Blood covered the ground. It was white, but a bit brighter, appearing almost phosphorescent, which betrayed the identity of the deceased in advance:
A member of the silver race, of at least the ninth generation.
"What the hell is going on here?" Greyfowl grunted, his tone somewhat annoyed and heavy with exhaustion.
The Argentean race was considered a warrior race, while the Aureans were considered an intellectual race; they had been created by the pantheon for that purpose, or at least so the legends said.
"Magister," said his subordinate, who had almost grayish silver hair. He looked nervous; even though it was daytime, he was extremely pale due to the large amount of blood (and Greyfowl didn't blame him, as the same blood ran through his veins).
"What is it, Azur? Any witnesses or anything helpful? This is the damn fourth case in less than a day. It wasn't even that late; it barely got dark and there's already a dead body," he said furiously. He nervously slipped his hand into the gap of his onyx-colored armor, which bore a laurel wreath on the chest plate, displaying his status as an Onyx Magister, the head of the internal security forces of the city of Tesara.
"Nothing, Magister," Azur said in a polite tone as he hurriedly pulled out a smoking pipe and filled it at a desperately slow pace.
"Nothing?" he grunted, making Azur jump and nearly drop the pipe.
"Nothing, unfortunately. No one saw anything suspicious or detected the smell of blood. There were several drunk nobles who passed out near the area after leaving the theater, but despite that, they were unharmed."
Frowning at the absurdity of the situation, Greyfowl re-evaluated the corpse in front of him. It was a silver-haired man dressed in a floral shirt and a fuchsia cape. His face was twisted into an expression of horror because his jaw was dislocated and broken, and most of his face was deformed from being repeatedly smashed into the asphalt. Furthermore, a large portion of his neck had been torn out by a strangely humanoid bite.
"Magister, then his identity is already confirmed?" he asked with a certain fear and concern, dreading the words he was sure he was about to hear.
"Yes, I suppose there's no point in delaying the inevitable," he grunted reluctantly. "Report that the Princeps' youngest son, Karna Noir Arhilde, has been found dead."
His words caused the entire surrounding Onyx Guard to freeze slightly as they looked at each other in doubt.
"Let the hunt begin. I don't care if it's a damn Quicksilver or even a Sulfur, we will hang their head on a pike."
If there was anything to blame, Korelia would probably say it was her own bad luck, along with her low profile. Perhaps that uniquely attracted trouble, even when she tried to go unnoticed.
"Your name is Korelia, daughter of the Princeps of Maeve?" an intimidating-looking man asked coldly. He was an Argentean.
Therefore, his blue-toned skin and pale white hair stood out; it wasn't exactly silver, but the dilution of the Argentean bloodline probably had something to do with it.
"Not a Princeps, he is the Lord of Maeve. Although, well, de facto he would be a Princeps under the rule of the Hegemony," Korelia said with a shrug as she was interrogated by the man.
After all, she was supposedly the last companion of the deceased heir to the Princeps of Tesara.
"Lord," the Argentean replied with disdain. "Yeah, sure. Maybe on your continent he was a great lord, but even the kings of the East grovel compared to the Princeps of the South."
Korelia had no intention of correcting him; after all, she was already in enough trouble. If she had to count the actions that had led to her being detained by the Onyx Magister, she could probably recount the entire last two weeks.
She had recently left the Eastern Continent. The reason: her father. He wanted to marry her off to some southern noble and, if he was lucky, get rid of her; after all, the problems and rumors she had generated due to her unusual talent for attracting disasters were legendary. To the point that they called her "The Living Plague."
From bandit attacks, pirates, kidnappings, spies, terrorists, beasts... all sorts of accidents and situations in which she had simply been a victim or an innocent bystander.
Although I am glad in a way. This way I can launch the organization to new heights. The Witch's Cult will be as grand as the kingdom itself. Setting foot on the Southern Continent with her cult was indispensable, and she was genuinely curious about the situation in this place.
Or at least that was her initial plan, but certain factors altered this idea right from the start.
"So you didn't see anything weird, not a single suspicious person?" the sinister-looking man—despite being a guard—asked intensely, causing Korelia to raise an eyebrow while feigning fear and nervousness.
"No, I didn't see anything. Karna had asked me to leave him alone when he reached the center of the city; he just wanted to use me as a cover," Korelia said with a sad and desperate air.
But the man frowned as he looked at his partner and muttered a few words in a low voice.
"And you didn't see anyone suspicious? Not even a figure like a Quicksilver nearby?" the Onyx guard asked.
"No," Korelia replied hastily, shaking her head. "There was no one following us... I think."
But she caught a keyword in this conversation: Quicksilver. That was interesting.
Quicksilver wasn't the name of a gang or a place; it was a race, a corruption of a known word: Argentean.
The Quicksilver race was a corruption of this. Over twenty thousand years ago, during the peak of the Hegemony's artistic, military, and intellectual power, many members of the silver and gold races fell into both physical and intellectual revelry, coming into contact with unholy ideas and quests to transcend the flesh. A philosophical school emerged from that: The Cult of the Black Sun.
But... Unfortunately, everything comes with a price, and the price of this cult was the complete loss of the light. Their bodies turned jet black, while their eyes were overlaid with serpentine pupils. It is said that if they come into contact with pure sunlight, their bodies burn, instantly combusting (for the weakest), while the most powerful turn into black marble statues until the sunlight fades.
These beings, condemned to wander with their immortal bodies without ever seeing the sunlight, are called the Sulfurs (the sulfur race, in contrast to the Aureans, the gold race). Meanwhile, their equivalent for the silver race are the Quicksilvers (or the mercury race), which are creatures with inhuman features, having traded their beautiful and harmonious traits for animal parts. Although they retain the ordinary appearance of a member of the silver race, except for their ash-colored hair, at night their bodies take on animal and bestial forms, devouring corpses and committing cannibalism.
But what stood out the most about the members of this race was a specific deformity: they had the vestigial characteristics of a scorpion. That was the greatest corruption of the Quicksilver race.
It sounds too much like a twisted version of the vampire legend, Korelia thought to herself.
She genuinely found it curious that there was such an equivalent. Even though the Aureans and Argenteans lived ten times longer than a human, they still held that innate fear of the dark and death, and of what dwelled beyond it. Which was strangely very human.
But before she could enjoy that information, which was what she was truly after, they suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders.
And the guard said in a severe tone: "Take her away and interrogate her. And when you're done,"—with a cold look, as if staring at an object and not a person, he added—"do whatever you want."