Chapter 1072: Melancholic Thoughts
After Vitaliara finally confirmed from Lucavion that Isolde was indeed Alexander Valoria’s daughter, her response made one thing clear.
The name had given her context, perhaps even explained why something about Isolde had felt strangely familiar once Gerald’s old memories were taken into account. Yet it had done little to answer the question that had truly caught her attention.
Gerald’s history with Alexander belonged to another generation, tangled in friendships and grievances that had long since become their own scars. Whatever weight that history placed upon the name Valoria, it was not what Vitaliara had sensed from Lucavion in Hall C.
That had been something far more personal.
Something that had pulled his vitality in opposite directions the moment Isolde approached him, leaving behind a contradiction Vitaliara had yet to properly understand.
And she called this out directly.
[But whatever binds you to Isolde... lies somewhere much deeper. And I think you are far more afraid of remembering that than you are of remembering her.]
Lucavion remained silent after hearing Vitaliara’s conclusion, and for once, even the faint amusement that usually lingered somewhere around his expression had faded into something quieter. His pitch-black eyes drifted toward the window, where moonlight entered from the upper corner at an awkward angle, slipping past the frame in a thin silver band before catching within his gaze. The reflection looked almost misplaced there, a pale crescent suspended inside eyes that ordinarily swallowed light rather than returned it.
Vitaliara noticed immediately. Her ears shifted as she glanced toward the window, then toward him, and finally back toward the offending strip of moonlight with growing dissatisfaction. From where she sat against his side, the angle illuminated half of his face while leaving her almost entirely outside its reach, which seemed to irritate her far more than it reasonably should have.
Lucavion remained oblivious to her grievance.
His attention had already wandered somewhere beyond the Academy, beyond the distant rooftops visible through the glass, and perhaps even beyond the night itself. He stared into the empty distance with such complete stillness that Vitaliara could feel the difference through the arm resting beside her. His body remained relaxed, yet his vitality had begun shifting beneath the surface, currents tightening and loosening without settling into any pattern she immediately recognized.
Inside his head, things were considerably less peaceful.
’Well... this is a mess.’
His mind had become tangled plenty of times since that moment. Memories occasionally surfaced where they had no business appearing, fragments of Bruce collided with experiences belonging to Lucavion, and pieces of the past sometimes returned with details he could have sworn had vanished years ago. He had grown accustomed to sorting through those moments eventually, usually by giving them enough distance until the noise became something he could examine.
Tonight, distance refused to come.
Perhaps the conversation about Alexander had opened the door. Perhaps hearing Vitaliara speak of Gerald as the man she had actually known, rather than the legend history remembered, had loosened something deeper inside him. Either way, one particular memory rose through the disorder before he could redirect his attention elsewhere.
A ruined clearing returned beneath his feet.
The ground had been torn apart by forces far beyond anything Lucavion had possessed at the time, trees had shattered beneath the aftermath of techniques capable of determining wars, and the air had still carried the mingled remnants of golden radiance and celestial mana. Somewhere within that devastation, Alexander Valoria had stood over the man he once called brother, his axe hanging heavily at his side while Gerald’s body slowly surrendered its shape to the stars.
Then Alexander’s voice returned.
"Rest in peace, brother. May the stars guide you always."
Lucavion’s fingers shifted faintly against the blanket as the memory sharpened.
He remembered Gerald’s sword changing first. The pitch-black blade had begun to shimmer within his lifeless hand before its form dissolved into countless fragments of starlight, each speck rising with an almost impossible gentleness after the violence that had preceded it. His master’s body followed soon afterward, flesh and bone gradually losing their solidity as the same celestial light spread across him, until the man Lucavion had trained beneath seemed to become part of the night he had spent his entire life drawing power from.
At the time, Lucavion had watched with the stunned helplessness of someone who understood death perfectly well while still refusing to comprehend the particular death before him.
His gaze slowly lifted toward the sky outside the Academy window.
The sun had disappeared hours ago, leaving the heavens to the stars scattered across the darkness. Some burned brightly enough to remain visible even through the faint haze surrounding Arcania, while others existed only as distant pinpricks that seemed to vanish whenever his eyes shifted away from them. Their light reached across an impossible distance before entering the room, brushing against the glass, the stone, and finally him.
Then something deep within his body answered.
A pulse.
Lucavion’s eyes narrowed.
The [Devourer of Stars] core remained sealed, its celestial circulation dormant beneath restrictions he had long since learned to carry. He had grown used to the silence where Starlight once moved almost as naturally as breath, yet the sensation that reached him now was unmistakable. Somewhere beneath those seals, far below the pathways he could consciously reach, the black star seemed to respond to the heavens with one faint movement.
Another pulse followed.
His breath slowed.
’You felt that too?’
He could not tell whether he was addressing the sealed core or the man whose memory had awakened alongside it, and for several seconds he simply watched the stars while the question remained unanswered.
The clearing slipped away, only for another memory to take its place.
He remembered the Spiritual Realm, where darkness had stretched farther than sight and countless stars had surrounded him from every direction. Gerald had stood before him there after death had already claimed his body, his silhouette becoming increasingly transparent while celestial light passed through the edges of his form. Lucavion still remembered the old man approaching him, remembered that ghostly hand settling upon his shoulder, and remembered the strange warmth carried by a touch that possessed neither flesh nor weight.
