2025-12-15 20:31:08The morning sun poured through the tall windows of the Tristan mansion dining hall. The long table was covered with warm bread, golden eggs, fresh orange juice, and little silver dishes of jam. Everything looked perfect.
Asta sat alone at one end, still in his soft blue pajamas, hair messy from sleep. He was quietly spreading butter on his toast and taking small bites.
Cassian stood in the doorway,his arms crossed. He was already dressed in his neat school uniform, his tie perfect, his shoes shiny. His sharp eyes stared at Asta for a long second.
Asta looked up and met his gaze.
Cassian let out a tiny, cold chuckle, just a puff of air, nothing friendly. Without saying a single word, he walked past Asta’s chair, his shoulders stiff, his shoes clicking loud on the marble floor. He headed straight for the grand staircase and disappeared upstairs.
The old butler, Grogerry, stepped closer, wiping his hands on a small towel.
“Young master Asta, did Master Cassian wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”
He asked, his tone soft.
Asta looked down at his half-eaten toast and shrugged.
“I have no idea…”
He responded as he kept eating.
Night came.
The mansion was quiet and dark, only a few lamps glowing along the hallway.
Asta walked out of his room in a loose t-shirt and shorts, rubbing his sleepy eyes. He turned the corner and…
BAM!
He crashed right into Cassian, who was coming the other way.
Asta stumbled back a step.
“Sorry! I didn’t see you…”
Cassian’s eyes flashed with anger.
“Watch where you’re going next time!”
He snapped, his voice sharp.
He tried to push past.
Asta turned and gazed at him with a frowning face.
“Hey! What’s your problem? You bumped into me! If anyone should be angry, it’s me, not you!”
Cassian stopped walking. His back was still to Asta. Slowly, he turned around, his voice low and cold.
“Why? Why should it be you?”
He let out a bitter laugh.
“Oh, let me guess… because you’re the real son of the great fire mage? Because you’re the strongest one here? The boss of the house?”
He stepped closer, his eyes burning.
“Or is it because I’m just the adopted cousin? I don’t get to have a say? Is that it, Asta?”
Asta didn’t move or flinch, he just looked confused.
“What are you talking about, Cassian? You’re not making any sense.”
Cassian’s face twisted.
“I’m making nonsense, right?”
He poked his own chest hard.
“Tomorrow you’ll see exactly what I mean.”
He spun around, stormed to his room, and slammed the door so hard the walls shook.
Asta stared at the closed door for a second.
“What is his problem…?”
He whispered to himself.
Then he shook his head and walked downstairs.
The kitchen was lit by one warm light above the sink. Butler Grogery was washing dishes, his sleeves rolled up, humming an old song quietly.
Asta walked in.
Grogery smiled when he saw him.
“Young master Asta, still awake?”
“Yeah… just came down for water.”
Asta filled a glass from the big jug on the counter and drank half in one go.
“Young master Cassian was down here too.”
Grogery said.
“You must have passed him on the way?”
Asta sighed.
“Yeah. More like he walked straight into me.”
Grogery chuckled softly.
“Don’t be too hard on him. He hasn’t lived here in years. He’s still getting used to the place.”
Asta sat down on one of the kitchen stools, resting his chin in his hand.
“Butler… Can you tell me more about Cassian? I feel like I need to know who he really is… and which part of the family he came from.”
Grogery dried his hands on a towel and
pulled up a stool and sat across from Asta.
He smiled gently.
“Alright. If you really want to know… I’ll tell you everything about young master Cassian.”
