The Dragon Heir

Interlude 3.28 [Lysska]

A will crumbled into its own grave, and from the dust, another stood up, brushing off the debris of its predecessor. So was will ever a singular, fixed monument? Or was it river-water. A fluid, reshaping itself around every stone, every dam, every hollow it was forced to carve? Perhaps there was no true way to shatter someone's will, because it was never glass. It was like clay. The more pressure applied, the more it remembered the shape of the hand that tried to break it.Lysska let that thought linger.

Maybe there was something profound buried in its murk. Maybe she was already circling the truth without bothering to name it.

Through the window of her decrepit office, she watched the first signs of a blizzard gather in the distance. The wind shifted and snow thickened. The sky dimmed further.

It was going to be a cold night.

She placed a hand over her core and felt her expression tighten into something unreadable. It was acting up again. The mana inside her churned restlessly, surging in uneven waves.

Every Red Core at the peak of their stage experienced it. Growth that refused to stop, even when the structure containing it had already reached its limit. A limit was still a limit.

Her core was overflowing with concentrated mana, pressing against its own boundaries as if demanding action. Demanding ascension.

But enlightenment did not come.

Lysska did not know the exact process required to step into Gold. For all her skill in gathering information, she had only pieced together fragments. Hints and speculations. Nothing complete enough to risk her life on.

And it would be a risk.

It was a gamble she could not yet afford.

Which was ironic, considering her entire power revolved around bending probability and manipulating luck. But her core was the foundation of that power. To gamble with it was to stake everything she had ever built.

There was a certain cruelty in that symmetry. The universe, it seemed, had a sense of humor. Just not a very kind one.

For now, she had to suppress the surging mana and forced it inward, compressing it and cultivating it into something denser so it would not damage the core itself. The result was a larger mana pool and greater potency, but it was a temporary measure. A stopgap until she could find a soul-magic specialist or an artefact capable of stabilizing her core properly.

The surges had begun six months ago. Every other month, the pressure worsened.

It was a blessing wrapped around a curse. More mana meant greater strength. But the risk of fracturing her own core was not theoretical.

Soul magic could manipulate the core directly, sometimes even strengthen it. Most major sects possessed artefacts capable of such feats, or perhaps they kept soul-magic practitioners hidden among their ranks. Those practitioners were infinitely rarer.

Lysska was certain none of the major families trapped here had access to one.

So she cultivated, endured and waited.

Until she found a way to ascend properly. But now was not the time to dwell on it. She had work to do.

Reaching out, she reconnected with Kraven. Her vision fractured like a kaleidoscope, splitting into multiple perspectives at once. Each shard granted her a bird’s-eye view of Varkaigrad.

Through the streets she saw beastkin moving in tight patterns across the chaotic lower district. Different gangs with different colors and different grudges. Some of them owed Lysska favors. Some of them simply preferred staying on her good side. In here, that was often the same thing.

Her reputation had spread quickly after what Jade did. And her own name had weight now too, not just because of Jade, but because she had drawn the gaze of Golds and survived it. That alone shifted the balance of how people treated her.

The larger, older gangs were wary now. Afraid that if they stepped wrong, Lysska might unleash a Jade-shaped calamity on them.

The thought almost made her chuckle.

It wasn't simple, of course. Nothing wearing the mask of "influence" ever was. Every action grew a garden of reactions, some flowering visibly, others spreading roots where no one thought to dig. Nothing was ever purely . It only looked that way when you were polite enough not to excavate.

Her plate was full for the first time in years.

She would deal with the consequences later.

Honing in on another street through Kraven’s fractured sight, she saw one of the affiliated groups already casting spells in a coordinated frenzy. Their targets were elves. Over a dozen had already been apprehended. They were rather efficient.

Kraven’s fragments were scattered carefully. Almost a dozen lingered near the Colosseum. Others drifted through alleyways, rooftops, market squares. Lysska juggled the perspectives with ease, her vision splitting and recombining without disorienting her. Watching Jade’s trial and keeping an eye on the Flameclaw elders was just as important as controlling the lower district.

And that was where things unsettled her.

The Colosseum usually displayed each Champion’s trial with near-perfect clarity. It curated them almost theatrically, weaving coherent sequences that entertained the crowd while revealing just enough of the Champion’s life and struggle. Sometimes it was overly dramatic. Sometimes it lingered on moments longer than necessary.

