Aya Grephin
It's been a while. It's truly been a while.
The thought drifted through my mind as I walked the main street of Zestier, my boots finding the familiar rhythm of cobblestones worn smooth by centuries of footsteps.
The Green Gem. Sprout City. The Royal Capital of Elenoir had many names, but to me it was simply home—even if home was a word I had learned to use loosely.
I wore the uniform of the Royal Police today. It was a good cover, practical and unremarkable, allowing me to move through the city without drawing the wrong kind of attention.
The right kind of attention—the kind that came from guards who recognized the uniform and dismissed the face behind it—was exactly what I needed.
The atmosphere of Zestier wrapped around me like a familiar cloak. Peaceful. Serene. The kind of peace that once we could only dream of, the kind that had been purchased with centuries of vigilance and the quiet, unseen work of people like me.
But beneath that peace, something had shifted. A vivacity I had never witnessed in all my years walked the streets alongside the elves. Dwarves. Merchants, artisans, travelers from beyond the mountains, their presence a testament to the newly approved trade agreements Elder Virion had negotiated with some elder of the dwarven Kingdom of Darv.
Change, I thought. Change comes, whether we are ready or not.
The sun filtered through the canopy above, that eternal ceiling of leaves that sheltered Zestier from the harsher realities of the world. Light dripped through gaps in the foliage like liquid gold, illuminating the broad streets and the tall, graceful buildings that hugged the ancient trees.
The architecture of my people was not imposed upon the forest; it grew from it, a symbiosis of elf and tree that had taken millennia to perfect.
Above me, the great Watchful Willows loomed. Those colossal trees, older than the kingdom itself, formed the foundation of the Royal Palace and the other government buildings.
They rose like living and green mountains, their branches creating a natural cul-de-sac at the end of this main street—a street that ran all the way from the palace to the northern gate, passing through Portal Plaza and the market district on its journey.
I had walked this path a thousand times. It never changed. And yet today, with the dwarven merchants hawking their wares and the unfamiliar cadence of their voices mixing with the musical tones of my people, it felt different.
Change, I thought again. Let us hope it is for the better.
I entered the Royal Palace through a side entrance, moving through corridors thick with guards who registered my presence and immediately forgot it.
That was the gift of House Grephin—not invisibility, but unremarkability. The art of being seen and dismissed, of existing in plain sight while remaining utterly beneath notice. No one but the King, the Queen, Alea, and Elder Virion—the King Emeritus—were supposed to know of my existence. And no one did.
The palace wrapped around me like a living thing, its halls breathing with the slow rhythm of ancient wood. I made my way toward one of the many wings—the one that faced the gardens, the one where a discreet room awaited my arrival. The room where I was used to being received by my liege.
"Aya."
The voice stopped me mid-stride. I did not startle—I had been trained too well for that—but something in my chest shifted. Recognition. Familiarity. The only person in all of Elenoir who could perceive me when I did not wish to be perceived.
I turned.
Alea Triscan stood before me, young and vibrant and impossibly alive in her maid's uniform. Twenty-six years old. A commoner by birth, a Lance by the inexplicable grace of fate. My only peer in magic within the borders of this kingdom.
"Alea." My voice emerged professional, controlled, the voice I used for all interactions. But beneath it, buried deep where even I could barely feel it, there was something warmer.
We Lances were not meant for "team bonding." We were not meant for friendship or camaraderie or any of the soft entanglements that made people weak. We were weapons, forged for a single purpose.
And yet, from time to time, it was... good to see a familiar face.
Alea nodded, her expression carrying that peculiar blend of deference and ease that she alone seemed capable of directing at me. She knew what I was. She knew what I did. And still, she looked at me like I was simply... another person.
"I find you well," she said.
Silence stretched between us. Was I supposed to reply? Social interactions—genuine ones, unscripted and unobserved—were not my forte. They never had been. House Grephin raised its children in shadows, not in sunlit rooms full of laughter and conversation.
