NOVPUBAs the guests dispersed, Lady Laelyn followed Kaeven to a small sitting room adjacent to the dining hall. The space was intimate but formal, designed for private conversations that didn't warrant the seclusion of his personal study.
"Please, sit," Kaeven gestured to a comfortable chair upholstered in blue velvet.
She settled down, watching him move to an ornate locked cabinet in the corner of the room. From within, he withdrew a leather-bound journal, its cover worn with age and frequent handling, faint traces of golden script barely visible on its spine.
Lady Laelyn's eyes widened as she recognized it. "That's my grandmother's journal," she whispered, her voice a mixture of disbelief and longing. "Father told me it was lost after her death."
"Not lost," Kaeven corrected smoothly, running his fingers over the cover with what appeared to be genuine reverence. "Entrusted to me for safekeeping. Your father, my good friend Eoric, feared what might happen if the wrong people discovered it among your family's possessions."
He handed her the journal, watching intently as her fingers trembled slightly upon contact with the leather binding. "He asked me to give this to you when the time was right, when you were on your way to take your rightful place at the Academy."
Lady Laelyn opened the cover carefully, her eyes quickly scanning the familiar handwriting that filled the first page. "These are her private thoughts... her research..." She looked up at Kaeven, suspicion mingling with hope in her expression. "Why would Father keep this from me all these years, only to have you give it to me now?"
"Protection, my dear," Kaeven replied, seating himself across from her. "Your grandmother's ideas about the dual nature of the suns, her experiments with techniques that draw on both energies, these are considered heresy by the Order's current leadership." His voice lowered. "As I believe you're already aware."
Lady Laelyn's grip on the journal tightened perceptibly. "How much do you know about her work?"
"Enough," Kaeven said with a meaningful smile. "Your grandmother and I shared many conversations over the years. Her perspective on balance, on the artificial division between the Orders... I found her insights compelling."
"This contains her actual techniques," Lady Laelyn said carefully, her finger marking a particular page. "Detailed instructions for channeling both sun energies simultaneously."
"Indeed," Kaeven nodded. "Knowledge that the Order has suppressed for centuries. Knowledge that could reshape our understanding of cultivation entirely." He leaned forward slightly. "Knowledge that would see you executed as a heretic if discovered in your possession within the Cerulean Spire."
Lady Laelyn's head snapped up, her eyes narrowing. "Then why give it to me now? When I'm about to enter the very heart of the Order's power?"
"Because you are her granddaughter," Kaeven replied smoothly. "Because the blue sun marked you from birth, yet you question the Order's dogma just as she did. Because if anyone can restore the balance that was lost, can heal the rift between the Orders, it is you, as Saintess."
He reached out, placing his hand gently atop the journal. "But you must be careful. Trust no one with this knowledge until you have secured your position. Keep it on your person at all times during your journey and at the Academy.”
"You're taking an enormous risk," Lady Laelyn observed, studying him carefully. "If the Order discovered you had kept this journal, had passed it to me..."
"Some truths are worth the risk," Kaeven said. "Your grandmother always said that, and I believe it too."
Lady Laelyn's fingers caressed the journal's cover, her expression thoughtful. "I've dreamed of finding this for years. Ever since she showed me the first dual-energy technique before she died."
"And now it's yours," Kaeven said, rising to his feet. "Use it wisely. Your grandmother's legacy, and perhaps the future of both Orders, depends on it."
Lady Laelyn stood as well, clutching the journal close to her chest. "Thank you, Lord Rimaris. I don't know what to say."
"No thanks necessary, my dear," he replied with a benevolent smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Just remember, when the time comes, who your true allies are, those who understand that power comes from balance, not dogma."
"I'll remember," she promised, her gaze dropping once more to the journal in her hands, the precious repository of forbidden knowledge that she had long believed lost forever. With that, she bid goodnight before departing.
Kaeven watched her go, allowing himself a small, satisfied smile once she had disappeared from view.
***
Deep in the night, when the blue sun had reached its zenith and most of the estate's inhabitants slumbered, Lord Kaeven had one task that needed completing before he could retire for the night.
He made his way through silent corridors to a specially prepared chamber in the east wing. The room was small and sparsely furnished, a desk, two chairs, and an array of crystal fragments arranged in a precise pattern across one wall.
