Chapter 106: Yveselune
The world past the gates didn't look like anything Arthur had seen since arriving in this body.
Everything was bone white. Buildings rose in towers that curved rather than squared off, blue marble capping each one like something poured on top and left to set. White trees lined every path they walked, leaves pale as paper, and above all of it the same canopy from outside the walls stretched on and on, filtering the daylight down into something soft and even.
Far past the rooftops, at the edge of what Arthur could see, a trunk rose out of the earth thick enough to be mistaken for a mountain range. He couldn't find the top of it from here. He wasn't sure it had one, from this angle.
Nothing about Ishkral or Creslan had prepared him for this.
The streets moved differently too. Where a human market crowded around noise and haggling, here elves moved between stalls with a quiet, unhurried economy. glass vials lined up in neat rows, liquid inside them glowing faint colors that shifted depending on the angle Arthur looked from. Alchemists, most of them, working potions distilled from the sap of the white trees, infused with something that felt like aetheric blood but sat differently in Arthur's shadow sense, sharper somehow, more refined.
"They don't build relics the way the Yeruk do," Solenne said quietly, walking beside him. "Different philosophy entirely. Where humans and Yeruk carve intent into stone and metal, elves brew it. Everything here runs through the trees first. Their whole economy sits on what they can extract and refine from them."
Arthur nodded, watching a shopkeeper hand over a small vial to a customer in exchange for a folded note, no coin changing hands at all.
Every elf they passed did the same thing when their eyes landed on the group. The slits along their cheekbones, just under the eyes, opened and closed in slow pulses, reading something off them that Arthur couldn't feel happening.
He kept his palms together at his forehead, bowing low each time one of them looked his way.
Theodore picked it up fast, mimicking him without asking why. Cael held out for two blocks before he finally leaned in.
"Why do you keep doing that."
"It's a greeting gesture. For elves."
"How do you know that?"
"Just follow it if you want to leave a good impression."
Cael studied him for a second, clearly unsatisfied with the answer, then bowed the next time an elf passed close enough to notice.
Most of the elves wore long coats, closer to robes than anything Arthur had seen in Ishkral, pale fabric layered and belted at the waist, white earrings catching the filtered light every time they turned their heads.
They walked like that for a while. Solenne in front, Thalon a step behind her, Cael and Theodore flanking, Arthur trailing slightly with Roz silent on his shoulder — moving through streets that felt too quiet for a city this size, every elf's attention following them without a single one raising their voice about it.
Then one did.
A man stepped into their path near a wide plaza, tall even by elven standards, his coat trimmed in a deep green that stood out against the white around him. His eyes fixed on Solenne and didn't move from her.
He said something. Sharp. The relic hummed and caught up.
"You bring them here. Into our home. After what your kind has done."
"General." Another voice cut in before Solenne answered.
A woman approached from the side, shorter hair than most elves Arthur had seen so far, one long braid falling past her shoulder on the left side. Her coat was the same pale white as everyone else's, but stitched through with black at the seams. She placed herself neatly between the general and the delegation without making it look like she was blocking anything.
"They were granted entry," she said, in clean,
And the relic translated. "By the King's own decree, relayed through the gate wardens. I'd ask you to remember that before you decide to make a scene in front of them."
The general's jaw tightened. He held Solenne's eyes a moment longer, then turned and walked off without another word, his coat snapping behind him.
The woman turned to face them properly, offering a small bow of her own, palms together.
"My apologies for that." Her voice stayed even and in perfect human language. No relic needed, though something tired sat underneath it. "Tempers are short right now. I imagine you understand why."
"Woah. She speaks our language Vex.." Theodore whispered towards Arthur.
"We do," Solenne said. "Thank you for stepping in."
"Yveselune Lysantmir." She introduced herself with a small dip of her head. "I serve the King's court. I'll be your point of contact while you're here."
"Solenne Von Castellane. Second Princess of the Elercross Empire."
"I'm aware." Yveselune's gaze moved briefly across the rest of them, Cael, Thalon, Theodore, then landed on Arthur a half second longer than the others, her slits opening and closing once, slow. She didn't comment on it. "The King intended to receive you today. Unfortunately, he's unwell, and matters at court have kept him occupied longer than expected. He'll meet with you tomorrow."
"We understand," Solenne said. "We're grateful for any audience at all, given the circumstances."
"There's a residence near the castle grounds we keep for visiting dignitaries. I'd suggest you stay there tonight rather than in the lower district. It's warded, and closer if the King's schedule opens earlier than expected."
Arthur felt something tighten in his chest at that.
Warded didn't mean safe. Not with a general who'd just looked at them like he wanted them dead standing thirty feet away a minute ago.
'You're thinking about it too,' Vexis said quietly.
Yeah. If something happens tonight, we're sleeping in the middle of a kingdom that's one bad rumor away from wanting us gone permanently.
'I don't love it either. But refusing the offer probably looks worse than accepting it.'
Arthur weighed that. Vexis wasn't wrong. Turning down hospitality, however uneasy it made him, would read as an insult in a place already primed to find offense in everything humans did.
"That would be appreciated," Solenne said, before Arthur worked out whether he wanted to voice any of it.
Yveselune nodded once. "I'll have someone show you the way. Rest well. Tomorrow will require all of you at your best."
She turned and began walking, expecting them to follow, and after a moment they did.
Arthur glanced back once, toward the plaza where the general had stood.
He was still there. Further off now, near the edge of a colonnade, watching them go with an expression that hadn't softened at all. His slits stayed wide open the entire time, unblinking in the way Arthur was starting to recognize as something closer to a held breath than genuine calm.
Arthur turned back around and kept walking.
The residence Yveselune brought them to sat in the shadow of the castle proper, low and long, built from the same pale stone as everything else in the kingdom, its windows lit from inside with soft blue light that Arthur assumed came from the same alchemical process running the market stalls.
Inside, the rooms were sparse but warm, low beds with pale linens, no ornamentation beyond a single dried branch mounted above each doorway. Theodore dropped his bag the second they were shown in and exhaled like he'd been holding his breath since the gate.
Arthur walked to one of the windows and rested a hand against the frame.
The castle overlooked almost the entire city. White rooftops stretched beneath the branches of the enormous tree, its trunk disappearing into the distance like another cliff face.
"I still can't believe this place exists," Theodore said.
"It feels…" Arthur searched for the word.
"Different."
Cael nodded once.
"They're centuries ahead of us in alchemy."
"And centuries behind us in trusting humans," Arthur replied.
Nobody argued with that.
Outside, a pair of elven guards crossed the courtyard below without once looking toward the residence.
It didn't make Arthur feel any less watched.
"That was terrifying," he said, quiet.
"Which part," Cael asked.
"All of it."
Roz hopped down from Arthur's shoulder and onto the nearest windowsill, staring out at the white trees lining the courtyard below.
"Get some rest," Solenne said, standing in the doorway a moment longer than necessary. "Tomorrow's the part that actually matters."
She left to check the other rooms. Thalon followed her out. Cael lingered a moment, looking at Arthur with something unspoken behind his eyes, then went to find his own bed without saying it out loud.
Arthur sat on the edge of the low bed they'd given him and looked out through the window at the courtyard, at the white leaves drifting down slow in a breeze that didn't feel like wind so much as breath.
Somewhere out there, past the walls of this residence, a general who wanted them gone was still awake, still furious, still watching. And somewhere further than that, an entire kingdom was deciding, one conversation at a time, whether humans deserved to be believed at all.
He didn't feel safe here.
He wasn't sure he was supposed to.