Summoned by the Divine Realm Chapter Two: Vaelion
The realm Sylvara had drawn him into existed somewhere language hadn't reached yet.
No sky. No ground. Just constellations suspended in deep, breathless dark, and islands of shimmering mist drifting between them like thoughts between sleep and waking. Roshan stood at the centre of it — or floated, or simply was there, because physics seemed to be more of a suggestion in this place — and tried to keep up with a goddess.
She showed him things rather than explained them. Ancient magic older than the kingdoms that had learned to use it. Wars that had redrawn entire continents. Creatures no cartographer had ever survived to sketch. A world layered in power and history and blood, with him — a dead mafia errand boy from Mumbai — dropped into the middle of it without so much as a map.
Why me, he wanted to ask. But Sylvara's form was already beginning to thin at the edges, her voice growing distant even mid-sentence, and then there was nothing but—
A pull.
A falling sensation.
Darkness.
He opened his eyes to a ceiling he didn't recognize, in a room that smelled of dried flowers and old wood, and for exactly three seconds he lay completely still and appreciated the fact that he was, against significant odds, not dead.
Then the headache hit.
He pressed both palms against his skull and groaned.
"Young lord—!" A rush of footsteps. "Young lord, you're awake — oh, thank the gods—"
Mira appeared at the edge of his vision, cheeks flushed and eyes bright with something caught between relief and leftover panic. In the soft light of the room she looked younger than she had before, less composed — genuinely shaken, and trying hard not to show it.
"I was terrified," she said, clasping her hands together as if stopping them from reaching for him. "Your eyes turned completely white. You just — collapsed. I carried you to the bed myself and sent word to the lord of the manor immediately. He has ordered a priest."
Roshan sat up slowly, letting the room settle around him.
Lord of the manor. Priest instead of a doctor. Right — this world doesn't have doctors.
He looked at his hands. Small. Pale. Still wrong, still not his. He flexed the fingers slowly, one by one, like he was taking inventory of something borrowed.
"Mira." He kept his voice steady. "What is my name?"
The question landed strangely in the air between them. Mira's brow creased.
"My lord...?"
"I think I hit my head when I fell," he said. "I don't remember much. I need to hear it from you."
She stared at him for a moment — weighing it, deciding — and then something practical won out over the confusion on her face.
"Your name, my lord," she said carefully, "is Vaelion Reinhardt Valenhart. Son of Lord Reinhardt Soros Valenhart, the Second Duke of the Eldorian Empire."
The name settled over him like a garment he hadn't chosen.
Vaelion.
He turned it over in his mind. Tried it against himself the way you try on a coat in a shop — checking the fit, deciding whether you could live in it.
Roshan died in the rain in Mumbai. Vaelion woke up in an unknown world.
Vaelion it is, then.
"And you?" he asked. "Your name."
"Mira Lanelle. Your personal attendant." She dipped her head slightly, more habit than formality. "I have served you since you were three years old, my lord."
Seven years. She'd known this body longer than he had. The thought was strange enough that he let it pass without comment.
"Good," he said. "Then I need you to explain everything to me, Mira. The kingdom. Magic. This house. Everyone who lives in it." He paused. "Pretend I remember nothing. Because I don't."
She blinked. Then she pulled a chair to his bedside, sat down with the posture of someone used to being useful, and began.
Magic, Mira explained, was not a trick or a tool. It was a living current — mana — that ran through the air and soil and blood of everything born into this world. Those with the sensitivity to feel it could draw it into themselves and shape it: fire, frost, shadow, healing, illusions, contracts with unseen forces. The details varied. The power itself did not.
"And what happens if someone uses more than they can handle?" Vaelion asked.
Mira's expression shifted slightly. "Burned veins, in mild cases. Drained lifeforce, in severe ones. Scorched souls, if they push past that." A pause. "There are also rumours of hungry spirits that are drawn to unstable mana. Scholars debate whether that is true or merely a story used to frighten children away from practising unsupervised."
"Based on everything else about this world so far," Vaelion said, "I'm going to assume it's true."
Mira almost smiled.
"As for this household," she continued, folding her hands in her lap, "the Duke has taken three wives."
She laid it out plainly, without embellishment. The first wife had given him three sons — Edmund, twenty, who Mira described as temperamental and prone to excess in the diplomatic tone of someone who meant something considerably worse; Cedric, eleven, petty and sharp-tongued; and Emrys, seven, quiet enough that very little was known about him yet. The second wife had given him three daughters — Vivienne, twenty, who moved through politics the way other people moved through rooms; Selene, sixteen, magically gifted across almost every discipline; and Amanda, eleven, whose intelligence Mira mentioned with a carefully neutral expression that suggested she found it slightly unsettling.
