Ersia: Raven Dawn

The quarterfinals of the Open Duel tournament roared with unrestrained energy. A sea of spectators filled the coliseum—chanting, laughing, howling for blood and spectacle. The noon sun poured through the open dome above, setting the stone arena ablaze in gold and shadow.

Amid the jubilant crowd, a lone figure in a black cloak sat unmoving. His frame was tall, broad, almost out of place in the frenzy. Beneath the hood, Randia’s eyes shimmered faintly—not with excitement, but with the weight of something far older. The performance below—the duel reenacting an ancient hero’s tale—dug up the bones of memory he’d long buried. It was as if the world itself had chosen to resurrect his late brother, not through graves or songs, but through this loud, merciless celebration.

He barely registered the next matches. The cheers blurred into a distant storm, and his gaze drifted—hunting for any sign of the mysterious sender of that letter. Yet his focus dissolved into the noise.

And then—

Silence.

It was subtle at first, like the sound of a single flame in a crowded room. A calm voice brushed through the noise.

"Enjoying the day, Randia? I thought you hated the crowds."

The name hit him like a splash of cold water. Randia snapped from his reverie, turning left. There, sitting as if he’d always been part of the scenery, was an old man with a lazy grin.

“Lux Prima?” he breathed.

The man didn’t answer. Argenis, the Lux Prima only lowered himself onto the stone bench, uncorked a clay flask, and took a long, satisfied sip as if they were old friends meeting at a spring festival. In his other hand—a wrapped skewer of meat dripping with spices.

Randia’s mind raced. Of all places, of all people to run into in this swelling tide of humanity, he was the last he expected.

“I don’t know what the hell you people did back then,” Argenis said with a light chuckle, wiping his beard with his sleeve, “but out of all the hero stories I’ve lived to see, this one might just be my favorite ending. Have you tried this thing they call a kebab? It’s insane. Absolutely insane.”

He waved the half-eaten skewer at Randia like it was a fine wine. Randia, of course, only shook his head. Argenis sighed, taking another triumphant bite.

“You’re still too serious. Just like last time.”

Randia’s jaw tightened. “Did you send the letter?”

“Letter?” Argenis tilted his head innocently, chewing. “What letter?”

The old man never lied. Randia knew that better than anyone. Which meant the answer he needed was still out there.

The crowd below erupted again as another duel began—iron clashing on iron, sparks rising like swarms of fireflies. A pair of duelists circled each other, trying to qualify for the next round like their life depended on it. The chants of the spectators echoed louder than a church choirs.

Argenis leaned back, savoring the commencing duel. “So? What do you think? Did the actor do a decent job playing your loud, obnoxious, insufferably noisy brother?”

Randia let out a humorless breath. “Asmar would’ve made a bad joke right about now. Killed the mood instantly.”

Argenis barked out a laugh—a raw, genuine laugh that would drew a few annoyed stares from nearby spectators if not for his spell. For him, the memory of that insufferable humor wasn’t something to mourn. It was something to miss.

“You’re right,” he said between laughs. “Heavens, he really would. That bastard loved his old man jokes too much.”

The next words came softer, though, slipping between the laughter like an uninvited ghost.

“It’s almost a pity,” Argenis murmured. “All those old, corny jokes of his… he never got the chance to use them properly. Never got to tell them to his own child.”

Randia froze. The noise of the arena collapsed into a ringing silence in his ears. His breath caught in his throat.

“…What?” His voice cracked faintly.

During all his wandering in the forgotten corners of civilization as a nameless medevist, not once had he heard a whisper of this. Not a name. Not a rumor. Nothing.

Randia’s hands clenched against his knees. “Are you joking? What do you mean by that?”

Argenis tilted his head as if the question itself were absurd.

“Hah? How could you not know?”

A sharp, guttural scream burst from below as a massive shard of glass—splintered from the arena’s decorative shields during the match—spun through the air like a guillotine blade. It hurtled toward a young girl seated with her friends directly beneath their stand. Her eyes widened, too stunned to scream again.

But before Randia could even rise from his seat—before anyone could move—

The shard melted.

Mid-flight, the deadly glint softened, liquefied, and blossomed into white powder. What had been glass now drifted as a flurry of delicate snowflakes, settling on the girl’s cheeks like winter’s kiss. She blinked, unharmed, as her friends shrieked and clutched one another in confused relief.

Randia’s pulse spiked. He had seen countless mages in his lifetime, but none who could rewrite matter without a word. No sigil. No chant. No delay.

This was the Lux Prima at his most casual. And that was the terrifying part.

“Ah,” Argenis said with a grin, dusting imaginary snow off his lap. “I almost forgot. You’re a runaway. One that is too busy hiding from the world. Of course the news wouldn’t reach you.”

Of all the wild things Randia had survived, this thought rooted itself deeper than any blade ever could. Asmar was loud, friendly, almost irritatingly warm. He flirted with the world itself—no age, gender, or rank excluded. The man had made everyone feel like they mattered. How was Randia supposed to guess who he’d left a legacy with?

“I don’t know and honestly don’t give a damn about your reasons for hiding,” Argenis said, stretching his arms lazily. “Nor how any of this came to be. How Solus still lingers in that shape is beyond me. But—if you do want to reconnect with what’s left of Asmar…”

His gaze narrowed, and he rubbed his beard—as if trying to guess something.

“…you might want to pay a visit to Nocthyr Valanis. I heard his lover was a dark elf.”

Argenis then snapped his fingers.

A ripple of shadow uncoiled from beneath his chair, like a loyal hound rising from a nap. It slid away, only to return carrying a tray—of all things—stacked with food and drink. A smoked turkey leg, its scent rich and heavy with spice, and a tall, sweating glass of lemon-lime tea.