"How is your brother?" The question surprised me as much as it surprised her. Alwyn, a boy the same age as the royal children.
Alea's face transformed. A soft, satisfied smile—the kind that only family could inspire—curved her lips. "Alwyn? He is doing fine. Very fine, actually."
I nodded. "Glad to hear it."
The words were simple, inadequate, utterly insufficient for the warmth that flickered briefly in my chest. Then we continued our separate ways—she toward her maid duties, I toward my meeting with His Majesty. The conversation might never have happened.
But it had. And I would remember it.
The room where I met my King was not like the rest of the palace. It sat atop one of the tallest branches of the Watchful Willow that supported the Royal Palace's southern section—a perch that overlooked the gardens below while remaining hidden from any casual observer.
Here, in this space, the Kings and Queens of the Eralith line had met with agents of House Grephin since the very founding of the elven kingdom.
Unlike normal elven interiors, this room embraced shadow. The circular table at its center sat in permanent twilight, the faces of those who gathered here deliberately obscured.
It was tradition, older than any living memory. While the members of House Grephin discussed their duties—their shadows—with their monarch, it was always in the shade.
Shadows and illusions. The signature of my House.
I entered and bowed my head deeply. "My King."
King Alduin Eralith sat at the circular table, his features half-hidden by the deliberate gloom. Son of Elder Virion and current ruler of Elenoir. The man whose will I served, whose secrets I guarded, whose dirty work I performed so that his hands—and his family's reputation—could remain clean.
"Lance Phantasm." His voice was stoic, revealing nothing.
I closed the door behind me, and the shadows closed in. Then I began my report.
Alwyn Triscan
Magic was, by all measures, absolutely wonderful.
I had awakened only two days ago—just forty-eight hours since that strange, tingling warmth had first bloomed in my chest and I had felt the black orb of my core for the very first time—and already I could not imagine my life without it. Without magic.
When the gardeners weren't looking, or when they shuffled off to their afternoon break, I slipped away to the quieter corners of the Royal Gardens.
Places where the manicured beauty gave way to something wilder, where the soil lay bare and waiting. I crouched beside lonely pots—the ones still empty, still waiting for the flowers that would eventually be planted and sold to the population—and I practiced.
The soil in my hands was cool, crumbly, alive with possibilities. I focused on that black orb in my body, that wonderful, impossible thing, and I pushed.
The soil responded. It shifted, molded, took rough shapes under my clumsy guidance. A lump became a crude sphere. A sphere became a lopsided cube. It was nothing impressive, but it was mine. It was real.
Earth magic. That was my affinity.
Augmentation, they called my way of using magic—the art of using mana to enhance one's own body—and augmenter was my classification. But I had discovered I could do more. I could make the earth itself move, just a little, just enough to feel like I was part of something larger than myself.
It felt so good. I had never felt this good in all my life. Not once, not ever.
And it was all thanks to His Highness.
But there was a price for this gift. A secret I had promised Prince Corvis I would keep at all costs. And that secret had led me here, to this moment, to this door.
I stood before the entrance to Princess Tessia's room, my heart hammering so violently I was certain someone would hear it.
My eyes darted left and right, scanning the corridor for any sign of movement, any witness to this impossible scene: a commoner boy, loitering outside the chambers of the future Queen of Elenoir.
With Prince Corvis, I could sometimes go unnoticed. He was the male twin, the spare, the one whose movements drew less scrutiny. But Princess Tessia? She was the actual heir. To be found near her, to be seen waiting for her—the consequences didn't bear thinking about.
The door opened.
Her Highness peeked through, her gunmetal hair falling in waves around a face that held none of her brother's quiet intensity. Where Corvis's teal eyes were deep pools of thought and worry, Tessia's were bright with impatience and mischief.
"Oh, you're here." She pushed the door wider, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. "Good. Come in. Fast!"