Then Gerald had entrusted him with the one regret he had carried to the end.
"I am entrusting my daughter to you. Please look after her if you can."
Lucavion’s gaze lowered slightly from the stars.
Elara.
Gerald’s daughter.
The thought should have been simple by now, especially after everything he had learned, yet tonight its absurdity struck him with renewed force. Gerald had placed that responsibility into his hands without knowing that his daughter had already been entangled with Lucavion long before either of them understood the connection between them.
Elara Valoria had once existed in Lucavion’s mind as the protagonist of a story he believed he knew. Her downfall had belonged to the original novel, while the disgraced Lucavion Thorne had occupied his predetermined place beside that tragedy as another name associated with her ruin. Then Bruce had awakened inside that discarded body, survived the battlefield, encountered Gerald, inherited his teachings, witnessed his death, and accepted his final request without realizing that fate had already woven the two of them together.
’What would you have done if you knew, Master?’
The faintest trace of amusement touched Lucavion’s thoughts, although it never reached his face.
’You asked me to protect your daughter after your daughter’s life had already been ruined with my name attached to it.’
Gerald might have laughed.
Or perhaps he would have stared at Lucavion for several long seconds before striking him over the head and demanding an explanation.
That possibility felt considerably easier to imagine.
Lucavion’s thumb moved absently across the edge of the blanket while he continued looking outside.
’What a ridiculous play of fate.’
He had once thought possessing knowledge of the original story would place him somewhere outside its currents, as though understanding the pieces allowed him to stand above the board and watch them move. Instead, each answer he uncovered seemed to reveal another thread beneath his feet, and every supposedly separate event eventually curved back toward something already connected to him.
Gerald had led him to Elara.
Alexander had killed Gerald.
Elara had returned beneath the name Elowyn.
Alexander’s other daughter had entered Hall C and taken the chair beside him.
Isolde.
The name alone shifted the direction of his thoughts.
Lavender eyes replaced the stars for an instant, followed by platinum hair falling beside a familiar face and fingers resting lightly upon the back of an empty chair. He remembered the examination hall, the whispering students around them, and the infuriating ease with which Isolde had sat beside him as though several years of blood, betrayal, and exile could be folded neatly beneath ordinary conversation.
Then another Isolde surfaced behind her.
Younger.
Less composed.
Standing before him while rain struck tall windows somewhere beyond the edge of his fractured memory. One of her hands had been wrapped tightly around the opposite wrist, her fingers pressing hard enough to drain the colour from her skin, while her lavender eyes struggled to remain upon him.
Her voice returned with painful clarity.
"No. You are waiting for me to stop."
Lucavion’s brow tightened.
The words pulled another memory behind them, then another, until his mind began moving faster than he could properly separate the pieces.
Alexander kneeling beneath Gerald’s ascending starlight.
Isolde sitting beside him in Hall C.
Elara behind iron bars.
Gerald smiling inside the Spiritual Realm.
A quill resting between Lucavion’s younger fingers.
Isolde watching that same hand years later.
Alexander crying after killing the man he once called brother.
Isolde looking away while trying to tell Lucavion something he had forgotten.
’What happened back then?’
His fingers curled slightly.
The question drew another one from somewhere deeper.
’What were you trying to tell me?’
Lucavion’s breathing changed almost imperceptibly as the memories pressed closer together. He had always relied upon observation, upon his ability to look at a person, a battlefield, or a situation and find the structure hidden beneath appearances. That instinct had kept him alive through places where a single mistake meant death, and over time he had come to trust it almost as much as the sword in his hand.
Yet Alexander had spent years believing one truth about Gerald.
Gerald had carried another.
Both men had known one another as brothers.
Both had still reached the clearing convinced that the other had failed to understand.
The comparison entered Lucavion’s thoughts before he could stop following it.
’If Alexander could misunderstand Master for that long...’
Something tightened beneath his ribs.
’Then what exactly did I misunderstand?’
The pulse behind his sealed Starlight core returned, faint and distant, while Isolde’s expression from that forgotten room overlapped with the elegant smile she had worn in Hall C.
’And how much of what I remember about her belongs to what actually happened, rather than what I decided afterward?’
[Your thoughts are flickering.]
Vitaliara’s voice reached him through the noise.
Lucavion barely registered it.
His gaze remained fixed beyond the window while one memory folded into the next, and his mind continued dragging connections from places he had avoided examining for years.
[Lucavion.]
He heard Gerald’s voice.
He saw Alexander’s axe.
He remembered Isolde’s hand tightening around her wrist.
’If I had listened then—’
Warm white fur suddenly entered his vision.
Lucavion blinked once.
Vitaliara had climbed higher against his side without drawing his attention, and she now stretched upward on her hind legs with both forepaws planted firmly across his eyes. Her soft pads covered most of his vision while the tips of her claws remained carefully withdrawn, leaving him staring into darkness that smelled faintly of clean fur and winter air.
[Stop.]
Her voice carried a firmness that cut through the disorder far more effectively than another question could have.
Lucavion stayed still beneath her paws. For several seconds, he simply felt their warmth against his face while the memories continued moving somewhere behind them, slower now that the stars and moon had disappeared from sight.
When he finally answered, he surprised even himself by using his actual voice.
"Why?"