"You really think those little shardlings could actually do the job?"
Nyra's voice cut through the rushing wind as she vaulted over a massive, moss-covered root. She didn't just run; she moved through the dense woodland behind the school as if the entire forest were a personal parkour course, effortlessly treating the golden sunrays slicing through the canopy like physical obstacles to weave around.
Damon shifted his grip on Princess Alya. Her greyish, darkened body was chillingly cold against his shoulder—a heavy reminder of the ticking clock. Despite the dead weight in his arms, he didn't break his stride, matching the brutal pace as Cythera kept parallel to them, swinging fluidly from a low-hanging oak branch.
"My plan wasn't exactly Mr. Perfect," Damon replied, his boots crunching against the damp earth before he launched himself off a boulder. He planted a single foot against the trunk of a towering pine, ricocheting off the solid wood to clear a thick patch of briars without losing momentum. "But if they execute it flawlessly, they should still be alive."
He cleared the air, landing cleanly on a steep slope. "Besides, wait a minute. You're their classmate, so you're technically a shardling too."
Mid-stride, Nyra turned her head and playfully shook her index finger at him. "Not exactly, big bro. I'm a hardened shardling. I've partaken in actual, kill-or-be-killed battles, remember?"
Damon chuckled under his breath, adjusting his footing as they crested a rocky ridge. "Fair point. But a shardling is still a shardling, even if it's hard. So..."
"Keep your pebble brain to yourself and let's focus on finding Klaven," she shot back, though a small smirk tugged at her lips. "Cythera, how many hours do we have left?"
Cythera blinked, her grip tightening on a different oak branch as if Nyra's voice had physically snapped her thoughts back to the present. She swung forward, landing cleanly on a thick, mossy ledge alongside them.
"Hm? Oh," Cythera said, her voice momentarily lacking its usual sharp edge. She glanced down at her wrist interface. "We have twenty-two hours left to return Princess Alya's core."
Damon kept his stride steady, but his eyes narrowed slightly as he caught her profile.
'Is she alright?' Damon thought, his mind flashing back to the grim darkness of the underground vault. 'I'm usually the quiet one, but she hasn't said a single word since we left the crypt. Is it 'cause of Klaven? I thought she said she didn't like him...?'
Damon exhaled sharply, forcing the thought aside. 'I'll ask later. We should focus on getting Alya's core.'
He shifted his gaze back to the path ahead, his eyes tracking the layout of the trees as they blurred past.
'If Klaven is headed to see Doran, he'd definitely go this way. It's the fastest route to reach the school. But there's no sight of him anywhere in this dignified forest. I can't even sense his Ki signature at all. What if I—'
He paused mid-thought. A subtle shift in the rhythm of their footsteps caught his attention.
'Hmm? Why is she slowing down?'
Damon glanced over his shoulder. Nyra, who had been leading the charge just moments ago, was beginning to trail behind him. Cythera noticed it too, letting her momentum drop as she landed softly on a thick branch ahead, looking back with a worried brow.
"Are you seriously slowing down?" he called back. "Don't tell me you're getting tired already. It's not even been—"
Before the words could fully leave his mouth, Nyra launched herself off a massive root, bounding through the air straight toward him.
In one fluid, split-second motion, Damon whipped Princess Alya's cold body off his shoulder, shifting her down into a secure princess carry against his chest just as Nyra collided with his upper back. She locked her wild paws into his hair, sticking the landing perfectly on his shoulders.
Damon took the extra weight without a single stumble, his boots digging into the dirt as he kept their momentum flying forward. Though his voice wasn't as calm and precise as his movement:
"Nyra! What the heck?!"
"No foul words, big bro," Nyra said, closing his mouth from above with her palm as she settled onto his shoulders. "Don't tell me you forgot your offer? A few days ago, you promised to always let me sit on these sturdy boards if we were ever travelling on foot."
