Chapter 85: Too Reckless

Cassius saw him before he fully understood what he was seeing, a friend from the wars of his own youth, striding straight toward Lucian and wrenching him free of the guards still dragging him toward the door.

"What exactly do you think you’re doing, Irvine."

Cassius’s voice cut cold and sharp across the hall, his eyes fixed on the man who had just stripped Lucian clean out of his own soldiers’ grip.

Elder Burrel moved to stop him, but Irvine’s own men, armored in the flame-lion crest of House Augusta, were already there, blades crossing with House Sarnel’s guards in a tense standoff.

"Patriarch Irvine. Do you intend to interfere in House Sarnel’s own affairs?"

A ripple of confusion passed through the hall. No one could quite understand why House Augusta would suddenly move to protect Lucian of all people.

Burrel cast a glance around the room, reading the discomfort on more than a few noble faces at Augusta’s heavy-handed move, and let a thin smile settle over his own, certain the room’s mood had turned in his favor. He leaned into it, choosing his next words carefully, hoping to box Augusta into backing down before they could do Lucian any real good.

"Are you trying to protect a rebel from our own house, Patriarch Irvine? A boy who just showed open disrespect to His Majesty himself?"

Irvine had been standing back, quietly stroking his mustache while the room argued over him, content to let them talk. The word rebel changed that instantly.

He turned the full weight of his stare on Burrel, and the air around his hands ignited, a wave of furious heat rolling outward that sent the Elder stumbling backward off his feet, pure animal fear written across a face that only a moment ago had carried nothing but swagger.

Burrel, who had spent the whole night playing the picture of dignity and command, now looked like a child who’d stumbled into a monster’s den.

Sarnel’s soldiers raised their swords toward Irvine on reflex, closing ranks to shield their Elder.

Then the floor between Irvine and Burrel split open, and a wall of raw earth tore itself upward out of the marble, fast enough to leave half the hall flinching back from it.

Everyone in that room knew, without needing to be told, exactly who commanded the element of earth.

"Isn’t that His Majesty’s own Element Terra?"

As the murmur spread, Varka’s Grimoire answered it for them, manifesting at his right hand in a slow, deliberate bloom of golden light. It hung there in the air rather than resting in his grip.

Its pages, when they fell open on their own, showed no ink at all, only a faint seismic shimmer, as though the text written there existed somewhere just beneath the surface of the world rather than on the paper itself.

From it poured the Element Terra, packed earth hardening into whatever shape its wielder’s will demanded.

The size of that wall, and the speed and precision with which it had risen, told the room everything it needed to know. The Emperor’s own strength sat at nothing less than Tier 8, Astral Core, a level matched only by the Patriarchs of the Seven Pillars themselves.

Varka’s expression gave away almost nothing, only a flicker of genuine curiosity as he studied Irvine, holding back, giving him room to explain himself before judging the scene any further.

Varka trusted Irvine enough to believe the man wasn’t the type to pick a fight with another noble house, or stir up trouble, without real cause behind it.

Irvine brushed a thin layer of dust from his sleeve, glancing once at Burrel still cowering on the far side of the new wall, before letting his attention settle, briefly, on Varka.

But his real target had never been the Emperor at all. It was the man sitting at Varka’s side, watching him now with open, furious focus.

"Like I already told you once, Cassius. Are you quite certain you want to throw away one of the finest gems your family has ever produced?"

Confusion spread through the hall in both directions, from those seated far from the two men to those standing close enough to hear every word, none of them able to make sense of what was actually being discussed.

Irvine’s gaze dropped to Lucian, still face down against the marble. He closed a hand around the boy’s shoulder and raised his voice so the entire room could hear it.

"This child you’re so eager to cast out is the very first man in this continent’s recorded history to receive a White Awakening."

"And if you truly intend to discard him, House Augusta will take him in as one of our own, gladly, the very same hour you do."

The hall erupted all over again, louder this time, the shock of it plain on nearly every face. People openly questioned how a man could possibly have received a White Awakening at all, something that had never once happened in the whole of recorded history.

Beside Kaelyn, Helia’s own expression sharpened with the same disbelief.

