Ersia: Raven Dawn

The power of the Dictum that had shackled all of Great Gardenia began to fade.

Sound returned first—ragged breaths, broken sobs, the murmur of disbelief—then movement followed, hesitant and uncertain, as though the crowd had forgotten how to inhabit their own bodies. Some collapsed where they stood, weeping openly for Pope Innocentius I, grief spilling out now that silence no longer held them in place. Others stood frozen, minds paralyzed beneath the sudden weight of too many truths arriving all at once. A few scholars, pale but composed, reacted in the only way they knew how: they opened their books and began to write, hands trembling as they recorded what they had seen and heard, desperate to preserve meaning before it slipped into chaos.

Yet fear is always faster than reason.

A great portion of the crowd surged toward the corridors leading out of the stands. Panic spread like fire through dry grass. People shoved and clawed their way forward, bodies pressed tight in blind desperation. Women screamed. Elderly men stumbled and fell. Children vanished beneath trampling feet. The knights stationed throughout the arena found their hands full, abandoning formation to drag the weak from the crush, pulling children free from beneath boots, lifting the fallen before they were crushed to death.

All of it was in vain.

Every corridor gate was sealed—locked by magic and reinforced by the engineered arcanomechanics of Great Gardenia itself. Those who reached the exits found only unyielding stone and glowing sigils. Behind them, the press of bodies continued, relentless and merciless. People were crushed between their own kin and the walls meant to protect them. Some screamed until their voices broke. Some stopped screaming altogether.

In the midst of this unfolding catastrophe, the sky answered.

The Sky Knights of Rosmayne descended astride their bluespike basrats, massive winged beasts whose serrated crests gleamed like steel. Their orders were clear: intervene, suppress the terrorist threat, and neutralize all suspects. They dove without hesitation, banners snapping in the wind, lances leveled, resolve unshaken.

Then the air itself turned against them.

From within Great Gardenia erupted a storm of black—thousands upon thousands of ravens bursting upward in a single, unified surge. The flock moved with unnatural cohesion, as though guided by a singular will. They rose to meet the Sky Knights head-on, intercepting them mid-flight. The ravens clawed and pecked at the basrats’ wings and eyes, striking again and again. Each wound was small, insignificant on its own, but multiplied endlessly beneath the relentless assault.

Feathers were shredded. Blood darkened the air. Wings faltered.

One by one, the great basrats screamed as their strength failed them. Some were forced into desperate landings. Others lost lift entirely and plummeted, rider and mount alike, falling in broken spirals from the sky. Knights died screaming as the heavens seemed to weep them back to the earth. Even when reinforcements arrived, the result did not change. Every advance was halted before it could begin.

The sight shattered what little restraint remained among the crowd.

Above them, beneath a ceiling of dark, overcast clouds, the raven storm churned like a living nightmare. The world felt submerged in shadow, as though reality itself had tilted toward some darker dream. When several ravens broke from the flock and swooped toward the stands, panic erupted anew.

Knights and civilians alike lashed out, striking at the birds with blades, spells, and bare hands.

“Keep them away!” a female knight shouted, swinging her sword in wide arcs.

“A–agh! They’re biting me!” cried a nobleman, flailing wildly.

“Watch out!” another man yelled. “You’re stepping on a child!”

“You!” the noble shrieked at a meek woman crouched nearby, clutching her satchel. “Why aren’t you doing anything? Are you insane?! Use your magic! You’re a wizard, aren’t you?!”

Nearby, a mercenary fought desperately with twin knives, slashing at the air. He turned and roared at the same woman. “Cast something! Anything! Lend me a hand, damn you!”

“But—they aren’t attacking me!” she cried back, her voice shaking. “They don’t seem to want to hurt anyone at all!”

“Just do it!” he barked. “Use your magic!”

“No!” she snapped, panic giving way to resolve. “My spells are dangerous in a crowd like this!”

“Ugh—stupid bitch!”

She shrank back, trembling, but forced herself to observe through her fear. And what she saw made her breath catch.

