Grey
The heavy stone of the Castle floor seemed to absorb the sound of my footsteps, yet to my ears, each fall of my boot was a thunderclap, a stark counter-rhythm to the frantic drumming of my own heart.
Alone, I walked the grand, empty halls, a ghost in a mausoleum of my own making. I had told myself, told others, that I feared staying here because I should be on the battlefield.
That every moment spent within these secure walls was a moment wasted, a moment where I wasn't fighting, killing, carving a path through the Alacryan ranks to reach him—to bring Corvis back to me and Tessia.
It was a flimsy shield, a pathetic justification crafted from the same rotten timber King Grey had always used to build the walls around his soul.
And now I was using the image of my captured best friend as that same kind of excuse. I was propping up his suffering to avoid facing my own.
The truth, naked and ugly, was this: I feared the Castle because it was a cage containing my other ghosts. Here, within these walls, I could be forced to stand in the same room as Nico. And… Cecilia.
The name was a shard of ice in my chest.
I had not spoken to my former best friend since the day we—since the day I—reincarnated her into this world. Since I tore her soul from one reality and shackled it to another. Apart from the cold, clinical confirmation from the mages that the ritual was a 'success,' I had not sought her out. I had not heard her voice, seen her face, looked into the eyes of the girl I had killed.
I still killed her.
The thought was a constant, low hum in the background of my mind, a foundational tremor that threatened to crack the very core of who I was. It didn't matter that the Cecilia I killed on Earth was a hollowed-out puppet, a weapon.
It didn't matter that she had begged me, in some final, flickering moment of the girl I knew, to do it. It didn't matter that she was no longer my friend in that final, bloody moment.
The act itself was an eternal stain. Cecilia had been one of the two pillars of my first, bleak life. She and Nico were the only sparks of warmth in the grey monotony of King Grey's existence.
And I had destroyed that. I had slain one and, in doing so, had condemned the other to a hatred that spanned lifetimes. I had broken the only truly good thing my first life had ever produced.
The immense, carved doors of the Council chamber loomed before me, a barrier between the chaos in my head and the demands of the world. Their closed state signaled a respite from the endless, grinding meetings of war. I lifted a hand, the knuckles white with a tension that had nothing to do with the door's weight, and knocked.
"Enter." Virion's voice, though firm, carried a weariness I knew all too well.
Virion Eralith, Commander of the Tri-Union, stood with his back to me, his posture ramrod straight, but the set of his shoulders spoke of an immense, unseen weight.
He turned as I entered, and a faint, tired smile touched his lips. I attempted to mirror it, a weak, twitching thing that felt more like a grimace.
"Grey. You are back," he said. His voice was a familiar anchor, but today it felt strained.
He was clad in an elven battle-armour, masterfully crafted from what looked like interwoven leaves of living metal, dyed deep forest green and accented with silver that caught the dim light. It was a suit for war, not for council.
The functional, lethal elegance of it was a discordant note that set my every nerve on edge. My gaze swept the room again, truly taking in its profound emptiness. The usual scribes, the aides, the guards—all gone.
"Virion?" I asked, my voice low, the name a question. "What is going on?"
The old elf's eyes, usually bright with cunning and a spark of enduring spirit, were now shadowed pools of ancient grief. He seemed to have aged a century in the few days since I had last seen him. The lines on his face were deeper, carved not by time, but by agony.
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he turned back to the map, his gaze fixed on a specific, sprawling area of green. His long, elegant fingers, usually so steady, trembled slightly as he reached out and touched the vellum, right over the heart of the Elshire Forest.
"Elenoir, Grey," he whispered, and the name was a prayer and a curse. "Elenoir. The Alacryans… they seem intent on scouring my home from the face of this continent. They are pouring everything they have into the forest. They are burning it. They are defiling it."
A cold, sharp understanding pierced through the fog of my self-pity. Of course. Agrona. That petty, sadistic basilisk. This was a deliberate strike, a calculated act of cruelty. He was targeting the very heart of the elves... for what? To eradicate Corvis Eralith completely?
