Chapter 42: Khaernos Opera House
Seris Vritra
The weight of the Briand Manor's massive, iron-banded door felt heavy. Standing before the northern entrance—the secondary access to the Grand Hall on the right of the main entrance—was an act of profound reluctance, a personal failure I had not anticipated.
This was the last place I wished to be, a mausoleum of a past I had meticulously sealed away.
But that damned reincarnate had forced my hand again. He had failed to appear at my villa, spurning the coachman—my eyes and ears—I had personally assigned to escort him to the Victory Ball in Cargidan.
Personally, his presence at some gaudy gathering of preening highbloods meant less than nothing to me, it wasn't the Victoriad where I could use him to send a message to Alacrya.
But the cover of Iskander Briand, the fiction of a surviving, legitimate heir to a waning but historically significant bloodline, was paramount.
It was a carefully placed piece on the board, a shield against prying eyes and a vessel for his… other activities. If he truly intended to pursue whatever labyrinthine plan he was concocting privately against the High Sovereign he needed this facade to be impeccable.
The Victory Ball, held in the wake of the annual Victoriad in Vechor was not just a party. It was the stage where allegiances were signaled, power was measured in whispers and glances, and absence was a declaration of weakness or, worse, disloyalty.
His non-attendance would be noted, questioned, and ultimately, it would lead back to me which was unforgivable.
The door swung inward, not with the grand, silent sweep it once managed, but with a faint, protesting groan. The inside was empty and barren, totally opposite to what this manor once was more than a century past.
The corridor that led to the Grand Hall was spoil, barren, devoid of decorations or anything of notice. I looked to my left, there, stood a door. It was the entrance to the drawing room of the Briand Manor, my foster father was a lover of all kinds of arts—painting above them all.
It was only thanks to him that I financed many artistic groups in Sehz-Clar—using either a cover identity or one of my "collaborators" as proxy.
The last owner of my ho—of Briand Manor—did a poor job with it.
I remembered Stephane Briand, I didn't care about him, but still he was the great-grandson of two of the only three people who had ever shown me a semblance of unconditional kindness, the foster parents who had taken in a girl and given her a name that wasn't yet a title: Seris Briand.
Their memory was the last anchor, the final, fragile thread that kept that girl from being completely devoured by Seris Vritra, the Scythe of Sehz-Clar.
Their decency was the quiet, stubborn core of my resolve, the reason I dared to imagine a different future for our people. It was the source of every dangerous thought, every treasonous plot.
Placing this reincarnate here, bestowing upon him the Briand name, had been an act of breathtaking recklessness. But more than that, I saw now with chilling clarity, it had been infinitely selfish. It was a desperate attempt to keep a memory on life support, to preserve the empty shell of a family that had already ceased to be.
I had hoped a being of such strange power could somehow inject life back into these cold stones. A foolish, sentimental hope.
But every feeling—the pang of remorse for Stephane's miserable end, the bitter nostalgia, the simmering irritation at the reincarnate's insolence—was locked away behind a wall of ice.
I stepped across the threshold and entered the Grand Hall after so many years. The air inside was thick with the weight of time.
This manor was a testament to a forgotten era, one of the first structures raised when Sovereign Orlaeth and Briand Vritra carved Aedelgard from the wilds over a millennium ago.
I could feel that age in the stones, a deep, resonant hum of history. But beneath the grandeur was a profound neglect, a decay that had set in not when Stephane died, but over a century ago, the moment my Vritra Blood awakened and I was ripped from this place and delivered to the cold, brutalist spires of Taegrin Caelum to be experimented on and tortured.
The countless reconstructions could not hide the soul-deep rot of abandonment. I had left, and this house had begun its long, slow death.
I quashed the thought, a dangerous indulgence.
After a while I reached the underneath cave, the cellar where my foster father had once patiently aged his wines and beers, the air always rich with the scent of oak and fermentation.
But the sight that greeted me was not one of rustic tradition. My eyes, for a fraction of a second, widened before my control reasserted itself.
