Page 294 of Interion

Serguei clenched his hands into fists and continued, his voice dripping with bitterness:

“That night, Ravena argued with the king. She said words wouldn’t protect us, and that Interion should clean up its own trash because we weren’t going to dirty our hands with them. When we got home, we got into another argument, but this one was different. She was hysterical, wouldn’t listen to me, and refused any compromise. She said she would take our people and lead them away. But lead them where? Out there, we wouldn’t be safe! If we weren’t hunted by soldiers, we’d be hunted by lamias. I tried to calm her down, but it was useless: your mother turned against me, and what had been an outside problem ended up destroying our marriage. She said she couldn’t stand beside someone who couldn’t even protect our children, and I said I wouldn’t drag 120 people into the forest to die. That day, Ravena left the house to clear her head and never came back.”

“I must say she wasn’t wrong,” the seer murmured quietly, as if he didn’t want to be heard.

“While all this was happening, where were you, Julius?” Zion asked, arching an eyebrow.

The Sonar turned toward the horizon without a word.

“After two years,” Serguei continued, “she reached out and said she’d returned to the walls and we needed to talk. I was far away, but I came back as quickly as I could. When I arrived, the city was in chaos and under attack. Her squadron had stormed the palace and carried out a massacre.”

“Another scene I’ll never forget,” Julius interjected.

“The king was beheaded on his throne, and Elitium was already arriving, coordinating a counterattack. He ordered the descendant district surrounded. Amenadiel, Lea, Luanda, and I were trapped by a blocking barrier and taken to the main square. There, Elitium gave us a choice: make a blood pact swearing loyalty as his Pillar, or die. And if we died, the entire district would go with us.” Serguei interrupted the Sonar, who had also been forced to make a difficult choice that night. “To avoid a civil war, we agreed to the pact and swore loyalty to the new monarch. It was a temporary bargain to save the descendants. Then he brought some guards from Ravena’s squadron and told us she had been the one to set up the ambush. I didn’t believe it. Your mother didn’t like Interion, but I was certain she wouldn’t commit such an atrocity. Seeing my reluctance, Elitium forced me to enter those men’s minds, breaking the mental barriers Ravena had created to protect the information there. In their memories, I found the proof I needed. There were images of Ravena negotiating with the king of Drutes. There were also scenes of the camps she had found and of descendants being led blindfolded down an unknown path. Elitium forced me to relay the images to him and declared a death sentence on Ravena. Then he made another blood pact and ordered me to kill her. He promised before the entire nation that if I did this, there would be no bloodshed. He would release the descendant district to live freely outside the walls, but he wouldn’t tolerate our kind living among his people. However, if I refused, he swore to hunt down and kill any descendant who tried to fight.”

“You had the strength and power to fight back. Why didn’t you?” Zion asked.

“Back then, we believed in peace, Zion. We didn’t want to be seen as murderers. We were already battling one nation; we couldn’t go to war with Interion too. Everything pointed to Ravena having planned the attack, because there was no other explanation. And as leader, I felt obligated to repair the damage. It was my duty to wash away that stain, and I had to agree for the good of our people. I hunted Ravena through the city and found her in the abandoned tunnels, then pursued and cornered her. My plan was to kill her and then take my own life. But things didn’t go as planned. When I killed her, she did what we call a ‘consciousness transfer,’ passing her memories and her entire life’s information to me. I discovered we had a son. I saw everything hidden in her mind, and I saw the mistake I’d made.”

Serguei looked at his son, and tears streamed down his cheeks.

“It was too late, Zion. She hid the pregnancy, afraid I’d want to keep you here and you’d be killed like the other children. Ravena was already pregnant when the attack happened and became hysterical thinking it could have been her own child. Even back then, she’d maintained contact with the king of Drutes, but she was deceiving him, playing a double game where she pretended to pass information when she was actually gathering intelligence on him. The king wanted her to retrieve a stone from Interion. He told your mother everything he knew and why it was so important. In exchange for her service, he promised to end the breeding camps. Ravena and her squadron accepted; she knew it was a lie, but she had her own interest in the stones and was manipulating the king too. After years of this game, she grew tired and made her final move. She stole the stone the Drutes king was guarding and fled somewhere he couldn’t find her. But your mother’s squadron was truly loyal to Drutes and returned to Interion, now with objectives and orders the red king had given them.”

