Fifty-four days ago. Night of the war. Lord Theodore's perspective.
Everything was ready. The plan was complete.
I stood near the church's Headquarters, hidden by an Aether containing barrier. The building loomed before me, massive and ornate, its spires reaching toward the twin moons as if in prayer.
I grabbed my sword and started concentrating Aether on the blade. The weapon had been hand made by the best of the weapon makers that I used for decades.
It deserved this moment. It deserved to drink the blood of the church that had served our enemy for centuries.
Every ounce of revenge gathered in my chest. The decades of fighting monsters that were sent to kill us. The centuries of manipulation that had turned my family into unwitting pawns. The siblings I had murdered, believing I was seizing power when I was only following the dragon's design. All of it, every drop of pain and rage and bitter truth, flowed into the sword. The barrier containing Aether was released.
The blade started to glow. At first it was subtle, a faint luminescence along the edges. Then it grew brighter, hotter, until the sword itself seemed to become light. I poured more Aether into it, I had built over seventy years of hoarding monster cores, of pushing my body past every limit, of preparing for this single moment.
The sword was vertically held, point toward the sky, edge aligned with the church's central spire. Ready to be stricken.
After a few seconds, I moved the sword downward with the utmost speed. The motion was simple. A vertical cut. But the force behind it was anything but simple.
The ground melted beneath me. The stone I stood on turned to liquid, then vapor. The air itself caught fire. Surrounding buildings were instantly destroyed, their walls crumbling, their roofs vanishing in the shockwave.
A massive concentrated Aether slash was generated.
It detached from my blade and traveled forward, a crescent of pure energy that devoured everything in its path. The church's outer wall dissolved. The courtyard beyond evaporated. The main sanctuary simply ceased to exist.
The slash traveled at an incredibly high speed. It struck the central spire, and for a moment, the spire seemed to resist. Then it, too, was gone.
Everything that came within the slash's path was evaporated. Reduced to the component particles that had once formed stone and wood and glass and flesh.
Then it reached the church population… and exploded. All of them evaporated. Shockwaves were redirected to House Mareux destroying them too.
My job is over.
I stood there for a long moment, breathing heavily, watching the devastation spread.
The plan succeeded. Now we had everything in the empire.
My forces would be moving through the House Mareux now, securing key positions, eliminating remaining resistance. Alistair would be killing the king about now, if he hadn't already. The Mareux family, caught between our surprise attack and their alliance with the church, would be annihilated within hours. By dawn, the three powers would be nothing but memory.
But an event that I hadn't predicted occurred.
Three days later, as I was reviewing reports from the front, a messenger arrived with urgent news. The Abyssal AER Jail's mass prisoner escape. Hundreds of inmates, freed in a single coordinated breakout.
The prisoners were all innocent. Political prisoners. Truth-tellers. People who knew about the church's secrets and had been silenced for it. I can use them.
They took refuge in the house.
I learned of it the next morning. A column of former prisoners, led by three individuals, had approached our eastern border and requested asylum. My border commanders, following standing orders to accept any refugees from Church territory. They were now housed in a temporary camp near the border of House Theodore.
I visited the place where they took refuge.
The camp was orderly, well-run. The prisoners had been processed, fed, given basic medical care. My people had done good work. I walked through the rows of tents, scanning faces, looking for one face in particular.
No presence of Zyphron.
I checked twice. Three times. I used my Eyes of Veracity to verify that I wasn't being deceived, that some illusion wasn't hiding him. Nothing. He simply wasn't there.
The three heroes that saved visited me one by one.
The first was a man called Roran. Big, strong, straightforward. He had been a soldier before his imprisonment, and it showed in the way he stood, the way he spoke. He claimed that he and the others had freed the prisoners. When I asked for details, he described fighting guards, leading people to safety. Standard prison break narrative.
The second was Mirabel. Quicker, sharper, more observant. She claimed that only the three of them had freed the prisoners. Her story matched Roran's in every particular.
There was something suspicious.
