Chapter 84: You Talk To Statues

Veyris soon settled his mind and began to truly look at the pages he was holding. On the surface, it might look as if the boy had lived a rather uninteresting life. He worked as an Alchemy Boy doing menial labour under the Palace walls, and he returned to the Stoneward Asylum every day without failing except on the weekends, when he roamed about and had few acquaintances, mostly older men.

This life was so bland when looked at in this manner, but in this blandness, Veyris suspected something else, but the problem was that he was not sure what he was even suspecting. He sighed and turned the sheet over, as if expecting a hidden sheet beneath, but this was all he could get.

Perhaps he might have missed something the first time he read it, and so Veyris took his time to go through the page slowly, letting each word settle in his mind.

Subject: Elias (no family name recorded)

Age: 18 (approximate)

Origin: Lower districts, Stormfall (unverified)

Early reports (age 6–7): Subject observed in decaying physical state (suspected self-inflicted or environmental affliction). Removed from Stoneward Asylum grounds by unknown means. Reappeared several days later, fully restored, with no visible injury.

Subsequent activity: Sporadic sightings in lower districts. Employed intermittently by Palace Wall construction crews (access restricted by Heavenly Mandate — details redacted).

Primary residence: Stoneward Asylum, lower levels (confirmed).

Notable: Subject rarely leaves Asylum grounds. No criminal record. No known affiliations beyond Asylum staff.

Threat assessment: Non-existent.

“Non-existent, my foot,” Veyris growled, but he already knew that he was able to get this much detail about Elias only because he was a member of the Stoneward Asylum; hence, he was worthy enough to be noted down. If it were anyone else with no family, it would be a wonder if his name was even known.

He glanced at the single page again, and as if he was a bit irritated by the sparseness of the content, he summoned a quill from his Spatial Storage, which was the thin gold band around his left thumb, and he began to write on the page. His writing was as precise as a scribe, every child born of royal blood had a series of education that most could never imagine.

Ascendant Potential: Confirmed activation of Lumina Space (60 Lumina Pools confirmed by Lord Captain Veyris, accurate number still waiting to be confirmed, suspected to be eighty opened pools.). No prior indicators of exceptional talent or lineage.

Veyris paused here as he looked at the words he had written. Eighty pools outside the control of the Royal Palace were insane. What sort of a mind would be able to push past that barrier without knowing what was waiting for them on the other side?

He paused as he remembered the eyes of the child; he could not see much of his appearance because of the Commander’s influence, but he knew that he was tall and had long red hair. Still, appearances can be deceiving; only the heart was important, and in the short time he had spent in the Asylum, the child seemed to have both a strong heart and a cunning brain, a dangerous combination.

“I need more answers,” Veyris muttered to himself as he finished the report.

Recommendation: Further observation required. Subject displays abnormal composure post-Fragment exposure.

Veyris let the page fall from his fingers. It drifted to the polished obsidian table like a dead leaf. Even with his intervention, it was still one page.

For an Ascendant Candidate who had just walked out of a Fragment of Divinity with one hundred pools open and the calm of a man twice, no, four times his age, there was one page to describe his entire life.

He leaned back in the high-backed chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin. The silence in the waiting hall was thick, broken only by the distant murmur of servants and the occasional clink of armor from the guards stationed at the far doors.

Veyris closed his eyes.

He did not need to reread the report. He had already committed it to memory. Instead, he let his enhanced perception drift outward toward the city itself. Usually, he did this when he was about to think, but now it could also serve other purposes, too.

To his senses, the City of Stormfall breathed. Although he did not go indepth every nook and cranny, but allowed his mind to hover above everything, he could still feel it… the slow pulse of millions of mortal hearts.

Veyris could sense the faint flicker of Wisp-level Lumina shadows in the streets, and the sharper signatures of Fury Forge Siphons moving through the upper districts. And beneath it all, the deep, thrumming resonance of the Fallen Citadel ruins the city had been built upon.

Heavenly Restrictions layered upon Heavenly Restrictions, woven into the very stone. A mortal brain would fray under that weight over time. Yet the people here moved with strange steadiness, as though the pressure had become normal to them. Perhaps it had, he did not understand everything about Heavenly Restrictions, but this amount of power below a city filled with mortals could not be a good thing.

Veyris was beginning to realize that this city may have untapped resources like no other, but Calyx had never made the report. Why would his brother hide the fact that he was sitting on a gold mine and had not drawn Siphons from all over the continent to his palace?

After a while, Veyris opened his eyes. “Too quiet,” he murmured to himself, as the scribe who had delivered the report into his Spatial Storage had arrived and still stood at attention near the pillar, head bowed.

Veyris flicked two fingers.

“Speak.”

The scribe swallowed, and because his head was bowed, the motion was supposed to be unseen, but Veyris’s perception had picked it out, and he frowned inside. This must be an untested scribe; he had truly been in too much of a haste, even a world-renowned chef needed good ingredients to make a delicious meal.

“My lord… There is more. Unofficial reports. From the lower districts.”

Veyris raised an eyebrow, the smallest motion, but it carried the weight of command.

“Go on.”

“Street children and beggars… they speak of a boy who used to eat rats. Called him Rat-Catcher. Said he decayed once, with his flesh falling off while he still walked. Then he vanished. Reappeared weeks later… whole. Stronger. Working stone for the Palace Walls. Never spoke much. Never begged. Never stole after that.”

Veyris leaned forward slightly. The report had hinted at this, but it was never this fleshed out, and his interest was piqued because the fog that seemed to surround this boy was slowly loosening.

“And?”

“The children say… he never smiled. Not once. Until the day he was taken inside the Asylum and did not come out again to hunt rats.”

There was silence for a while as Veyris tapped one finger on the arm of the chair, in thought. He felt the answer he was looking for was at the tip of his tongue, but he could not find it.

“Anything else?”

The scribe hesitated for a moment, but seeing the frown beginning to grow on Veyris’s face, he quickly spoke,

“There is talk… among the dock workers near the lower canals. They say the boy was seen speaking to the statues of Asulon. Not praying. Speaking. As though they answered. He works with these statues underneath the palace walls, but with the level of Heavenly Restriction in this city… it is highly suspicious.”

Veyris’s expression did not change, but inside, something cold and precise clicked into place, and he surged to his feet.

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