Chapter 72

Parentage

One of Sylas' major headaches was resolved—he knew how to stop the invasion and save the castle. But with the disappearance of one, another came strolling right in—the boy. He never left Sylas' side, and the kid's gaze followed his back coldly everywhere. At least, that was Sylas' impression after the first two hours they spent together. While the castle was celebrating yet another victory and collectively wondering whether their Price was a God among men, Sylas was trying to enjoy the silence and recollect his thoughts inside his room. Trying being the key word, and woefully failing due to the fact that the boy kept staring at him.

He never uttered a word, or even did anything, just stood a few paces away from Sylas and stared, as though the latter was some carnival attraction. Realizing he wouldn’t be able to concentrate and do anything productive, Sylas sighed and turned to face the boy and his chilly eyes.

“So, uh, are you hungry?” he asked.

“No.”

“Alright. Thirsty?”

“No.”

“Happy? Sad? Constipated? Are you anything?”

“You are not a Prophet,” the boy said suddenly. “All human Prophets are blind and rife with disease from the early age. Their Gift… is a Curse. No human Prophet had lived past childhood and almost all ended their lives due to the visions of horror. So, if you are not a Prophet… what are you?"

“…” Sylas wasn’t worried that his disguise had been ‘seen through’; by now, he had understood that nobody was quite certain what a ‘Prophet’ was. Unlike the idea of it from back on Earth, here, it didn’t seem to bother anyone that he never prayed, that he never chanted or preached or anything akin to that. All that mattered, it seemed, was that he could see the future—all his ‘eccentric’ behaviors were simply explained away by him seeing the visions. At least, that was the case with people. Clearly, there were always those more knowledgeable around. “Don’t you know that it’s quite rude to ask someone who they are without introducing yourself first?”

“I am the Thrall of Frost,” the boy replied candidly. “Entrenched soul cast in chains of ice to forever bear its curse. I am dead yet living, ghostly yet corporeal. I have been roaming the Realm of the Living for fifteen hundred years now.”

“… wow. You’re an honest bunch, aren’t you?”

“It is your turn.”

“… I am a Prophet,” Sylas said, smiling faintly. “Or, at least, that’s the closest comparison I can give you. However, you are correct: I do not see visions, nor do I hear a God’s voice. Instead, I read words written for me. And those words warn me for things to happen. Often, they are vague. For instance, words regarding you read as such: A Thrall Cometh, bearing Frosted, Wintered Winds, and the ghastly breaths of the damned. It didn’t warn me of the time of your arrival, or place, or manner, or anything. As such, most of my energy is spent trying to decipher the words. And because of that, I’m nary a Prophet and more of a… decipherer? Is that a word? I think that’s a word. But, in case you haven’t realized, people don’t care how I see the future—they care that I do. So long as I can tell them of what happens tomorrow or in a week, they see me as a Prophet.”

“… you are not lying,” the boy said after a momentary pause. “How… strange. Others seem to trust you unquestionably. Especially that queer human.”

“Who? Valen? Ah, yes, the boy trusts me quite a bit. I don’t think he realizes just how ridiculous what he did tonight was. Why didn’t you inform him?”

“Why should I?”

“Common courtesy? Aah, the poor Prince thinks himself a common man still,” Sylas chuckled, pouring himself a cup of sweet wine. “Those eyes of his… they don’t just see through the illusions.”

“No,” the boy confirmed. “I haven't realized it immediately, but those are likely Yatan's Eyes." What the fuck's that? Wait… Yatan… Yatan… why is that name familiar? Sylas mused inwardly for a moment “He was the solitary reason why the Well wouldn’t open the last time. Could it be fate? That his descendant is here, now, again?”

"…" Sylas' mind spun quickly as he went back through the memory lane, finally locating the source of the name: the diary, the journal they found inside the cabin! "No fucking way!!" he shot to his feet, eyes as wide as sources. "Valen is Yatan's descendant?!! What—how—what the shit?! Didn't Yatan die inside that fucking valley?! How does he even have descendants?!"

“Died? He didn’t die,” the boy said. “He closed the Well and disappeared back into the human Kingdoms.”

“…” Sylas sat down, deflated. Once again, a bolt of thunder boomed inside his mind. His perception of reality was shattered. Just as he started thinking he was getting a fairly decent grasp on all elements of the story… boom. A hook out of the no-field slams into him and knocks him out.