A familiar, cold fury ignited in my gut, a welcome replacement for the gnawing guilt. "I am going immediately," I stated, already turning, my mind racing through the logistics of mobilizing my forces from Darv, of pushing through the Alacryan lines.
"No." The word was a whip-crack, absolute and final. It stopped me in my tracks. I turned back, stunned by the iron in his tone.
"You are doing an excellent job in Darv and Sapin, Grey," he continued, his voice attempting to regain its formal, command-room cadence, but the pain bled through. "Continue—"
I cut him off, the pieces clicking together with horrifying clarity. The armour. The resolve in his eyes. It wasn't the determined gaze of a commander sending his troops to the front; it was the bleak, sorrowful acceptance of a warrior heading to his last stand.
"You want to go to Elenoir yourself?!" The words erupted from me, laced with a disbelief that bordered on panic. "Are you crazy, Virion?!"
I knew that look. I had seen it in the mirror for a lifetime. It was the look of a man who needed to feel the enemy's bones break under his own hands, who believed that personal bloodshed was the only answer.
But where King Grey's version had been fueled by a cold, bottomless bloodlust and a thirst for revenge, Virion's… Virion's eyes were just infinitely, unbearably sorrowful. He wasn't going to fight for vengeance; he was going to die for penance.
"There is no room for argument, Grey," Virion said, his voice low but unyielding. He was a master at masking his pain, but I could feel the tremor running through him, a seismic fault line of grief. "Merial and Alduin have recalled Tessia from the frontlines. She will be here at any moment."
"Don't divert the conversation!" I snapped, taking a sharp step forward, closing the distance between us. I was taller than him now, but he still felt like a giant, a pillar I had leaned upon since my arrival in this world. The thought of that pillar crumbling was unthinkable.
"Virion. Dicathen depends on you. You know that better than anyone else. You cannot go to battle! You can't take even a single risk!"
My voice rose, echoing in the vast, empty chamber. It was the shout of a frightened child, begging a parent not to leave—ironic.
"I am a silver core mage, Grey," he replied, his composure a fragile shield. "Elenoir is going to need every capable fighter it can get. And I have known the pathways and secrets of the Elshire Forest for more than two centuries. I am not some decrepit old man to be coddled."
"Virion," I said, my voice dropping, pleading. "If you are doing this because you blame yourself for Cor—"
"Of course I blame myself!"
The roar that tore from his throat was raw, primal. It was the sound of a heart breaking. And then, before my disbelieving eyes, Virion Eralith—the Commander, the legend, the strongest, most resilient man I had ever known in either of my lives—began to cry.
Tears, not of gentle sadness, but of absolute, soul-crushing anguish, streamed down his weathered face.
They carved paths through the dignity he always wore, revealing the shattered man beneath. I was frozen, completely and utterly paralyzed. My own inadequacy in the face of such raw emotion rendered me mute, a statue forced to witness a tragedy unfold.
"Never!" he choked out, the word a sob. "Never in his sixteen years of life was I able to help him! Never was I the grandfather he needed!"
He was trembling now, his fists clenched at his sides, the elegant armour seeming to mock his human frailty.
"When he was a toddler, so small and so… haunted, I let him distance himself. I was a fool! I refused to believe a child could carry such shadows in his eyes. So I didn't intervene. I didn't do anything to make his childhood a bit brighter, a bit softer. I failed him from the very beginning."
He paced a few steps, a caged animal of grief.
"When he didn't develop a mana core, when we all lived in terror that he was developing a Divination that would consume him alive… I treated him with silk gloves! I was afraid to push, afraid to hurt his feelings, afraid he would retreat back into that cold, detached shell. I was so concerned with not breaking him that I never tried to forge him. I left him to struggle alone!"
Each confession was a hammer blow. I saw it all through his eyes—the lonely boy, the worried grandfather, the chasm of misunderstanding between them.
"He was hunted, Grey! Hunted by the very continent he would later bleed to defend, and I, with all my power, could only sit and wait for news! He was made Vice Commander by the Asuras, given a burden no child should ever bear, and I just… accepted it. I told myself it was an honour that it was the least Corvis was worthy of. I didn't see the weight on his shoulders, I only saw the title. I was blind."