Nevarn awaited him, along with a younger Lightweaver whose hands moved in complex patterns over the crystal array, activating and adjusting the surveillance formations that monitored the east wing guest chambers.
"Report," Kaeven commanded.
The younger Lightweaver bowed. "Nothing unusual to report, my lord. The subject has been sleeping peacefully for the past three hours. No sign of cultivation energy, no communications, no suspicious movements."
"Show me," Kaeven commanded.
The Lightweaver gestured, and one of the larger crystals in the array illuminated, projecting an image into the air between them: Tomas, lying still beneath the covers of a four-poster bed, his breathing deep and regular in the rhythms of natural sleep.
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"He hasn't moved from that position since retiring," the Lightweaver added. "The formation would have detected any change in his energy signature, any attempt to use cultivation techniques, or any effort to conceal his true nature."
Kaeven frowned slightly. "And there's been nothing at all?"
"Nothing, my lord," the Lightweaver confirmed. "By all measures, he appears to be exactly what he claims. A normal, untrained human from a common background."
"Disappointing," Kaeven murmured. "I was so certain that he was sent by one of the others..."
Nevarn stepped forward. "Shall we maintain the surveillance through the night?"
Kaeven considered for a moment, then nodded.
"As you wish, my lord," the younger Lightweaver bowed again before turning his focus back ontp the array.
Kaeven turned to Nevarn. "It seems I may have been overly suspicious. Perhaps the boy truly is nothing more than a fortunate survivor who had the presence of mind to warn Lady Laelyn of danger."
"Such individuals do exist," Nevarn acknowledged. "Though they are rare."
"Indeed they are," Kaeven agreed, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "Well, regardless of his origins, he poses no immediate threat to our plans. He understands what must be done?"
"He does," Nevarn confirmed. "Though he questions the necessity of such... permanent measures against one who might still be useful to the Order."
"His concern is noted but irrelevant," Kaeven said firmly. "The future of our partnership with certain... external interests... depends on this outcome. Lady Laelyn must not reach the Cerulean Spire."
"And if she does?"
“Alternative arrangements have already been arranged,” Kaeven smiled, turning back to the now-darkened crystal array. "We should rest. Tomorrow will be eventful, one way or another." 𝑛𝑜𝑣𝑝𝑢𝘣.𝘤𝑜𝘮
***
As they left the surveillance chamber, Kaeven's thoughts drifted to the journal now in Lady Laelyn's possession. He could almost feel the weight of it in his hands again, as he had that night twenty years ago when he and Elder Lyonis had stood over Lady Vareyn's still-warm body, the poison having done its work quickly and efficiently.
"A shame," Lyonis had murmured, not sounding particularly remorseful as he extracted the journal from the old woman's private chambers. "She was brilliant, in her way."
"Too brilliant," Kaeven had replied, watching as Lyonis leafed through pages filled with forbidden techniques, genuine methods that challenged everything the Order claimed about the separation of the sun energies. "She would have upended the entire power structure if given time."
They had kept the journal hidden all these years, passing it between them for safekeeping, studying its secrets while ensuring its revolutionary ideas never spread. And now, in a twist of elegant cruelty, they would use the grandmother's own work to destroy her granddaughter.
If Lady Laelyn survived the ambush on the road, unlikely, but possible, the journal would condemn her as a heretic. The Order's hypocrisy was absolute; they would execute her for possessing the very knowledge they themselves had suppressed.
And once Lady Laelyn was dealt with, they would move on to their greater challenge: Kal.
Lyonis's last communication had confirmed that preparations were advancing for the young Lightweaver's elimination. The Rank 6 Lightweaver could not be allowed to succeed in his Rank 7 breakthrough attempt.
Kal posed a far more complex problem than Lady Laelyn: his power, his connections, and most troublingly, his inexplicable ability to survive situations that should have been fatal.
"I'm working on something special for him," Lyonis had written. "Something that even his... unusual talents... won't overcome."
Kaeven had no idea what Lyonis meant by this, but he trusted the Elder's meticulous planning. Three decades of partnership had taught him that the man's ruthlessness was matched only by his thoroughness.
First the grandmother, then the granddaughter, and soon the prodigy.
