Dark Parasyte
Chapter 35: A Ghost from Genesis

Chapter 35: A Ghost from Genesis

Planarch Selyndros cleared his throat. Not sharply, but with the measured gravity of one accustomed to commanding attention without the need to raise his voice. The faint stirrings within the chamber ceased. Even the glow of the suspended runes above seemed to still in subtle deference. The Archmagus seated around him shifted slightly, their postures aligning as if summoned by an unspoken ritual.

"Let us begin anew," Selyndros said, his voice low and solemn, each syllable carrying the weight of centuries. "Corvin Blackmoor, you stand now before the Hexarchy. The hidden heart of the Synod, the council that governs not in public halls, but in shadowed sanctums. We are the true executors of the Dark Mother’s will. What is spoken here carries the authority of our goddess."

He gestured gracefully with an open hand, fingers extended in welcome or command, it was unclear which.

"I am Planarch Selyndros. Beside me is Planarch Dhaelora. You are already acquainted with Archmagus Vaelorin, our emissary to the Synod’s visible tier. The other Archmagus seated before you are Archmagus Caladriel," he nodded toward a woman of sharp profile, silver eyes set beneath a crown of raven black hair. "Archmagus Thalen Morn," a tall, statuesque figure whose face betrayed no emotion, carved more from silence than flesh "and Archmagus Yserith Vale," a pale elven woman with delicate features and a slow, knowing smile that never reached her eyes.

Selyndros steepled his fingers beneath his chin, the sleeves of his robe shifting with the motion like velvet shadows.

"You were summoned to this chamber for multiple reasons. Chief among them is your refusal to permit the Synod to establish a formal presence within the Gilded Dominion by leveraging your existing accord with Duchess Yvanna. We believe there exists a path toward advantage of both sides."

He completed his sentence with unwavering poise. His voice, though soft, carried a certainty that echoed through the hall like a formal decree.

"We believe there exists a path toward mutual advantage, and we would see it explored in good faith, for the benefit of both the Synod and yourself. Our desire is not to command, but to cooperate. Your talents are beyond question, and your station, however unconventional offers opportunities not easily replicated. We do not seek to rob you of agency, Corvin Blackmoor. We seek to align our purposes, to give structure to what has until now been an informal arrangement."

Selyndros leaned back slightly, folding his hands.

"We hope this council will not be remembered as a confrontation, but as the beginning of true understanding."

Then he fell silent, waiting.

Corvin had not replied immediately.

He had only moved.

Turning slowly, deliberately, Corvin swept his gaze across the gathered Archmagus. His eyes lingered momentarily on each of them measuring, weighing. But when they reached Archmagus Thalen who had attempted to breach his mind, the stillness turned to steel. The silence crackled. His stare did not threaten. It judged.

The offending Archmagus shifted ever so slightly in his seat, as if the air had become too sharp to breathe.

Corvin faced Selyndros again.

When he spoke, his voice was cold iron wrapped in velvet. Controlled. Precise.

"So," he began, "you wish to renegotiate the bounds of an accord that belongs to me alone. One forged by my initiative, not yours. One you had neither claim nor invitation to influence."

His tone deepened, the cadence deliberate.

"Yet here I am, standing. While you remain seated upon elevated thrones as though this is a trial and I, a wayward disciple come to beg forgiveness."

A faint scoff escaped his lips.

"The illusion of control is almost... charming."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop. The silence pressed in tighter.

"Let us recall the agreement," Corvin continued. "The Synod vowed to shield the truth of my origin from outside eyes and voices. To name me a Dark Elf trained under the authority of Synod in Space Magic. In exchange, I accepted ten tasks, four of them completed with perfection could not be replicated. That is all there was. That is all there is."

His eyes narrowed, and his voice lost all softness.

"You’ve breached that agreement. Not once. Not twice. But repeatedly. You’ve tried to unravel the truth I entrusted to you to conceal. You’ve tested my boundaries with probing minds and half veiled questions. You forget, perhaps, that this was never a covenant of loyalty, but convenience."

He stepped forward, slow and unflinching.

"The Arcanum served a purpose. It taught me. But that debt is settled the moment my affinites were measured. I owe you nothing further on that regard. You, who presume to sit in judgment while I stand as if summoned to beg approval."

He turned slightly, hands still clasped behind his back, posture calm and coiled.

"No more negotiations. No more talks. Not while you delude yourselves into believing I require your favor."

He met Selyndros’ eyes again, unwavering and utterly still.