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Chapter 858
They didn't have the luxury of celebrating the bridge's outcome for long.Word reached them two days later, carried by a rider Sera's remaining trusted contacts had sent ahead, Emberfall, the border city they'd once saved from a single feral Choir fragment weeks earlier, was burning again, and this time the scale dwarfed anything the squad had faced there before."How bad." Asta asked, already moving toward the horses before the messenger had finished catching his breath."Bad." The rider said. "Whatever hits the city isn't one fragment anymore. Reports describe multiple sources of uncontrolled flame, civilian casualties climbing by the hour, and Council forces either unable or unwilling to intervene effectively.""Unwilling." Roderick repeated, sharp. "Why would they be unwilling?""Because the soldiers on the ground are saying it looks exactly like what happened at the bridge." The rider said, grimly. "Except nobody stabilized this one. It's still spreading."Vex's expression
Chapter 857
The light and dark flame collided in a violent, churning column above the shattered carriage, and Mira, thrown backward by the shockwave along with half the squad, watched in horror as the eleven fractured voices continued screaming, no longer coordinated, no longer speaking as one, a cacophony of grief, confusion, and raw, remembered pain pouring out of eleven bodies that no longer knew how to be a single harmony and hadn't yet remembered how to be separate people again."It's destabilizing." Emrick shouted over the chaos, having insisted on accompanying the strike team despite his weakened condition, his eyes fixed on the churning light with grim, focused intensity. "Exactly as theorized, but faster, more violent than I predicted. The resonance broke all eleven bonds at once instead of gradually.""Is that good or bad." Roderick shouted back, blade raised against the chaos while trying to keep the reeling, disoriented Council soldiers from regrouping around them."I don't know ye
Chapter 856
They reached the convoy's projected route on the fourth day, cresting a ridge that overlooked a long, winding stretch of road cutting through a narrow valley, the kind of terrain, Yuki noted grimly, that made for excellent ambush ground and equally excellent killing ground, depending entirely on who controlled the higher elevation first."This is it." Lucien confirmed, studying the road below with the particular certainty of a man who'd memorized this exact route during his months of forced service. "The convoy passes through here tomorrow morning, assuming the schedule hasn't shifted. There's a narrow bridge crossing about two miles further along, the only viable route through this section of terrain. Everything funnels through that point.""A bottleneck." Roderick said, already assessing the tactical shape of the ground with a soldier's eye. "That's our best chance to isolate the transport carriage from its full escort.""It's also the most heavily guarded section of the entire
Chapter 855
The next two days blurred into a grinding cycle of riding, planning, and stolen hours of sleep, the squad pushing hard toward the convoy's projected route while Yuki and Emrick refined their theory into something that might actually survive contact with reality."Resonance isn't a weapon." Emrick said, for what felt like the third time, sketching another diagram in the dirt as the fire burned low around them. "It's a condition. You can't simply throw fire at eleven merged voices and expect coherence to shatter. You need something that speaks to what's holding them together in the first place.""Which is what, exactly." Roderick asked, patience visibly thinning after two days of theory without a clear plan of execution."Shared trauma." Emrick said. "That's the foundation every successful bond I studied was built on. The Choir isn't eleven separate people cooperating. It's eleven fractured identities that found it easier to stop being separate at all. The harmony holds because sep
Chapter 854
They rode through the morning in near silence, the weight of Emrick's revelation pressing down on the whole company harder than exhaustion or the dwindling clock on the convoy ever had. Kael rode near the back, alone, refusing the company even Asta offered, and Emrick kept his distance at the opposite end of the line, watching the old man's back with an expression Mira couldn't quite name, not forgiveness, not yet, but not pure hatred either. Something unsettled in between.They made camp at midday out of necessity, the horses needing rest and Seris still weak enough that Sera insisted on a proper stop rather than pushing straight through toward the convoy's projected route.It was Yuki who finally broke the uneasy quiet, approaching Emrick with the same careful, methodical curiosity she brought to every piece of the puzzle they were still assembling."You said you studied for twenty years." She said. "Do you know what they were trying to learn? Specifically?"Emrick considered her
Chapter 853
Roderick's blade met the first guard's with a screech of metal, driving the man back into the second before either could raise a full alarm, and for a handful of desperate seconds the narrow corridor became nothing but steel and breath and the grim, practiced economy of a soldier who'd learned, the hard way, exactly how to make three seconds last as long as thirty.He dropped the first guard with a strike to the temple, disarmed the second before he'd finished raising his blade, and was already turning to follow the others when a third voice, not a guard's, called out from a cell further down the block, low and urgent."Wait. Please. Whoever you are, wait."Roderick hesitated, torn between the escape already underway and the desperate plea echoing off stone, and something in the voice's raw, worn quality stopped him from simply running past.He found the source in the block's last cell,an older man, gaunt, scarred along both forearms in patterns that looked disturbingly familiar, eyes
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