Chapter 292: Memory of a different time.
The tall figure standing outside the door didn’t make a sound as he crossed the threshold. He wore his dark armor, the steel still bearing fine, pale scratches from the gravel and dust of the Zeregran Ranges.
He didn’t look injured, nor did he look tired, but as his gaze fell upon Morgan, the young man immediately noticed something subtly off.
Valerius’s expression was flat, stoic as ever, but his golden eyes carried a strange, heavy stillness.
"You’re awake," Valerius said, his low, resonant voice filling the small timber room.
"Hard not to be," Morgan replied, adjusting his posture slightly against the headboard, wincing as his ribs protested.
"Am I being discharged? Because if Angel has another bowl of bitter-root soup lined up, I’m crawling out the window."
No," Valerius said simply.
Morgan looked at him, his brow furrowing slightly. "
Then I’m guessing this isn’t about my leg."
"It isn’t."
Valerius walked to the side of the bed and stopped. He didn’t sit in the chair Raven had occupied.
He stood, in front of the single window the cabin had, his shadow stretching across the wooden floor in the flickering orange light of the lantern.
Silence stretched between them for a long, heavy moment.
Outside, the wind rattled the pine shutter against the window frame.
"As a boy, I saw a man once," Valerius said quietly, breaking the stillness.
"Many years ago. Long before the collapse of the northern border. When Moreus had just become a city..."
Morgan blinked, caught off guard.
"What?"
"The man was not too tall, and he was quite lithe," Valerius continued, his eyes fixed on Morgan’s face, searching for something in the young man’s expression.
"He had wore linen tunic. He was standing near a wagon train on the old trade road through the eastern marches..."
Valeriys turned, his golden eyes glinting in the dim light.
"It was you...back then..."
A silence descended upon the room, thicker and far more suffocating than the air of the pine cabin.
"But how..."
Valerius’ eyes narrowed, his lips tightening into a thin line.
"How could you have existed back then and now..."
Morgan felt a strange, prickly sensation on the back of his neck.
"What the hell does he expect me to tell him?!" He thought.
"It was just a dream to me...an incredibly vivid one at that..."
"Was I that... different then?" Morgan asked quietly instead, his voice barely above a whisper.
Valerius paused. He looked down at his own gloved hand, then back at Morgan.
"Yes."
"Different how?"
Valerius let out an exasperated sigh.
"What I am telling you," Valerius said coldly, his demeanour shifting entirely "is that, your presence in my life has never been an accident. Neither then. Nor now."
" Back at the mountain, within the black mist, I saw you..."
The light in Valerius eyes dimmed for a split second then—
Before Morgan could process the weight of those words, Valerius shifted his weight, his posture hardening back into that of a commander.
"Which brings me to the reason I am here," Valerius said.
"I have received a message."
Morgan looked at him closely.
"From who?"
"Lord Velagrew."
The name reverberated through the room like a physical blow.
Morgan’s heart skipped a beat.
Instantly, the memory of his dream flooded his mind—the vast, impossible terrace of white marble, the inverted mountains floating in a golden sky.
And then there was Alsterius, Lord of Light, standing in all his radiant authority and Velagrew, Lord of the Realm Between, holding a black porcelain cup while shadows bent reality around his boots.
"Ah, crap, crap crap!"
He vividly remembered Alsterius threat to Velagrew.
...Even the Realm Between has boundaries...
Despite his inner turmoil, Morgan kept his expression entirely neutral, forcing his hands to remain still on the blanket.
He didn’t dare mention the dream. Not yet. Not while Valerius was still coming to terms with who the hell he was...
"Velagrew," Morgan repeated slowly, testing the weight of the word. "The Lord of the Realm Between."
"He has summoned us," Valerius said.
Morgan raised an eyebrow. "Why does a Sovereign want to see me?I don’t know," Valerius replied.
"You don’t know?" Morgan asked, a faint trace of his usual dry humor breaking through his anxiety. "You’re his lieutenant—or whatever it is you are to him. He doesn’t give you a reason?"
Valerius gave him a flat, unamused look. "If I knew, I wouldn’t be telling you I don’t know."
Morgan let out a short, quiet breath, rubbing his forehead with two fingers. "Right. Silly question. Is he going to kill me?"
Valerius didn’t answer immediately.
He looked toward the small, paper-covered window, where the pale winter light was beginning to bleed into the room.
"He is a Sovereign, a Lord over this Realm Morgan," Valerius said softly.
"He does not think like men. He does not kill out of anger, nor does he spare out of mercy. To him, lives are threads in a grand tapestry of fate. Some are woven in, others are cut to clear space for a new pattern."
Valerius turned his gaze back to Morgan.
"So asking if he is dangerous is the wrong question."
Morgan looked up, meeting his eyes.
"What’s the right question then?"
Valerius’ lios curled into a rueful smile.
" That question would be why? Why does he want to speak to you?"
A heavy silence filled thecabin once more.
He did not demand your appearance," Valerius spoke, his tone dropping into a dangerous quiet.
"He requested it. In three years of serving his interests in this realm, I have never heard him use that word regarding a mortal."
Morgan’s mind raced.
He remembered Alsterius’s casual, sharp warning on the celestial terrace.
... I hear you’ve acquired one of mine...
He remembered the way Velagrew had turned his head at the very end of the dream, looking directly at Morgan’s invisible presence with that terrifying, quiet curiosity.
"Did he know?" Morgan thought, a chill running down his spine.
" Did he feel me watching? Or is this about something else entirely?"
"And you’re taking me?" Morgan asked, looking at Valerius’s dark armor.
"In this condition?"
"I was ordered to escort you," Valerius said.
The words hung in the air like a heavy chain. Morgan looked at Valerius differently now.