Chapter 6

  It had been a ritual act of the highest political and magical significance. Young Thivan Sothar, having just entered his early twenties, was meant to undergo the sacred, magical bond with the most powerful heirloom of the House: the Sothar Golem.

  But the Golem had rejected the spirit of Thivan Sothar, the young heir to the throne.

  It had not been a gentle rejection. When Thivan directed his concentrated essence into the stone colossus to establish the connection, the massive construct recoiled with a dull, deafening bang. The magical rejection was a tremendous, physical feedback. It struck Thivan’s mana channel and nearly shattered his head as the overloaded energy of his own spirit backfired. The feedback left him with bloodshot eyes and blackened skin at his temples.

  Only the quick, desperate intervention of the Arch-Healers of House Sothar—specialized in the complex wounds of the magical aristocracy—prevented his immediate, dreadful death from mana overload.

  Even though young Sothar physically recovered quickly, the internal wounds and mental difficulties remained. He suffered from night tremors and could only control his magic with the greatest effort because his inner core had become unstable. His self-esteem lay in ruins.

  Worse yet: from then on, he was deeply despised by his father. The King saw in him only an unworthy failure who had broken the tradition of the Golem bond. Thivan was not enough.

  His mother, fixed on tradition and public opinion, no longer afforded him a glance, overwhelmed by the shame of her son's blemish. She died a short time later from grief and public ridicule. When the news spread throughout Caleon that the Queen of Caleon had died from grief and shame over her own son, Thivan’s public reputation was definitively ruined. He was a curse and an omen.

  His family, and thus House Sothar, faced some difficult, disgraceful years. The cracks in the realm, caused by the hostile princely houses, grew wider. The consequences of the devastating Dragon War—the instability, the famines, the vulnerability—worsened everything further. Caleon was slowly disintegrating.

  During this time, in this period of deepest shame and personal pain, Thivan Sothar met a young Elven lady who introduced herself as Vin Brightgrove.

  Brightgrove. It was one of the largest, perhaps the largest and most powerful tribe of the Wood Elves. They too had suffered greatly under the Dragon War, losing their heir to the flames and facing the loss of their oldest forests. Stories told that the tribe had sent out a young Elven woman with a difficult mission: she had to find and prove her inner strength in the world of humans to become the new chieftain and savior of her people.

  Young, broken Thivan told no one about Vin, not even his father. Perhaps out of fear of further rejection, perhaps out of shame over his connection to an alien race amidst the human crisis, or simply because he hated his father and Vin was the absolute opposite of what his father would approve of.

  The King (or the young heir in his disgrace) and the Elf drastically and quickly developed a deep, secret relationship. Thivan Sothar believed he had found his great love. He hoped to be happy with her. She was the only person who did not judge him for the Golem and offered him comfort. She was his escape from the cold, perfect world of the palace.

  For Vin, however, it was truthfully only one thing: a transaction. Thivan needed comfort, validation, and an escape from his shame. And she needed money. A lot of money.

  Both could serve the other: Thivan received the love he desperately needed; Vin gained access to power and resources. But Vin preferred to take her share herself—in the most direct and un-elven-like manner.

  Her emotional comfort was genuine enough to deceive him. But the financial equivalent was her primary goal. She had a mission to fulfill, and the plight of her people was greater than the longing of a broken human prince.

  One early morning, after another extensive night in the Sothars' opulent bed had briefly soothed the young prince's wounds, Vin grabbed a small, linen pouch. With a delicate, gentle motion, she slipped the gold-crystalline rings and heavy, filigreed bracelets from Thivan's sleeping arms and fingers. The expensive, heavy crown lay, naively, on the bedside table—a symbol of the casual carelessness of the arrogant nobility—and barely fit into the pouch. Fortunately for Vin, Thivan rarely took the time to return his bodily riches to the treasury.

  The treasury itself was to be no harder for her to crack than Thivan's emotional soul. House Sothar, despite its immeasurable riches and Arch-Healers, took little effort to equip the vault with effective physical or magical protections. They relied on pure, arrogant conviction and ritualistic but ineffective blessings of the walls. They believed their authority and the strength of their magic would deter any thief. Wrong.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Furthermore, there was a fifteen-minute gap between the changing of the night-weary guards, a routine, sloppy inefficiency that Vin had quickly identified. The perfect opening.

  So, she simply snuck in—

  -

  Hall of Infallibility (Present)

  “STOP!” Metatron suddenly commanded, interrupting Ragiel harshly. The thunder of his voice was so unexpected that even the assembled angels in the tiers visibly flinched.

  Metatron scrutinized his brother, critical and angry at once. His platinum-colored armor seemed to glow colder.