"We know nothing about that fool’s Awakening," Kaelyn answered, a short, dismissive laugh escaping him, as though the very idea struck him as faintly absurd. "We never even sent a representative to witness it."

He genuinely seemed not to have known. But Helia felt a different kind of unease settling in, one Kaelyn’s easy laughter hadn’t touched at all.

How was it possible that news of a man’s White Awakening, the first of its kind in history, hadn’t already spread through every noble house in the empire?

"Rhaiven. Did any of our people pull the Awakening registry from the cathedral today?"

"No, Princess Helia. Peria’s cathedral hasn’t released its Awakening results to the empire yet. We may need several more days before an official report reaches us."

The surest way to prove Irvine’s claim, for anyone still unconvinced, would be an official record from the Order of Lumielle itself, documentation that could also, conveniently, raise the standing of any house whose child had tested at a strong enough tier.

"Irvine, did something you ate tonight disagree with you?" Galen’s voice carried an easy contempt. "If you pity the boy and want to help him, surely you could manage a more sensible idea than this."

"It’s no idea of mine," came a voice from beside him. "One of my own servants heard gossip today, from a Baron’s household on the eastern side, about something that happened in Peria."

It was Elder Eldric, and the words stopped Pentaron cold, some thought already turning over behind his eyes.

He called for another of his Elders, standing further back in the crowd.

"Vitarte. Where is House Kayden right now? Didn’t their son attend the Awakening ceremony at Peria’s cathedral as well?"

Marquis Kayden’s territory fell within House Austur’s own southern holdings, close enough that House Kayden effectively answered to Austur as something close to a vassal house.

Vitarte’s answer, when it came, satisfied no one. Marquis Kayden, he said, had sent word that he couldn’t attend tonight, citing no particular reason at all.

"He isn’t here?"

Pentaron frowned at that. House Kayden had always kept close ties with House Sarnel, and rarely if ever missed an event of this importance. Something, he suspected, had happened to that family, something serious enough to keep them away entirely.

Across the hall, Cassius turned his attention to Elder Meron, demanding to know whether there was any truth at all to what Irvine had just announced to the room.

"Forgive me, Patriarch. Per your own earlier order, you forbade us from sending anyone to accompany Lucian to his Awakening. We have no information on it ourselves."

Cassius’s hand closed around the arm of the chair beside him until the wood splintered under his grip, though even he understood the fault for this particular ignorance belonged to no one but himself.

"Bring Jeanne before me. Now. There is no possible way she brought him back into this house without knowing this."

He said it through gritted teeth, humiliation burning hot beneath the words, furious at himself for standing in front of the entire court without a single piece of information this important.

Irvine, watching Lucian still slumped in quiet misery, crossed the distance between them and crouched down beside him.

"Hey, kid. What you just did back there was far too reckless."

Lucian heard it, and knew, with a dull, aching certainty, that every word of it was true. He had moved too fast, said too much, with nothing behind it but conviction.

He’s right. I made a mistake. I should have known better than to think words from someone like me, someone who’s nothing to any of them, would ever actually be heard.

But in that vision, even though I failed to stop this tonight, I never saw anything confirming the mission itself had failed outright. Which means it’s still active. I still have a chance to keep them out of that forest.

He turned the thought over, searching for whatever angle might still be left to him. His eyes drifted, almost on instinct, toward Rhaiven.

Unfortunately, I don’t have anything solid enough to convince a single person in this room that a Necromancer is behind all of this.

He’d considered it, more than once tonight, tearing the mask off Rhaiven’s true identity in front of everyone.

But the only thing he actually had to point to was a length of thread coiled somewhere in the man’s grip, nothing more than that.

It wasn’t enough, not by a long measure, and Lucian suspected Rhaiven held something far more convincing in reserve, something capable of fooling every person in this hall at once if it came to that. If he pushed now, without real proof behind him, he feared it would end exactly the way tonight already had.

He never noticed that his own silence, and the direction of his gaze, had already drawn Irvine’s attention. The man’s next words landed like a hand closing around his throat.

"Did you just see a god?"