The ravens were not harming the people.

When they pecked, it was not to wound but to drive aggressors back, to scatter those who trampled others beneath their feet. She watched, wide-eyed, as several ravens worked together to lift an unconscious child from the crush, their talons careful and precise, carrying the small body through the air before setting it gently down in an open, safer space. Elsewhere, they shielded women from the press, forming living barriers of wings and shadow.

“Damn it!” a mage shouted. “Where are these cursed birds coming from?!”

Another mage hurled a fireball that incinerated two ravens mid-air. But instead of falling as charred corpses, the birds dissolved instantly into black smoke and drifting sand, vanishing without a trace.

“Stop!” the bespectacled woman screamed, her voice finally cutting through the noise. “Please—stop! They won’t hurt us!”

“What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?!” someone shouted back.

“Look!” she cried. “Just look!”

Enough people paused to follow her gaze.

They saw it then—the ravens lifting children from beneath crushing crowds, guiding the injured, shielding the vulnerable. Murmurs spread. A few voices called for calm. Too few. Too late.

Amid the chaos, some finally noticed the source.

At the edge of the arena stood the dark-veiled woman. A black crystal rotated slowly above her palm, pulsing like a second heart. From the feathered folds of her gown and the living shadow cast at her feet, ravens continuously emerged, born of darkness and will.

Realization turned to rage.

People tried to strike her—steel, flame, ice—but every blow shattered harmlessly against an unseen barrier. Physical and magical attacks dispersed as though striking empty air. That much is a certainty, for she is untouchable, protected by the same arena barrier that shielded Mr. Sunday and the grievously wounded Dictum on the opposite side of the Arena.

And above it all, the ravens continued their grim work, indifferent to hatred, deaf to panic, answering only the will that had summoned them.

---

The coldness and the scent of iron reign over the Central Chamber.

Blood veined the marble like a blasphemous fresco. Warm metal and ozone, mingled with the faint sweetness of broken spellworks. Twenty-five bodies lay scattered across the marble floor, limbs twisted where they had fallen, robes soaked through, eyes open and unseeing. The wards that once hummed like a living thing were dead now, their sigils flickering weakly before going dark one by one.

At the center of it all stood Sual.

His breathing was steady. Too steady.

Louise Clairmont, his foster mother, knelt several paces away, her back pressed against the base of the central dais, her hands trembling despite every discipline she had ever mastered. At sixty, she still bore the beauty of someone preserved by genius and magic—grey hair bound in its usual severe style, face unlined where time should have carved it. The Overseer of the Central Chamber. Architect of half the systems that ruled one of Rosmayne’s most renowned infrastructure.

And now, utterly powerless.

“Sual,” she said, forcing command into her voice out of pure habit. “Whatever madness has seized you, it is not too late to lay it down.”

He laughed softly.

It was not the laughter of mirth, nor even cruelty. It was the sound of something long confined finally finding air.

“Madness?” he echoed, tilting his head as though tasting the word. “No, Mother. Madness is what you call clarity when it no longer asks your permission.”

He stepped closer, his boots whispering through blood. His eyes roamed the Chamber—not the corpses, not the wreckage, but the architecture itself, as if recalling lessons taught long ago.

“Do you remember,” he continued, “the first theorem you ever gave me? You said power, unexamined, rots the soul. That restraint was the highest virtue of civilization.”

She swallowed. “I taught you so you would understand, so you would—”

“So, I would obey?” His smile widened. “You taught me perfectly, Mother.”

“I am not—” she began, then stopped herself. Correcting him now felt obscene. “Sual, listen to me. You were a child when I found you. Everything I did was to give you a future.”

He crouched before her, bringing his face level with hers. Up close, she saw the truth she had long refused to name—the way his gaze clung too tightly, the way every emotion bent inward, folding back upon her like a closed circuit.

Sual then felt his mother's face lovingly. There was a clear and intense lust in his eyes, and it made Louise uneasy. That unease was answered when Sual touched her lips sensually.

