Dark Parasyte
Chapter 37: A Raven Upon the Golden Spire

Chapter 37: A Raven Upon the Golden Spire

Kaelyn blinked once. Then again.

Nope. Still there.

Corvin, the Raven, the infamous cursed elf, the subject of whispered fear and reluctant admiration was indeed sitting in her guestroom, lounging with all the casual entitlement of a man who had simply wandered in to borrow sugar.

Awkward silence hovered like a fog, thick and intrusive.

Kaelyn stood abruptly, nearly tripping over her own blanket, she kept her eyes locked on him as though blinking again might cause him to vanish and leave her holding the blame. Her body tensed with the sudden shift from half asleep to painfully half aware. She cleared her throat, tried to find a shred of composure, and summoned the most formal tone she could muster through the haze of shock:

"Mr. Corvin, Duchess Yvanna cordially invites you, very kindly I might add to discuss the recent developments and explore potential avenues of collaboration."

It sounded rehearsed. It was rehearsed. And the awkwardness in her voice wasn’t helping.

There was a pause.

Then Corvin chuckled.

Not just a polite laugh, an actual, amused, "isn’t this adorable" chuckle that rolled out like a cat toying with a mouse.

"An impressive effort," he mused, rising from his seat with fluid grace that made the motion seem almost lazy. "You almost sounded like a real envoy there."

He took a single step toward her, then stopped precisely at the edge of the displacement snare she had meticulously placed the night before.

He let his gaze dip toward the invisible arcane trap. To Kaelyn’s utter dismay, he smirked at it as though it were a mildly interesting smudge on a window or a misplaced napkin at a dinner table.

Then his eyes returned to hers he examined her from her toes to the tip of her hair.

"I’ll meet you at her palace," he said amusedly, each word slow and deliberate, "after I finish a few minor... dealings."

And just like that, he vanished.

Not a gust of wind, nor a magical pop. Just gone. Like a bad idea finally deciding to leave.

Kaelyn stood frozen, arms still awkwardly poised in the half raised posture of formal delivery, like a marionette awaiting new strings.

A full ten seconds passed before she let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Then, slowly, she moved, shuffling over the cool stone floor, inspecting each of her traps, every sigil, rune, and boundary she had crafted with meticulous care.

All untouched.

Not one was tripped.

Not one showed signs of tampering.

Her mind raced, a storm of conflicting realizations.

He hadn’t dispelled them.

He hadn’t bypassed them.

He had simply... walked through them... and had the audacity to pause at one, just to prove he could see it.

Kaelyn’s hands went to her temples.

"Did he... see them?" she muttered aloud, her voice somewhere between wonder and dread. "Is that even possible?"

She sat down heavily on the edge of her bed, the adrenaline draining from her limbs and leaving behind an acute wave of self awareness.

Only then did she glance down at herself and felt her stomach drop like a lead stone.

The nightgown she’d worn in sleep clung softly to her form, clearly designed for comfort, not diplomacy. It draped loosely over her frame, but not enough to obscure large part of her cleavage, nor the long sweep of her thighs. The hem barely reached mid thigh, and in her flustered posture, one leg had drawn up just enough to make the exposure unmistakable. She tugged the fabric down and folded her legs beneath her with stiff urgency.

Her face flushed a deep crimson, ears burning. She crossed her arms, as if that alone could shield her from the memory.

"Wonderful," she muttered, mortified. "I delivered a diplomatic message in a nightgown. To Corvin Blackmoor. Brilliant."

She buried her face in her hands.

And then, after a long pause, she peeked between her fingers toward the empty space he’d occupied.

He’d seen it all. And he hadn’t commented. Was it out of courtesy, or because it simply didn’t register as worth.

That somehow made it worse.

She wasn’t sure whether to be terrified, insulted... or impressed.

Possibly all three.

And she had a feeling this was only the beginning.

--

Corvin was still wearing a faint grin as he left the Obsidian Gate far behind. The image of Kaelyn flustered in her nightgown lingered in his mind like a pleasant aftertaste. "She has a rather nice figure," he admitted to himself, more amused than lecherous. The chaos he sowed wasn’t just political message to Yvanna, it was personal, layered with the kind of subtle power plays he enjoyed far too much.

Once he was far enough from the Obsidian Gate’s detection perimeter, he teleported back to his subterranean laboratory.

