The Exiled Prince Of Veridia

The great gates of House Valerius groaned open, admitting Lyren into the familiar silence. He stepped from the muddy reality of the road into the somber elegance of his home, his cloak tattered and stained from the Whispering Marches. 

Servants paused in their duties to offer shallow bows with their eyes avoiding his weary face. Lyren paid them no mind. His thoughts were centered on a single burning image: Kaelen...

At the end of the hall, two guards in the silver-and-crimson livery of the House Valerius Flame Guard stood before a set of towering doors. They recognized him instantly with their pikes snapping to a crisp salute before they heaved the doors open.

Lord Valerius, High Archmage of Veridia, sat upon his high-backed chair on a raised dais with his attention fixed on a crystalline orb that floated before him, pulsing with a slow internal light. He did not look up. He didn't need to.

"You return empty-handed, Lyren." Valerius's voice filled the chamber. "I trust there is a very good reason for this deviation from your orders."

Lyren swallowed as he came to a halt at the foot of the dais with the image of his brother's pitying gaze flashing behind his eyes. He forced himself into a deep and formal bow. 

"Father. I tracked the anomaly deep into the Marches as commanded. I engaged it." He paused, straightened and met his father's detached gaze. "But Father it wasn't Kaelen. Not truly. It was… something else. Something wearing his face and using his voice. But the power behind the eyes was alien."

Valerius finally lifted his head, his gaze sweeping over Lyren's disheveled state with clinical disapproval. His eyes, the same shade of piercing gold as Lyren's, held no warmth, only a cold, controlled fury. 

"A convenient excuse. An emotional gambit designed to appeal to a sentiment I do not possess. You were trained, Lyren. You were armed. You were given a singular task: to destroy a threat to this House and the order of the Conclave. You were not sent to return with riddles and tales of things wearing familiar faces."

"This is no riddle!" Lyren's voice cracked with a frustration he couldn't contain. "It wielded Aether in a way I have never seen. In a way that should be impossible. It wasn't channeled or refined. It was raw. Unfiltered. It didn't cast spells it commanded reality. It… it twisted the Weave itself, Father. It tore my fireball apart from the inside out, unmaking it atom by atom. And then… it let me live. It spared me as if I were a child swinging a wooden sword. As if I were utterly, completely beneath its concern." The humiliation of that moment burned fresh in his throat.

Valerius rose from his chair, and his robes shimmered woven with subtle runes that bent the light around him, and he descended the three steps of the dais. He stopped a mere foot from Lyren, forcing his son to tilt his head back slightly to meet his gaze.

"If it bore Kaelen's face, it was your obligation to see Kaelen's blood spilled upon your blade," Valerius stated, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "You let sentiment, a weakness I thought I had trained out of you, cloud your judgment. You failed in your duty."

Lyren flinched as if struck, but he held his father's gaze. 

"Then let me make it right. Now. This is bigger than Kaelen, bigger than a disgraced exile. This creature, whatever it is, threatens the foundation of our power. I am telling you the Conclave is not prepared for what is coming. Call an emergency session of the Archmages. Mobilize the legions of battlemages from every House. We need to strike with the full unified strength of Veridia before it decides we are no longer beneath its concern."

Valerius was silent for a long moment. He was weighing the words, sifting through his son's fear and frustration for the kernel of tactical truth. Then a thin, cruel smile touched his lips. 

"And how convenient," he murmured, "that your long-lost brother returns from exile wielding impossible power only when your own position at this table becomes… unsteady. When whispers of your inadequacy begin to circle the court."

Lyren's face hardened. 

"He is not my brother! Not anymore. That thing I saw is a perversion of what he was. He is a danger to your legacy, Father. To our name. If you allow him to continue to perform these so-called miracles, the people will see him as a savior. They will rally behind a myth. They will not rally behind order. Behind you."

Valerius's gaze drifted from his son to the floating crystal orb. It had begun to pulse more rapidly, its dim light brightening with an agitated rhythm. He raised a hand, and the orb floated higher, its light casting sharp shadows across his severe features. 

"Then so be it," he declared, his voice regaining its command. "Your logic, at least, is sound. A perceived threat, real or not, must be managed. I will summon the Archmages."

He turned back to Lyren. 

