Chapter 82: You Are Steady

Brother Valerius had long told the others that Elias would be summoned by the Commander, and the quick celebration was because they did not know when Elias would be returning, and so they needed to show the boy a hint of warmth before he headed into whatever role he was meant to play by the higher-ups.

They left ten minutes before the tenth hour, as it was better to always be early than on time.

Before Elias left with Brother Valerius, Kaelen had held him by the shoulder and pulled him a bit closer, and whispered,

“You are a soldier now, but you are also more than that… whatever comes for you ahead, follow your heart and your head.”

Elias smiled and nodded, and he turned around to follow Brother Valerius. He did not know how to say he did not fully trust his heart or his head to make a decision for him. After all, the only thing it wanted him to do was to kill everyone here.

Perhaps Elias may have missed some last-minute comments and greetings from his teachers, but his mind was fully occupied.

One reason he had been able to preserve his sanity with the screams of the Passenger in his head was because of the silence he found when inside the walls of the Asylum.

Elias would have loved to walk through the streets of the city and explore more of its wonders, but he knew that he would only find peace inside these walls.

He had long ago noticed that the voice of the Passenger was not random but selective. It only called him out to kill targets that were either mortals, Wisp, or, as he neared his eighteenth birthday, Fury Forge.

He never got the urge to kill anyone higher than this, and although he did not know the exact stage of the members of the Order, he knew they were far stronger than Fury Forge.

Something had changed, and it was either because he was now stronger, and the Passenger believed that he could hunt his teachers, or it must be the strengthening of the Passenger as he grew stronger.

Elias recalled that on the expanded version of his Status Screen, the Passenger Tax had increased to percent, and this did not just affect his stamina, but it seemed to have other effects too.

At least the visions were new.

Having the voices in his head was bad enough, but seeing Kaelen’s head being twisted around until he could see his own back and all of his limbs pulled from his body was not a pretty sight.

Remembering Anya’s dead eyes as her stomach was ripped open and her intestines shoved into her mouth was nightmare fuel, and Elias had to watch these visions stay side by side with reality.

Brother Valerius was walking in front of him, but Elias could also see his headless body staggering to the ground as blood pumped out of his neck.

“… are you listening to me?”

Elias blinked and saw Brother Valerius looking back at him, a bit in concern, and he nodded and smiled, “Forgive me, Brother Valerius, I was a bit deep in thought and was distracted. So many things have changed in such a short time.”

The one-eyed man sighed, “They have, but you will adapt to it.”

Elias did not make any abrupt motion when he heard the word adapt, but he looked at Brother Valerius and nodded.

The man smiled, “I knew I should have never allowed Kaelen to give you wine, but your body should be able to quickly purge out any alcohol, and you should listen well to what I am about to tell you next, they are not that important, but they may serve you well.”

Elias bowed, “I will listen well,”

“Good, let us hurry, we have delayed too long in the feast, and we must not keep the Commander waiting.”

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ROYAL PALACE OF STORMFALL – GRAND HALL

“I don’t know why I hate this city,” Lord Captain Veyris whispered as he sat in the grand hall and awaited the summoning from the Lord Protector of Stormfall, Calyx Arathor.

In any other city, no Lord Protector would dare keep Veyris waiting for more than ten hours, but Calyx was his brother by blood, and so he had some special privileges that no other Lord Protector would have.

By all rights, Calyx should have been the Lord Captain; he was the older brother after all, and he had trained hard for this position, scheming and killing his way through the ranks until he should have been the only option, but he had failed to consider one thing… Veyris had leverage… or should he say, he had his mother’s ears and, through her, the rest of the council.

Calyx was a brute, and with his character, he would have caused a war across all seven Ascendant Domains, and Veyris did not have to try hard to shift favor to his position.

In the battlefield or out in the wild, hard power was supreme, but in the courts and the ears of nobles, soft power was key.

The Lord Protector, even after eighty years, had not changed, and he had not yet learned this lesson; if he had, he was still very clumsy at it.

There was no reason to allow Veyris to wait for ten hours, if not to display his hard power as the Lord of this city.

If Calyx were not such a hard-headed man, then he would have seen the advantage of having Veyris be the Lord Captain of the Royal Guardsmen and would have most likely been transferred from this wretched heap of rock decades ago.

The tree that stands strong bends with the wind, Calyx would not bend, and so he had been blown to this corner of the world where even the Calamities would not even spit upon.

Still, his ten-hour wait did not have to be unproductive; there were massive changes afoot, and this new Ascendant Candidate born at the edge of nowhere needed to be thoroughly investigated. No one in any of the Royal Houses or the Guilds wanted the rise of another Kenshin or Abraxas.

No… that would be a disaster. However, this was not likely, even though Veyris knew that the boy had unlocked more than sixty pools of Lumina.

In the long run, Veyris knew that the pools of Lumina unlocked was not the main criteria to determine the power of a Siphon or an Ascendant Candidate, he knew of many Royal brats still smelling of their mother’s milk who had unlocked seventy pools of Lumina, and they would not survive in the battlefield against lesser threats, no, what determined the power and influence of anyone was their mindset, and Veyris had looked into the eyes of that boy and he had seen… nothing.

And that disturbed him more than he would care to acknowledge.

The boy had seemed weirdly clear-headed after he had stepped out of a Fragment of Divinity; this was not what he expected from a mortal who had just touched Divinity for the first time.

Veyris had seen dozens of Ascendants rituals in his lifetime, and even those that had been prepared for that moment had emerged from it… shaken, many were on the edge of madness, and some had to be killed on the spot.

Then why was this child so… steady?

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