Dark Parasyte

After leaving the estate of Count Emual or what was left of it, Corvin turned his attention to his newly granted domain.

At the heart of a vast valley stood a massive fortress: ancient stone carved from forgotten veins of bedrock, its silhouette already dominating the ridgelines. Nearly a kilometer south, the shore of Duskwell Reach shimmered under the moody light of the overcast sky. The shore, stretching nearly three kilometers wide, lapped restlessly against the broken cliffs and coves. The waters marked the southern end of Argyll and the northern edge of distant Savaryn, as named in the old maps of Verthalis. The winds carried salt and the distant calls of seabirds, occasionally drowned by the thunder of crashing waves.

The first thing Corvin did was summon his Covenant Bound Mermen and Mermaids, figures of eerie beauty, scaled strength, and cold obedience. He ordered them to create a sanctuary in the deeps, a haven beneath the crashing waves where their kind could dwell, breed, and be reborn. Without a word, they vanished into the dark surf, singing to the currents as they descended. Their forms shimmered, vanishing beneath the surface like myths returning to legend.

He turned to the land next.

With a heavy breath the ground trembled. Corvin’s earth magic surged outward in concentric waves, groaning through stone and soil. The valley answered like a living thing. Great sheets of bedrock were pushed upward from the crust, rising with the slow inevitability of ancient titans. The first wall rose from the valley floor like a monument to siege itself: forty meters tall, twelve meters thick, forged not from quarried blocks, but from fused strata, seamless and unbreakable. Moss and dirt fell away as the ramparts formed with terrifying precision. They encircled the perimeter in exact geometry, no gaps, no breaks.

Then came the second, an inner bastion coiled protectively around the massive castle. Slightly lower at thirty meters but just as wide, it stood like a clenched jaw around a crown of shadow. Once finished, warding started for reinforcement and obfuscation. Obsidian veins crackled along the walls’ surface, weaving through the rock like molten glass.

But his greatest eyes would not be stone.

Corvin hunted the skies next.

Ravens.

Dozens became hundreds. They came in waves, flocks descending from the cliffs and forests beyond, drawn to him by his own ravens calls. They circled, landed, watched. One by one, he bound them. Ritual by ritual, until their black eyes shimmered faintly with tethered arcana. With each new binding, his mental lattice expanded. Corvin could feel their vision as threads along his spine, hundreds of eyes from dozens of angles, every heartbeat transmitting through the web.

They would be his spies.