He stopped and turned his tear-streaked face to me, his eyes begging for an absolution I had no power to give.
"And you know what is worse, Grey? What is the most cruel joke of all?" He asked the question of the heavens, of the fates, of me. "Corvis never hated me. He told me… he told me I was the person he respected most. He said he wanted to be just like me. Me! I have done nothing to earn that! Nothing! I have been just an average, failing grandfather who stood by while his grandson shouldered the world."
"Virion, that's not—Tessia!" I tried, my own voice thick, the image of Corvis's unwavering respect for this man burning in my mind.
"To Tessia!" he barreled on, cutting off my feeble attempt. "To Tessia, I have been a grandfather. I doted on her, I protected her, I let her enjoy her last moments of peace before this damned war took her, too. But Corvis? He was on the front lines from the moment he could hold a weapon. He should have hated me! He should have been envious of his own sister! He should have cursed my name and hated this world for its unfairness!"
He was right. The truth of his words was a devastating thing. And it mirrored my own turmoil. I, too, had done nothing to earn the loyalty and friendship Corvis had given so freely. He had sees the monster in me, he was the only one to fully know the ghost of King Grey and his oceans of blood, and he had stood by me regardless.
Even better than Cecilia and Nico.
"He is just a better person than all of us," I finally said, my voice a broken, stuttering whisper. I felt a hot, unfamiliar sting in my own eyes. "B-but Virion, please… please think about this. I know how blame can kill you from the inside. I live with it every second of every day. It's a poison. Please… Dicathen… I… can't lose you. You are one of the few people… one of the very few who make this life worth living for."
It was the most vulnerable admission I had ever made to him. I was laying my own fractured soul bare, using it as a shield to protect him.
For a moment, a flicker of something—softness, pity—crossed his face. But it was quickly extinguished, buried beneath the suffocating weight of his duty and his grief.
"That doesn't change the fact that Elenoir has been breached," he said, his voice hollow once more. "The Scythes will come, one moment or the other, while the Alacryan army consolidates its hold on the rest of the continent. It is a mathematical certainty."
"Virion," I said, a fresh wave of alarm rising. "Now you are speaking like the war is already lost."
"Sorry," he said, the word terribly inadequate. "That was not what I meant."
But the defeat in his eyes had been real. It was a look I recognized, the look of a man who has already accepted his fate. Argument was futile. He was a force of nature, moving toward his own destruction, and I was a pebble in his path.
A deep, cold resolve settled in my own heart. If I could not stop him, I would join him. I would stand between him and the enemy until my last breath.
Sylvie? I reached out through our bond, the mental call a lifeline thrown into the storm.
'Yes.' Her response was immediate, tinged with a sorrow that mirrored my own.
We are going to Elenoir. Now. I poured my will into the thought, the decision solidifying into unbreakable intent.
I understand, she replied, her mental voice a soft, steadying presence. I will meet you at the entrance.
I let the connection fade and looked at Virion one last time. The old elf had turned back to his map, his armoured shoulders slumped. The silent tears still fell, spotting the vellum over his homeland.
"Let's go," I muttered to the empty air, the words a vow and a curse.
———
I was already turning, my mind charting the aerial route towards Elenoir, when the voice cut through my grim focus. It was a sound that belonged to another world, another life, a grating melody from a song I had long since tried to forget.
"Grey!"
I stopped, my shoulders tensing. I didn't need to see him to know. The chains, though perhaps more metaphorical now, still clinked in my memory. Nico. Granted the freedom to roam the castle, a prisoner on a longer leash, all to stand vigil by her side. By Cecilia's.
I turned slowly, the motion deliberate, as if moving through water. There he stood, in the grand hallway, a portrait of simmering fury and profound weariness. The fine clothes of Dicathen looked alien on him, a costume that couldn't hide the Alacryan sharpness in his posture, the Taegrin Caelum coldness in his eyes.
"What are you doing?! Look at me!" he shouted, the words echoing in the vaulted space.