"But Lyren," he said, his voice dropping to a lethal calm. "Mark my words. Should your personal fears and petty jealousies ever outweigh your loyalty to this House again, I will not be so forgiving. You will find that Kaelen is the least of your concerns."

Before Lyren could formulate a response, the crystal orb shrieked in a shrill scream that set the stone walls of the sanctum vibrating and made Lyren's teeth ache.

At the same instant, a bell tolled from the highest tower of the keep—a deep and then another joined it. And another. The emergency chimes sounded for decades.

"The capital—" Lyren gasped, turning toward the high-arched window.

The sanctum doors burst open with a crash, and the mage lieutenant, with his fine robes torn and spattered with blood, staggered into the room, leaning against the doorframe for support. His face was pale with shock.

"My Lord! Lord Valerius!" he gasped raggedly. "Luminis is under siege! The outer barriers are collapsing! A beast… a creature of unimaginable size… it tore through the Western Ward before the Wardsingers could even raise the veil! It's… It's at the inner wall!"

***

Panic was a living entity on the streets of Luminis in the screams and terror that washed over the pristine avenues. The great magical shields that had protected the jewel of Veridia for centuries flickered and shattered like falling glass, their iridescent fragments raining down on the fleeing crowds. 

The very earth shuddered under the tread of something monstrous, a beast with its hide a shifting mass of stone and flesh slick with veins of molten Aether that pulsed with a sickening orange light. Its roar was a shockwave that cracked marble facades and sent spires toppling into the streets below.

Above the chaos, battlemages rose into the sky to defend. Fire bolts the size of carriage lances of pure ice, whips of roiling water and spears of enchanted stone flew through the air, lashing against the creature's form.

They did nothing. The spells either splashed harmlessly against its hide or were simply absorbed, causing the Aether in its veins to glow even brighter.

"Contain it—now!" Archmage Idran of House Soltair roared from a floating disc of force. "Focus fire on the joints! Weaken its mobility!"

"It's absorbing elemental mana!" shrieked Archmage Venra of House Marrowind with her form wreathed in lightning. "It's feeding on our attacks! Draw from the Deep Wells! We need purer energy!"

But the creature only grew stronger its every step, leveling entire city blocks. Buildings collapsed into plumes of dust and fire. Elemental magic untethered and wild rained down, adding to the destruction.

Then—everything stilled…

A sudden hush fell over the city so sudden and absolute that it was more terrifying than the noise it replaced. The screams died in a thousand throats. The barrage of spells ceased. Even the great beast halted its rampage, its massive head tilting as if sensing something colder and more absolute than its own rage.

From the fractured burning skyline of Luminis, a single cloaked figure levitated downward, descending in an unnerving, deliberate silence. At his side, pacing on the air itself, walked a Glimmerfanh with its body covered in crystalline armor. Its eyes burned with a steady and golden intelligence.

The Archmages hovered with their spells forgotten and their mouths agape. The monster turned its burning, hateful gaze from the city to this single new challenger.

There was a breath. A collective city-wide intake of air.

Then a flash of impossible movement. The cloaked figure did not attack. He did not cast a spell. He simply raised a hand, and the world around the beast unwove...

There was no sound, only a silent, intricate disassembly. The Weave of magic, the very fabric of existence, was manipulated with surgical precision. 

The Aether coursing through the beast was inverted. The stone of its hide turned to dust. The flesh that bound it was sliced apart by invisible, absolute forces. 

In seconds, the creature dissolved into a silent rain of ash and dust.

Silence…

Ash. And the stunned, disbelieving quiet of a saved city.

Archmage Idran lowered his disc, his voice trembling with an awe that bordered on terror. 

"Who… in the name of the First Mages… who are you?"

The figure floated to the ground, landing softly in the center of the devastated plaza. With a slow, deliberate motion, he pulled back his hood.

His hair was wind-swept black, and his eyes… his eyes glowed with an inner light, something both achingly human and terrifyingly divine. The simple traveler's cloak he wore seemed to ripple with aether itself.

He looked past the gathered Archmages, his gaze fixing on the distant high tower of House Valerius.

"I am Kaelen Valerius," he said, his voice carrying across the silent plaza with unnatural clarity. "First son of the High Archmage Lord Valerius."

He held their gaze, a prince returning to a kingdom that had forgotten him.

"I am home."

Across the ruins of Luminis, ten thousand people held their breath…