Vaelion's own mother, the third wife, had died when he was five. No other siblings. No allies in the house that came with the blood.
"And women can't inherit," Vaelion said. It wasn't a question — Sylvara's ring had given him enough of this world's social structure to understand that much. But saying it aloud felt like pressing on a bruise.
"That is correct, my lord."
"So three daughters with nothing to gain, and three sons who all want the same chair." He exhaled slowly. "And I'm the one with no mother, no backing, and apparently no memory. Fantastic position I've found myself in."
Mira was quiet for a moment. "Young master Edmund has made his feelings regarding the inheritance... clear. On several occasions."
"I'll bet he has." Vaelion glanced at the ring on his finger, turning it once. Sylvara's ring didn't tell me everything. Just enough to know how much I don't know. "Mira. Honestly — how bad is it?"
She met his eyes.
"It is a house where everyone smiles at dinner," she said, "and sharpens knives afterward."
Vaelion looked at her for a moment. "Hah. Aren't you quietly honest."
The silence that followed was the most informative thing she'd said.
He was still sitting with that image — a household built on inheritance war dressed up as family — when the chamber doors slammed open hard enough to crack against the walls.
The Duke walked like a man who had never once considered that a room might not be ready for him.
He was tall, composed to the point of severity, and trailed a mana so dense and controlled it seemed to thicken the very air ahead of him — a storm on a leash, held by the kind of will that had clearly never slipped. Behind him followed a man built like a siege weapon, carrying a greatsword that would have looked comical on anyone else and simply looked inevitable on him.
Mira was on her knees before Vaelion had fully registered the sound of the doors.
"Why was I not informed of his awakening." The Duke's voice was not a question. It was a verdict looking for a sentence.
"I — I am deeply sorry, my lord." Mira's hands pressed flat against the floor. "I should have sent word immediately. Please forgive me."
"You consider my son's life equal to your convenience?"
"Ser Rodric," the Duke said, eyes still fixed on Mira, "remove her from my sight."
The knight — Rodric, something in Vaelion's mind supplied, the name surfacing from Sylvara's ring like a record being pulled — stepped forward at a slight inclination of the Duke's chin. His gauntleted hand reached for Mira's shoulder.
Something in Vaelion moved before his thoughts caught up.
"Take your hands off her."
The words came out quieter than he intended. Which somehow made them land harder.
Rodric stopped. He looked down at Vaelion with the particular expression of a man deciding whether a child was worth his attention, and concluded that it was not.
"Stand aside, young lord. You do not command here." He reached for Mira again.
"I said—" Vaelion stepped forward and caught Rodric's wrist with both hands, "—let her go."
The room stopped breathing.
Rodric looked at the hands on his wrist. Then at the boy attached to them. A muscle worked in his jaw.
"That is enough." The Duke's voice was almost soft. Which was worse.
Rodric released Mira and stepped back. Vaelion released Rodric's wrist and held his ground, though his heart was doing something violent inside his chest.
The Duke crossed the room slowly, each footfall deliberate, until he stood close enough that Vaelion could smell faint steel polish and old parchment on him. He looked down at his son in silence for a long moment — the way a man looks at something that has surprised him and is deciding how he feels about that.
Okay. He's the Duke. He's technically your father now. Breathe. Be respectful. Be careful.
"You would raise your voice against my order," the Duke said, "for a servant."
Vaelion's legs wanted badly to take one step back. He told them no.
"I apologize for raising my voice, Father," he said, keeping his tone as level as he could manage. "But Mira is not at fault. I was the one who kept her from her duties."
"And why did you do that?"
"She was educating me. On matters that will prove useful." He paused, choosing the next words with the same care he'd once used picking exits in Francis Carlos's building. "It has given me a sense of direction I didn't have before."
Surprise moved through the room like a shift in temperature. He saw it in Mira's widened eyes, in the slight tightening around Rodric's mouth.
"What sort of matters?" the Duke asked.
"I cannot say yet," Vaelion answered. "But you will know in time."
Rodric moved forward, armor sharp in the silence. "You will answer the question put to you, young lord, or—"
The Duke's hand rose. Palm outward. One gesture.