Two portals hummed with potent energy, an Ascension and Descension Gateway to the Relictombs right here, in the heart of what was once a wine cellar. The audacity of it was staggering.
He's inside, I realized. Of course he was. The reincarnate possessed a scholar's obsession with the reliquaries of the Ancient Mages, a passion so intense it had somehow bridged the gap between him and the brilliant Sevren Denoir.
My gaze flicked to the surroundings, but before I could study the other modifications, a brilliant, golden light erupted from the Descension Portal. And Iskander emerged.
He was bleeding—his left arm severed, one eye gone, his body a map of bruises and fractures, ribs crushed more than once beneath some merciless weight. And yet, through the ruin of flesh and bone, he was grinning.
I raised an eyebrow, my mind working with cold, analytical precision. I could not feel the same overwhelming, god-like aura that had once radiated from him.
Was he suppressing it? Voluntarily containing that impossible power? The skill that implied was... impressive. For his cover, it was perfect.
"Aaaah, that was fun!" Iskander exclaimed, as if he'd just returned from a brisk walk, not a harrowing journey into a dimensional deathtrap.
He shrugged his shoulders, and a pale, divine light enveloped him. Flesh reknit, bone reforged, and his formal attire replaced the bloodied armour. Whole. Healed. As if it were nothing.
Then his senses caught up. He turned, and his gaze found me. "Scythe Seris. To what do I owe your visit?"
"You are late for the Victory Ball, Highlord," I stated, my voice flat. I watched the realization dawn on him, saw the color drain from his newly formed face.
"How long was I in the Relictombs?" he asked under his breath, a note of genuine alarm finally piercing his facade.
"You have spoken with Anvald Torpor, right?" I asked and Iskander nodded. "Then you were missing for a day and a half."
"Ah." The single syllable was a masterpiece of understated chagrin.
"Yes," I replied, my voice dripping with icy precision. "'Ah.'"
Iskander Briand
The door of the Briand Manor clicked shut behind us, the sound a definitive period at the end of an exasperating sentence. The air outside was cool and carried the faint, damp scent of Highbloods Park's manicured gardens, a stark contrast to the charged, ancient atmosphere of the cave I'd just left.
"You are attending the Ball too, Seris?" I asked, falling into step beside the Scythe. Her presence was like walking next to a storm looming on the horizon—still calm, beautiful, and utterly lethal.
"The Victory Ball is an important event that demands the presence of all the Scythes and Retainers currently not occupied with the war in Dicathen," she stated, her voice as levelled and uninflected as a still pond.
She took an object from the folds of her attire—a small, intricately crafted anvil, looking more like a jeweler's artifact than a tool of power.
"Oh, I didn't take Agrona for the type of guy to like ballets," I quipped, the joke a reflexive shield against the sheer, intimidating weight of the situation. A Scythe was personally escorting me to a high-society event.
Do you confirm, Sylvia? I mentally nudged the will-o-wisp form of my Dragon Mama, nestled securely within my aether core.
'Agrona had… peculiar tastes for dates…' Her mental voice was dismissive, laced with a flicker of old, painful memory.
Yeah, I wasn't going to press her for details about her megalomaniacal ex who'd ordered her death. Some doors were better left firmly closed.
"It's something that Sovereign Khaernos Vritra of the Central Dominion organized since the dawn of Alacrya," Seris explained, either ignoring or not registering my attempted humor.
"Oh, and who is this Vritra?" I asked, genuinely curious. "Apart from Agrona, I don't know much about his other clan members."
I could have asked Sylvia—she undoubtedly knew more than any history text and Scythe—but filling the silence between Seris and me felt necessary.
"Sovereign Khaernos has gone missing many years ago," she replied, her gaze fixed ahead. "Most people in Alacrya remember him only through their mandatory studies. They call him the Invisible Sovereign."
A new piece of the puzzle slid into place, painting a clearer, more disturbing picture. Mandatory studies. Of course. Agrona's dictatorship wasn't just maintained through force; it was propped up by a cult of personality so thorough it demanded the worship of his entire extended family—if he even considered such a concept.
