spoke with the weight of centuries.
"Now," Jin-ho directed, "distract the others. I need to practice. The more I use this power, the stronger it becomes. If someone looks this way, make sure all they see isyou two chatting away, not me."
As the women moved to form a protective semi-circle around him, Elsa whispered to Verra, "He's suddenly different, right? It's like became a different person overnight."
Verra watched Eon's back, her hand resting on her daughter's head. "I don't care what he became," she murmured, a flicker of her old fire returning to her eyes. "I just know, he gave me a reason to breathe again. I'll kill anyone who tries to take him."
In the corner, Eon went back to work.
[Skill Progress: 105/1,000]
He watched the clay in his hands mold itself into a sharp, jagged needle. 'The Goddess's Chosen One'... he mused with a dark grin. 'It's a good title. Let's see if I can play the part well enough to burn this human-kingdom to the ground.'
Author Note: From now on, Jin-ho will be referred to as Eon, as he himself is starting to accept himself as Eon the Elf.