A part of me, the old, cynical part that was once King Grey, wanted to ignore him, to simply fly away and vanish into the sky. But a newer, heavier weight held me fast. Sylvie. She was still not back. A cold suspicion wormed its way into my thoughts.
Was she delaying on purpose? Forcing this confrontation she knew I would otherwise avoid forever? My bond was too wise despite her appearance and actual age, too attuned to the festering wounds of my soul.
I had tried. But that effort had died stillborn, suffocated by his hatred and my own guilt. After we had torn Cecilia's soul from its peaceful rest and shackled it to this war, there was nothing left to say.
"I want to fight Agrona."
The statement was so absurd, so utterly disconnected from reality, that I actually wondered if the strain of the day had finally caused an auditory hallucination. I stared at him, my mind scrambling to process the words. But his face, pale and set in lines of fierce determination, confirmed it. He meant it.
"Nico, you can't. You are..." I began, the reasons a dull, practical list in my head. A prisoner. A liability. A key piece in a game you don't understand.
"What?" he snarled, cutting me off, his voice dripping with a venom that was both familiar and terrifyingly new. "You are enjoying playing the hero so much that you want to keep even me here, chained and defeated at your feet, for having tried to capture your best friend?!"
The words were meant to sting, and they did. But it was the way he said "best friend" that caught me off guard. Usually, any reference to Corvis from his lips was laced with pure, unadulterated spite. It was the name of who he thought was his replacement, the reason for his continued imprisonment.
But now… now there was none of that old hostility. It was just a statement of fact, laden with a different, more complex emotion I couldn't name.
"Or do you want me to tell you how much I am sorry?" he continued, his voice rising again, cracking under the pressure of his own emotion. "That I have wronged you?! That I have been played like a fucking fool by Agrona and hated you for something Cecilia asked you to do!"
The air left my lungs. The world seemed to narrow to the space between us. "Did Cecilia?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
"Yes." The single word was a dam breaking. "She confirmed your story. Are you happy?" He let out a bitter, broken sound that was almost a laugh. "I have always been the monster. I have always been in the wrong since we were reincarnated in Taegrin Caelum. Since the first time Melzri and Cadell made us spar. I was always wrong to hate you."
He gritted his teeth, his jaw muscle twitching, as if trying to physically restrain the confession.
I had to look away, my gaze dropping to the cold stone floor. Could the shattered glass of our friendship ever be pieced back together? The cracks were too deep, the fragments ground into dust. In Taegrin Caelum, I had despised this version of Nico.
No, resented him. I saw none of the brilliant, passionate person I had known on Earth in that bitter, Agrona-twisted weapon. But the truth I had to face was that the Nico I knew hadn't died because of Agrona's machinations. He had died because of me. Because of King Grey. Agrona had merely found a broken vessel and poured his poison into it.
"You were right to hate me, Nico..." The admission was ash in my mouth. I had said it before, but it never felt like enough. It would never be enough. "I know I already told you, but… I am sorry for everything."
"I don't want your excuses," he spat, the words sharp and final. "I only want to do something. To do something for Cecilia, and I can do that only by helping your continent."
Your continent. The phrase was a small, precise dagger. It found the gap in my armour and slid home. He was right.
Despite everything—despite Tessia's love, Corvis's brotherhood, Virion's guidance, Alduin's and Merial's love—I still did not truly call Dicathen home. It was a transaction. A chessboard, vast and bloody, upon which I was moving pieces with a single, obsessive goal: to get Corvis back.
It was the battlefield where I was trying to win not just a war, but a life, a redemption, for myself and the handful of people I had reluctantly, miraculously, allowed to matter.
"How is Cecilia doing?" The question escaped me before I could stop it, a flicker of concern for a ghost I had created.
Nico's posture shifted slightly, the aggressive tension bleeding away into something softer, more protective. "She is confused," he said, his voice lowering. "But… she is relieved. She isn't haunted by the Legacy anymore." .
I merely hummed, a non-committal sound, the gears in my head still turning, calculating the flight time to Elenoir.
