The Vaise estate within Velmoria Academy wasn’t large—it was massive.
It wasn’t as big as the main Vaise mansion, but it was still huge.
ant to be a "modest outpost" for Vaise mbers studying in the academy, the estate had sohow ended up bigger than most noble family mansions.
Complete with training grounds, ditation pools, a private garden that probably had illegal plants, and a squirrel-sized castle sowhere in the back, it felt less like a dorm and more like a territorial claim.
Inside the courtyard, Raven leaned against a stone railing while Crisaius stood before him, arms folded behind his back like he was about to reveal state secrets—or insult his haircut again.
It was hard to say with that old man.
"So?" Raven asked, his brows raised. "You pulled off a fake assassination, terrified the squirrels, and traumatized half the courtyard—what now?"
Crisaius’s expression sobered. "There’s going to be a eting at the Royal Palace."
Raven frowned. "A eting?"
Inwardly, however, he humd. ’That’s sooner than I thought.’
"Indeed," the old man said. "You caused quite a stir in the Red Magic Tower. You killed a demon, unveiled forbidden knowledge, and then proceeded to beat it into submission with a Q&A session. That, my dear boy, has consequences."
"...I still don’t get what the problem is," Raven said.
"No one is ever happy when soone too young handles a national threat and then follows it up without telling much," Crisaius replied bluntly.
A short silence followed before Raven asked, "Are you here to make tell the ’much’ I didn’t?"
The old man stared into his eyes for a while before he shrugged. "If you wanted to tell , you would’ve already said it."
Another silence followed, only to be broken by Crisaius as he rubbed his chin. "I heard you made the demon cry."
"It had it coming."
Crisaius nodded, changing the topic. "Regardless, the Tower Master reported the incident, including the existence of a new race called Demons. It is as if we didn’t have enough trouble with corrupt beasts, political squabbles, and young love. Now we have demonic parasites, reapers, and god-knows-what else."
Raven crossed his arms. "They needed to know."
"Yes," Crisaius admitted, "but the egg they brought back? The one extracted from the Red Tower? It’s being studied under heavy magical barriers in the capital now. The entire royal court is on edge. Even Argon seed more talkative than usual."
Raven blinked. "What, he said four words?"
Crisaius snorted. "Five. He said, ’This... might require my blade.’ Almost fainted from the excitent."
Raven leaned back, letting that information sink in. The demon egg... yeah, he rembered that thing pulsing like a cursed heart.
Nibbles had tried to chew it. Twice.
"Alright," Raven muttered. "So it’s a ss. But still, what the hell was that fake assassination stunt really about?"
"I told you." Crisaius tilted his head, ever so innocently. "Practice."
Raven raised a brow. "Right. And I’m the Duke of Squirrelburg. Be serious, old man. Who would actually try to assassinate a Vaise?"
Crisaius’s answer ca instantly.
"Another Vaise."
Raven paused.
There was a long, drawn-out silence, broken only by a distant squirrel tripping over its own tail.
"...What?"
Crisaius gave him a knowing look. "You’re not that dumb, boy. No outsider would risk it. Attempting to assassinate a Vaise is signing a death warrant, blood contract, and inheritance tax at once. But what if a Vaise was doing it? Now that’s a different story."
"That makes no sense," Raven muttered. "Even for our family."
Crisaius frowned. "Why are you pretending to be dense?"
"I’m not—!"
"You are. You must be getting dumber. Too many girls orbiting you like emotionally unstable moons."
Raven groaned. "What does that have to do with—?"
"Let teach you about love and balance," Crisaius said sagely, hands folding behind his back like he was about to deliver a TED Talk titled ’Why Romance Makes You Dumb: A Lecture by a Lonely Old Assassin Grandmaster.’
"Nope," Raven said, raising a hand. "Stop. Please spare the wisdom of the ancient loner. Just tell why one of our own would want to try to kill ."
Crisaius paused. Then gave a casual shrug.
"Because you revealed your dragon scales."
Raven blinked. "What?"
"Before, only your little group knew about it. The few people at the academy might’ve seen it during your fight with the knight, sure. But it could be dismissed because they didn’t know what it was. But now?"
Crisaius looked him dead in the eye.
"You used them in the Red Magic Tower. And soone from there talked."
Raven opened his mouth, but Crisaius cut him off, raising a finger like he was dropping divine truth.
"You don’t get how important those scales are, do you?"
Yes, Raven didn’t.
After all, even for a Vaise to assassinate another Vaise, getting caught would an execution.
Only Cradle was an exception.
After one is out of the Cradle, they would be executed for trying to kill another Vaise family mber without a valid reason.
Raven scowled, clarifying why he didn’t know.
"Why would I? I thought they were just so OP power only a few knew of! What kind of responsibility did it carry?!"
Crisaius closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, the kind of breath you take before yelling at a child who’s just eaten a magical cactus.
"Listen carefully, you frog-brained battle prodigy. For the last three generations, every Vaise patriarch has had those dragon scales."
Dead silence.
The courtyard around them faded away.
Even Nibbles, who was now chewing on a suspiciously noble-looking boot nearby, stopped and perked up.