Not in what they said. In what they didn't say. They described the escape as if it were a simple matter of force and opportunity. But the Abyssal Jail was not simple. I knew its reputation. A breakout like this required planning, coordination, intelligence. These three were capable, but were they that capable?
Two days later when Cinder came, I looked into the truth with my eyes.
He stood before me in my private study, nervous but composed. He told his story, the same as the others. Fighting guards. Rescuing prisoners. Escaping together. All true, as far as it went.
But my Eyes showed me more.
They showed me the gaps in his narrative. The moments he skipped over. The decisions he attributed to chance that were actually directed. They showed me a shadow behind his words, a presence that had guided everything.
The mastermind of the escape was Zyphron.
He planned everything.
The realization hit me like a physical blow. I maintained my composure, kept my face neutral, but inside, something shifted. My twelve-year-old son, the Aetherless child I had sacrificed, had orchestrated a mass prison break.
Hahahahaha. I laughed internally. What an amazing child!
The movements he did. The plans he had created. The leadership he had demonstrated, convincing grown adults to follow his direction. Everything pointed to a mind far beyond his years.
So the carriage Manipulation was not a show, but his real skills.
When he had provoked Lyra into attacking the church , I had assumed it was childish impulsiveness. A fortunate accident that. But it wasn't an accident. It was calculation.
He was really cunning.
Using and provoking his sister to attack the church, saving him. But that failed. The Church had taken him anyway, had thrown him in the Abyssal Jail instead of killing him outright. They thought they were being merciful. They had no idea they were giving him exactly what he needed.
If I had given him formal training…
The thought trailed off into silence. I couldn't complete it. Because the truth was, I hadn't given him training. I had given him isolation. I had given him a role in my plan.
But I had to use him because of the plan. That was what I told myself. That was what I believed. The plan required a sacrifice, and he was the most expendable piece. It made strategic sense.
Now I wasn't so sure.
So he's moving towards Paras.
He had separated from the group, probably before they reached the border. He was out there somewhere, alone, with no Aether and no resources.
I gave my top men orders to find Zyphron in Paras and bring him back.
A few days later, the reports came back. There was no sign of Zyphron.
My men had searched the surrounding, nearby area. They had interviewed every local, every traveler. Nothing. He had vanished.
Did that cunning child predict this?
The question haunted me. If he had deduced that I would come looking for him, if he had anticipated that I would want him back, then he would have taken steps to avoid capture.
He moved to another kingdom?
The possibility was horrifying. If he had crossed a border, finding him would become exponentially harder.
He must have deduced the plan. That's why he ran and that's why he moved into another kingdom.
It was the only explanation that fit. He had figured out that I had used him. And he had decided that his best option was to disappear completely.
This is turning out to be the worst case scenario!
I didn't expect him to fight back so hard. I expected him to survive, maybe, if he was lucky. I expected him to be found among the prisoners, grateful for rescue, ready to be reintegrated into the house. I didn't expect him to plan an escape, lead it successfully, and then vanish into the wilderness.
I cannot forget my oath. I need to find him.
The promise I had made to my dying wife echoed in my mind. He had uncovered the truth at age three. He had earned the inheritance. And now he was gone.
I ordered my men to look in every kingdom. I sent agents to every major city, every trading hub, every place he might seek shelter. I pulled strings, called in favors, spent gold like water.
There were no traces of him.
Weeks passed. The reports grew thinner, more desperate. My men found nothing. The informants I paid had no information to sell.
He has become a spectre.
Why is this possible? How can a child plan this?
I asked the question constantly, turning it over in my mind like a puzzle I couldn't solve. And yet he had outmaneuvered me completely.
Present.
After days of searching, we finally found a kingdom called Raone that had a system.
It was a small kingdom, barely worth noticing, tucked between larger neighbors.
I personally visited the kingdom and demanded to look at the files of travelers.
The local official I spoke to was a small man with a tendency to sweat when stressed. He denied my request immediately, citing privacy laws, royal prerogative, the sacred rights of travelers. I listened politely for approximately thirty seconds, then demonstrated why politeness was optional.