Then he added, his voice barely audible, "She's been asking how you were doing." He paused, and I forced my eyes back to his. He was biting his lip, a nervous habit from a lifetime ago. "Her last memory from Earth… was of her dying happy because you granted her a freeing death."
The image flashed behind my eyes, unbidden and brutal. Cecilia, on her knees, a smile of terrible, grateful peace on her face as my blade found its mark. The warmth of her blood on my hands. The silence that followed.
"You should stay by her side, not fight," I retorted, the words coming out harsher than I intended, a defense mechanism against the flood of guilt.
He scoffed, and for a fleeting second, I saw a ghost of the boy I knew—sarcastic, challenging. "Your few years with Corvis Eralith's sister have given you a couple's counseling title?" he asked, his tone perched precariously between our old, familiar banter and a fresh, searing insult.
"Why?" I asked, steering the conversation back from the brink. "Why do you want to do this?"
The King Grey part of my mind was already assessing his utility. He was strong. Not a Scythe, not a Lance, but a product of Agrona's personal tutelage, trained for years longer than I had been in Taegrin Caelum. He was a weapon, and we were desperate for any blade we could wield.
"I told you. I am tired," he said, and the exhaustion in his voice was a bottomless well. "I am tired of being a fucking cog! In both lives, I have been useless. Headmaster Wilbeck died, Cecilia was kidnapped, you disappeared to train…"
What was happening today? First Virion, shattering before my eyes with the weight of his failures as a grandfather, and now Nico, unraveling the tapestry of his own profound inadequacy. I felt a surge of panic.
I am not Corvis. I don't have his innate empathy, his trength that makes people pour their hearts out. I am a listener by necessity, not by nature, and the weight of these confessions was crushing me.
"In Taegrin Caelum…" Nico continued, his eyes staring at something I couldn't see, some private hell. "I have been belittled. For fifteen years by Agrona, who continuously reminded me how useless I was. By the Scythes, who never missed a chance to tell me how much better you were, how fantastic Scythe Grey would have been."
Memories, sharp and painful, resurfaced. My early years in that citadel of ambition and cruelty. The training that made my sessions with Lady Vera seem like child's play. Back then, I was a willing instrument, desperate to serve the man I saw as a savior, a genius uncle.
I saw it now with horrifying clarity—Agrona didn't just command with power; he wielded emotions like a sculptor wields a chisel, shaping his Scythes through devotion and divine disappointment, keeping all of Alacrya on a leash of fearful reverence.
"And then came Corvis Eralith."
The name, in this context, was a thunderclap.
"For the first time in two lives, someone looked at me not with belittlement. Not with pity, like you are doing even now! Not with the biased, protective love Cecilia has for the ghost of who I was…"
He took a step closer, his voice intensifying. "Corvis Eralith… he said that I was his only chance. You, so high and mighty, so talented, so experienced, so good at everything you do… so powerful and unyielding… you can't understand! You can't possibly comprehend what it feels like! Corvis Eralith is the only person who understands what it feels to be an inept! To be suffocating in your own ineptitude while everyone around you is so much better, so much more capable than you!"
I wanted to rebuke him, to tell him he was wrong, that I understood struggle. But the words died in my throat. Because he was right. My struggles had always been against external enemies, against the limits of my own power. I had never known the soul-crushing weight of being fundamentally lesser, of being left behind.
Corvis, born without a mana core in a world of mages, and Nico, perpetually in the shadow of others' in both his lives… they shared a common currency of desperation that I, for all my sins and suffering, had never truly possessed.
The realization was a humbling, painful blow.
"Still, you can't go," I said, my voice firm, forcing myself back to the cold calculus of our situation. "The fact that Agrona doesn't know you are alive might be the only thing keeping Corvis alive. Until we are sure… until we know whatever plan he set in motion with your 'death' has worked… you can't do anything, Nico. I am sorry."
The finality in my tone was a wall. I saw the fight drain out of him, the fierce light in his eyes guttering into resigned acceptance. He understood. He hated it, but he understood.
"I told you," he said, his voice flat and empty, all the fire extinguished. "I don't want your apologies."
He turned and walked away, the sound of his retreating footsteps echoing the hollow rhythm of my own heart.