One by one, they would remove every threat to the order they had so carefully maintained, an order that secretly served their own ambitions rather than the Blue Sun's supposed purity.
Kaeven reached his private chambers, dismissing the servants with a wave of his hand. Exhaustion weighed on him, but satisfaction too. Everything was proceeding according to plan. He removed his outer robe, draping it carefully over a chair.
The chains struck without warning.
Glittering blue-white links materialized from the shadows, wrapping around his wrists, ankles, and throat in an instant. They yanked him upward, suspending him in the air at the center of his own bedchamber, arms and legs splayed wide.
"What—" he gasped, instinctively reaching for his connection to the blue sun's power.
As a Peak Rank 6 Lightweaver, he commanded formidable energy, enough to shatter these restraints.
But nothing came. The familiar rush of cerulean power, the energy he had cultivated for centuries, was simply... absent. As if it had never existed at all.
"Puzzling, isn't it?" came a soft voice from the darkest corner of the room. "That terrible moment when you reach for power and find only emptiness."
A figure stepped forward, moonlight from the window illuminating stark white hair above a youthful face. Eyes that glowed with pure, undiluted blue light regarded Kaeven with something between amusement and contempt.
"Kal?" Kaeven whispered, disbelief warring with mounting terror. "How did you... this is impossible, you're at the Academy—"
"You know what's truly impossible, Lord Rimaris?" Kal moved closer, his steps unnaturally silent against the marble floor. "Living through your own death. Again. And again. And again."
The young man circled beneath Kaeven's suspended form, looking up with a sad expression. "The first few iterations were quite traumatic. I would always die early in the loop, you see. Often painfully. Often at your and Lyonis's hands, directly or indirectly."
"What madness is this?" Kaeven struggled against the chains, which only tightened in response. "Release me at once! I am a Peak Rank 6 Lightweaver, allied with Elder Lyonis himself!"
Kal smiled, the expression never reaching his luminous eyes. "Almost a thousand loops now, Lord Rimaris. That's how many times you and Lyonis have experienced what you inflicted on me. The difference being, of course, that you don't remember. Fresh horror each time, while I... I remember everything."
Cold understanding began to dawn in Kaeven's mind. "You... you can't possibly be manipulating time. No cultivator below Rank 9 could—"
"Who said I'm Rank 6?" Kal's smile widened. "Or even Rank 7?"
The young man raised his hand, and a painting materialized in the air, not a physical artwork, but a living, breathing scene rendered in brushstrokes that seemed to float and pulse with energy.
It showed Elder Lyonis, his expression frozen in a rictus of terror, surrounded by chains identical to those holding Kaeven.
"Your partner met a similar fate about an hour ago," Kal said. "He was quite resistant to the idea that a 'mere prodigy' could have mastered abilities beyond his comprehension. His final moments were... educational for him, if not particularly dignified."
"This is impossible," Kaeven whispered. “What are you going to do?"
"What I've done almost a thousand times before," Kal replied, his voice almost gentle. "Balance the scales, one small increment at a time."
With a gesture, Kal summoned a brush and began to paint in the air. Each stroke left behind glowing lines that solidified into chains, constricting around Kaeven's body with increasing pressure.
"You'll find that death by compression is particularly unpleasant," Kal continued in that same conversational tone. "The smaller vessels rupture first: eyes, fingertips, tongue. Then the larger ones. The mind, unfortunately, tends to remain aware until nearly the end."
Kaeven opened his mouth to scream, but no sound emerged, another of Kal's techniques already at work.
"Don't worry about being discovered," Kal said, still painting. "By morning, these chains will have dissolved into pure energy. Nothing but your remains as evidence.”
The chains tightened inexorably. Kaeven's eyes bulged, blood vessels rupturing beneath the skin.
"Perhaps in the next loop, you'll make different choices," Kal whispered, stepping back to admire his handiwork. "Though I doubt it. Some patterns seem destined to repeat, no matter how many chances one receives to change them."
The painting in the air completed itself with a final flourish of Kal's brush. The chains constricted one last time.
Lord Kaeven Rimaris, Peak Rank 6 Lightweaver, trusted noble, and secret murderer, died in silence, suspended in the center of his own bedchamber.