It was a level of narcissistic control that made my stomach turn. Back on Earth, King Grey had been a tyrant in his own right, censoring media that dared to expose the atrocities in Trayden. But even he operated with a certain brutal pragmatism.
Agrona's rule was a performance, a grand, bloody opera where everyone was forced to sing his praises and those of his entire cast. It was, I decided, the epitome of disgust.
The anvil-shaped item in Seris's hand began to glow with a soft, ethereal blue light. The air before us shimmered, wavered, and then tore open, resolving into a portal of swirling azure energy. The sight sent a familiar thrill through me, a resonance with the aetheric gateways I'd just been using.
"Neat. What is that?" I asked, my curiosity genuine this time.
"This is a Tempus Warp," she said, her tone still that infuriatingly perfect neutral. "An item bestowed by the High Sovereign to teleport to certain locations. You made me waste it for you."
The words were factual, devoid of obvious accusation, but I felt the slight, razor-sharp edge of her annoyance. It was there in the minuscule tightening around her eyes, the way she held the artifact just a fraction too stiffly.
"Can I see it?" I asked, extending a hand.
She passed it to me without comment. "It's only a one-time use. It will disintegrate when we step through the portal."
I nodded, my mind already racing. Sylvia, I called out mentally, my focus turning inward. Can you go inside the Tempus Warp?
The principle was the same as with the Barnacled Relic that had granted me the Djinn Slate.
If I could Create portals after studying them, perhaps Sylvia, with her new connection to Creation itself, could decipher the magic woven into this single-use artifact.
Of course, Child, her voice echoed, a warm, determined presence in my mind. Her will-o-wisp, invisible to all but me, detached from my core and flowed into the Tempus Warp I held. I felt a faint hum of power, a silent conversation between her ancient magic and the artifact's engineered purpose.
"We can go," I said to Seris, handing the now-inert-seeming Warp back to her. Either Sylvia would gain the insight needed for me to replicate it, or she would be able to repair it before its imminent disintegration. In either case, I won.
We stepped through the azure rift. The sensation was different from my own portals or the Relictombs' gateways. It was smoother, colder, like being pulled through a river of liquid ice.
There was no disorientation, only a sudden, definitive cessation of movement.
—
We emerged into air that was crisp and thin, carrying a sharp, clean scent of stone and distant pine. The cacophony of arriving carriages and murmured conversations replaced the silence of the Briand Manor.
Before us stood a building that stole my breath. It was a massive, marmoreal palace, its architecture a breathtaking fusion of grace and imposing power.
It reminded me of pictures of an Opera House of Old Paris, but grander, more audacious, carved from a stone that was white yet gleamed with an inner... darker light.
Behind it, silhouetted against a sky bleeding into deep indigo, rose a jagged, majestic mountain range—the Basilisk Fang Mountains, if my geography served.
"This is the Khaernos Opera House of Cargidan," Seris informed me, her voice pulling my gaze from the horizon. "It's where the Victory Ball is held every year."
My eyes traveled up its magnificent facade, coming to rest on the roof. There, two golden statues depicted serpentine basilisks, their powerful, coiling bodies twisted around a miniature, intricately detailed globe. The symbolism was unmistakable: dominion over the world.
A sudden, almost laughable thought struck me. Sylvia, I prompted. What is the name of this planet? In all the chaos of my reincarnation, my training, and my kidnapping from Al-Hazred, I'd never actually asked.
'The planet?' she mused, her presence thoughtful. 'We Asuras refer to the planet itself as the Old World, because our home continent, Epheotus, is separated from the rest and lies inside a pocket dimension.'
I see. Any idea what the Alacryans call it?
'Both the cultures of Dicathen and Alacrya have been heavily influenced by the Asuras, Child. They haven't named the planet yet on their own.'
And let me guess, I thought, the pieces clicking into a depressing whole. While in Alacrya there's Mr. Dictator-God Agrona, Dicathen has been influenced by that guy we saw in Gawain's memories: Windsom, right?