“You shaped me with your glorious love,” Sual went on, voice calm, almost scholarly. “You gave me hunger, then starved it. Reverence, then absence. And when I stood before the realm crowned in excellence, you were elsewhere. Again.”

She shook her head, tears finally breaking free. “Sual, I beg you. This will not fix anything.”

“No,” he agreed. “But nothing was ever broken in the first place. If anything, it will complete me.”

Her protests dissolved into pleading then into silence as his will closed around her like iron scripture. The Chamber bore witness without judgment, its sanctity already long dead.

"N-No! Please! No!"

"Je t’aime, maman chérie. There is no one I love more than you in this world. And I will show it properly today."

He took her wrist—not violently, not yet—and pin her down on the floor. Her strength failed her; the power of anima she reached for simply wasn’t there. Every bit of her magic and strength was spent during her earlier retaliation against the man before her.

Sual sank deeper into madness. He gripped his adoptive mother's neck until she nearly lost her breath and then licked her lips. He then began exploring every detail of her. He kissed her neck, sniffed her armpits, and played with her breasts.

Every now and then, she resisted and tried to push him away, but her weak body prevented her from doing more than that. Sual turned his adoptive mother around and brought his manhood closer. Lovingly, he initiated a taboo intimacy that made Louise moan and cry.

Breath mingled. The world narrowed to the quiet cadence between heartbeats. Louise's tears had long dried in resignation while her own adopted son enjoyed her with a passion much greater than a stallion, lost in his twisted love and insanity.

Later—how much later could not be told—Louise lay unmoving against the stone, her robes disordered, her gaze fixed on nothing. The Overseer of the Central Chamber no longer looked like a woman preserved by mastery, but one reduced to flesh and memory—not merely violated, but completely unmade by the insanity that she once turned away from, from the lunacy that perhaps she could have prevented.

Sual stood apart once more, methodically adjusting his attire, his expression serene.

For a moment, he regarded her.

Then he turned away, stepping over blood and bodies alike, taking over the control of the Central Chamber. He is to fulfill his part, to ensure chaos keeps singing and the shadows that are long kept keep dancing.

"Look at me, mother. I have brought you a present ... The labor of my love for you. The truth that you have always longed for."

---

Meanwhile, Rudan—Argenis’ disciple, who had been caught in the calamity within the Great Gardenia—finally regained his ability to move.

Without hesitation, he began to chant, layering spell upon spell exactly as his master had taught him. In moments, no fewer than seven defensive enchantments wrapped around his body, interlocking against physical harm and metaphysical interference alike.

Only then did he prepare to strike.

Mr. Sunday stood well within range. Rudan had already completed the framework of a high-tier spell—one capable of killing swiftly, cleanly, from afar.

And then—

His body refused to obey.

“D–Damn it! Again?!”

Anger flared, but before it could fully rise, a voice slid coldly into his mind.

"You are not allowed to interfere, brat."

“O–Old man! You bastard! This is your doing, isn’t it?! Why are you stopping me?!”

It was Argenis.

Through telepathy alone, he had seized control of his student from afar.

At that very moment, Argenis was seated not far from the Great Gardenia, leisurely drinking iced lemon tea. The atmosphere around him was tense, ominous even—but he seemed utterly unconcerned, calmly finishing his meal and casually ordering another drink.

He tapped his fingers against the table.

Instantly, Rudan could move again.

Furious, Rudan tried to invoke his magic once more—only to discover that every spell had been sealed. Every one, except his telepathic link to Argenis.

“Y–You old geezer! This is definitely your doing! Why are you doing this?!”

“… Rudan.”

The tone changed.

Argenis almost never called him by name. He preferred mockery, nicknames, irritation. But now his voice was calm—serious in a way that made Rudan fall silent at once.

“Do you remember the promise you made,” Argenis asked, “when you begged me to take you as my disciple?”

Rudan said nothing.

His brow furrowed. He shut his eyes and turned his face away from the scene before him, shame tightening his chest. There was nothing he could do.