"As of this moment, I am suspending every obligation between us. I am leaving Thalasien to address matters of personal significance. They are not yours to oversee, not yours to question, and certainly not yours to forbid."

His final words were a blade in velvet:

"They lie beyond your jurisdiction. Beyond your reach. And most definately beyond your permission."

The sentence settled into the chamber like a final verdict. Immovable, undeniable, and absolute.

--

As Corvin’s final words faded from the chamber, the atmosphere shifted palpably, like the vacuum left in the wake of a collapsed star.

Starting with Planarch Dhaelora, fury rippled through the members of the Hexarchy like a living current. The Archmagus bristled, their expressions contorted in barely suppressed outrage. Archmagus Caladriel’s silver eyes blazed with unspoken curses, and Yserith’s fingers twitched against her armrests, already forming the skeletal beginnings of a spell. Even Thalen Morn, the master of psychic disciplines, showed a crack in his composure. His face, normally a mask carved from stone darkened with something close to dread.

Before the room could erupt, Planarch Selyndros lifted one hand slowly, deliberately. The gesture was more than command; it was authority, sculpted by centuries.

"Enough," he said, the word laced with finality.

The chamber froze.

His gaze turned toward Corvin, who stood just beyond the circle of thrones, spine straight, expression unreadable.

"You are within your right," Selyndros said evenly. "You are free to leave."

Then, with a flicker of something drier, sarcasm, or perhaps grim amusement he added, "We shall be in contact after we’ve addressed the... inefficiencies you so elegantly identified."

Corvin did not respond. A silent figure emerged from the shadows. Tall, veiled in dark robes. The Shadow Agent bowed at the waist, and together they disappeared into the depths of the fortress, leaving the heavy obsidian doors to seal behind them with an echoing boom.

A full minute passed.

Then Dhaelora exploded into motion, rising from her throne in a surge of violet energy. Her voice sliced through the air like a whip.

"You allowed this," she snapped at Selyndros. "You let that... that creature walk into our sanctum and disgrace everything we are. The audacity! The arrogance! He spat in our faces and walked away unscathed."

Her anger crackled in the air, visibly warping the light around her.

Archmagus Caladriel nodded stiffly, arms crossed. "He treated us like petitioners. Like irrelevant bureaucrats. I’ve never seen anything like it."

Yserith’s smile, ever present and unsettling was gone. Her face had gone pale, her lips compressed into a thin, silent blade.

Thalen Morn’s voice broke the tension, low and uncharacteristically shaken.

"When his eyes met mine," he murmured, "I didn’t see anger. I didn’t see defiance. I saw death. Not the metaphor. The reality. It stared into me as if measuring the worth of my soul. That was no mortal stare."

Selyndros remained still, breathing deeply, as though bracing himself.

Then, he raised one finger.

"First," he said, "does any one of us know his formal mage rank?"

The silence in response was deafening.

He raised a second finger.

"Second, what do you all know of the Elves of Sylvan? Of their origin lines, their affinity structures, their place within the first lattice of Verthalis?"

The Archmagus exchanged glances, tight, unsure. None spoke.

He raised a third finger.

"Third," he said, more firmly now, "he was right. On every count."

Dhaelora’s fury flickered. Dimmed not by logic, but by forced consideration.

She turned sharply to Archmagus Vaelorin, who had remained composed throughout, his face unreadable.

"What is his rank?" she demanded.

Vaelorin took a long breath.

"By our current classifications?" he said. "He’s at least Archmagus. Possibly close to reaching the Planarch level."

He turned to Thalen Morn.

"Thalen. You are our most adept mind walker. Were you able to breach his defenses?"

Thalen shook his head slowly, almost reverently.

"No. Not even slightly. I made the lightest approach, an exploratory touch and his response was immediate. It wasn’t merely a rejection. It was... intimate. Directed. He knew. He traced the tether back to me in an instant."

He paused, frowning.

"This doesn’t align with the reports. You told us his primary affinity was Lightning. His secondary, Space. But that kind of psychic acuity..."

"...is almost equal to your own," Vaelorin said, completing the thought.

Thalen inclined his head once, grimly.

Dhaelora folded her arms, her voice dropping an octave.

"And the hostility in his presence, it wasn’t mere arrogance. It was deeper. Like... like the weight of an ancient feud passed through his blood."

Selyndros finally stirred, rising slowly from his throne.

"I’ve heard such presence only once before," he said. "And only in the oldest tales."

