My Shard Bearer System - Elias's Legacy
Chapter 229: Slopped Efforts

Chapter 229: Slopped Efforts

A gray-haired tutor stood behind him, long robes dusted with lint, one hand tapping the corner of a thick leather-bound tome.

"Fire needs focus, not force," the man said, tone flat as he knocked on the cover. The title read Foundations of Elemental Conjuring, its edges frayed. "Study the basics tonight, or you’ll burn your boots."

Torren smirked.

The gem set into his wrist band caught the light, a pale gleam running across its polished surface. Untested. Untouched by spirit yet.

"I’ll burn Vorak raiders," he said, swinging again. The blade cut through the air with a faint whistle.

The tutor exhaled. Not quite frustration—just repetition. He muttered something about discipline and lack of reading time, turning back toward his book.

Veyren watched it all.

Torren’s bravado didn’t annoy him.

It stirred something worse.

That voice. That stance. The same tone my father used back on Cradle.

Bold. Certain. Ready to fight monsters he hadn’t met yet.

Elias’s chest tightened in his tiny body, the rattle in his hand suddenly heavier. The wood creaked slightly in his grip as his fingers tensed.

They’re not mine, he told himself. This family. This bloodline.

But the weight of the rattle said otherwise.

It wasn’t just a toy. It was a tether. A reminder. He couldn’t drift from this life, no matter how sharp the mission etched itself into the walls of his mind.

Find the gem.

The voice returned—silver-eyed, still. The crucifix’s words echoed like a dropped nail rolling across a stone floor. Find it. Retrieve it. But what was it? A weapon? A truth?

Even Seraphine didn’t seem to know.

A blur shot past the archway.

Eldrian.

Small legs pumping as he toddled full speed after Jitter, the feraline’s ears flicking back in alarm. She darted under a nearby table just as his stubby hands reached out.

A clay cup tipped.

The crack it made when it hit the floor cut through the low hum of the manor like a blade tapping bone.

"Eldrian!"

Seraphine’s voice came sharp—but not cruel. The kind of sharp born from too many mornings that started this way. Her exhaustion clung to the edge of each syllable like dust on a half-swept floor.

She rose, crossing the room in practiced strides, and scooped him up before his feet could hit another dish.

He laughed.

Not nervously. Not out of apology.

Just joy.

Wild and innocent.

His curls bounced against her shoulder as he twisted in her grip, reaching back for the tail disappearing under the table.

Torren rolled his eyes from across the hall, muttering just loud enough to be heard.

"He’s worse than a boar."

The blocks at his feet still hadn’t been cleaned up. He didn’t move to do it.

Veyren didn’t mind.

The chaos—Eldrian’s chase, Seraphine’s sigh, Torren’s complaint—held a rhythm. It anchored him. Reminded him where he was. What he needed to learn. Not just how to survive.

Who to trust.

Torren, heir. Eldrian, wild. Both young. Both reachable.

Maybe not yet.

But one day, when his legs could carry him. When his voice could speak.

Seraphine’s eyes met his.

Tired. Kind. The corners softened as she crossed back to the bassinet.

"Stay strong, Veyren," she said.

Not a command. Not even quite a hope. Just something she needed to say aloud.

As if Ysmera’s quotas might tear through her home the way blue-face tech once tore through the skies.

Behind her, Lira moved to clean the mess.

The maid’s brow furrowed, hands steady as she lifted the shards with a small conjured gust. Her wrist gem flickered pale green—Wind. Textbook-learned. Still clumsy.

The spell swirled dust into a circle before sputtering out.

She cursed softly, and swept the rest by hand.

The main hall’s side door creaked open.

A figure stepped in, robed in layered grays with hems patched unevenly, the fabric heavy from travel dust. His wrist gem caught the light first—amber set in an iron cuff, pulsing with quiet steadiness.

Anacraid.

The agent’s expression didn’t shift. His face was thin, hollow-eyed, mouth drawn tight as if everything he said had been pre-approved and signed in triplicate.

"Coins, Lady Seraphine," he said.

Voice flat. Not rude. Just... practiced.

He extended a clay tablet etched with receiving marks, the script angular and old. No flourish. No greeting.

Seraphine’s quill froze mid-stroke.

She looked up without surprise. The pouch already rested on the table beside her, half-filled. The sound of it sliding across the surface landed louder than expected—coins shifting, leather dragging slightly against waxed oak.

"Half now," she said.

Her tone didn’t rise. It clipped itself clean, defiant in its restraint.

"The rest after the Banquet."

The agent nodded once. No argument. He reached for the pouch, his gem flaring faintly. A ripple of Earth conjuring ran down his wrist as he steadied the tablet, transferring weight between hand and spell.

Across the hall, the shard embedded in Veyren’s shoulder pulsed.

Sharp.

Pain knifed through his collar and into the back of his arm. Not enough to make him cry—but enough to lock his jaw, enough to remind him the network was still there.

The cart earlier. The agent’s gem now. Even the house’s foundation, laced with passive energy threads the blue-faces had standardized decades ago.

It was all connected.

Sixty-five years.

The number repeated in his mind like static.

Ysmera hadn’t just conquered—they rewired.

Seraphine exhaled through her nose as the door clicked shut behind the agent. A sound as small as that shouldn’t have carried weight.

But it did.

If I follow this mission, Elias thought, his body still, eyes fixed on her hand as it returned to the quill, will I unravel their trust?

His fingers slipped.

The wooden rattle tumbled off the bassinet’s edge. It clattered once against the frame, then spun on the floor, the hollow sound louder than it had any right to be.

He didn’t cry.

But his fist clenched tight.

The shard pulsed again—cold, steady, implacable. A rhythm that didn’t belong to a child.

A rhythm tied to secrets he couldn’t name yet.

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