“In the years she spent away, I thought she was running from me. But in truth, she was running from the king of Drutes and keeping you safe. Ravena hid in the city she was building because that was her grand plan—the reason for all the disappearances during expeditions. She was secretly taking descendants there while pretending to fight for Interion. Your mother's city grew the whole time. It became impenetrable because she trained all the inhabitants with the same discipline the Night Squadron had received. The city was protected by magical barriers and camouflaged in territory no one wanted to set foot in.”

“That must be where all the refugees I send northwest end up. The city where I was born. Ravena's nation,” the general surmised, absorbing all the information that had always been kept from him.

“Yes, the place where our people thrive,” Serguei said anxiously. “Two years later, when you were weaned, your mother decided it was time to bring all our people into her city. She came back to tell me and to find the stone the red king had spoken of. But when she arrived in the city, her old squadron carried out the plan the Drutes king had devised to capture her. He was furious—he wanted her dead and the stone back. From here, you know what happened: the squadron killed Elaizer and made it look like Ravena did it. I killed your mother, but I couldn't follow her into death, because her last request was that I take care of you. She loved you so much that she placed that request in my mind, knowing I would have died that night too. So I left Ravena's body in the cavern and went back to tell the king I'd fulfilled the agreement. I needed to get our people out of the city before Elitium started killing indiscriminately. And I did. I saved everyone and stayed within the walls to honor the agreement and serve as the king's Pillar. That night, I returned to the tunnels to retrieve her body and bury it somewhere proper, but something monstrous interrupted me.”

“And this is where the lines of destiny crossed,” Julius said.

“The presence tried to enter my mind, but I repelled it easily. It had Ravena's gift, but it was weak and untrained. The voice I heard asked me about the stones that had been there before, and I asked who it was. I felt it analyzing every part of my gift, probing the depths of who it had found, just as I was doing with it. Then it withdrew and said it wasn't ready for me, but one day it would return to reclaim what I had stolen.”

“And has she ever tried to get the stones back?” Zion asked, curious.

“Not yet,” the psychic whispered, so quietly that the general only heard him because his hearing was sharper than normal.

“And Ravena?”

“When I reached the cavern, there was no body to bury.” He looked at his clasped hands, his heart racing as he relived all the despair he'd felt. “That was when the reality of everything crashed down on me. Ravena's death. Our people in the forests. A blood agreement on my shoulders. Your birth in the midst of all those deaths. I don't remember what I did when I left the tunnels. The only thing driving me forward was vengeance against everyone involved in the anti-Drutes movement. Exterminating them one by one until the walls were safe, until you were safe from them. I must have spent the entire night hunting and only came back to reality when not a single person involved in the deaths of the Drutes children remained. I killed ten thousand five hundred people, and Elitium couldn't punish me because it fell under the Law of Succession. Every one of them had our people's blood on their hands. But after my revenge, he ordered me never to take another life.”

Zion sighed. It was an epic tale, even more tragic than he'd imagined. He had racked his brain trying to understand why Elitium hadn't killed the psychic when he was slaughtering people like insects. Zion had suspected the king spared him because his gift was too powerful to discard, but here was the truth: Serguei couldn't be judged.

Still, that wasn't everything. One more point needed clarification.

“Why did you erase Kyller's memories?”

“That had nothing to do with my ego, Zion.” Serguei slid his hand over his face, trying to compose himself. “I erased them because she wouldn't have been able to recover from that trauma on her own. You would have lost your partner in the first year if she'd lived with those memories. There are wounds that time can never heal, especially wounds that deep. If I hadn't done it, the medical psychic would have. Then we'd have had a problem with the king if he saw Ravena's face in those memories or learned, through the girl's mind, that a general was helping Lagherta rescue and protect Drutes descendants.”

“I saw that future with my own eyes. He's not lying, boy,” the Sonar confirmed.

“What happened to the other leaders? Lea, Amenadiel, Luanda?”

“Killed by Elitium. Every one of them.” Julius stared into Serguei's eyes, and the psychic held his gaze.

“But watching them die wasn't the worst part,” Serguei said, wiping his face to hide the tears. “The worst part was knowing it was my fault. I could have saved everyone if I'd listened to your mother. I was stubborn, bet on a future that didn't exist, and lost everything. There's no place for any of us here.”

Zion couldn't block his power as that second, suffocating gift swelled within him, taking on a life of its own and stretching invisible arms toward Serguei. The psychic's pain hit him full force, making him squeeze his eyes shut to bear the visceral stab in his heart. It was a putrid, hungry pain, cultivated over years, that still carried the taste he remembered from childhood: rotten fruit under the sun.