Chapter 130: Caius Solmere (2)

As heir to House Solmere, Caius lacked nothing.

That was what people liked to say, anyway. It was repeated often that even people who had never spoken to him seemed convinced of it.

He had tutors instead of classrooms, servants instead of errands, meals appeared before hunger had time to become irritating.

If Virelia’s libraries did not contain a book he wanted, another copy arrived from another Settlement. His family owned interests in shipping companies whose vessels crossed routes most ordinary residents would never see in their lifetimes. Merchants bowed to his father, guild representatives remembered his birthday, and adults twice Caius’ age adjusted their language whenever he entered a room.

His name did most things before he had the opportunity. Solmere. In Virelia, that was enough.

"Again."

Caius lowered the staff-spear and stared across the training court.

Master Edran stood six paces away with both hands folded behind his back. He had the sort of posture that made standing still look accusatory.

Caius was eighteen. Old enough that most instructors had stopped correcting his posture with a training stick.

Edran still carried one. More concerningly, he occasionally looked disappointed that proper etiquette prevented him from using it. "You left your flank open."

"I hit you."

"You touched my sleeve."

"That still counts as hitting you."

Edran’s mouth flattened. "If this were a duel between silk merchants, perhaps."

Caius raised the staff-spear and pointed toward the narrow tear along the other man’s upper sleeve. "I’d say the silk merchant lost."

A laugh escaped from the veranda. It was small, and quickly strangled.

The boy looked over and saw his mother had hidden the lower half of her face behind a porcelain cup, though the slight shake in her shoulders rather ruined the attempt at dignity.

Edran followed his gaze. "..."

Lady Solmere immediately took a sip of tea. "I heard nothing."

"Of course not, my lady."

Caius looked back at his instructor. "Mother agrees with me."

"I distinctly do not."

Edran closed his eyes for a second, not long. Then he held out one hand. "Again."

Caius sighed through his nose and settled back into stance.

Virelia glittered beyond the training courtyard. The Solmere estate stood above the eastern harbor district, high enough that most of the bay could be seen from its upper terraces.

Ships crowded the water. White sails, blue sails, and merchant banners embroidered with crests from cities Caius had never visited and, at the time, had no intention of visiting.

Floor 31 was built differently from the settlements above and below it. They had walls, but Virelia had never needed them since the city opened itself toward the sea.

White stone buildings curved around a wide crescent harbor where merchant vessels arrived beneath sails marked by guild crests from across the Tower. Long piers stretched into clear blue water. Warehouses occupied entire districts behind the docks, their doors painted with trade symbols for grain, ore, medicine enchanted materials, monster loots, textiles, and luxury goods.

Bridges connected neighborhoods divided by seawater canals. Market streets remained crowded from dawn until well after dark. At sunset, hundreds of lanterns reflected across the harbor until the water seemed to hold another city beneath the first.

People called Virelia beautiful. Caius had thought so too.

More importantly, people called it safe. He had never considered questioning that part.

Settlement Floors were permanent. They were where Raiders rested, where guilds operated, where families built homes and merchants built businesses they expected their grandchildren to inherit.

Virelia had existed like this longer than Caius had been alive. House Solmere had controlled much of it for generations.

One day, he would inherit that responsibility. He would oversee the port eventually. Trade routes, taxes, contacts, merchant disputes, relations with other Settlement families, and the political machinery required to keep Virelia prosperous without allowing any one guild or other families to gain enough influence to threaten Solmere authority.

He had never planned to become a Raider. Raiders climbed while Solmeres remained. His father had explained that distinction when Caius was eight. Then again at twelve. Then once more at sixteen when an academy recruiter made the mistake of complimenting his lightning affinity during a formal dinner.

"You have no reason to gamble your life climbing," his father had said afterward.

They had been standing on the western balcony. The harbor below was turning gold with sunset.

Caius leaned against the stone railing, still wearing the ridiculous formal coat his mother insisted made him look respectable. "I didn’t say I wanted to."

"Good."

"That recruiter only said I had potential."

His father took a drink from the glass of wine he was holding. "Everyone has potential when they want money from you."

Caius turned his head and saw Lord Solmere’s expression remained completely serious. That made the boy laugh before he could stop it.

His father’s eyes narrowed. "Was something amusing?"

"I’m thinking about fiscal responsibility."

"Try harder, boy."

At eighteen, Caius knew how to fight because House Solmere considered helplessness embarrassing.

He knew elemental control. Basic wind, water, a little fire, but lightning answered him best. He also preferred the staff-spear because it provided reach without sacrificing close combat.

They were useful skills, useful enough that he once believed they would remain exactly that. A nobleman should know how to defend himself. A Solmere should not need someone else to stand between him and danger.

Then the Tower remembered what Floor 31 had been before Virelia.

And Virelia learned that permanence was only another privilege the Tower had allowed them to misunderstand.

===

The first warning appeared during breakfast.

Caius remembered because his father had been halfway through complaining about an increase in eastern harbor tariffs.

Then every visible System interface in Virelia turned red. Not one, all of them. Servants stopped walking, merchants froze in the street. A carriage stopped in the middle of the avenue when its driver suddenly saw the same notice hanging in front of him. Every Awakener had received the same red notice.

「 〔SYSTEM NOTICE〕

Unauthorized Settlement Modification has been revoked.

Original Floor Parameters restored.

Settlement Reset commencing...」

Caius remembered the silence first, not the screaming. That came later.

Nobody understood the words. Settlement Floors did not reset, not anymore. That was something from old records. Everybody educated in Tower history did. But knowing what words once meant and seeing them appear above your breakfast were very different experiences. It was a system abandoned so long ago that most people treated its references like descriptions of extinct monsters.