Nearby, Elva—serving as Argenis’ attendant under the directive of her foster father, Court Mage Andersen—quietly refilled his empty glass.

She was skilled at masking her thoughts.

Yet, unfortunately, Argenis was far better at reading them.

“Something on your mind, little girl?”

“… Yes, my lord.”

That surprised him. He had expected denial, evasion—but she was more straightforward than he had thought.

“Well,” he said lightly, “you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

Elva clasped her hands together.

“You are a grand mage,” she said carefully, “powerful enough to make my father kneel like a servant.”

She paused. The wind picked up, tugging at her neatly tied chestnut hair as dark clouds gathered from the north.

“Lux Prima … wouldn’t it be easy for you to stop everything that’s happening in this city?”

“Yep. It's easy,” Argenis replied.

“Then—”

“But I don't want to~”

The grin that spread across his face was unsettling—crooked, mocking, deeply wrong. It sent a chill straight through Elva.

Before she realized what she was doing, her hand moved on its own.

Smack.

The sound rang sharp and clear.

The moment it happened, Elva froze in horror.

“A–Ah! I’m so sorry, my lord! Forgive me! Your face was just—ah, I didn’t mean it like that—! I only—”

“Damn,” Argenis muttered, holding his cheek.

Then he laughed.

“Forty years,” he said, amused. “It’s been forty years since a woman last slapped me. That was a good slap, little girl.”

Rather than anger, he seemed delighted.

As Elva apologized again and again, Argenis poured another glass of lemon tea and slid it toward her.

“Come sit,” he said. “Drink with me.”

She obeyed.

“As you might have guessed, Elva ... I’m actually very powerful,” Argenis continued calmly.

“So powerful that I’m not convinced any human should wield all of this for themselves.”

He took a sip.

“My reasoning isn’t entirely logical. It’s more like a mental constraint—something I imposed on myself.”

He glanced toward the distant chaos.

“I fear that intervening too much in the flow of the universe might trigger something greater. Something even I cannot read, cannot control. After all … this world is insane, don’t you think?”

Elva said nothing.

She understood now. What restrained Argenis was not fear, nor indifference—but himself. His sense of responsibility, his awareness of what he was, and what he and those around him might become if he acted without restraint.

To him, events of this scale were not his to correct.

“That’s why,” he said quietly, “forgive me if I didn’t do what you hoped I would.”

At last, Elva understood fully.

Argenis had chosen his role.

He had chosen to be a witness to history—no more, no less.

Yet Elva saw it differently. Even witnesses shape history. To do nothing was still a choice—one that carried consequences, whether immediate or distant.

“How can you remain calm,” she asked, “knowing that your inaction may result in people dying?”

“…By knowing,” Argenis replied, “that what is meant to be, will be. And by understanding that I am not God—nor the arbiter of life and death.”

In the end, Elva made her choice as well.

Like Argenis, she remained silent—and became a witness to that decision.

“I understand.”

---

Amid the spreading chaos, Viena and Lisabelle forced themselves to remain calm. Lisabelle took command without hesitation, lifting her younger sister and guiding her toward the higher tiers of the stands, where the stone benches rose steeply and the crowd thinned. Up there, the air was colder, clearer, and far less choked by panic. It was the safest place she could find, and instinct told her not to linger below.

From those upper stands, they witnessed something even stranger than the violence unfolding beneath them.

Without warning, sound itself seemed to die.

Viena turned toward Lisabelle, her lips moving as she tried to speak, but no voice emerged. Not a whisper. Not even breath shaped into sound. Around them, others began to realize it too—mouths opening, faces contorting in confusion and fear, yet nothing carried through the air. The pushing slowed. Then stopped. The crowd’s frenzy ebbed into an uneasy, suffocating stillness.

It was then that Mr. Sunday spoke again.

“Ahh… tsk, tsk,” he said, his voice ringing clearly despite the imposed silence. “I did tell you to remain calm and return to your seats. Why is it so difficult for you to follow such a simple instruction?”

