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Book 2: Chapter 21: Screams And Whispers
🕑 Added 2025-08-25 17:09:56 +0000 UTCChapter 21:
Screams And Whispers
Lord Weran was bent over a crate of herbs, peering through his half-moon spectacles as he muttered to himself. The storeroom smelled of dried roots and faint resin, freshly stacked shelves half-filled with jars and bundles. It was not much yet, this “working place” they had given him in Gatewick, but it would serve.
He was an old man now, nearing eighty years. His back had stooped with the years, but his mind remained sharp. He was no noble by birth, only a scholar, a mage, and eventually a healer. Nobility had been bestowed on him as an honor when he broke into the Third Circle of magic, specializing in restoration. Not the grandest rank, but it had been enough to give him a title, and enough to earn him peace in his later years.
That peace had vanished the moment Lady Elyne Marren appeared on his doorstep with her request.
“The princess needs a family doctor,” she had said. “And I will not trust her health to anyone else.”
He had known Elyne since she was a girl herself, sharp-eyed and disciplined. If she asked, he couldn’t say no. And so, he had followed her here, to Gatewick, to serve the Ashford princess. Elyne had promised him calm years and quiet work, time to sink into his studies, to write history down for the next generation, and perhaps to find an apprentice to whom he could pass his knowledge before death claimed him.
Yes, that had been the bargain.
He brushed a fingertip over the top of a jar. “Hm. I didn’t order these herbs… why are they here? Moonblood? What fool sent me moonblood? That’s poison outside of tincture. Tsk. And what is this—ah, new mana pearls!” His expression softened as he lifted the velvet pouch reverently. Pearls were rare in such numbers. A fortune of power compressed into crystal.
The door burst open before he could finish his thought.
He jolted, nearly dropping the pouch.
A maid stumbled into the room, panting, her apron twisted in her grip. Her eyes were wide with panic.
“Lord Weran!” she gasped, her voice raw from running. “Lady Elyne is calling for you—it’s urgent!”
Weran set the pouch down carefully, his stomach sinking. Elyne did not panic. If she had sent for him in such a way…
He straightened as much as his old spine allowed, tugged his robe into place, and grabbed his satchel of tools.
“Take me,” he said. His voice was calm, steady, but his heart was already quickening.
Urgent meant only one thing: the princess—or someone very close to her—was in danger.
Weran followed the maid down the corridor, his steps quick despite his years. As they drew nearer, the air itself seemed to tremble. A piercing cry split through the hallway, a girl’s scream, high and raw with agony.
Then he felt the mana.
His eyes widened as faint specks of light spiraled around the doorway ahead, drawn inward as if pulled by an unseen current. They flickered erratically, dragged into the room like filings to a magnet.
Weran stopped dead, his gut twisting. “Oh no…”
He knew instantly what it meant.
Only a fraction of people ever formed a mana core—one in ten thousand, if the estimates were right. And even among those rare few, stranger phenomena sometimes accompanied the awakening. Perhaps one in a hundred… one in a thousand… at least that was what the scholars believed. Children with multiple affinities, unstable outbursts, wild surges no one could predict.
But what he saw now went far beyond that.
He threw the door open.
The chamber was chaos. Runes blazed in the air, hovering in patterns too complex for the untrained eye. Elyne was bent over a girl on the floor, her hand pressed to the child’s chest as sweat ran down her brow. Mana pearls lay cracked and dim around her, glowing with to much mana inside.
In a side glance Weran recognized the child; Clara of Bellgrave. But the name didn’t matter.
“Make space!” Weran barked, his voice cutting through the maids’ panic. “It’s an incursion—her mana core could explode!”
His eyes darted to the pearls beside Elyne. “Which affinity?” he rasped, even as his own hands began to trace runes, pulling from his nature core to steady the storm.
Elyne’s lips were tight, her eyes locked on Clara. She did not hesitate, letting his runes weave into hers, though her hand never left the girl’s chest. “I can’t say for certain—the pearls are filled with ambient mana, whatever they can grab. But since Grace and I are the only strong mages nearby, most of what’s being pulled in is light… and space.”
Weran swore under his breath. “Space? Damn it.”