Damon made an attempt to speak, but his words were completely muffled by Nyra's chaotic hands, and his arms were entirely occupied with the princess. Forcing his way past her grip, he finally broke free.
"I haven't forgotten the deal, because I remember telling you that you'd sit there when I can let you! Not when a princess is dying!"
Nyra raised an eyebrow from above. "Whaaat? Have you forgotten your sister's also a princess? You're going to carry another princess when I'm right beside you?"
Damon groaned as he leaped over a fallen trunk, whispering a surrendering, "It's uncomfortable. Also, keep your voice down. I might be making us invisible right now, but they can still hear us."
"On the contrary, it looks pretty comfortable to me," Nyra noted. "And maybe you should practice your theory. Sound bending with your wind."
"I'd be able to do that if my arms weren't full."
They kept running, eyes scanning the dense undergrowth for any sign of Klaven.
'We need to get Mom to know what's happening here,' Damon thought, his eyes tracking the tree line. 'But the problem is, if she knew, she'd come here too fast. And she wouldn't silence her arrival either, especially if Bravira tails along. That just increases the chances of Doran's escape. Hmmm. Daichi.'
'Daichi,' Damon called telepathically.
Without breaking stride, the wolf popped his head out of Damon's coat pocket and let out a single, sharp bark.
'Daichi. You know the way back home from school, right? Sorry, but I'll need your help with this.'
Daichi replied telepathically, 'Yep. From here we pass through The Corehouse of Plenty and—'
'No, no, no. Not today,' Damon interrupted. 'I want you to head straight to the palace in your tiniest dog form and tell Mother what's going on. I'm not exactly sure how you'll do that, but try your best. Tell her to trust Nyra and me, and to take her time. Also, mention I said she should NOT bring Bravira. Instead, call Draven and bring Hazel too.'
'Err… Damon, that's a lot to remember,' Daichi whined mentally. 'If I had meat with me, though…'
Nyra instantly reached out from Damon's shoulder, snagging a passing bird mid-air. She blew a silent line of fire to flash-cook it, tossing it from her palm in one seamless motion. Daichi leaped straight from Damon's pocket, catching the smoking snack perfectly in his jaws.
Damon glared upward. "What are you doing? What if they sense your eterna?"
"We have to get a message across, Damon," Nyra said, shifting her weight effortlessly. "The only way Daichi'll remember all of that is with meat."
Daichi swallowed the bird whole, whispering telepathically, 'Trust me, Damon. I'll get to Mom quietly.'
With a quick shimmer of light, the wolf instantly transformed into his smallest, most inconspicuous dog form and vanished into the shadows of the brush.
They kept running through the dense, uneven stretch of the Woewyn outskirts. Damon, even while carrying Alya's cold, almost skeletal form on his shoulder, planted his free hand against a fallen mossy log and vaulted his body over it cleanly without breaking stride.
Nyra adjusted her grip on his shoulders perfectly, her weight shifting in tandem with him. On his flank, Cythera moved like water—fluid and low to the ground. She approached a jagged outcrop of stone, slid her boot against the base, and executed a smooth side-vault over the ridge, landing back into a full-tilt sprint.
"Cythera, you've been quiet," Damon called out.
Cythera blinked, as if snapping out of a trance. "Hm? Sorry. I was just… lost in thought."
Damon and Nyra exchanged a glance.
"If this is about Klaven," Damon said, breath steady despite the pace, "I'm not planning revenge for what he did at the Trineum festival. Even if he was an enemy, I'll try to reduce his charges or something."
Cythera's eyes flicked toward him. "That's good to know."
She leaped off a massive exposed root, landing lightly before continuing. "But it's not about revenge. You'll understand later. Let's just focus on finding him."
As she faced forward again, the rhythm of her boots faded from her awareness—replaced by the heavy silence of a memory.