  “What does this cheap drama have to do with the burgeoning, primordial conflict?” Metatron asked loudly, his voice now hoarse with suppressed rage and frustration. He angrily pointed at the golden projection of the past, which instantly vanished. “Of all the main players in this galactic chess game, the Elf and this mentally deranged prince are the least believers in us or in cosmic justice!”

  Metatron spat out Thivan’s title like dirt. “Thivan is a regional warlord, incapable of ordering his own realm. The Elf is a common thief acting out of greed! Their petty criminal, human failure has no relevance to the wave of total order that Reyn wants to roll out over Tirros! Why are we wasting cosmic time on the morality of these two insignificant creatures?”

  Metatron kneaded his left arm to calm the muscles. His anger was genuine: Ragiel was prostituting the highest court of Creation for a triviality.

  Ragiel looked at his brother slightly stunned, but quickly smiled with complete composure. He had expected something like this. Metatron was too rigidly anchored in cosmic law to understand the subtle vibrations of human causality.

  “You have answered your own question,” he said relaxedly, leaning casually on the golden spear. The blatant self-confidence of his stance was provocative. “She is a main player in the coming war. And not just her.”

  Ragiel fixed Metatron with a penetrating, calm gaze. “You don't understand the chain reaction, brother. You see the end of the line, not the stone that set everything in motion.”

  Instead of understanding, Metatron raised his eyebrows questioningly. The argument was foreign to him.

  “I do not entirely understand, brother,” Metatron said, his voice now a mixture of reluctance and intellectual curiosity. He demanded the logical connection.

  Ragiel sighed, artificially annoyed, like a disappointed teacher who has to explain the formula for the tenth time because his most diligent student simply cannot grasp the core. He slightly raised the spear to underscore his words.

  “Then I will explain it to you again, brother,” he said, leaning slightly forward, demanding Metatron’s full concentration. “A little… simpler.”

  Ragiel smiled again, this time with a hint of sorrow for his brother’s inability. “The triviality is the catalyst for the epic. You see two crimes against House Sothar: The Golem failure and the theft. But I see two acts of total emotional destruction of the future King of Caleon, as well as the development of the young Elf. And that is the most important criterion.”

  The Envoy of Light cleared his throat, the gesture of an Immortal in the Hall of Infallibility. He addressed the entire eagerly awaiting Hall loudly and purposefully, his voice now gravitas-filled and immutable.

  “Vin Brightgrove,” Ragiel began, having now secured the full attention of the highest authorities, “determined the current presence of the Paladin more greatly than he did himself. Her small, unholy act of greed was the first domino in a chain of events that has kept our cosmic balance in the black.”

  He took a decisive step into the center, his golden aura glowing in the cold light.

  “Without her, without the moral instability and financial distress she plunged Thivan Sothar into, Luken would have become a demon warped by wrath. He would not be a reluctant hero on our side, but a warrior of Reyn—or perhaps something much worse: an independent, vengeful scion of the Lower Realms fighting against both sides.”

  As desired and expected, he had the full, undivided attention of the entire Hall. The Angels exchanged furtive but serious glances. The hypothesis was terrifyingly plausible.

  “Without Vin, our most powerful figure, the only weapon capable of discerning the source of Reyn’s power, would have been on the enemy’s side,” Ragiel cried. The implication was clear: his own disobedient rescue of the Paladin would have been useless had the Elf not created the right conditions beforehand.

  Ragiel grew louder; the emotion in his voice almost surprised even him. He wasn't just presenting a thesis; he was defending his raison d'être.

  “Without Vin, we would all be in a much deeper predicament. Deeper…” Ragiel paused. A slight regret mixed into his voice, a genuine sense of guilt that broke through the holy facade. He looked Metatron directly in the eyes; the chains on the floor were a silent witness to his actual guilt.

  “…deeper than through my mistake.”

  The Hall held its breath. Ragiel had defended himself while simultaneously confessing his guilt in the unnecessary escalation that had so enraged Metatron. The Heavenly Guard around Metatron waited for a sign. Morality demanded an arrest for the confession; reason demanded the continuation of the analysis.

  But nothing happened. No arrest, no judgment. Silence. A deep, weighty silence in which the purity of cosmic law was weighed against the necessity of survival.

  Finally, Metatron spoke calmly. His eyes were unwavering; his decision was calculated and unemotional.

  “Begin with the second story, Brother.”

  Ragiel exhaled softly. He had won—at least a reprieve. The importance of the following information outweighed his punishment. He put on his best, triumphant, holy smile.

  “With pleasure,” he said. He turned away from the Judge’s Podium and faced the empty center of the Hall again, his spear held firmly.

  “Now… the gods come into play, Brother. And their role is not as clear-cut as our laws would prefer.”

  Ragiel raised the spear. The gold light of his essence flowed again. The new projection—ten years ago, but in a different, unknown location—began to materialize in the heart of the Hall.