His father’s chair scraped back. "Call the harbor officed."

A servant ran.

"Father–"

"Ring the emergency bells in all districts." Lord Solmere crossed toward the window then stopped.

Caius followed him and saw the sea was moving.

Virelia had spent generations facing the water. Everyone who lived near the harbor knew what it meant when the sea retreated too far.

"Get everyone inland," his father ordered.

The room erupted as servants scattered. Guards began shouting in the corridor.

"Father, I’m coming with you."

Lord Solmere turned sharply. "Caius, now is not the time."

His father crossed the room, caught his shoulder once, hard enough that Caius felt the pressure through his shirt.

"Get your mother to the inner district."

"I can help at the harbor."

"You can help by doing what I asked."

"Father–"

"Not today, Caius." Lord Solmere released him then left with six guards at his back.

The harbor emptied in ten minutes. Ships settled into exposed mud, fish thrashed between stranded anchors. Old wreckage appeared beneath the withdrawing tide, including vessels that had supposedly vanished decades earlier.

People gathered on balconies and rooftops, then somebody saw the horizon.

===

Later, Caius remembered Virelia’s destruction in pieces. Not because he had forgotten, he wished he had. Memory simply refused to organize catastrophe politely. There was no clean beginning, middle, and end. Only fragments.

He remembered a siren singing from somewhere beyond Pier Nine. The voice was beautiful. But that was the terrible part since three dockworkers walked straight into waist-deep floodwater before anyone realized they were smiling.

Caius saw it from across the street. The man’s face looked peaceful, almost relieved.

"Stop!" He thrust out one hand and lightning cracked hard enough to hurt his teeth.

The current struck the water first. Then the siren screamed, so did everyone standing in it.

Caius remembered staring at his own hand afterward. Purple current crawled between his fingers.

There had been no instructor telling him how much power to use. Just the smell of scorched seawater and a man vomiting onto the stones after Caius nearly electrocuted him.

He remembered a creature with translucent skin crawling over a warehouse roof, all elbows and exposed ribs, before lightning tore through its spine.

Caius stood beneath the collapsed creature, breathing through his mouth. Then someone shouted his name and he ran again.

Then he remembered his father grabbing the front of his soaked coat. Rain streamed from Lord Solmere’s blond hair and down the planes of his face. Blood darkened one sleeve.

"The inner district, Caius."

"The western Beacon is failing. The engineers there are dead." He had already seen the bodies. One crushed beneath fallen masonry and the other two near the relay chamber.

His father went still, then his grip tightened. "You’re going inside."

"No."

For the first time in his life, Caius saw his father lose patience badly enough to shout. "You are the heir to House Solmere!"

The words struck harder than they should have. It was not because of the title but because Caius understood what his father meant.

"You are my son."

He simply had not said it that way.

Behind them, something enormous struck the outer harbor. The street shook which made Caius look toward the western skyline.

The Sea Ward flickered. A translucent blue barrier stretched over part of Virelia, cracked through with pulsing lines of failing mana.

His father had gone pale beneath the rain. "Go."

Caius swallowed. "Come with me."

"I can’t."

"Then don’t ask me to go."

His father’s jaw tightened. For one second, Caius thought he might strike him. Instead, Lord Solmere reached up and pressed one hand against the side of his son’s neck.

It was a gesture from childhood, almost forgotten. Then he shoved him away. "Do what you think you must."

Caius stared at him as he clenched his fists.

Lord Solmere had already turned. That was the last time they spoke.

The eastern Harbor Beacon failed first. The western one went dark less than an hour later. After that, every remaining evacuation route collapsed toward the southern district. Thousands of people moved inland through knee-deep water.

Rankers held intersections, Solmere guards fought beside Awakeners who had probably never drawn the swords they carried.

The southern Beacon was already breaking when Caius reached it. Two engineers lay dead beside the control array and the mana core had split straight down the middle. Every few seconds the Sea Ward above Virelia flickered, each failure lasted longer.

A guard stumbled in behind Caius. "Young Master!"

Caius ignored him. He crouched beside the broken conduit and saw half the channels had melted. The core was finished. There was no repairing it, not in time.

Another impact shook the building and dust fell from the ceiling.

"How long until the southern district clears?" He asked as he stood.

"Young Master–"

"How long?"

The man swallowed. "Ten minutes... maybe fifteen."

Caius looked toward the broken core then down at his staff-spear. The conductor channels along the weapon were designed to handle his lightning.

The guard stepped closer. "That isn’t a replacement core."

"No." He wedged the spearhead into the open relay.

"You’ll burn out the weapon and yourself."

"I know." He wrapped both hands around the shaft, lightning gathered beneath his skin. The familiar tingling began in his fingers then climbed higher up to his elbow.

Usually, that was where he controlled it. This time, he kept pulling. Purple current exploded through the mechanism and he screamed with tears welling in his eyes. The current tore through his arms like heated wire shoved beneath the skin. His shoulders locked, his teeth slammed together hard enough that he tasted blood.

The Sea Ward ignited. Across the southern district, the barrier turned violet.

Caius fed the Beacon more to the point his palms split, his skin burned, and his vision narrowed.

Someone shouted from below and the people kept moving. That was enough. He bought them minutes and perhaps, hundreds escaped because of those minutes. Perhaps thousands.

The final image he remembered from his first life was not his father. That used to bother him. He thought death should have been kinder about that. Instead, he remembered the sea. It rose beyond the buildings like a wall.

The Beacon chamber disappeared beneath black water and his body struck stone. The pressure dragged him sideways through debris.

Caius Solmere died with Virelia.