I hurried inside, and the door clicked shut behind me.
The Princess's room was... breathtaking. The only space I had ever seen that compared was Albold Chaffer's home, when I had visited the Chaffer estate with His Highness. But this room? It eclipsed it.
A massive window dominated the left wall, offering a sweeping view of the Royal Gardens below. Beneath it sat a bed that could have swallowed my family's entire cottage... before me and Alea moved to the Royal Palace—easily seven or eight times my size, draped in silks and furs that probably cost more than my sister earned in a lifetime.
A hearth, built into the curve of a massive branch, crackled softly in one corner. And everywhere—everywhere—there were toys.
Dolls with painted faces. Balls of every size and color. Spinning tops carved from precious woods. Games I didn't recognize and treasures I couldn't name.
Princess Tessia was quite literally submerged in toys, surrounded by more wealth and wonder than most kids, noble or not, would see in a hundred lifetimes.
I thought of Prince Corvis's room, which I had never seen but could imagine—bare, empty, deliberately sparse. The contrast was dizzying.
Tessia walked across her room like she owned the world. Because she did, or would, someday. She made a small, graceful jump and landed on her bed, which in that moment looked less like furniture and more like a throne.
"Well, then, Alwyn." She smiled, and it was a brilliant thing, full of confidence and expectation. "Teach me."
"Uh." I stumbled, caught off guard by her abruptness. "Immediately, Your Highn—"
"Call me Tessia." She crossed her arms, her expression shifting to something that might have been stern on anyone else but on her looked simply determined. "If you're going to teach me magic, then you will address me by name."
Just like Prince Corvis. The thought surfaced unbidden.
But where Corvis had asked me to use his name because he disliked being royalty—because the weight of it seemed to press on him like an unbearable thing—Princess Tessia was different.
She offered me her name because she thought she was doing me a favor. Because she thought it would make me comfortable, make me happy, make me feel special or more at ease.
And she was right. It would make me happy. It would make me feel special. That was the worst part.
I was just a commoner. Everything special about me—being a mage, being here, being truly alive in this moment—was only thanks to His Highness.
I had no right to stand here, no right to breathe this air, no right to call the future Queen of Elenoir by her given name.
Just like with His Highness, I would refuse.
"I... I can't, Your Highness." I dropped my gaze, unable to meet those teal eyes that held none of her brother's quiet depths but burned with their own fierce light.
Tessia frowned. For a moment, displeasure flickered across her features. Then she hummed, a thoughtful sound, and nodded.
"Fine." She said it like a queen granting a concession. "For now."
Then she clapped her hands, and the frown vanished, replaced by that eager, brilliant smile. "Now let's commence the awakening training!"
I swallowed my nerves, my fear, my overwhelming sense of being exactly where I didn't belong.
The Princess of Elenoir, future queen of the kingdom, sat cross-legged on her throne-sized bed and looked at me like I held the keys to the universe.
I had never been more uncomfortable in my life.
Albold Chaffer
The wooden sword was an extension of my body, or so my instructors constantly told me. Today, howeverz, it felt like an extension of my frustration.
I kept my guard high, adjusting my stance for the hundredth time as I faced the training dummy—a grotesque sculpture of dried leaves, rough logs, and matted fur designed to mimic the proportions and overall texture of a potential opponent.
My blade, a practice Courtblade carved from seasoned wood, swept through another arc. The edge connected with the dummy's "shoulder" with a dull thump that resonated up my arm.
Not good enough. Never good enough.
This was what it meant to be a Chaffer. Training. Constant, relentless, endless training. From the moment I could hold a blade, I had been taught that the Courtblade was not merely a weapon—it was an inheritance.
House Chaffer had been the greatest representatives of every fighting style of this elven weapon since the first Lords and Ladies of my bloodline picked up swords and declared themselves defenders of the realm.
The weight of that history pressed on my shoulders with every swing.
