CAIUS: Crown of Threads and Shadows

The next morning, Caius began his training before the first light reached the underground settlement. With the Absolute Moon’s decision still fresh in his mind, he understood that no one was coming to make his path easier. If he could not leave the territory, then he would have to find another way to continue growing.

Old Bones had already taught him that stagnation was as dangerous as weakness. A warrior who stopped challenging himself eventually became predictable, and Caius had no intention of becoming predictable.

He began with his body. The training hall remained empty as Caius moved through a series of exercises designed to strengthen his legs, core, shoulders, and arms. He repeated the movements until his muscles burned, then continued until the burning became familiar. He worked on his balance, his footwork, his flexibility, and the explosive movement required for Shadow Step.

He did not have a master correcting every movement. There was no instructor counting his repetitions. There was only Caius, the cold stone beneath his feet, and the knowledge that two years would eventually end.

After more than an hour, sweat soaked through his clothes. His breathing had grown heavy, but he refused to stop until he had completed the final set. Only then did he sit against the wall and allow himself a few moments of rest.

Old Bones was nowhere to be seen, though Caius knew better than to assume the old assassin was not watching from somewhere in the rafters. The thought almost brought a quiet trace of amusement to his mind. He rose and continued.

By the time the first meal had passed and the underground settlement had fully awakened, Caius had already completed his physical regimen. He cleaned himself, changed his clothes, and made his way toward the clan archives.

The library occupied several chambers carved deep into the territory of House Vel’drin. The main halls contained records available to scholars, scribes, warriors, and general clan members. Deeper within the complex, however, lay sections that remained strictly inaccessible to most of the household.

Caius had been granted direct authorization to enter those restricted vaults. At the heavy threshold, the steward was waiting for him. The older dark elf looked at the token in his hand before returning his attention to Caius.

”You have been granted access to the secret archives,” the steward said. ”The permission comes directly from the Patriarch. Do not remove anything from the chambers.”

Caius nodded. ”Understood.”

”If you require anything, send word to me,” the steward added, pausing slightly before continuing. ”There is one other matter. Some of the older records are written in ancient dialects of our language that even you may find difficult to parse. If you require translation, tell me. I will have one of the young archivists assist you.”

”I will keep that in mind.”

The steward handed him the token, and Caius accepted it before stepping through the heavy ironbound doors. The atmosphere changed almost immediately.

The deeper archives were colder and far quieter than the public library. Tall stone shelves disappeared into the darkness above, carrying scrolls, bound manuscripts, tablets, maps, expedition reports, and records gathered by generations of Vael’dhaer scouts.

House Vel’drin had spent centuries exploring the Underdark. Its scouts had crossed tunnels that no ordinary traveler would ever find, mapping forgotten passages, recording strange creatures, documenting underground settlements, and preserving knowledge gathered from territories where few others dared to travel. If there was information about something hidden beneath the world, Caius believed this was one of the best places to search for it.

He had come looking for one thing: the Black Core.

Caius began with the clan’s records concerning mana cores. He searched descriptions of unusual cores, bloodline manifestations, rare mutations, and abnormal awakenings. He read accounts of warriors whose cores had changed color during cultivation and records of individuals whose cores had transformed after absorbing foreign energies.

There were many examples. Some had begun with red and eventually developed darker shades. Others had started blue, violet, or green before becoming nearly black after years of cultivation or corruption. There were even accounts of cores that had changed color after exposure to powerful artifacts or forbidden techniques.

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Every record shared the exact same characteristic. They had started as something else. None had begun black.

Caius frowned as he turned another page, checking the ledger again, only to find nothing. He moved to another collection, but the result was the same. Then another, and still nothing.

Hours passed as Caius searched through the clan’s knowledge of mana cultivation. He found references to blackened cores, corrupted cores, unstable cores, and cores that had been consumed by foreign energies. Yet nowhere was there a documented case of someone awakening with a pure Black Core from the very beginning.

Eventually, Caius leaned back in his chair and stared at the shelves surrounding him. House Vel’drin’s knowledge was enormous. If the clan did not have an answer, the possibility that anyone else in the known realm possessed one seemed even smaller.