Bob greeted him first.

"Mate," the bearkin rumbled in his gravel thick voice, the sound like boulders grinding in a canyon.

Corvin raised an eyebrow, momentarily impressed. "Well, you’re coming along faster than I expected."

He took a moment to stored everything, tools, equipment, unfinished strains, specimen and finally Bob himself into his inventory. With a final glance at the lab, he collapsed the cave in a controlled implosion of earth magic.

Then he turned west.

His next jump carried him nearly 130 kilometers. A feat that only a few weeks ago was fifty kilometers. Now, thanks to MAG1.0, his mana regeneration was a raging river, and his pool deep enough to drown in it.

He chained the jumps with barely a pause between them, skipping like a stone across the map of Thalasien until he arrived at a high hill overlooking the western shore. He took a stroll from there to the shore.

The ocean sparkled , stretching into a silvery horizon. He inhaled deeply. Saline wind, the scent of kelp and sun warmed sand simple things. He started to swim and after a while, with a whisper of arcane will, he shifted form. Scales blossomed over his skin, gills opened beneath his jaw, and his legs merged into a powerful tail. In moments, he was no longer Corvin the elf, but a sleek, merman.

He dove into the surf with barely a splash.

Underwater, everything changed.

Colors bent and shimmered in surreal hues. Schools of fish darted past in synchronized ballets, the coral reefs pulsed with life, and shafts of sunlight filtered through the surface like spears from heaven. The weight of the world lifted from his shoulders, and he moved through the depths as if he’d been born there.

The water was colder than the air, but invigorating. He could feel the way it moved around him, whispering against his skin, sliding through his fingers. Here, sound was muffled, sensation was amplified, and magic pulsed differently as though the ocean had its own mana, its own language.

He stayed submerged for hours, gliding through trenches, weaving between kelp forests, and listening to the song of the ocean.

When he finally surfaced, it was without urgency.

He took one long breath of open air, shifted back to his usual form, and launched into the sky with a vertical teleportation burst. He should find a way to keep his clothes dry he thought while high in the air when cold wind cut through him enough to make him shiver. His jumps continued, faster than ever. In under a heartbeat, he was 130 kilometers farther. Then again, and again.

The sky turned beneath him, clouds left swirling in his wake.

After around forty jumps, the jagged coastline of the Gilded Dominion came into view.

With a satisfied hum, Corvin angled his descent and plummeted like a javelin toward the sea.

At the last moment, he twisted in the air and executed a dive so precise it would have made any aquatic born proud. The splash was near silent. He resumed his merman form underwater and swam the final stretch toward land.

As the sandy seafloor shallowed, he resurfaced, cloaked his presence, and shifted back into his elven form.

In less than two hours, he had crossed from the wild forests of Umbraveyn to the edge of the Gilded Dominion.

With the tide lapping around his boots, he tilted his head, imagining Kaelyn still trying to compose herself and organize travel.

"She’ll probably arrive in two days," he muttered, a smirk tugging at his lips. "Maybe. If she doesn’t trip over her own diplomacy."

--

Corvin made his way to the capital city of the Gilded Dominion. Goldhaven, its spires as gilded as its name suggested. The city radiated wealth and piety in equal measure, with its wide promenades paved in golden veined stone and its central towers glistening with enchantments designed to dazzle visiting dignitaries. Magic lanterns floated above the avenues, casting warm illumination that mirrored the radiance of the setting sun.

Instead of drawing attention to himself, Corvin cloaked his presence in a refined veil of space warping silence. Without delay, he secured a room in one of the city’s most lavish inns, The Lord’s Rest, a marble clad haven for foreign emissaries and influential merchants. His suite overlooked the eastern garden district, a walled expanse filled with enchanted flora and softly whispering fountains that masked the hum of the city.

He wasted no time.

The moment the door closed behind him, he summoned his avian scouts, each embedded with different vision and sensing abilities. They scattered above the rooftops, moving in spirals and coordinated sweeps to scan for magical currents, clerical wards, and patrolling zealots. Block by block, Goldhaven was rendered into an intricate mind map.

He decided to start early as he already knew wht Yvanna wanted from him. Why not start to clean the house from the capital he thaought. His objective: the embedded religious infrastructure and covert operatives of the Holy Verrenate.

