Reincarnated as an Elf Prince-Chapter 478: Veyrath (4)

Ashwing frowned, folding his wings tighter. "Maybe it’s just the world’s heartbeat or whatever. Doesn’t mean it’s eating people."

Lindarion didn’t respond immediately. His hand brushed against the root beneath him—it pulsed faintly in response, almost like acknowledgment. Not malevolent, but aware. Watching.

He spoke finally, voice low. "Every power asks for something in return. That’s the way of the world."

Ashwing huffed. "You’re starting to sound like the old snake."

A faint smile tugged at Lindarion’s lips. "Maybe he wasn’t as wrong as we wanted him to be."

He looked down at his hand again. The faint golden light beneath his skin pulsed once, steady, deliberate. Then, very briefly, it flickered crimson.

[Alert: Unknown energy fluctuation.]

[Trace signature: Veyrath Fragment Response—active.]

[Stabilizing...]

Lindarion froze. "...No."

Ashwing straightened immediately. "What? What’s wrong?"

He didn’t answer. His mind flooded with something not his own—a memory, sharp and luminous. A serpent’s shadow coiling through a storm of flame. A voice whispering not in sound but in concepts, ancient and clear:

"You cannot sever roots that lie beneath your own soul."

Lindarion gasped quietly and pressed a hand to his chest. The vision vanished as quickly as it had come.

The system beeped once, flat and cold.

[Fragment neutralized.]

[Integration incomplete.]

Ashwing’s voice was tight. "Okay, you’re definitely not fine."

Lindarion straightened slowly, forcing his breath to even out. "I’m fine. It’s just... residue."

"Residue that almost made your veins light up like a forge," Ashwing muttered. "You sure you’re not turning into a tree or something?"

The elf glanced toward the southern horizon again. "If I am, I’ll make sure to fall toward Dythrael first."

Ashwing groaned. "Not funny."

Lindarion’s tone softened faintly. "Didn’t say it was."

They fell into silence again as twilight settled. The first stars began to appear through the canopy, silver and distant. Lindarion sat motionless, his eyes half-closed. The quiet hum of his mana was steady again, but his thoughts were not.

Veyrath’s words lingered like an echo that wouldn’t fade.

The Tree feeds.

Roots feed as much as they bind.

And somewhere deep within, beneath the golden calm of his core, he could still feel the faintest trace of that foreign pulse, divine, serpentine, waiting.

He didn’t tell Ashwing that part.

Not yet.

The night came quietly. Too quietly.

Lindarion hadn’t slept. He sat with his back to a massive root, his sword driven point-first into the earth beside him. The forest murmured in whispers, crickets, the rustle of leaves, the far hum of mana seeping through the trees, but beneath it all was another sound, something only he could hear.

A pulse. Slow. Rhythmic. Like a second heartbeat echoing his own.

[Alert: Foreign resonance stable.]

[Energy Source: Divine Fragment—Veyrath.]

[Status: Dormant.]

[Suggested action: Observation.]

He stared at the hovering text, the faint red lines flickering across his vision. Dormant didn’t mean gone. It meant waiting.

Ashwing was asleep, half-curled beside the blade, wings twitching faintly in dream. Lindarion’s gaze softened briefly at the sight, but his focus returned to his hand, to the faint shimmer that still lingered beneath his skin.

He raised it, and the air around his palm shifted, gold light blooming like embers, then turning faintly iridescent. Shadows coiled through it, not dark but alive, like tendrils of smoke suspended in water.

And then came the whisper.

"You still doubt it."

The voice wasn’t heard, it was felt. Pressed into the marrow of his bones. Smooth, ageless, unmistakable.

Lindarion didn’t look up. "You’re inside my mind now."

"Not by choice. You accepted a fragment of me, even unknowingly. And so... until it fades, we are bound."

The voice of Veyrath. Calm. Patient. The tone of someone infinitely certain.

Lindarion closed his hand into a fist. "Then fade."

"If it were so simple, I would have centuries ago," the voice replied, a faint trace of amusement threading through. "No, little heir. Fragments are not curses—they are reflections. You absorbed a piece of what I am. And now it seeks... to understand you."

He said nothing. The forest stirred faintly, a ripple of wind running through the leaves.

"You fear what power will make of you," Veyrath continued. "But fear is the first step to mastery. It means you see the edges of your own strength. The gods you oppose once lost that sight. That is why they fell."

Lindarion frowned, finally speaking aloud. "And what are you? Another fallen god pretending to be a teacher?"

"No," the serpent’s voice hissed softly, almost mournfully. "I am what remains when gods learn to regret."

The words pressed into him, heavy with something ancient, an emotion so deep it almost wasn’t one. Regret that had turned to wisdom.

Lindarion felt it, the sincerity. The danger of believing it. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"Why are you showing me this?" he asked quietly.

The world shifted.

The forest fell away.

In its place: a vast desert of glass. The sky above burned in twilight red, and the horizon shimmered with endless ruins half-buried in sand. Giant serpentine skeletons wound through the dunes, their bones carved with runes too ancient for meaning.

Lindarion spun in place, gripping his sword. "An illusion."

"A memory," Veyrath corrected, voice now echoing across the wasteland. "This was my world. Once. Before it was consumed."

Lindarion’s system flared in warning.

[Mana field distortion detected.]

[Reality layer: unstable.]

[Source: Veyrath’s Domain projection.]

He could feel the pressure of divine essence pressing against him again, though not hostile—more... testing. Probing the limits of his endurance.

A shadow rose from the sands—a massive serpent, translucent gold and black, its head crowned in horns like twisted obsidian. It moved slowly, almost gracefully, until its eye—vast, slit-pupiled, filled with molten light—met his.

Lindarion’s breath hitched.

"This," said the voice of Veyrath, "was what I was made to guard. The knowledge of what came before the gods. The breath of those who built the first Trees. The truth they hid from their children."

The serpent’s jaw opened, revealing a hollow void within, filled not with teeth but symbols—living runes swirling in endless recursion.

"Look closely, prince of light. You wish to save your kin from Dythrael’s grasp, but you cannot even see what chain binds you."

The world began to tremble. The air split apart. Images flashed, runes, the Tree’s heart glowing in golden fire, the face of Luneth behind glass, reaching out, then his mother, shrouded in mist, whispering words he could not hear.

Lindarion gritted his teeth. "Enough!"

He raised his sword—and the blade shone brighter than the false sun. Gold and shadow fused until the light tore through the illusion. The desert cracked. The bones shattered. The serpent’s vast form rippled, dissolving into smoke and fire.