FLASHBACK — BEFORE THE TRINEUM FESTIVAL
The clinking of silver cutlery against fine porcelain echoed in the quiet dining room. They were all sitting at the long, polished mahogany table, having what started as a normal conversation about noble standing and politics. Cythera sat directly between her mother and her father, while Klaven sat opposite her, wedged between his own mother and father.
The adults were all in casual conversation, though Klaven sat with his shoulders slouched, twisting his fork into a single bean as if it were the only thing in the world he could control.
"I heard you only managed to chip the training targets yesterday," Klaven's mother remarked, casually swirling the wine in her glass before looking up. Her eyes flicked to the bean on his fork.
"Which brings me to my point—what stage are you on now, Klaven? Because your cousin Cythera is already outgrowing her tutors, yet you seem perfectly content poking vegetables. Even the new Majesty, Prince Damon, has already reached the Aegis stage. The boy's only been on Woewyn for a few weeks, and he is already showing the kind of prestige a true Royal family should carry. Even though we are only Nobles."
Cythera's mother offered a blunt, realistic nod. "Cythera's an anomaly on the low end of the Aeon stage, brutally surpassing her peers by carrying centuries of power at such a young age. The Chosen One, as your mother noted, has only trained for a few weeks and is remarkably at the peak of the Aegis stage. You're all the same age."
Cythera thought to herself, 'Expecting him to match an Aeon at seventeen is absurd— but no one at the table seems to care. You just said I was an anomaly yourself, but if there were more like me, I'd be less of an anomaly. The only Aeons I know aside from myself are over three hundred. That's the whole point of being an anomaly. There are times I wish I weren't a noble, or at least grandfather were here to show how drastic these comparisons are. This is one of them.'
From across the table, Klaven's father tried to intervene, aiming to pamper his son and soften the sting. "Now, now, let's not get carried away. Klaven is a Voren. But of course, he can't compare to the Chosen One—the boy's a true anomaly. It's unfair to expect my son to keep up."
Klaven's breath hitched—barely audible, but Cythera and her father heard it.
Cythera watched from her seat as Klaven held the fork he was using to eat more tightly. His knuckles turned white, the silver trembling slightly against his palm as he stared down at his plate. He abruptly pushed his chair back, the legs scraping against the floor.
"I'll be leaving."
"Sit back down," his mother commanded, her voice leaving zero room for argument. "Does it hurt being weak, my son? Well, if you don't like it, change it. Everyone in our family surpasses those above them. Cythera is younger, even though only a few months, but better. The new prince has barely trained and is amusing. But you're just… here. Stagnant."
The suffocating tension hung heavy over the table.
Cythera set her silverware down and fixed her gaze on Klaven's mother, "I don't know if you've noticed, Aunt, but being an Aegis stage mage at the age of seventeen is incredibly impressive. He's rare in the country and the entire Kingdom. You're only saying this now because the Trineum match is coming up, and you've disregarded that he's fought to be amongst the top twenty mages."
Klaven's mother held a smile. "Wow… defending your cousin, that's a new one. I'd always hoped you'd grow out of your coldness toward Klaven, and now that you have, you can't possibly expect me not to compare his immature nature to yours."
"You're mistaken. I don't hate him. I just—"
Cythera's father instantly snapped his head toward his daughter, his expression stern. "Cythera."
"But father—"
He calmly shot her a stern look, and she kept quiet.
The clattering of cutlery at the table went on for a moment before Cythera's father spoke again, turning his gaze across the porcelain. "In my opinion, as your uncle, you could be better, Klaven. Cythera reached Aeon long before this age; in fact, you should be better. There's nothing simple about being an Aegis. If your grandfather were here, he'd commend your strength. However, the point remains—as Cythera will not be competing this time, do not disgrace us. If she can do it, you should be aiming higher."
Cythera's mother added, "Speaking of your grandfather, wouldn't it be a shame if the headmaster of the festival being run has his grandson lose against a boy who's only been training for a few weeks?"