But this year was different.

Each trial was shrouded in inconsistency. Jade’s trial most of all.

An impenetrable dark fog covered the arena most of the time. The audience only caught fragmented glimpses, with Jade sitting motionless sometimes, seemingly meditating. No context and no clear opponent. Occasionally there were flashes of violet light, distant echoes of combat, the sound of something large moving within the fog.

Lysska knew Jade’s powers well enough to recognize the pattern.

She was hunting something with her clones.

But the Colosseum never behaved like this. It never presented incoherent scraps unless something interfered with it. The lack of narrative structure alone told Lysska something was wrong.

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The problem was that she couldn’t identify what.

One possibility was that a Flameclaw elder had somehow tampered with the trials. Direct interference wasn’t supposed to be possible, but the elders had been lingering near the heart of the Colosseum, an area even Kraven’s vision couldn’t penetrate.

Even the Flameclaw matriarch seemed uneasy lately. That alone was telling. If she was unsettled by her own sect’s elders, then something had shifted internally.

Still, Lysska lacked proof.

For now, she could only act on what she knew for certain. Contain the lower district, watch the elders and finally, monitor Jade.

Maybe it was simply the fact that Jade had entered the trial as a dragon. But Lysska doubted it was that simple.

For now, Lysska focused on what she could control.

The elves in the lower district were being rounded up one by one. Some were already restrained, their hideouts uncovered and stripped of alchemical poisons, ritual implements, and enough materials to suggest something far larger in scope than a minor disturbance. Jade had been right. They had been preparing to sacrifice a significant portion of Varkaigrad’s lower district.

The only clue Lysska had about the motive came from her ‘Mother.’ She was a water mage with a cryptic past of her own. Lysska had dug into it despite herself. Before settling in Varkaigrad, the woman had lived in Lithrindel, where she had refined her affinity and carved out a reputation that was never fully explained.

Lysska was certain her Mother was not involved in the current scheme.

But for now Lysska might have a proper lead.

For the next several hours, Lysska maintained surveillance as unrest spread through the lower district. Not all of the elves surrendered quietly. Many were Red Cores themselves, and subduing them required real strength. Spells clashed in narrow streets, stone fractured, and mana flared against the night air.

Iron Pact remained conspicuously absent.

At this point, Lysska was nearly certain they were colluding with the elves. But to not even make an appearance? To not even pretend to contain the chaos? That was reckless. Or was it calculated?

Something was wrong there.

Her thoughts halted when she sensed someone materialize outside her office.

She turned her gaze and saw a Saryn man standing just beyond the threshold. Handsome, angular features, the effortless posture of someone born into authority. He could have materialized inside the room itself, and Lysska would not have been able to stop him. Instead, he stood outside and knocked twice.

Respectfully.

The office had been rebuilt recently. When Thibault attacked and Jade happened to be present, the result had not been subtle. The room had been reduced to rubble. This place held more than old furniture and walls; beneath the ground it concealed matters that could not be left exposed. Earth mages had restored the structure quickly, compressing days of labor into hours. The furnishings were new, long overdue replacements.

Lysska rose immediately and brushed off imaginary dust, then glanced briefly at her reflection in the restored windowpane. She hoped she did not look too worn.

Composure first. Always.

She moved to the door and opened it.

“Greetings, Lady Lysska.”

“Please, come in, Lord Veyan.”

The interior was improved from before, though still modest. Lord Veyan did not seem inconvenienced by it. Lysska exchanged a few measured pleasantries before allowing the silence to guide them toward the true reason for his visit.

“Regarding your request,” Lord Veyan began, his tone measured, “I did investigate the past to unravel that riddle of yours. While the Sablethorn Sect has always remained an external presence with limited influence within Varkaigrad, we possess sufficient records to form a conclusion.”

With a casual motion of his hand, a dusty tome slipped out of a spatial pocket and drifted toward Lysska.

She caught it, and the pages flipped on their own to a marked section.

“Varkaigrad’s original construction encountered multiple obstacles,” he continued. “The first was the Veilwoods. They were never truly removed, only suppressed. The second was the land beneath the city itself.”

Lysska’s eyes moved swiftly across the page as he spoke.

“Few are aware that Varkaigrad stands atop an unusually potent layline. That layline is the reason the Veilwoods formed in the first place. It is also why the surrounding lands remain so abundant. Those born here rarely notice how mana-dense the city truly is unless they leave it for extended periods.”