Rodric stopped mid-sentence as completely as if the air had solidified around him.
The Duke's gaze had not left Vaelion.
"You have changed," he said quietly. "You could not hold my gaze three months ago. You flinched when I raised my voice. You would not have challenged Rodric if your life depended on it."
Three months. Does he not visit his children often, or is he simply that occupied? Vaelion filed the question away without letting it show on his face.
He took one step closer. "What changed you?"
Vaelion's fingers curled behind his back — the only concession to the nerves firing up and down his spine.
"I am trying to be what this house requires of me," he said. "To act as a son of this household should." A breath. "And perhaps as a future lord must."
Holy gods above, he thought. Did I just say that out loud? That was actually good. Someone remember this moment.
The Duke's eyes narrowed. Not in anger. In the particular calculation of someone re-evaluating a set of numbers that have stopped adding up the same way.
"You are declaring yourself a candidate for the lordship," he said. "Without your mother's family behind you. Without support from the inner house. Against brothers who have been positioning themselves since before you could walk."
"I'm not declaring anything yet," Vaelion said. "I'm saying the future isn't fixed. And that I intend to be part of deciding it."
A silence stretched between them that had real weight to it.
Then the Duke did something Vaelion hadn't expected.
He smiled. Just a slight thing — not warm, more like a man watching a storm cell form on a clear horizon and finding it interesting rather than inconvenient.
"Very well." He turned away, the conversation apparently concluded in whatever internal court he maintained. "Rodric. We are finished here." His gaze swept to Mira, still kneeling. "Return to your duties. Consider this your only warning regarding your priorities." His eyes found Vaelion one last time. "Rest. We will speak again."
"Yes, my lord." Mira and Rodric answered in unison, both bowing.
The Duke's cloak whispered across the stone floor. Rodric's boots followed like a second, heavier echo. But before the door closed, the captain glanced back over his shoulder — just once — and gave Vaelion a slow, unreadable smirk.
Vaelion didn't know what to make of it. He filed that away too.
The doors shut.
He stood completely still for three full seconds.
Then his legs informed him that they were done performing and would be sitting down now, and he dropped onto the edge of the bed with all the grace of a man whose adrenaline had just cashed out at once.
That man, he thought, chest heaving, is the single most terrifying human being I have ever been in a room with. And I used to work for Francis Carlos.
He pressed a hand to his sternum, feeling his own heartbeat slowly shift from catastrophic toward merely elevated.
And Rodric. That walking mountain they call a captain. He exhaled slowly through his nose. Equally terrifying. Different flavor, same quantity.
Mira was still beside him, silent. Her composure had mostly returned — except for the slight tremor she was still doing her best to hide.
"Why did you go so far for me?" she asked softly.
Vaelion paused.
Honestly, he wasn't sure. He'd moved before thinking, same as always — some reflex in him that hadn't changed between worlds. But sitting here now, looking at her still-trembling hands, the answer surfaced on its own.
I just did what any person would have done . And also how was I going to just stand there and let them take you?" A beat. "Is that a good enough reason?"
Mira's composure broke quietly, the way a person breaks when they've been holding themselves together for too long and someone finally says the exact thing that undoes them. She pressed a hand to her mouth, shoulders shaking.
"Thank you, my lord," she managed. "I will not forget this. Not ever."
"Hey." Vaelion looked away, suddenly uncomfortable with the weight of her gratitude. "It's fine. Just relax, alright?"
Her breath came out somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
Vaelion glanced at her from the corner of his eye. Her hands were still clasped tight in her lap — the hands of someone who had just watched a ten-year-old face down two grown men on her behalf and was still processing what that meant.
Don't trust anyone in your current household. Sylvara's parting words drifted back to him, easy and cold as river water.
He looked at Mira for a moment.
Then he looked away.
"Don't thank me yet," he said. "I'm probably going to cause you a lot more trouble before this is finished."
She let out a breath that might have been a laugh if she'd fully let it.
Vaelion leaned back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, turning the ring on his finger slowly.
Back home, the thing I had to survive was a mafia boss and a world of guns and loyalty that turned out to be neither. Here, it's a father who smiles like a weather event and six half-siblings playing a game that started long before I arrived.
Different world. Same rules. Don't trust easily. Don't show weakness. Figure out who the real threats are before they figure out you.
And try not to die in the first month.
He closed his eyes.
Yeah, he thought, somewhere between grim and almost amused. This is going to be so much worse than the orphanage.
To be continued...