Sylvia's silent, affirmative feeling was all the answer I needed. Two sides of the same meddling, god-like coin.
The stone of the Opera House fascinated me. It wasn't just white marble; as we drew closer, crossing a wide, elegant street that separated the teleportation area from the main entrance, I saw it was something else entirely.
It was a peculiar stone, white like marble, but it gleamed with a soft, internal golden luminescence, as if capturing the last rays of a sunset. I liked it. A lot.
A mental note was made: find out what it was and if I could, through Creation, use it to renovate the dreary Briand Manor. It needed some light.
Cargidan itself was a revelation. Aedelgard was all gothic spires, shadowy alleys, and a sense of brooding industry—a mix of Old London, Old New York and Gotham.
This city was different. It was brighter, more open, built with sweeping boulevards and elegant, airy structures that spoke of art and spectacle. It was an Old Paris built at the foot of mighty, snow-capped mountains.
As Seris and I approached the grand, widely open doors, a path cleared before us. It wasn't a violent parting; it was a subtle, instinctual yielding. Eyes widened, conversations hushed, and the crowd of lavishly dressed Highbloods and adorned nobles simply diverted, creating a bubble of space around the Scythe of Sehz-Clar.
"Are you sure you should be seen accompanying me?" I asked under my breath, the politics of the situation suddenly becoming starkly clear. "Wouldn't it damage your public image?"
She didn't even turn her head, her gaze fixed ahead. But she gave me a slight, almost imperceptible glance from the corner of her eye.
"I don't care about my public image. With you showing here by my side, it shows Alacrya that you are a well-connected Highlord. It will help you build your cover."
"I understand," I said. Politics seemed to be waiting for me.
We passed through the doors into an atrium that was nothing short of breathtaking. It was a vast, soaring space, illuminated by a colossal, sumptuous candelabrum hanging from the ceiling high above, complemented by dozens of smaller, self-contained orbs of light that floated serenely in the air, casting a warm, golden glow.
"I will be joining the other Scythes," Seris stated, her mission with me apparently complete for now. With that, she melted into the crowd, leaving me standing alone at the edge of the glittering throng.
'Child, what if they recognize you as Agrona's lost weapon?' Sylvia's voice was tight with anxiety within my core.
They won't, I thought back, projecting a confidence I felt was warranted. Seris wouldn't have made me come here if she wasn't one hundred percent sure I was unrecognizable—the first thing I understood about her was that she is clever and cautious—she doesn't take uncalculated risks.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped forward into the social fray. Almost immediately, I was met with a barrage of polite, curious glances. I became the new, interesting variable in their carefully balanced equation.
A nod here, a curt, respectful bow there. I returned them in kind, my movements guided by the countless hours of tedious etiquette lessons I'd forced Alfred to give me during my bedridden eternal convalescence.
The muscle memory of a life I'd never truly lived—the heir to House Hyperion—kicked in, providing a perfect mask of aristocratic grace.
The conversations were a predictable, boring whirlwind. Highlord Graeme of the Central Dominion, a man with a face like a well-fed hawk and an air of immense self-importance, spoke at length about the prestigious Central Academy under his influence, probing to see if the "new Briand" might be a potential donor or source of influence. I offered non-committal compliments.
Highlord Frost of Sehz-Clar was effusive, his pleasure at meeting the "scion of the prestigious Briand bloodline" so thick it was almost syrupy. His eyes, however, were sharp, calculating the political weight of Seris's very public endorsement.
Then came Highlord Seabrook of Truacia. His questions were less about pleasantries and more about assets. He spoke of Dicathen not as a war, but as a future resource, a continent soon to be parceled out like a cake.
"And what are your intentions, Highlord Briand, when the continent falls under the Sovereigns' rule? Will your Blood be making a move for territory? Mining rights? The rich forests of Elenoir hold immense potential from what I heard."