The old man’s mood swung as easily as the breeze. He bit into the turkey leg with a delighted grunt, eyes sparkling as if the world’s heaviest secrets for Randia had not just been handed out like casual gossip.

“Holy smokes, this is incredible!” Argenis declared, talking through a mouthful of meat. Grease glossed his fingertips, and a delighted hum escaped him. “What a fool I’ve been. All this time, and I never thought of traveling the world for its food. What a waste!”

Randia’s voice cut through the noise with measured irritation.

“Did you come all the way here just to tell me that?”

Argenis didn’t even bother looking at him.

“Of course not. I don’t give a damn how many girls your brother knocked up. He could've had more lovers than stars in the sky. Maybe they crept around while you were sleeping or wandering off on your noble little crusades.”

Randia’s jaw tightened. He hated it—because Argenis’s mockery, as always, carried a grain of truth.

Asmar had been a storm of light and noise. Friendly with anyone. Restless. Uncontainable. If the man could keep something like this buried for sixteen years, what else had he kept from his brother?

“Then what is it you want from me?” Randia asked.

At that, Argenis finally turned to face him. There was a glint in the old man’s eyes—sharp, curious, like a scholar poking at something fragile just to see where it cracks.

“I want to know why you handed your precious little pets to a girl who won’t even live past twenty.”

Randia’s chest tightened. For the briefest flicker of a heartbeat, the arena fell away. The noise, the lights, the smell of roasted meat—it all dimmed into background static. Argenis’s words hit where it tick the most.

The old man saw it too.

He grinned, leaned over, and clapped Randia’s back like a father teasing a son.

“Whoa there, getting riled up already? What’s with that look? Don’t tell me she’s actually yours.”

Before Randia could swat him away, Argenis wiped his sauce-stained fingers down the back of Randia’s dark cloak. He chuckled—old, mischievous, utterly infuriating.

“…She’s not my daughter,” Randia said flatly.

“Yeah. Thought so. After all, she’s a mistari.”

Argenis dragged the word out, let it sit between them like a spark on dry grass.

“And how could a hero father a child with one of Mistus’s followers?”

He paused to sip his lemon-lime tea, cooling it with a casual flick of ice magic. Then came the long, satisfied burp, because of course it did.

“But that's actually the curious factor,” he continued, his grin sharpening. “You heroes—there’s only one thing you ever did to the mistari.”

He lifted a hand. Made a clean, silent gesture of a blade slicing through a neck.

“So tell me, how does the great hero Randia end up playing house with one of them? What will the world do when they find out their shining moon raising a spawn of an evil deity like a doting father?”

Argenis leaned back, one leg casually draped over the other. Behind him, his shadow stretched like a coiled beast, waiting. His smile was wide, almost boyish, but his eyes—his eyes were razors. They didn’t just pierce. They pressed. They crushed the air from lesser men.

But Randia was no lesser man.

“A lot of things happened,” Randia answered, his voice low.

“…And these things,” Argenis drawled, “made a change of heart in Randia—the man colder than the ninth month in Nordovaste?”

Randia said nothing. He simply fixed his gaze on the two fighters in the arena below. To him, their clash was a mirror: the man he once was, and the man he had become. Time dragged. A minute. Two. Then Randia exhaled slowly.

“Yes.”

Argenis laughed—loud, unrestrained. Not mockery. Something more like relief. Satisfaction.

“My my! What a day! I made the right choice coming to Fleurein. Should’ve come here much sooner.”

He rose, stretching his back and waist with the ease of a man who refused to act his age. His gaze swept across the Great Gardenia, and for a heartbeat, he seemed fifty years younger.

“Well then,” he said lightly, “it seems the voices in your head have gone quiet. That means they are weaker than they let on.”

Randia froze.

How did Argenis know? The voices of gods and goddesses were the most guarded secret of the heroes—something not even the closest of comrades were allowed to speak of. And yet this old man spoke of it so casually.

“Who are you really, Lux Prima?” Randia’s voice hardened, his fists curling tight. “How much do you know about this world?”

Argenis smirked, the kind of smirk that belonged to someone who’d lived long enough to stop fearing questions.

“As patiently as I will wait to hear your truth,” he said softly, “so too will the world one day learn mine.”

With a snap of his fingers, the air rippled. A massive cushion bloomed out of thin space—absurdly soft, utterly out of place. Argenis collapsed into it like a man slipping into a warm bath, one hand lazily rubbing his full belly.

“Oh, one more gift before I leave,” he added, voice rolling like a purr. “Yesterday evening, I felt a great resonance… an echo so strong it shook even me. It seems the bloodline of that old hag, Celestra, has produced someone far stronger than any of her kin before. Find that child if you want a glimpse of the truth. But remember this—” His smile faded into a thin, dangerous line.

“You may ask onlyone question.”

Then another snap. The layered spells—silence, sensory dampening, spatial binding—shattered like glass. Sound rushed back into the world.

People nearby gasped, pointing at the floating cushion as though they had only now noticed it. Argenis, of course, couldn’t care less. He began to drift lazily upward, as if carried by the wind itself.

“I’ve had my fun for the day,” he sighed contentedly, “and now I’m ready for my food coma.”

He paused midair, tilting his head down toward Randia. “And… just between us—” His voice dropped, almost gentle. “Personally speaking, I think you’re doing it right, boy. Believe in yourself. In your choice.”

Then he saluted with two fingers, that smirk returning.

“Very well then. Until next time, Randia of Aderia.”

And with a whirl of light and a gust of wind, the man known as Lux Prima was gone.

The cheers from the arena swelled again, as though nothing had happened. Randia stood there for a long while, silent, the taste of that name—Celestra—lingering like iron in his mouth. He had been given a torch to aid him in his path.