Space was bad news. The worst.
Every affinity had its place in rarity. Weran had never believed rarity meant strength, not by itself—but some exceptions couldn’t be ignored. Void and light, for example. Void made the so-called “dark” affinity obsolete, its existence rewriting what scholars thought they knew. Sure, there was the Shadow affinity, but it wasn’t the opposite of Light. Only Void matched it, equally rare, and also equally feared. Between them they made up perhaps five percent of all recorded mages, difficult to find, but not impossible.
But Space was different. It was the rarest affinity known, tied to no stable pattern. Its mana followed its own logic, disobeying rules other cores obeyed. In all of Ashford, only the Marren bloodline had consistently produced space mages. Generations of them, and even then, most burned bright and short, their gift consuming them before mastery could be reached.
Weran’s jaw clenched. “This is trouble,” he muttered, more to himself than to Elyne.
Clara screamed again, her back arching violently, light blazing from her skin as the pearls cracked one after another.
This wasn’t just an awakening.
It was an incursion. Weran’s blood went cold at the thought. It was the word every healer-mage dreaded.
A normal mana core was slow work, a patient weaving. Over years, a body would quietly gather the ambient mana it was naturally attuned to, filtering, aligning, shaping it into a steady vessel. The world itself decided affinity, and the child grew into it as surely as lungs filled with breath. Some, with unlucky affinities and poor environments, might never form a core at all.
But an incursion… that was something else.
It was when the fragile balance broke. When the critical threshold in forming a core was overstepped, and the body lost control of its own shaping. The gathering no longer followed the true affinity, it no longer picked and chose. It became hunger. Blind, endless hunger.
Instead of drawing what suited, the half-formed core began pulling in everything. Every speck of ambient mana nearby, indiscriminate, like a black hole swallowing light.
And because of the rapid growth, it didn’t stop when it reached capacity, the vessel kept flooding past its limits, cramming more and more power into flesh and bone until the body itself risked shattering.
Such phenomena could only happen under extraordinary conditions: mana-dense environments, ancient ruins still saturated with primordial energy, leyline crossings… places where the air itself was thick with magic. And even then, it only ever struck those whose cores weren’t aligned to a single clean affinity.
Children touched by more than one path.
Weran’s hands shook slightly as he etched another rune, steadying the surging flow with his nature core.
Space. Light. Both rare and dangerous in itself. And now they were tearing through a frail, unready vessel.
If they didn’t stabilize her soon, Clara of Bellgrave wouldn’t survive the night.
--::--
Grace stretched her arms over her head as she stepped out of the stuffy hall, blinking against the sunlight. Finally done with the mayor. Gods, that man was exhausting. All stiff politeness and sideways panic like he was one breath away from falling over his own desk.
She kicked at a loose stone in the cobbled street, watching it skitter forward. Elyne hadn’t even shown up. That… bugged her. Elyne was punctual to the point of being robotic. If she said she’d meet Grace, she met Grace. That was the deal.
So where was she?
Grace frowned, dragging her thoughts back to the ledger she’d just flipped through. Boring on the surface, but not to her. Numbers always talked if you knew how to listen. The tariffs, the grain shipments—something was off there. She needed Elyne to bounce her thoughts against, but apparently, Miss Perfect Governess had better things to do than babysit her princess today.
Emergency? Nah, someone would’ve told me. Forgot? Elyne? Please. The woman probably remembered what socks Grace wore three days ago. No, this was something else. And Grace hated “something else.”
Behind her, the rhythmic clink of armor reminded her she wasn’t actually walking alone. Two knights, her shadows in black plate, followed steady as clockwork. And behind them, dragging their feet in chains, were the two idiots she’d picked up today—one minor noble and his hired muscle who thought they could throw their weight around in her city. She was still annoyed about that.
Seriously. She’d been here less than a week and already stumbled into more trouble than she ever asked for. Every time she walked outside, some new moron decided to audition for “villain of the week.” She didn’t even have to try. Trouble just… found her.
Is this what protagonists deal with? No wonder they’re all moody and dramatic.
She sighed, pushing her curls out of her face. Well, at least she’d gotten something out of it. Watching that noble’s smug expression melt when his fancy bracelet blew up in his face? Worth it. She almost wanted to frame that look.
