Crimson Ascension

There was no heartbeat behind Draven. Wait, that can't be true. Someone followed his steps, but it felt distant; its sound was muffled by a veil of emptiness that escaped his perception until the speaker had revealed himself. He was an Empyrean, there was no doubt about it.

Hexion flowed out of Draven's astra by instinct, traveling along his veins, spreading its enhancing power to his flesh. The strange might be an Empyrean, but so was Draven.

"You have three seconds to cease imbuing your body, Draven." A man appeared in front of him, a familiar face. "A Mender against an Evoker... It will not end well for you," Elevalein said.

Draven let the hexion fade. If he got close enough, Evoker or not, he had a chance at killing him before his Specters destroyed his soul.

"A wise choice." He walked past Draven, exposing his back. A trap, he knew it, for his heart raced in readiness. "Walk with me."

"Elevalein," Draven snarled. "Are you stalking me?"

He shook his head as if the idea was beyond him. "I have better things to do than follow the Primus of a minor House, much less an Orisanth. Or so I thought."

Draven followed him as he talked. An opportunity would come.

"Imagine my surprise when I found you were acquainted with the very traitors that killed my father," he snarled.

What sort of nonsense is this? Did he somehow escape all of their detections and listen to their private meeting in the Wild Voice? Certainly not. The old man had been there, after all. There was no chance in the abyss anyone could take that geezer by surprise. But again, he only arrived later.

"And I'm supposed to know who you are talking about?" Acquaintances. It could be Myra, Corvanis, Aemon, and Helvan. One of them had allegedly killed this man's father. "Do you expect everyone to indulge your nonsense?"

His expression grew darker as they entered an alley.

"I expect nothing, Draven. I demand it." His eyes glowed green.

To the abyss with this! Draven knew the man was about to use hexion to call out his Specter and whatever else an Evoker could do. Hexion burst out from Draven's astra, traveling a painful path toward his fingers. Mind-numbing pain erupted from both his arms as the Art was about to unfold, but it ended when something pierced his chest.

A roar wrenched itself out of Draven's throat without restraint. He looked down, only to see a green arm made of mist bursting out from the right side of his chest. The Specter, he thought amidst the screams.

His arm fell listless to the side, dead, numb. Unresponsive. Something tore through his legs, and he collapsed on the floor. His mind went blank. Pain. Torture.

When Draven regained thought, he could not move. His throat was raw from all the screaming. His limbs felt foreign. Dyad Vessel had always numbed all the pain he suffered without fail. Until now.

He looked at Elevalein, at the disgust on his face. He did not enjoy the sight of deeds, but that meant nothing—the determination in his tightened fists was enough to see it through the end.

"You see, Draven. Scream as much as you want, but no one will hear you." He kicked a pebble out of the way. "What the soul does not perceive will go unnoticed by sight and hearing. Keep your secrets, if you must, but know that a Specter can hold nothing from their masters."

"Fuck you!" It was do or die.

Draven let the well of hexion within himself burst forth. He willed blood spheres to form, as many as he could, regardless of the damage they did to him. No, he wanted them to wreck his flesh, for that only fueled the power of Dyad Vessel.

Before Elevalein could react, hexion exploded from Draven. The spheres pierced the stone building around them, causing dust to pour like an obscuring morning mist. The Providence within him filled to the brim as his blood first flowed through the cracks between bricks before pooling in a warm puddle around him.

Mend! He commanded. Just enough so I don't die. Just enough so Elevalein thought he was on his last breath. He urged his heart to drink the remaining hexion from within him until he was empty.

"You mongrel piece of shit!" Elevalein coughed. "What manner of monster are you to wield so much hexion at once?" The dust parted as he approached Draven with a faltering step.

Still alive. Damn it to the abyss!

An emerald, ethereal armor clad his figure. It brimmed with small holes in the arms and legs, but only cracks in the torso and head. Blood seeped out from the crumbling armor. He had defended himself somehow.

"Brother?" The Specter of a child burst out from his body. "Hate to say it, but I told you to just kill him."

"Were it not for me, you wouldn't have survived." Another one walked out of his body, but he seemed more fascinated with the surrounding destruction than his blood-soaked master. "This… I've never seen someone this powerful at Lesser Reverence. It would have been impressive had he not doomed himself."

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"True. True," the other one said. "His astra is double the size of what it should be."

"Shut up!" Elevalein snapped, hands gripping the sides of his head.

The Specters disappeared in a cloud of green mist.

He looked at Draven with his bloodshot eyes. There was anger in how his limbs trembled, hesitation in the step he contemplated taking. All of that was gone after he blinked. His hand shot forward, touching Draven's forehead, making contact with the boundaries of Dyad Vessel—his last mistake.

A veil of numbness swept over Draven before he could release the Providence.

***

Draven was back in the Catalyst District once again. His mother and brother urged him to follow them to the Ascension Ceremony, but he hesitated. Something was wrong. It felt as if he had been about to do something important, yet now the memory of it failed him.

One step forward and time regressed a few years. His dad was in front of him, eyes with shame. Draven remembered this day; it shaped who he is.

