NOVEL NEXT Vol 2. Chapter 59: We Have A Klein
The storm outside raged as though the sky itself had fractured. Rain slammed against the palace windows with a force that made the glass tremble. Lightning cast momentary shadows across the throne room, illuminating the faces of those gathered in harsh, white flashes—men and women who had seen much, who had lived through war, through fire, through peace—and they now stood in silence before a throne that had not changed since the dawn of Easthaven.
The same could not be said about the man who sat on that throne.
Magnus Elarion sat slouched against the velvet lining of his throne, the golden antlers of his crown duller than they once were. It was clear that he still carried himself with an immense power that could not be denied but it was also just as clear that this power had lost the edge it once had.
His breath was more labored, his hands stiff when they gripped the armrests. He blinked often, as though dragging his vision back to clarity, and when he did speak, it was no longer the commanding baritone of Easthaven's golden age—it was something quieter, roughened by time.
The throne room was filled not by noblemen looking to flatter their King, but by those who once stood beside him since his coronation—his Archmages of the Magic Tower, the High Governors of Easthaven, the Councilors of his Court.
They did not come with ceremony. They came with worry. The air was thick with it, thicker even than the salt that crept in from the rising tide.
"This…it is not an ordinary swell," Archmage Belanor the Blacksmith explained, his voice nearly drowned by the wind rattling through the old marble pillars. "This is the culmination of years of destabilized weather—the current convergences, the wild arcane tides—we cannot hold it back, Your Majesty. Even with the entire Tower's mages gathered at the shore, we will only delay the inevitable."
Myrren Hollowark, another Archmage of the Tower, continued to plead their case. "It will be the largest tsunami in our recorded history. This isn't a guess. This is certainty, Your Majesty. Entire districts of Easthaven will be wiped clean. The coast of this Kingdom will be swallowed whole along with its people if we do nothing about it."
Another voice rose, Vaelith's. "We need to evacuate, Your Majesty. We must sound the horns. The commonfolk—"
"I have said no," Magnus interrupted quietly.
Silence fell. The storm did not.
It was not often that the three Archmages of the Magic Tower came together in agreement.
"You're asking us to believe," Belanor demanded, anger rising in his tone, "that Easthaven will survive a wall of water taller than its highest spires—because of a feeling? Because of some misplaced faith in—"
"There is no need for fear," Magnus insisted again, a touch more firmly now. "It is more than just a feeling, old friend."
"You cannot possibly know that," someone else snapped, one of the High Governors of the Court, the illusion of courtly restraint cracking. "You're asking us to gamble the lives of tens of thousands of our people, our Kingdom—"
"I am not gambling anything," the old King interrupted once more.
Magnus Elarion leaned forward slightly in his throne, and for a breath, his eyes were the same sharp blue they had once been in his youth. The same eyes that had once stared down armies and walked away untouched.
"What makes you so certain that there is no need to evacuate, Your Majesty?" Myrren asked, recognizing the clarity in those eyes.
Magnus exhaled, slow and steady, and then he answered her question.
"Because we have a Klein."
The winds shrieked across the coast, but Lukas Drakos stood still on the dock, his eyes fixed on the endless grey horizon.
The waters had drawn back like a held breath, revealing seabed and scattered debris—the unnatural silence before the strike. The skies above boiled with black clouds, and thunder cracked like bones snapping in the heavens.
Beside him stood Rosalia Elarion, no longer the child who he once met so long ago the first time he washed up on the shores of this Kingdom.
The Princess of Easthaven stood tall now, her frame lean with discipline, her shoulders set like steel. She was seventeen now, perhaps as tall as Lukas' elbow. And that meant this was the year that she would be considered a grown woman.
The year of her coming of age ceremony.
Today, she would be tested not by courts or pageantry, but by the fury of the sea itself.
And what a fury it was.
The sea groaned, and the tide began to return—slowly at first, then faster, then all at once. A towering wall of water surged forth, as though the ocean had decided to take Easthaven back for itself.
Rosalia took a single step forward, her hands lifting into the air. The mana came to her like wind through a broken door—flooding, hungry, wild. She spoke to it now. Not with authority, but with sincerity. With her very own presence. With emotions that words could not describe.
And it listened.
Lukas felt the change in the air as her magic took hold—thickening, shaping into something more. Something sacred. Something ancient.
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It was the Divinity of the Seas.
Lukas watched as massive invisible push was made against the incoming tide. The wall of water began to slow, then to tremble, its force being caught by unseen hands. The wave snarled and shook, frothing at its peak, but for a moment, it halted.
Time seemed to pause.
Lukas watched closely.