He faced the chamber fully now.

"What we witnessed here today was not the product of training. Not learned behavior. This was inherited. Bred into bone. Corvin Blackmoor is no construct of this age. He is impossible to exist."

He turned to Dhaelora, his eyes sharp.

"When he clashed with Thalen, did you observe the color of his mana?"

Dhaelora hesitated, recalling.

"It shimmered... blue and silver. Subtle. Iridescent. It did not behave like elemental mana."

Selyndros nodded solemnly.

"That is the color recorded in the accounts of the Sylvan Elves. The Origin Elves. Their mana wasn’t siphoned from ley lines. It was the ley line. Their magic came not as command, but as communion. They were of the world, not merely its manipulators."

The room went still. Even the flickering lights above seemed subdued.

Now they understood Selynros’ approach.

"Find everything about him, starting his place of birth, to his blood reatives, to the point he stepped into this very chamber." He commanded the Archmagus’, "and for the love of Dark Mother do not let him find about it." He finished. "This is more important then the supposed base in Argyll. If we can find his kin and breed them we’ll have a force of nature not seen for eons."

Corvin Blackmoor was not merely powerful. He was not just an unknown variable.

He was a rupture.

A memory awakened.

A ghost of Verthalis’ forgotten genesis.

--

Corvin exited the restricted sanctum of the Hexarchy without a backward glance, the heavy obsidian doors sealing behind him like the tomb of a finished Chapter. The Shadow agent who had accompanied him peeled off at a side corridor without a word, vanishing into the deepening gloom of the inner corridors. Corvin didn’t need farewells or escorts. The work was done. The harvest had already begun.

His footsteps were soundless as he navigated the labyrinthine lower levels of the Obsidian Gate, weaving through the dimly lit tunnels with practiced ease. Every corridor, every archway felt like a hollow vein in a corpse. Ancient, formal, and cold.

He reached the first intersection and paused. Drawing in a steady breath, he exhaled slowly, letting his awareness expand.

With a thought, shadows thickened around him. Darkness wrapped itself over his form like a second skin, seamless and perfect. The threads of Space magic interlaced with his cloak, folding sound and light alike. To the sentries that guarded the Obsidian Gate’s inner layers, Corvin was now less than a whisper. Not invisible, he was absent.

He was not returning to the wilderness, not yet. He had unfinished business. Something personal.

The foreign dignitary wing of the Obsidian Gate was a stark contrast to the rest of the fortress. Situated on the western edge, the halls were less severe in their construction. Though still built of blackstone and encased in enchantments, the corridors bore elegant curves, magical sconces that glowed gently, and ambient warmth that subtly reassured its guests they were not in a prison, even if that was a lie.

Corvin moved silently through the halls, a silent phantom of will and purpose.

His encounter with the Hexarchy had gone better than he could have anticipated. Not only had he avoided outright conflict, but he had also extracted far more than any of them had suspected.

He had stepped into a lion’s den and walked out with fangs of his own. Three Archmagus, Caladriel, Thalen, and Yserith had been siphoned, each carrying the silent burden of centuries. He took half of it as the lion’s share. Their thoughts, affinities, latent powers, all gently unraveled and siphoned. They wouldn’t notice.

And perhaps more important than all of it, he had secured what no currency could buy.

Time.

Time to act.

Time to pursue his own designs.

Time to deal with what he had buried deep beneath calculated calm.

He reached the outer wing of the dignitary sector. A wide spiral staircase rose before him, flanked by sculpted railings etched with diplomatic crests of various powers. He remained just beyond the threshold, letting his presence fold even further into the surrounding void.

He closed his eyes.

A deep breath. Then came the hum.

His psychic magic unfurled, no longer a probe but a tide. Waves of awareness rippled from his mind, passing through stone and sigil, brushing against every sentient thread in the structure. He was deliberate, focused, gentle. The magic lapped at each corridor and chamber until, like a fish caught in a current, he felt her.

Kaelyn.

Second floor. Northern wing. Alone. Alert, but not alarmed.

He opened his eyes, the world sharpening to crystalline clarity.

Without hesitation, he moved.

Each step was chosen with intent, each stride precise, each movement perfectly balanced. Not even the faintest echo followed his footsteps. He wove between passing stewards and lesser mages without a single one catching the barest glimpse of his existence.

The shadows loved him now. The Gate itself barely remembered he was there.

But for this brief moment, Corvin Blackmoor controlled the board.