Chapter 86 - 88: If He’s Brave Enough

Irvine’s words turned Lucian’s head toward him before he’d even decided to move.

Behind the black cloth covering his eyes, his eyes had gone fully wide, trembling faintly, as though a secret only he had ever been meant to carry had just been pulled out into the open in front of the entire hall.

His pulse surged up into his skull all at once, blood pounding hard enough that his hands began to shake, every feeling in him tangled past sorting. A thousand questions tore through his mind in the same breath, chasing every possible way Irvine could have known, could have said something like that out loud.

He found nothing. Not one crack, not one slip, that could explain how Irvine might have guessed he could see something he was never supposed to be able to see at all.

Lucian’s lips parted, his voice coming out low and unsteady.

"How did you know..."

He lifted his face toward Irvine, who was watching him with the same careful attention, and caught, for just a moment, something close to surprise flicker across the man’s own features, as though Irvine hadn’t fully expected the question to land exactly where it had.

Whatever Irvine’s expression held, it settled quickly into something more deliberate, a man weighing his words before answering.

He ran two fingers along his mustache, twisting the end of it slowly, his eyes drifting somewhere distant, toward a memory of someone who’d once told him something he’d nearly forgotten.

"Truth be told, I was only guessing. I don’t actually know what’s happening with you. But something about your eyes just now reminded me of it."

"I’m afraid I don’t remember the Oracle’s real name anymore. But when she spoke with me once, she told me that someone who receives a White Awakening is special, because they carry a connection to a god."

Lucian heard it clearly, that Irvine had just named an Oracle as the source of that claim.

Something shifted in him at those words, an entirely new possibility opening up in his mind. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one capable of seeing text, or receiving orders, from whatever god or goddess lay behind it.

By Irvine’s own account, someone bearing a White Awakening carried power bound to the divine. And Lucian had seen, more than once now, that same text identify its source as a goddess.

It fit, too well to dismiss.

Irvine had heard it from an Oracle, and within the Order of Lumielle, an Oracle carried the title of the goddess’s own representative, someone whose decisions could be read, functionally, as the goddess Lumielle’s will itself.

That set her apart from a Saintess, who carried only the title of messenger.

Which meant, within the Order’s own structure, an Oracle outranked a Saintess by a wide margin, holding the position closest to supreme leadership the Order had.

Even so, the common faithful who followed the goddess Lumielle still revered every member of the Order, however minor, as something close to her own right hand.

But an Oracle’s movements stayed deeply private. She rarely traveled to smaller towns in any official capacity, rarely acted directly in the world at all.

A Saintess, by contrast, moved freely among ordinary people, which was exactly why a Saintess’s name and face became so widely known, while an Oracle’s remained something closer to legend.

Lucian found himself circling back to an uncomfortable thought. If he himself, with power this slight, could see a message from a goddess at all, what might an Oracle carry, or a true Saintess, whose power should by every account run far deeper than his own?

Because he already had a living example he still didn’t fully understand.

Lumina.

By her own admission, Lumina carried no Crimson bloodline at all, and yet she wielded power that looked, unmistakably, like Crimson power.

He remembered, too, a moment he’d never quite let himself examine too closely, a time she’d healed him with Sacred Mana after he’d been stabbed, proof enough, at least in part, of whatever strange claim sat behind her.

Had she not healed him that night, he doubted he would have opened his eyes to see another morning at all.

That memory, set beside everything Irvine had just told him, made what should have been impossible suddenly feel plausible.

Both things, a woman without Crimson blood wielding Crimson power, and a man with no divine birthright seeing messages from a goddess, made a kind of sense, if some god or goddess truly stood behind both of them.

And Lumina, a Saintess already, stood as one of the future candidates for Oracle herself, which meant whatever power she carried now was likely only a fraction of what she’d eventually hold.

"Patriarch Irvine. Could you tell me more about what this Oracle told you regarding a White Awakening? Does everyone who receives one gain the same kind of power, or does it differ from person to person?"

"Lucian, did I ever say this Oracle belonged to the Order of Lumielle?"

The question stopped him cold.

If she wasn’t an Oracle of the Order of Lumielle, then whose Oracle was she?

"I heard it from an Oracle belonging to one of the Orders on the continent of Eosia."

There was only one Order on that continent that Lucian knew by name, and it left his mouth before he’d fully decided to say it, a name he doubted many people in this hall would even recognize.

"Do you mean an Oracle of the Order of Selenea?"

Something shifted behind Irvine’s eyes, his thoughtful expression breaking open all at once, like a memory long buried had just clawed its way back to the surface on its own.

"That’s the one. That Order sits in the Red Lands, on Eosia, further from here than most of this hall could even picture."

A flicker of real admiration crossed Irvine’s face at the fact that Lucian knew a name this obscure at all, and he asked, with open curiosity, how the boy had come across it.

Lucian told him he’d once heard the name from a shepherd, mentioned almost in passing, nothing more than that.

Irvine seemed willing enough to let the explanation stand, not pressing further for details he clearly suspected didn’t add up. But his mouth kept moving all the same, and what came out of it next sounded less like praise for a servant of the goddess and more like admiration for a warrior.

"She’s an unusual one, that Oracle. Entirely too skilled with a spear for someone in her position. Spend enough time around her and you’d come away a spear master before you came away anything resembling devout."

Irvine drifted into a story of his own, some memory of time spent with that Oracle, and the more details he offered, the more something about them tugged at Lucian.

There was so much more he wanted to ask.

But the hall around them had no patience left for it.

The argument over Irvine’s claim hadn’t settled at all, some voices falling in behind him, others still refusing to believe a word of it, insisting the whole story of Lucian’s White Awakening sounded too far-fetched to accept, not without the Order of Lumielle confirming it themselves.

Then, before Lucian even registered her moving, Amelia rose from House Winter’s seat, having apparently reached her own certainty about what was happening to him after watching Irvine’s gamble play out.

She stepped in to help carry the argument forward, offering herself as a direct witness to the Awakening ceremony itself.

"Because of that, Your Majesty, as you well know, someone who receives an Awakening carries extraordinary talent from the very start. However far-fetched this sounds tonight, I believe it deserves real consideration."

Her words landed with weight. Even those who’d been firmly skeptical a moment ago found their certainty wavering, now that two of the Seven Pillar houses had stood up in Lucian’s defense.

"Your Majesty, I happen to know a way to put Patriarch Augusta’s claim to the test, if this boy from House Sarnel truly carries the Sacred Mana his White Awakening should grant him."

Varka turned toward the voice cutting through the uproar, and found someone stepping forward, offering to settle the question of Lucian’s Awakening once and for all.

"Is that so. And how exactly would we go about that, Rhaiven, to know for certain whether he carries a true White Awakening or not?"

Rhaiven’s sharp gaze had already fixed itself fully on Lucian, a quiet wariness settling behind it, the look of a man weighing something he suspected might prove dangerous.

His mouth curved into something that didn’t quite reach a smile.

"Of course, Your Majesty. If he’s brave enough to come forward, I believe I can prove it myself."