Fury rippled through the stands. Several people shouted back at him, curses and accusations visible on their lips, but no sound answered their rage. The systems embedded within the Great Gardenia had fully engaged the spell; Vocal Seal. No voice could escape—only the beating of raven wings and their harsh cries cut through the air.

Randia remained seated among the stone benches of the western stands, his body rigid, his presence strangely detached from the chaos unfolding below. He had not acted. He had not spoken. His stillness was not born of composure, but of shock—raw, invasive, and deeply unsettling. What he had witnessed happen to Pope Innocentius I had torn something loose within him, wrenching open questions he had buried for years. They rose violently now, dragging with them fragments of memory he had long refused to examine.

He had always believed he understood his sins. Or at least, he had tried to believe he had made peace with them. Now, in the wake of what he had seen, that certainty collapsed. The weight of what he had justified, what he had endured, and what he had allowed himself to become no longer aligned into a single, coherent shape.

His sense of self began to fracture, splintering like a mirror struck again and again. The image he carried of who he was—what he had been, what he had survived, what he told himself was necessary—no longer held together.

Randia’s fingers tightened around the edge of his hood until his knuckles blanched white. He bent forward sharply in his seat, shoulders drawing inward as though trying to contain something tearing at his chest. His eyes squeezed shut, and cold sweat streamed down his face in unrelenting rivulets, his breath shallow and uneven.

Randia’s sense of self—his values, his morality, his understanding of life, even the place he believed he occupied within the long ledger of history—began to collapse inward. Nothing remained in its proper order. Thoughts twisted and collided, multiplying into a chaotic storm of meanings that no longer belonged to him, thoughts that felt alien, invasive, and impossible to grasp. It was as though the foundations of his being were being pulled apart, stone by stone, by an unseen hand that showed no mercy.

A sharp, suffocating pain bloomed in his chest. Each breath became a conscious struggle, shallow and inadequate, as though the air around him had thickened into something heavy and resistant. His heart hammered erratically, too fast and yet uneven, while his limbs trembled with a weakness that did not come from fatigue but from something far deeper. The world seemed to narrow, sounds dulling at the edges, vision swimming as if reality itself were slipping out of focus.

Then it struck him with cruel familiarity.

Just like that night—months ago, in the dim tavern at the edge of the nowehere—his body betrayed him completely. A violent fit of coughing tore through him without warning. He doubled over in his seat, gasping and choking, his throat constricting as though invisible fingers had closed around his neck. Each convulsion burned his lungs, dragging him back into that remembered helplessness, where fear had no shape and pain had no clear source, only the certainty that something inside him was unraveling beyond control.

He gagged and retched, almost dropping to his knees as something foul poured from his mouth—black tar mixed with pus, thick and viscous, reeking of rot and corruption. The stench alone was enough to make nearby spectators recoil.

And then the voices came.

They did not shout. They commanded.

'Randia, deliver judgment upon the one behind the mask.'

'Randia, end the masquerade.'

'Randia, do not let the world be deceived by the herald of demon.'

'Randia .... My Champion.'

.

.

.

“Remain faithful, Randia. As you have always been.”

The voices multiplied, layering over one another, growing louder, more insistent, until they drowned out even his own thoughts. His breathing became ragged, his hands shaking as he pressed them against the stone beneath him.

Then—suddenly—he opened his eyes.

What he saw stole what little breath he had left.

Viena was in the middle of the arena. She was seated on the cold stone floor, her legs folded beneath her in the posture of a captive who had already given up running. Her hands were bound behind her back. Her shoulders were tense, but she did not cry nor scream. She only stared ahead with a glint of hope that everything will be alright.

Mr. Sunday stood behind her.

He did not draw his sword. He did not need to. His presence alone was enough. One hand rested lightly on her head—not gentle, not cruel, just there, a reminder that she belonged to the moment he controlled.

The arena watched.

And somewhere in the stands, Randia saw her.

That was all it took.