Still, the day had been long enough. She wanted to dump these clowns into her dungeon, close the door, and then track down Elyne to demand answers. Maybe grab Clara too, if she wasn’t busy—Clara always made her feel less like she was just pacing in circles.
Her stomach growled. And food. Yes. Definitely food first.
She kicked another stone, this one bouncing off a wall with a satisfying clack.
“Princess,” one of the knights said carefully, “should we head directly to the keep?”
Grace shook her head. “Nope. Dungeon first. We’ve got new decorations.” She smirked over her shoulder, watching the prisoners stumble as the knight tugged them forward. “Then I’ll check on Lady Elyne. Wherever she’s hiding.”
She tried to sound casual, but the little knot in her stomach didn’t untangle. Elyne missing was weird. Too weird.
Grace tucked her hands behind her back and lengthened her stride. All right. Dungeon drop-off. Then straight to Elyne. If something’s wrong, I’ll deal with it. One thing at a time.
Her boots clicked against the stone, steady and sharp. The city parted quietly around her, people bowing their heads or simply stepping aside, letting her path stay clear.
She groaned inwardly. What a hassle.
And then the guard she’d rescued earlier—Liam, or something—suddenly stepped into her way. Grace stopped, irritation flickering across her face. Why was he blocking her path now?
Before she could scold him, he dropped to his knees. No, flat out on the cobblestones, ignoring the wince of pain that flashed across his face from his half-healed wounds.
“My Grace,” he said, voice hoarse but steady, “I wanted to thank you for rescuing my life!”
Grace blinked at him. Uh. Okay. Now what? Was she supposed to say some cheesy line, like ‘It was my pleasure’? That sounded gross even in her head.
She raised one eyebrow, already shaping some noncommittal answer, but caught the subtle movement behind her: her knights stepping forward, ready to drag the boy out of her way. With a small flick of her fingers, she stopped them.
The boy lifted his head slightly, face pale but eyes burning with earnestness. “I owe you my life, and I want to serve you as one of your soldiers. Please… allow me to work off my life debt!”
Grace tilted her head, studying him. A teenager, maybe eighteen. Could be younger—hard to tell in Nyras. Still, that fire in his eyes…
“You honor me with your request,” she said finally, voice carrying just enough to reach the gawkers already gathering around. “But I only did what every ruler should do—protect her people. If you want to help me, then do your duty again. Help the good people of Gatewick.”
A ripple went through the bystanders. Murmurs rose, whispers darting between them. She caught fragments: kind princess… protects us… different from before…
Perfect. Carry Princess routine, activated. They eat this stuff up. And I don’t have to babysit another useless idiot.
The boy opened his mouth, maybe to insist further, but before he could, a girl pushed through the crowd. She laid a steadying hand on his shoulder and bowed deeply.
“I apologize for him, my Grace,” she said quickly. “He is probably… traumatized. But from me as well, my deepest thanks that you protected him.”
Grace’s gaze sharpened on the girl. There was something familiar. Not in her face, but in her eyes. That vibe. It reminded her of Rin.
And then she noticed.
Around Rin, there were faint specks of shadow mana drifting near, pulled into orbit like dust around a star. But around this girl… nothing. No ambient mana at all. A void, as if the world itself bent around her absence.
Grace’s stomach did a small flip. What the hell is that?
Definitely another item for Elyne. Add it to the ever-growing list. Every time Grace crossed something off, two new mysteries crawled onto the page.
And Rin—ugh, she still needed to check if Ser Calen had finally shown up with his so-called “package.”
Grace forced a smile, bright and practiced, at both boy and girl. “That’s no problem,” she said. “I’m proud I can help my people.”
And just like that, she turned, ignoring the crowd, ignoring their whispers, and ignoring the confused look still on the boy’s face.
Her boots clicked again against the cobblestones as she set her course toward the castle. Another mess behind her. Another mess waiting ahead.
Seriously. This world never gives me a break.
Comments
Snow2Reaper
Mana pearls lay cracked and dim around her, glowing with to much mana inside. Should be "too" much mana.