"I know this won't make sense to you, Aiden. Trust me, if there was another choice, I would have taken it." Will's eyes brimmed with tears, an odd sight. His father never cried in front of him. "But there's too much at stake. You'll understand everything when it's time. Just remember one thing: I love you, son."

Draven's heart clenched. Today was the day he died. But how did he know that?

"It can't be…" A voice spoke from the distance, echoing inside his head as if his own. "Father?"

Pain stabbed his head. He blinked away tears, and when he opened his eyes he almost flinched at the sight. He looked at the ground below and fear made him grip the wall harder. Aemon climbed ahead of him, seemingly unbothered by what they were doing—his facade might fool somebody else, but Draven heard the frantic pace of his heart.

"I dreamed of the Maker's death." A woman rasped.

It was still hard to believe. But Draven had to report it to Helvan. It was his ticket to getting his family to safety. The old man would know what to do. He always did.

The entire world shook. Draven lost his grasp on the ornate dragon that adorned the window and fell. The wind rushed at his back. Fear. Panic. He flailed against nothingness, trying to get a grip on anything, but there was nothing to save him. He was going to die.

This time, there was no escape.

***

Draven opened his eyes with a gasp.

Elevalein took a step back, his face pale, his lips trembling with a mixture of emotions complex beyond his ability to grasp.

Where am I? Draven looked around, confused. Did I fall to my death and this is the abyss? It seemed too mild, unlike the legends—not at all cold.

"Who…" Elevalein backed himself against a corner for support. "Who are you?"

Draven did not understand. Elevalein might not know his real name, but they certainly introduced themselves to each other before in the Amethyst Palace. Come to think of it, Draven did not recall the details of how they ran into each other today. The more he thought about it, the less it made sense.

He tried to stand up but could not.

One look at his body told him the answer. A carriage had run him over, it was the only explanation. He beckoned the hexion into his astra, imbued it with his will until it became his own, steadily using it to mend the extensive damage throughout his entire being. There were holes in his soul, wounds that not even the most dire of failures with the Unbreakable Veil had incurred.

What's going on?

Draven used the pure hexion burning on his astra's surface to stitch them together, but he knew that would not heal them overnight. How did this happen? Was he training as he walked and somehow got distracted? It seemed unlike him to make such a big mistake.

"Answer me! How do you know Korvax von Astrais?" Elevalein's voice stopped him dead.

Memories rushed into Draven's head. He blinked, and his heart grew cold, for he remembered everything. The meeting in the Wild Voice. Elevalein's ambush. The way he had somehow entered his head. Unforgivable. Draven would kill him, no matter the cost—he knew too much now.

"If you're going to kill me, cut the crap and do it." Come closer. I won't make the same mistake again. Dyad Vessel roared on the brink of release.

"Aiden…" Elevalein said. The name took him aback. "Son of Will Greystone. A ratling turned Sovran. A spy for the Witnesses of the Beyond."

It seemed like an odd choice to focus on that after he saw the prophesied death of the Maker. Anyone sane was bound to prioritize the impending doom of the Haven over a miner-turned-spy, but Elevalein did not. The way he looked at Draven now, though filled with anger, differed from before. There was something else in his voice.

The hesitation of one who dared not hope for too much.

"Listen here, Elevalein. I'm just doing this to save my family." Draven had to buy some time, enough so that his body healed, just enough so that the numbness in his limbs disappeared. "Got no bad blood against you or your house, so why don't we call this a day? Each one of us goes our separate ways."

He knew Draven's father. He knew what Draven truly was. He must be a relative of some sort, somebody hunting down Korvax for what he stole. Just a little longer. Come on. Mend! The wounds in his body were closing slowly, but the ones in his soul showed only minor improvements.

"Your family," Elevalein laughed suddenly. "How can you save them if you don't even know who they are, Aiden Greystone? Your father was Korvax von Astrais, Korvax the Traitor, the most powerful Dreamer to have ever lived, second only to the Maker himself—who now is apparently going to die."

Elevalein laughed maniacally. His hands tore locks of hair out of his temples. Tears ran down his face. Draven stared at him and sighed. There was no other way. Only one of them would walk away from this alley.

"Like I said, if you're gonna kill me—"

"How could I kill my brother… again? I never had a choice!" Elevalein shouted as the forms of Specters struggled to free themselves out of his head.

His shout silenced Draven not because it was loud—there was more to it than words. Hope. Despair. Regret. Draven felt it all in the desperate beat of his heart. He looked at Elevalein, really looked at the man who had almost killed him, and knew the hard truth.

Elevalein was not only a relative, but a scion from House Astrais like Draven's father had been. He was more than that. He did not hunt Korvax von Astrais to recover a lost remnant. That goal was driven by greed—none of which shone in his earnest eyes. Draven understood his own difficult situation; he, like Elevalein, pursued the same objective.

In front of him was a man who desperately looked for his father—the brother Draven never knew he had.

Elevalein exchanged one more glance before vanishing into a cloud of green mist.