Across the table, Klaven didn't move. He kept his head down, his gaze locked onto the unfinished dish in front of him. A single drop of condensation slid down the side of his untouched water glass, tracking slowly toward the polished wood.
"I'm tired of it." "
His throat tightened, the words clawing their way out before he could swallow them back.
Underneath the edge of the mahogany table, Klaven's hands gripped the wood so hard his knuckles turned a brittle white.
Klaven's father lowered his glass. "What did you say?"
"I said I'm tired of it!" Klaven slammed both hands onto the edge of the table so hard the water glasses rattled.
"Every chance you get, I am compared to something. I don't care about the opinions and expectations of others, even though I surpass them every single day. But you," he turned, his gaze sweeping over the elders at the table, "I can't seem to satisfy you regardless of what I do. My tutors are in their fifties, and I've reached their stage as a child. I'm sorry that's not enough for you!"
The room went completely still. No one moved to pick up their cutlery. The wine slowly stopped swirling in his mother's glass, the ambient hum of the grand dining hall fading into an uncomfortable, dragging silence.
A grandfather clock ticked against the far wall, counting the heavy seconds as the elders stared back at him with rigid, unreadable expressions.
Klaven stood straight, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths.
"You don't listen to me when I speak. You just hear it. Listen now. I'm strong. I am. And I'll prove it. I'll win the Trineum Festival. And I'll beat the prince you think I can't even light a candle to."
Klaven turned from the table and proceeded out, his boots thudding against the polished wood.
Cythera called out, her voice rising to reach him before he hit the door, "Klaven, wait—"
Klaven didn't look back, throwing his words over his shoulder as the heavy doors began to swing shut. "I'm older than you. Just because you're stronger than me doesn't give you the right to tell me what to do."
The room instantly went silent, save for the ticking of the grandfather clock.
Cythera watched as Klaven slammed the door and left the room. And had one certain thought:
'I knew it in that moment that he was hurt. And that pain would cause him to do something stupid.'
PRESENT— FINDING KLAVEN
The heavy doors of the Voren dining hall vanished from Cythera's mind, shattered by a sharp, pained grunt that echoed through the damp forest air ahead.
Damon's ears twitched. "This way!" he called out instantly.
He dug his boot into the soil, pivoting hard to the right. Cythera tracked his movement seamlessly, her expression locking back into a cold determination as they dashed forward through the thickening brush. The branches whipped past their faces, the ground sloping downward into a shadowed, rocky ravine.
They burst through a dense wall of briars into a small, ruined clearing—and the scene before them brought their momentum to a sudden, grinding halt.
Scattered across the dirt were several of Doran's cybernetic humanoids, their metallic chassis smoking with jagged, melting holes blasted cleanly through them from intense fire. But the fight was already over.
In the center of the carnage, a massive, uninjured cybernetic humanoid stood tall. The cybernetic humanoid's four mechanical arms shifted with eerie precision.
Wrapped in its mechanical grip, Klaven was being held entirely off the ground by his neck. His head hung limp, a thick trail of blood streaming down from a fresh gash on his forehead, while more blood poured dark and heavy from both of his ears.
His eyes were barely open, his fingers weakly clawing at the cold metal around his throat. His pupils were unfocused, drifting — a sign he was seconds from losing consciousness.
The humanoid's free arm shifted, the forearm casing sliding back as a high-density energy blast whirred to life, pointing straight into Klaven's chest at point-blank range. The machine held Princess Alya's core in its third arm, a sword clutched in its fourth.
The condensed blast glowed a blinding, volatile blue, ready to erase him.
Damon, with Nyra still gripped tightly onto his shoulders, Princess Alya in his arms, and Cythera at his side, stared at the sight in absolute shock and disbelief.
"What?" Damon breathed, his voice dropping into a stunned whisper. Nyra's claws dug into his shoulders, but Cythera's breath stopped entirely.