Raven just stared.
Then he exploded.
"WHAT?!"
He grabbed Crisaius by the front of his robes like a disappointed child who’d just learned his superpowers ca with a royal price tag.
"Why the hell are you telling this now?! If they’re a symbol of the patriarch or whatever, shouldn’t you have ntioned it before I started glowing like a dragon-thed lantern in public?!"
Crisaius tilted his head, genuinely puzzled. "Wait. I never told you?"
Raven looked like he was about to start foaming at the mouth. "No! You never told ! Not once! Not even a hint!"
This dragon scale thing was new to Raven since the original Raven never had anything like this.
Everything related to this was new to Raven.
Crisaius, however, couldn’t believe he had never told him anything about it.
"Not even a bedti story?" Crisaius muttered, scratching his beard.
"Who tells bedti stories about cursed political inheritance?!"
"Well, clearly not !" Crisaius said, as if that excused everything.
Raven stepped back, hands dragging down his face. "You absolute fossil. You left out crucial political context! That’s like handing a glowing crown and forgetting to ntion it marks as the next in line for backstabbing."
Raven was sure that most of his siblings—if not all—would now be coming for his ass.
’If the demons weren’t enough, now I have to deal with my siblings!’
Crisaius waved it off. "Oh, don’t be dramatic."
"YOU FAKED AN ASSASSINATION MINUTES AGO!"
"...Dramatic," Crisaius repeated.
Raven groaned into his hands.
Crisaius, not liking the direction this was going, suddenly straightened and then clapped his hands. "Anyway! Speaking of glowing crowns, have you eaten? I made bone-broth tea out of an actual bone. It’s probably cursed."
Raven’s eye twitched.
"Old man."
"Yes, my boy?"
"Please. Stop talking."
And for once, just once, Crisaius did.
But before the atmosphere turned awkward—
—A low pressure rolled through the courtyard like thunder before a storm.
It didn’t make a sound, but Raven felt it anyway—like a wall of judgntal silence.
Crisaius straightened his spine a mont before a portal of sheer intimidation shimred into existence near the courtyard gate.
It wasn’t magical. It was just Argon arriving.
That was all it took.
In ca the patriarch of the Vaise family, wearing a long black coat that rippled like it wanted to declare war on the wind.
His black hair was slicked back like it owed him money, and his red eyes were colder than Raven’s social life in middle school.
Raven’s frustration faltered for a second. Then ca so very deliberate words.
"Good morning, Father."
Argon’s brow twitched.
It was such a tiny movent, it could’ve passed for a muscle spasm.
But Raven knew that twitch was equivalent to a peasant getting vaporized in old legends.
After all, it wasn’t even morning yet, and Raven was greeting him with a "good morning".
Crisaius gave an enthusiastic wave, like a man delighted to avoid further conversation with a dragon-scale-wearing teenager. "Argon! You’re early."
Argon said nothing.
He rely looked at Crisaius, then at Raven, and then back to Crisaius like he was ntally calculating which one of them had been the bigger disappointnt lately.
Raven cleared his throat. "So, uh... the eting?"
Argon didn’t respond. He just nodded once at Crisaius—the kind of nod that could silence courtrooms and end civil wars.
Then, he said. "We are getting late for the eting."
Silence.
But then, Crisaius, who was in a hurry to leave, nods, stepping forward, ignoring the fact that Argon actually spoke again.
Crisaius then gave Raven one last grin. "Don’t die while I’m gone. Unless it’s funny."
"I’ll do my best," Raven deadpanned.
But just as the two were about to move, Argon paused.
His shoulders shifted ever so slightly as he turned halfway toward Raven.
Raven blinked, not expecting anything. He assud the man would continue ignoring him like a tree that owed him child support.
’Well, it’s only temporary. I know just how I can break that ice,’ Raven shrugged inwardly.
But then Argon’s lips moved. His voice was deep, controlled, and sharp enough to slice a magic circle in half.
"I will handle the pressure outside the family."
That was it.
There was no dramatic flare.
No explanation.
Just the words and the certainty that ca with them—like an emperor declaring, "This land is mine," and everyone simply agreeing.
Raven stared, mouth slightly open.
By the ti he snapped out of it, Argon and Crisaius had already vanished.
A long silence followed.
Raven slowly turned his head toward the empty air. "...Did that guy... look out for ?"
A squirrel sowhere nodded solemnly.
"...He did," Raven muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "Huh."
It was hard to tell what surprised him more—that Argon actually acknowledged him or that it helped.
Because Raven understood what those words ant.
Argon was trying to say that Raven should focus on not dying from sibling-related betrayals.
The political chaos? The nobles? The interrogators? The royal court?
Argon was going to crush all that like a can under an angry god’s boot.
"...Cool," Raven muttered, then sighed as he sat on the nearest stone bench.
Then a pause.
"...Wait. Did I just find comfort in my emotionally unavailable warlord dad saying a sentence?"
He blinked.
"Damn. Even if I want so fatherly love, I am going soft."
In the distance, Nibbles tripped over the sa boot again.
As poor Raven walked toward the mansion, he had forgotten that another challenge was waiting for him inside those doors before him.
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