Rosalia's eyes narrowed. Her jaw clenched. Her feet pressed harder into the soaked dockwood as the sheer weight of the tsunami bore down upon her will. Her fingers trembled, and cracks of azure light ran across her arms as she reached further to the Mana all around her—drawing in more mana, more force, more of everything she had to give.
She was holding the waves back.
The strain showed. Sweat ran down her face, mixing with the sea spray. Her knees bent, almost buckling. Her breath came sharp. The wave shuddered violently—and then broke through her hold.
The ocean surged again.
Lukas didn't step in to interfere. Not yet.
"Don't stop now," Lukas called to her, his voice cutting clean through the storm. "You're almost there. Again, Rosalia. Try again."
She didn't look back. She didn't speak. She simply roared—not like a mage, not like a princess, but like something else altogether. Mana screamed back in response, swirling into a vortex of light around her.
The dock groaned under the pressure. Her hair whipped wildly as she gathered the last remnants of the surrounding energy, dragging it from the air, the sea, even from the ground beneath her feet.
Then she struck. The magic exploded outward, not as destruction, but as defiance. A tidal force of pure will slammed into the oncoming wave, and for a heartbeat, the tsunami stopped.
Lukas grinned.
The tsunami held still as if frozen, but Rosalia's magic was the only thing that was truly holding it back from crashing down upon the Kingdom of Easthaven.
As always, she always strived for greatness and pushed beyond it. She had achieved a level of strength that Lukas could not have imagined possible in that timeframe.
Finally, Rosalia's legs gave out beneath her as the last of her spell unraveled into nothingness. Her hands trembled at her sides, magic still crackling faintly across her skin. The wall of water had been stopped only for a few moments thanks to Rosalia's magic.
Now, those same waves were now hurtling towards Easthaven with just as much gusto; seeking to destroy everything in its path.
Rosalia should have been afraid. But she wasn't.
Instead, the princess turned to Lukas who stood beside her. Breathless and laughing quietly as tears mixed with seawater on her cheeks. "Did I do well?"
Lukas smiled, and the world of Hiraeth itself seemed to pause for that moment. He stepped forward, placing a hand gently on her shoulder.
"You did great, little one," he told her. "I'm so proud of you, Rosalia."
The words struck deeper than she expected. Her breath caught in her throat. Then she let out a laugh because those were words that she had been waiting to hear for a while now. She glanced beyond them, watching as the oceans rose to heights unimaginable and were now threatening to crash down on them all; certain to send them to the Underworld.
But the seas would never reach Rosalia Elarion. It would never reach the Kingdom of Easthaven.
The moment Lukas Drakos raised his hand, the ocean remembered who he was.
The mana that poured from him was not summoned—it burst from within.
A torrent of power surged upward, twisting into elegant arcs of silver and blue, thick with primordial force. Where Rosalia had shaped the waves through sheer grit and connection, Lukas commanded them through authority so absolute, even nature dared not question it.
The Divinity of the Seas roared to life around him—not like a spell, but like a dragon finally awakened from slumber.
The waves responded instantly. It did not even reach the shores of Easthaven. Instead, at the brink of devastation, the sea's fury curved heavenward—rising in a vertical swell that clawed toward the clouds.
A vast wall of water now towered over Easthaven, casting a mighty shadow across the coastline.
It shimmered in the stormlight, terrible and beautiful, as if the gods themselves had split the sea in two and raised one side to the sky. From the towers of the Elarion Royal Palace, the Archmages stood frozen, their faces lit in blue radiance.
None of them spoke. None of them could.
They had been silenced by the sheer awe at the magic they were now bearing witness to at that very moment.
Even the elders of the Magic Tower's Higher Floors among them—mages who had spent a lifetime pushing the known boundaries of their craft—had never seen such mastery.
This was beyond them. This was something else.
The Head Mage himself, Magnus Elarion watched from his window, smiling.
The very reason why he had not sounded the alarms to evacuate the coastal towns of Easthaven and rush his people to safety was because of one man.
The man they knew as Klein.
The Dragon Lord Magnus knew as Lukas Drakos.
Rosalia had not been the only one who had grown for Lukas had become stronger, sharper, more tempered than ever before.
Now, Lukas stood upon the docks with the sea in his palm. There was no strain in his breath. No shaking in his fingers. Not a drop of sweat shed. He simply lowered his hand. And the ocean obeyed. The great wave unraveled, not into chaos, but into calm. The water flowed gently back to the sea as if nothing had ever happened. The tide returned to its place.
In seconds, the Kingdom of Easthaven was safe. The disaster had passed.
The people watching from the rooftops and towers and flooded streets—they didn't cheer. They simply stared, wide-eyed and wordless, at the man on the docks who had told the sea to kneel.
Because now, they understood. There would be no natural disaster, no arcane catastrophe, no divine punishment strong enough to touch Easthaven.
Not while Lukas Drakos was here to face it.