Fury suddenly built up in Theron’s chest. His expression didn’t change, but he could feel the billowing heat, a steam that seed to want to billow out and burn through everything.
ntioning his parents in passing, as an almost indifferent dig, had caused him to almost slaughter Thessa on the spot. He only barely managed to regain his bearings in the end to spare her from that Fate.
To ntion them so specifically—and his mother at that—left him wanting to cut everything before him into ribbons.
It felt almost like his heart had beco a volcano, as though it might burst apart in an explosion of its own any ti now. And yet...
The air crackled as though space itself was turning to ice from a re exhale of Theron’s breath. It didn’t take long before it was all sucked into the necklace, never to be seen again.
At so point between the start of the exhale and the end, Theron was already brushing shoulders with Grand Elder Acer, walking by him to stand before the broken archway they had entered as disciples before.
The archway seed to react to Theron’s presence and its runes lit up one after another. In a blink, the portal was ford and Theron walked right through.
Grand Elder Acer felt a cold sweat falling down his brows. Even as Theron disappeared, he seed to not dare to turn around.
He reached up to wipe the side of his brow only several minutes later, only to chip off bits of frozen droplets. They singed against his skin, the cool touch spreading even beneath the heat of his body. His heart felt like it was beating out of his chest, and yet no amount of his churning blood could warm him up until a palm calmly landed on his shoulder.
Acer looked to the side quickly, startled, but breathed out when he found that it was Patriarch Gian.
"Ah... thank you..."
Gian only chuckled. Other than his face being slightly pale, one wouldn’t think that he was very injured.
"Should I... should I go kill her now, Patriarch?" Acer’s voice was still trembling a bit, no longer from fear, but instead the cold.
"Kill her? No. Why would we dirty our hands like that? Soone else, soone far more desperate, will do that for us."
"But..."
Patriarch Gian shook his head. "You don’t understand the sort of luck surrounding that boy, especially in this world. Trying to kill him directly might as well be like putting your own head on the platter. The only thing that could do that would be the Heavens themselves, and, well, himself. So why not use both?"
"Then do we do nothing?"
"Nothing? Absolutely not. We have to let our lovely pawns know that soone is ho, don’t we? This is sothing he’s going to have to witness personally or else it won’t have the sa impact. If we just kill her now, he might not even hear of it."
"Will this... really work?" Acer asked after a long while, regaining his composure sowhere near the end of the sentence.
Patriarch Gian’s smile deepened. "Your life has been too easy, Acer. You don’t seem to understand this child at all. Because make no mistake about it, he is a child despite that gaze in his eyes. He just happens to be very good at suppressing his true emotions, whether that ans hiding them until they vanish, or taking on a persona that isn’t his own entirely.
"But did you know that he has quite a good relationship with the little princess? Or, rather, he used to. That relationship has beco one-sided recently, now hasn’t it?"
"Didn’t you say that he’s very good at pretending to be soone he isn’t?"
"He is, isn’t he? So why would soone as smart as little Theron go from having such a good relationship with a little girl, to completely ignoring her despite the fact she clearly very much still likes him? How could soone so intelligent choose to give up such a useful pawn when he’s basically in the middle of a war with what feels like the whole world?
"Odd, don’t you think?"
Grand Elder Acer’s eyes widened, but Gian’s smile was just the sa.
"That boy is fragile. It isn’t really his fault. He’s just a little boy, after all. Those his age are still training at ho in hopes of joining one of the big academies. But here he is, toying with Divine Realm experts.
"You know, they say especially gifted children rarely live up to their potential. They spend so long succeeding and being praised in their youth that they eventually burn out or don’t build up the sa habits that soone who had to work much harder for the sa achievents would have.
"You can’t help but wonder just how much he can keep trudging along before he hits the wall. Unfortunately, I don’t have the ti to wait for it, so let’s speed things up a bit. Shall we?"
After saying this, Gian began to stroll off, his steps calm.
Acer took a breath and finally managed to look behind him toward where the portal was long gone. There was a complicated look in his eye that quickly beca firm resolve.
At the end of the day, that child was the key they all needed. If there was going to be soone who succeeded, Acer hoped that it would be Patriarch Gian. Because as they all knew...
Theron wouldn’t be able to escape from this prison no matter what he did.
Why, then, should they allow a key to remain useless in the hands of soone who couldn’t use it? They should take it for themselves and see what the wider world had to offer.
They deserved more than they had.
Acer’s jaw set and he went off to do as he had been instructed. As for who that useful pawn would be, it was all too obvious. Who else other than the Thistles?
As for why they would be so desperate?
Well, the Nightingales were finally baring their fangs. The chance the Thistles had to reverse things was quickly slipping away. They knew they wouldn’t have the ti to wait for Wood Mana to proliferate...
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