Lysska absorbed the information while scanning the detailed historical accounts. The text elaborated on the mechanics, the unstable mana surges, the failed early settlements. Even before Lord Veyan reached his next point, she felt the answer forming.

She did not interrupt him.

One did not interrupt a Gold.

“The presence of such a powerful layline rendered the land unsuitable for habitation,” Lord Veyan went on. “Sections of terrain would dissolve into mud, swallowing entire stretches of forest, only for them to regenerate unpredictably. Planar boundaries weakened, increasing the probability of potentially hostile entities crossing over. The region was volatile and dangerous.”

He paused.

“And yet, it was extraordinarily rich in mana and resources. There was only one group capable of stabilizing such a place, of sealing the layline’s volatility while preserving its benefits.”

“The alchemists?” Lysska asked quietly.

“Yes.”

She had already reached that conclusion, but hearing it confirmed brought everything into sharper focus.

“The alchemists were the true architects of Varkaigrad,” she said slowly. “And the elves are using alchemical poisons in ritual configurations. They’ve been abducting alchemists for some time now. If those poisons were crafted by one of ours…”

Her thoughts accelerated.

“‘Varkaigrad will fall at the hands of its own architects.’ What if that wasn’t a prophecy? What if it was a requirement? A ritual condition. Destroying Varkaigrad using the very alchemical foundations that stabilized it.”

The pieces aligned in her mind for the first time. Not as a scattered puzzle anymore, but as a proper pattern.

She had already shared everything she knew with Lord Veyan. This was no longer a matter of criminal maneuvering in the lower district. It was an existential threat to the city itself.

She lacked definitive proof at that time.

Yet Lord Veyan had placed his trust in her with surprising ease.

Lysska remained wary. Trust was never given lightly. But he had shown no sign of deception, and an ancient sect like Sablethorn possessed knowledge beyond most families in Varkaigrad.

So she had given him the core task— deciphering the riddle.

And he had delivered.

Now he stood silent and thoughtful.

"While I will admit," Lord Veyan said, "that I initially regarded you with a certain skepticism, Lady Lysska, it appears my judgment in trusting you was not misplaced. Iron Pact has been compromised at levels that should have been impossible. To permit these elves to infiltrate so thoroughly, to operate so brazenly beneath their noses, it is, frankly, embarrassing. I should very much enjoy a private conversation with their leadership."

His gaze cooled.

“Unfortunately, he vanished last night with no visible divination trail.”

Lysska did not know that. Iron Pact’s internal grounds were outside her reach, even through Kraven’s fractured sight. And if their leader had disappeared entirely, then this situation had grown more complicated than she had anticipated.

“But rest assured,” Veyan continued, “I will personally assist with the removal of these parasites. You may have already noticed that Master has extended aid to those you’ve mobilized from the shadows. I will dispatch several of my own trusted aides as well. Once this matter concludes, you will be appropriately rewarded for your… civic-minded initiative.”

Lysska had noticed.

Elven spells misfiring. Ritual arrays collapsing without visible interference. Some elves screaming as if unseen blades were carving into them. Others losing their minds entirely, clawing at empty air like they saw something unspeakable. She had assumed external interference the moment she involved Lord Veyan, but to hear that it was Matriarch Snezana herself assisting—

That shifted the scale.

Lysska bowed her head slightly. “I was merely protecting my home, my lord. And I cannot claim sole credit. The one who first noticed the rot is currently within the Colosseum. If not for her, I believe we would still be blind while the elves completed whatever they were preparing.”

“Yes. I am aware,” Veyan replied. “Master had informed me. Iron Pact rotting from within. Flameclaw elders moving independently. The Vor’Akhs unnaturally silent since their defeat. The pattern extends further than we can presently see.”

He folded his hands behind his back.

"We are missing pieces. But we will collect them the way one collects debts, patiently, and with interest. We begin with the elves. They are the visible thread. We pull, and we see what unravels."

Lysska straightened. "Then it will be done, my lord. With your weight behind the scale, containing them becomes a simpler matter."

Veyan inclined his head.

"While I am aware you already find yourself wrist-deep in this particular mess," he said, "my errand here was not solely to deliver information."

Lysska looked at him.

"I have been instructed to serve as your escort. Master wishes to make your acquaintance, Lady Lysska. And she is not, as a rule, fond of waiting."