I threatened to destroy the kingdom.
I didn't raise my voice. I simply described, in precise detail, what would happen to Raone if I did not see those files. His sweat intensified. He asked me to wait while he consulted his superiors.
I showed them the power.
When his superiors arrived, I repeated my request. They also refused. So I stepped outside, drew my sword, and carved a trench through the main street of their capital city. A hundred meters long. Ten meters deep. Clean as glass along the edges. I did it with a single casual slash, barely using any Aether at all.
They agreed to show the list.
I found him. Named as Kaito.
The name jumped off the page at me. Kaito. Not a name from any culture I knew. Where did he get this name? Some book he had read in the hidden library? I didn't know. But the description matched: a bald boy, young, traveling alone. The entry noted that he had arrived three weeks ago.
He had shaved off his head.
That intelligence was staggering. He knew his golden hair marked him as Theodore. He knew anyone looking for him would be searching for that distinctive feature. So he removed it. Simple. Effective. Brutally logical.
I underestimated him.
The thought burned. I had spent decades planning, decades preparing, decades positioning pieces on a board I thought I controlled. And my son, the piece I considered most expendable, had slipped through my fingers completely.
I tried to find him in that kingdom. My men searched every street, every inn, every possible hiding place. Nothing. No traces of him were found. He had been there, and then he was gone.
A rage grew upon me. I haven't felt that emotion for a really long time.
It was hot and cold at once, a burning fury mixed with icy frustration. I wanted to destroy something. I wanted to tear down the kingdom that had failed to hold him, the city that had let him slip away, the world that kept hiding him from me.
I was thinking of destroying that kingdom. It would have been easy. One more slash, properly aimed, and Raone would cease to exist. But I controlled my rage. Barely. The kingdom hadn't done anything wrong. It was just a place, just a record, just another piece of the vast continent where my son had vanished.
I quickly went home.
The flight was fast, the wind biting at my face as I soared through the upper atmosphere.
At home, Alistair was waiting for me.
He stood in my study, his posture alert, his expression concerned. He had changed in the years since the war. There was a new weight to him, a new seriousness. Killing a king did that to a person, I supposed.
"What happened?" he asked. "You look angry and distressed."
I breathed a sigh. The sound seemed to fill the room, heavy with decades of secrets and lies.
And I told him about the situation. Everything. The history of manipulations by superior dragons. The centuries of Antherra's control. The tests I had created for my children. Zyphron's Aetherlessness, hidden by a spell that had finally faded. The oath I had made to his mother. The plans I had built around him. And now, his disappearance.
Alistair listened without interrupting. When I finished, he was silent for a long moment.
"Why didn't you tell me about this?" His voice was quiet, controlled, but I could hear the emotion beneath it. "Why did you carry such a huge burden alone?"
"It was necessary." The words felt hollow even as I spoke them. "For the patriarchs who suffered decades of manipulation. For the house. For the future. I couldn't tell you because you were young."
"I am perfectly old now."
The simple statement carried more weight than any argument could. He was old now. He had killed a king. He had proven himself in ways I never could have at his age.
"That's why I told you." I met his eyes, saw my own citrine gaze reflected back at me. "I don't know what to do now."
Alistair considered the problem. I watched him work through it, saw the same analytical mind I had cultivated in all my children, the same strategic thinking I had tried to instill.
"The only thing we can do," he finally said, "is try to find him all across the human continent. Expand the search. Use more resources. Put pressure on every kingdom, every city, every village. Someone will have seen him."
"Yes." I nodded slowly. The rage had faded, replaced by exhaustion. "I might need some rest. Postpone the dragon invasion campaign to next month."
"Of course, Father. Rest. I'll handle things while you recover."
I clasped his shoulder, a rare gesture of affection. Then I left the study and walked to my private chambers.
After that, I finally, finally took a rest.
Decades of fighting, years of plans, months of war, weeks of searching. It had all caught up to me. I lay down on my bed, still in my clothes, still wearing my sword, and stared at the ceiling.
I had won.
I Destroyed our enemies.