The Courtblade itself was a paradox made steel, or wood in this particular case—longer than most swords, yet thin and light enough to feel almost fragile in untrained hands.
Its reach was its greatest advantage, allowing a skilled wielder to strike from distances that left opponents flailing at empty air. But that reach demanded everything in return.
Precision, honed to a razor's edge. Equilibrium, balanced on a knife's tip. Control—absolute, unwavering control—over every ounce of strength, both natural and mana-enhanced.
My senses, sharpened by Chaffer blood even without the formal training that would come later, made this style sing.
I could feel the dummy's "pressure" as I circled it, could anticipate how a real opponent might shift, might parry, might die under a properly executed sequence. The sword in my hands was a conversation between my ancestors and my future self.
I swung again. Another thump. Another not-quite-perfect strike.
Next month, all Zestier would witness something unprecedented: the first royal visit of the Greysunders monarchs to our capital.
The Royal House of the Kingdom of Darv, walking the streets of Elenoir. Centuries of suspicion, of closed borders and wary glances, were being set aside—at least for a moment—by the diplomacy my elders had woven.
And when foreign monarchs visited, when politicians of different races gathered to discuss whatever it was politicians discussed, Dicathen had a tradition.
Games. Competitions for the youth, displays of skill and prowess that let the younger generation prove their worth without the messiness of actual war.
I would be one of the two participants selected for my age group.
The other was a young elf of House Auddyr.
House Auddyr. The name alone was enough to make my jaw tighten. Great rivals. Eternal rivals.
In the army, we competed to produce better mages, better generals, more glorious victories and—when losses were unavoidable—less disastrous defeats.
At court, we jockeyed for influence, for the King's ear, for the Queen's favor, for the subtle prestige that came from being more useful, more loyal, more essential than the other House.
In the economy, despite both our Houses being fundamentally military in nature, we fought for control over who financed the best bowyers, the finest swordsmiths, the most innovative weaponsmiths in the kingdom.
And in technique—perhaps most importantly from my current, sweat-soaked perspective—we were locked in an eternal dance of blade against blade.
House Chaffer with our refined Courtblade styles, all precision and reach and elegant death. House Auddyr with their Branchberd, that elven halberd they wielded more like a pike than a true axe, turning reach into a different kind of weapon entirely.
The games next week would be another battle in this endless political war. Another chance to prove which House's youth carried the future of Elenoir's military might.
I took a deep breath, centering myself, and resumed my practice. The wooden sword rose. Fell. Rose. Fell.
Each strike a prayer to ancestors who had faced the same rivalries, the same pressures, the same burning need to be better.
"Young Master."
The voice cut through my concentration. I turned, wooden sword lowering, to find one of our household servants standing at the edge of the training courtyard. This space—behind my family's estate, visible to those who mattered, a symbol of power and prestige here in the Royal Capital—was where Chaffer warriors had honed their skills for generations.
"Yes?" I tilted my head, trying to read her expression.
"His Highness is visiting." She bowed as she delivered the words, as if the message itself required deference.
Prince Corvis.
He was back from Asyphyn. It had taken him so long just to visit one city—I had started to worry, genuinely worry, that his plan to avoid discovery by the King and Queen had failed.
But he was back. Everything had ended smoothly.
I handed my wooden sword to the servant, my mind already racing ahead. I really wanted to see the peculiar prince. I wanted to hear about whatever dueling cane had required such a long absence.
"Thank you," I said, already moving toward the estate. "I'll receive him immediately."
A/N:
A grave mistake I made in the original Corvis Eralith was not giving enough space to the elves and to Elenoir, choosing instead to focus too heavily on the broader Dicathian side of things.
So, especially with Volumes 2 and 3, I will try to make Dicathen—and Elenoir in particular—feel as alive and diverse as possible before the war against Alacrya eventually arrives. For obvious reasons, considering the divergences with Canon:Agrona and Re:Agrona, it will be very, very different.