Chapter 104: They’ve Started Moving

Unexpected as it was, Flemming recognized a genuine opportunity when it landed in front of him, a chance to pull real information from someone who might, under different circumstances, pose a real threat to his own empire.

A Spirit Master was never a profession to treat lightly. By its very nature, anyone gifted enough to become one entered a binding contract with a spirit carrying real command over a single element.

That alone made every Spirit Master formidable in their own right, a specialist whose mastery over their chosen element ran deeper than most warriors ever managed.

But if a Spirit Master happened to draw the attention of a true Spirit King, their strength stopped being reasonable entirely.

A Spirit King alone could command a pure element directly through its own body, its very form built from that element rather than merely wielding it, power enough to rival a fighter who’d clawed their way to the ninth tier of Mana Core. Every Spirit Master alive dreamed of forging that bond.

And yet, within Bravenheart’s own borders, the profession had never caught on, rare enough to be nearly forgotten.

Binding with a spirit demanded a mind strong enough to withstand the merging itself, or risk shattering entirely under the weight of it.

Which made Eleonor, slight as she looked, an unlikely candidate for a path that demanded that kind of raw mental fortitude.

"The Spirit King was never mine to claim, Sir Flemming. They choose their own masters, by their own will. And the one you’re thinking of has already chosen a successor. It wasn’t me."

Flemming’s eyes narrowed slightly as he studied her, and something in her voice told him she believed every word of it. But privately, he couldn’t help wondering who else it could possibly be, if not her.

He remembered that creature too well to let it go easily. If not for the Spirit King he’d once faced, his own battalion wouldn’t have been torn apart so completely, and he wouldn’t be carrying the scar that still sat beneath his eye.

But something else nagged at him, a detail from the first moment he’d laid hands on her head.

"Then satisfy an old man’s curiosity, if you would. Where did that Hydros signature come from, the one I felt clinging to you? You’re meant to carry a Lumen Grimoire. By rights, drawing on any other element should leave you half crippled."

It was true enough, thinking back. The very first time Lucian and Jeanne had crossed paths with her, she’d shown something close to that same power, a brief scatter of bubbles that looked, at a glance, like genuine Hydros manipulation.

"Do you mean something like this?"

Eleonor raised her right hand, palm open to the air above her, and light began gathering there, condensing, folding in on itself as though shaping something alive out of nothing at all.

"Omen: Caelum. Rise."

The white light shifted to a soft, deep blue, and from it emerged, unmistakably, a whale.

Except this time, it fit easily into the cup of her palm, no larger than a housecat, its small fins drifting lazily through the air as it blinked one enormous, gentle eye at the room around it.

Lucian, still standing near the table, watched the transformation with open disbelief. The same colossal creature that had torn through a swarm of Gargoyles now floated there, impossibly small, impossibly soft-looking, tail flicking in a slow, contented rhythm.

Jeanne’s mouth fell open, something between awe and outright longing crossing her face, the unmistakable look of someone who very badly wanted one of her own now.

"What you felt, and what you’re seeing, is just Caelum’s own manipulation of its element, Sir Flemming. Though I’ll admit, telling the difference would trip up most people."

Caelum drifted lazily through the tent’s air, circling once around Flemming’s own gathered maps, weaving a slow loop around the assembled commanders as though inviting every one of them to play.

Flemming found himself nodding along despite himself, the pieces falling into place. He’d heard rumors before, that Omens could carry strange, unexpected abilities tucked beneath their true form.

"This girl talks like she doesn’t deserve a Spirit King’s blessing, and here she is, already holding something that might grow into a creature twice as terrifying."

"And what is she, barely Tier 5 by the look of her? Is this the goddess Lumielle’s own doing, letting something this small carry that much weight behind it?"

Flemming turned the thought over quietly, caught somewhere between genuine wonder and a fresh thread of caution he couldn’t quite shake.

Eleonor cradled Caelum gently against her palm, running a finger along the curve of its back. Jeanne reached out too, clearly unable to resist, drawn in by how disarmingly adorable the whole thing looked.

But just as Jeanne’s fingers brushed toward one of its small fins, Caelum darted forward instead, tail flicking playfully as it drifted straight past her, gliding toward Lucian, standing a few steps behind.

Lucian startled as the little whale closed the distance without any warning at all, circling him freely, utterly unbothered by anything resembling caution.

"Ah, Lucian, don’t hurt him, okay? Looks like Caelum’s taken quite a liking to you."

Eleonor, still assuming Lucian couldn’t see at all, worried he might accidentally swat the creature away out of simple blindness.

In truth, Lucian felt no wariness toward it whatsoever, not because he couldn’t see it clearly, which he could, but because what actually puzzled him was why it wanted anywhere near him in the first place.

Then Caelum stopped, hovering level with his hip, right where Sonata hung at his side.

Its small eyes drifted forward, then back, inching toward the blade in slow, deliberate pulses.

Wait. Why does this little thing want so badly to get close to my sword? Does it sense something inside it?

Lucian eased backward a step, both hands moving to shield Sonata from view, trying, as subtly as he could manage, to put some distance between himself and the curious little whale.

Then, from outside the tent, the sharp clatter of hooves broke through everything, fast and uneven, followed by the thud of someone throwing themselves bodily down from a carriage.

A man’s voice rose beyond the canvas wall, arguing with someone nearby, pushing hard against the line of soldiers stationed to guard Flemming’s tent, demanding, desperately, to be let through to speak with the Supreme Commander himself.

Something about him read wrong from the start.

He wore what looked, at a glance, like Bravenheart’s own imperial armor, but it was caked in filth thick enough to swallow whatever crest or unit marking it might once have carried. Worse, he had no badge to offer, nothing to prove he was truly one of their own at all.

Flemming turned his head toward the sound. Through the gap in the tent flap, he could just make out a man being physically held back outside, pleading with the guards, who refused him on principle, citing security.

"Hey. Let him through."

Flemming’s voice cut over the argument at once, final enough that the guards stepped aside without further protest. The man staggered forward, collapsing into a low, exhausted bow the moment he crossed the threshold.

He looked thoroughly wrecked, swaying on his feet, fighting visibly just to stay upright and conscious, forcing his head up to meet Flemming’s eyes.

"Supreme Commander Flemming. I serve under General Tristan."

Flemming’s hands closed around both his shoulders at once, his mouth and eyes going wide.

"Is it true? What’s the situation inside Korven? What’s happened to General Tristan?"

It was no surprise the questions came tumbling out of him all at once. For days now, on top of the silence from House Melampus, he’d been pressing for any word at all from the fortress holding Korven’s own line, a garrison he’d lost direct contact with entirely.

The man nodded weakly, admitting he couldn’t produce any official badge to prove which company he belonged to.

But he carried a sword, its edge pitted with corrosion, a winged horse etched into the center of its blade. Pegasus.

With a hand trembling from wounds and sheer exhaustion both, he held the sword out to Flemming.

Flemming’s expression hardened the instant he saw it. When a Bravenheart soldier handed a superior their own sword, it meant one of exactly two things: the sword’s owner was dead, or they could no longer wield it at all.

And that particular blade, that exact Pegasus crest, belonged unmistakably to House Austur. If this man was truly coming from Korven, there was only one person it could have belonged to.

General Tristan.

"What happened to him? Why would he give up his own sword?"

The soldier barely seemed to register the question, his trembling hand closing instead around Flemming’s wrist, as though whatever he needed to say next mattered far more than anything else in the room.

"Supreme Commander Flemming. More important than that, you need to deploy your forces right now. The Dark Beasts on Korven’s northern side have already started moving!"