The real question now became whether Valen’s descendance traces through his father’s or mother’s lineage. Father’s, likely, as all Princes have Gifts, he concluded briefly, but couldn’t be certain. Really, likely the only person in the world who knew was the King—and it wasn’t as though Sylas could simply walk up to the man and ask.

Wait, Sylas frowned. Could… could it be that the King sent him up north because of that? Because he knew Valen inherited the eyes? But still, with no explanation or support, what the shit did he expect to happen? Fuckin’ hell. Why, why, why o’ why is this so much more complicated than I initially thought?

For the longest time, Sylas was convinced that Valen’s fate was simply a product of some old-fashioned royal infighting, with factions vying for more power. In fact, it seemed like Valen himself believed that much as well. In the end, he was ‘excused’ and told to leave and live out his days in the middle of nowhere. Sounds like a fairly straightforward story of infighting. Yet, the more Sylas learned, the less he was convinced that was the case.

A Kingdom's Prince was a public figure—as such, it wasn't easy getting rid of one without ringing alarms. If a Prince disappeared, the commotion would have been too large to ignore. Similarly, it was unwise to simply send the Prince somewhere and make it public knowledge as that was essentially declaring him a target for assassination. It had to be subtle and extremely vague, a story coated in seemingly normal behavior yet with strange interludes and conclusions.

Why did the King ‘spare’ Valen? Though he heard the Prince talk about the King quite a few times, Sylas never got the impression that the two were ever particularly close or that the King favored him over his other sons. If anything, even Valen implied that he was surprised that his Father pardoned him and sent him away safely.

The entire story was slowly, but surely, falling apart. And Sylas nearly beat his head against the stone wall for not seeing it before. He was too quick to relegate it to simply being a ‘tale of factions’, a bias from his knowledge back on Earth no doubt, and didn’t look into it any further.

“Are you alright? You started mumbling to yourself. Are you trying to convince me you were having a vision?”

"Yatan, did you ever see him yourself?" Sylas asked.

“No. Why?”

“His description—does it in any way resemble Valen?”

“Humans are all the same to me,” the boy said. “Only the eyes are distinct. And those are, undoubtedly, his.”

"Then, would all children who descended from Yatan inherit his eyes?"

“No,” the boy shook his head firmly. “I have heard the Preachers numb our senses with the story, to convince us we’d never have to face those eyes again—the eyes are only awakened when another, equally strong bloodline interacts with the eyes’. And even then, only one human child is ever born—with the female of the species either immediately dying or becoming permanently dry.”

“…” Ah, motherfucking shit… it all made sense—kind of. Mildly. Possibly. His brothers’ and sisters’ Gifts were linked to their Father—the bearer of another fairly strong bloodline, something that Valen himself confirmed. But he was an anomaly—just like his Father. In both cases, it was likely that the two equally strong bloodlines—no, wait, it’s not a fucking bloodline, it’s just genes—or, rather, two complementary genetic lines bearing a very specific, mutated genome converged into one, creating a very specific and beyond rare mutation.

At the very least, that was Sylas' non-magical explanation for it. For all he knew, however, it truly was in the 'blood', and by mixing different 'types of blood', a new, 'stronger blood' was formed. Though unlikely, since magic was involved anything was possible, really.

What was certain, however, was that Valen being in the north was not a coincidence-- that much Sylas could ascertain unquestionably. Another thing that was likely was that whoever was after Valen’s ‘String’, his gift, probably knew that there was something unique about it, even if they didn’t know precisely what. I can’t ask Valen about any of this since he probably knows fuck all about it, Sylas sighed, taking a sip of wine. But his return to the Capital… would likely cause chaos beyond comprehension. I’ll need to go back with Derrek after the Winter and try and meet the King myself and hear the full story.

Another line of inquiry opened—as if Sylas wasn’t already overwhelmed by the sheer amount of them. He was yet to even retrieve the Shard and see whether Valen could see anything nobody else did. Furthermore, he was still uncertain as to why the invasion happened much earlier than he was expecting it, even if he could project that it had something to do with Dyn’s death. The cult behind Dyn, the existence of the Well, and now Valen’s parentage… couldn’t you just have tossed me into some dog-eat-dog world or something? At least living there would have been simpler…