"Such matters are for the Sovereigns to decide, Highlord. I am merely a servant of the continent." I gently but firmly disengaged, the taste of his avarice bitter on my tongue.
Many, many more such exchanges followed. It was a dance far more complex and exhausting than any that would happen on the ballroom floor. Yet, I maintained the facade.
Perfect posture—respectful yet prideful.
A leveled, calm voice.
Compliments delivered with just the right amount of detachment.
In my own, slightly delusional way, I was even having a shred of fun. This was building the cover for my superhero identity, wasn't it? Crafting the secret persona of Aetherman right under the noses of the very regime he would oppose.
But the illusion of a comic book fantasy shattered a moment later. A shift in the atmosphere of the room pulled all eyes toward the elevated stage at the far end—the space that was usually a theatre stage.
Upon it stood an empty throne carved from the same glowing white-and-gold stone as the Opera House. The throne of that Invisible Sovereign, I presumed.
And standing before it were five figures.
Seris was among them, her calm demeanor making her seem like the eye of a storm. The other four were a study in terrifying power. But my attention, against Sylvia's sudden, frantic warning, was snared by the man on the end.
'Child, don't stare too much!' Sylvia's mental voice was a sharp, panicked whisper.
Oh, I'm not staring, I retorted mentally, though my eyes were locked. I am simply showing respect. The other guests were doing the same, their postures stiffening in a unified wave of awe and terror.
But this was different. The man was grey-skinned, clad in heavy, ominous armour—the only one of the Scythes so dressed.
His presence was a black hole, sucking in the light and energy of the room. He stood perfectly still, yet seemed to radiate a promise of infinite violence. And his eyes… solid, burning red orbs with no iris, no pupil, just pits of smoldering embers. And from his temples coiled S-shaped horns, a stark remark of the Vritra blood in his veins.
I felt it then. A shudder that was not my own. It was a convulsive, soul-deep tremor that ripped through the connection I shared with Sylvia. It was a spasm of pure, unadulterated terror and guilt, so profound it felt like an attack to my own heart.
Sylvia? The mental call was instinctual, laced with my own sudden alarm.
The response was not words. It was a raw, psychic scream of anguish and memory, a flash of searing pain and the cold approach of death. When her voice finally formed, it was a shattered, broken thing.
'He… he's Agrona's right hand—Cadell Vritra.' A wave of nausea washed over me. 'He was the one who killed me.'
The world narrowed. The music, the chatter, the glittering lights—it all faded into a dull roar. The only thing in sharp, horrifying focus was the grey-skinned Scythe on the stage.
A cold, murderous fury, purer and more intense than any I had ever known, ignited in my chest. It was a star of vengeance, so potent that for a single, catastrophic second, I felt the aether in my core surge, responding to my rage.
If Sylvia hadn't been there, a constant, vigilant warden sealing the depths of my power, I knew with utter certainty that my control would have shattered. The aetheric pressure would have erupted from me, a wave of pure force that would have crushed every single person in that magnificent room into paste.
The thought acted as a bucket of ice water. The innocent, the complicit, the arrogant Highbloods—they were waging a terrible war, but they did not deserve to be collateral damage in my personal vendetta.
I forced a breath into my lungs, a painful, shuddering act. I wrestled the inferno in my chest back behind the walls of my control. I looked away from Cadell, turning my attention to a passing server holding a tray of drinks, my hand trembling slightly as I took one I did not want.
The decision was made, cold and absolute, in the space of that single, harrowing heartbeat.
I know who is going to be Aetherman's first target, I thought, the words a silent, solemn vow in the confines of my mind.
But not today. For a multitude of obvious, tactical reasons, today was not the day. As much as every fiber of my being screamed to unleash everything I had, to tear that monster apart on the spot and avenge the woman who had given me everything, I would not.
I would not make this opulent opera house a charnel house. I would not put these hundreds of people, guilty and innocent alike, in the crossfire of my thirst for justice.
His time would come. But it would be on my terms. In front of every single people that could see it—on a stage bigger than the one he was currently standing on.