Still, he continued searching. He expanded his investigation beyond the clan’s warriors, searching records concerning mages, ancient kingdoms, forbidden practitioners, and creatures associated with corrupted mana.

That was when he began finding legends. Most were incomplete, little more than fragments copied from older texts. Others described beings that had supposedly existed centuries before the current kingdoms and clans had risen.

The most common references concerned liches. Several records described liches whose mana cores had gradually darkened after centuries of forbidden cultivation. Their cores were said to have become black after being consumed by corruption, death magic, or the accumulation of unnatural energies.

None of those stories described an individual who had possessed a Black Core from the beginning. Every legend followed the same pattern: the core changed, it became corrupted, and then it turned black.

Caius closed another book. That was not what had happened to him. His Black Core had not changed into its current state; it had always been black. He knew because he remembered the moment it had first manifested. There had been no corruption, no gradual transformation, and no foreign energy consuming another color. It had simply been there.

Caius opened another record, then another. He searched for obscure terms used by ancient scholars to describe darkness, void, shadow, and corrupted mana. He searched accounts of bloodlines that had disappeared, ancient warriors whose names had been erased, and creatures whose cores had never been properly understood.

Nothing gave him an answer.

By the time he had exhausted the records concerning intelligent beings, Caius had reached a clear conclusion. If there was an answer, it might not be found among people.

He turned toward another section of the archive: beast and monster cores.

The clan’s records on beasts were even larger than those concerning warriors. House Vel’drin’s scouts had spent generations documenting creatures throughout the Underdark, recording their habits, territories, mana signatures, strengths, weaknesses, and core formations.

Caius began searching again. He studied everything from common tunnel predators to creatures that had only appeared in expedition reports. He examined descriptions of rare cores, unusual mutations, and beasts whose mana behaved differently from ordinary creatures.

Red, blue, green, violet, gold, crimson... cores of nearly every color appeared throughout the detailed records.

Then he found something unusual.

Caius stopped turning the page. The entry was old, written in a hand that had faded with age. At the top was a simple name: Three-Eyed Crow.

Caius read the description carefully. The creature was considered a legend by most scholars. Sightings were exceptionally rare, and many of the surviving accounts contradicted one another. Some claimed the bird was enormous, while others described it as no larger than an ordinary crow.

One detail remained consistent throughout every entry. Its core was said to be pure black.

Caius’s eyes narrowed. He continued reading. The Three-Eyed Crow was believed to inhabit the abyss.

The name struck something deep in his memory. Caius turned toward the regional maps, locating the relevant section and tracing the underground territories until his finger stopped at the abyss.

He remembered that place. The ruins. The darkness. The orcs. The escape.

He remembered fleeing through the abyss with Sereth after their escape from the orc territory. It was the same region where he and Sereth had once fought simply to survive before beginning their journey toward the lands of the dark elves.

Caius stared at the map for a long moment. The Abyss was not simply another location on a piece of parchment. It was where his journey through the Underdark had truly begun. And somewhere within those ruins, according to the old records, a creature with a pure Black Core was said to exist.

Caius slowly closed the book.

He could not leave the territory now. The Absolute Moon had already denied permission for him and Old Bones to travel beyond the clan’s borders, so for the moment, the Abyss was far beyond his reach.

That did not mean it would remain so forever. If he survived the Trial of Fate, he would eventually have the freedom to travel again. And when that day came, Caius knew where he would go: back to the Abyss, and back to the ruins.

He had spent his life accepting that the Black Core was simply a part of him, an anomaly that had appeared without explanation. Now he had found the first possible clue that might tell him why.

Caius looked once more at the map before carefully returning it to its place on the shelf. Whatever the Three-Eyed Crow was, and whatever connection it had to the Black Core, he would find out someday.

For now, there were still two years ahead of him. Two years to become stronger. Two years to survive. If he lived long enough to see the end of the Trial of Fate, he would return to the Abyss and uncover whatever secret had been waiting there long before he ever knew to look for it.