These zealots had long woven their heretical tendrils into Goldhaven’s underbelly. Churches and chapels dotted the landscape like thorns in a velvet cloak, ostensibly harmless, but each housing spiritual infiltrators. Priests, purifiers, and doctrinal spies masquerading as diplomats formed an invisible web of control.

Corvin moved like smoke between cracks in a wall.

On the first night, he infiltrated the Grand Basilica of Saint Haldrin Ascendant, one of the Verrenate’s oldest and most revered temples in the capital. Its steeples pierced the clouds, its marble halls filled with candles and the scent of sanctified incense.

He located High Priest Velloras in his private study, still muttering invocations from a leatherbound tome. Corvin entered silently, shadow blending with scripture. Before the priest could lift his eyes, Corvin siphoned his memories, doctrine, alliances, plans and then, with a thought, unraveled the man’s heart with a dark pulse. The tome dropped from Velloras’s lifeless fingers, falling open to a page on divine mercy.

Before dawn, two more had joined him: Brother Denrik, an archivist with access to Verrenate intelligence reports, and Litanist Arven, known for his coded sermons embedded with religious threats. They were found by morning acolytes, lifeless and unmarked in their beds.

By midday of the second day, Corvin had identified the Verrenate’s true military presence in Goldhaven. Posing as a liaison post, Sanctum Fortis held fifty fully trained purifiers under Commander Seric. Their mission: intimidate, control, and subtly coerce the Duchess’s court into doctrinal compliance.

That night, silence fell on the fortress.

There were no alarms, no fireballs, no clashes of blade and steel. Only absence.

Corvin bypassed their defenses like a scalpel through gauze. He siphoned and mind walked Seric’s mind and learned everything. Plans to arrest dissenters, bribes offered to court officials, sermons prepared for forced conversion campaigns. Then he erased them all.

By morning, Sanctum Fortis was little more than a scorched husk.

On the third morning, Corvin rose from his feather soft bedding, bathed, and indulged in a rich breakfast: wildfruit preserves, crusted bread with butter churned from enchanted cattle, and coffee laced with cinnamon and stormleaf. The view from his sunroom was peaceful, almost jarringly so.

With practiced calm, he dressed and summoned a carriage to the palace.

Elsewhere in Goldhaven, the ripple of dread expanded like a shattering mirror.

In the palace’s solar chamber, Duchess Yvanna sat in her sanctum of velvet drapes and crystal latticed windows, attempting to maintain composure. She wore court robes threaded with silver, her face as composed as sculpture.

The first courier had arrived at noon after the Grand Basilica incident. He bowed hastily, then stammered out his message: High Priest Velloras was dead. The church descended into panic, scrambling to label the death as a divine ascension to stave off growing hysteria. But those within the clergy, those who had seen the body knew better. Something had entered the basilica, and what it left behind was not sanctity, but silence.

Later that same day, a second courier, this one wild eyed and pale barged in, panting.

The man bowed hastily, then stammered out his message: Brother Denrik and Litanist Arven was found dead as well. The day after the assasinations of Grand Basillica another courier entered running.

"Your Grace, the purifiers at Sanctum Fortis... All of them. Gone. Burned."

Yvanna’s hands trembled against the arms of her throne.

She had always hated their presence. The barracks clashed with the elegance of her city, their sigils reeked of oppression, and their presence was an open wound on her sovereignty. But this? This was not just resistance, it was eradication.

Kaelyn did not arrive until the third day.

She burst into the chamber early morning, her hair wind tossed, her eyes gleaming with urgency and fatigue.

"I found him," she blurted. "Corvin. He’ll be here soon."

And in that moment, clarity dawned on Yvanna.

The precision, the timing, the nature of the attacks. The complete lack of magical traces, the uncanny quiet, the untraceable execution. These weren’t random acts of retaliation. They were his anoouncment of arrival.

All of it, Velloras, Denrik, Arven, Seric... every one of them had been eliminated in perfect sequence.

By Corvin.

Yvanna leaned back, her expression unreadable yet relaxed.

Shock. Calculation. Awe.

What force had she truly welcomed into her kingdom?

She glanced sideways at Kaelyn, one brow arched ever so slightly. "Next time, do remind me if the help we invite happens to be a one man apocalypse in disguise, will you?"