Chapter 34: The Red Duke’s Arrival
Like an automatic reflex, as soon as Leo announced the Duke’s entrance both Ashborn and Avin snapped to their feet.
"What the hell?"
Avin thought, fingers tingling with the sudden shock of motion. He hadn’t meant to stand — his body had obeyed an old, carved-in command that detonated whenever the Duke’s name filled the room. The action felt like a fuse in his skull lighting without permission.
Heavy footsteps answered Leo’s words from the corridor. The air thickened. Avin’s knees betrayed him with tiny, electric tremors—so small no one else would notice, but enough to make the world feel unstable under his feet.
The figure who entered seemed to carry silence with him. Taller than anyone Avin had seen in this life, the man moved with slow, measured steps.
Red hair caught the light like embers; broad shoulders filled the doorway. His armor was a slab of red lacquer, glossy as dried blood, etched with flowing inscriptions that glittered faintly.
A diamond-cut gem sat in the center of his breastplate, catching the chandelier’s light and throwing it back in hard, cold shards.
Each measured step tightened the room. Conversation died mid-thought; spoons hovered. The Duke did not hurry.
He approached the table as if the floor itself had been laid down for him to cross. When he reached the head, Ashborn and Avin bowed together, a synchronous nod carved out of obedience.
He pulled out the largest chair, the one at the far end, and sat. The motion was simple—no triumph in it—but the weight of his presence was a thing that wanted to be worshiped. Then, without ceremony, he said:
"At ease."
The pressure that had sat on Avin’s chest eased like a window opening. He exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and suddenly knew again that he had no clue who this man was. Avin dug through memory, feeling for a name, a story, a shared glance from the past—nothing. Only an uncanny note of unfamiliarity hummed in his veins.
Ashborn took his seat beside the Duke. His calm acted as a proxy for Avin—if Ashborn relaxed, Avin could pretend the ground was steady. Ashborn’s movement was all the assurance Avin needed to let a small part of his shoulders unclench.
They began to eat. Avin pushed food around his plate, tasting nothing but anxiety.
"This is as bland as last time... wonder if it’s just me," he thought, trying to smother his own nerves with petty complaints.
Then, like a fingernail across a glass, an instinct pricked at him. Something urgent. A pressure at the base of his skull. He lifted his eyes—and met the Duke’s.
The red eyes were steady and sharp. Avin stumbled back inside himself. The Duke did not blink. He only looked, and Avin felt as though his secrets were threads the man could pluck one by one.
Has he figured out who I am? Some people already have... he’s the strongest Chrono, right? So surely— The thought collapsed under the Duke’s throat-clearing.
"The Abyss," the Duke said, voice folding through the hall like a knife. "Have you learned your place yet?"
Panic threaded up Avin’s spine. Tone mattered—too light, too strict, too amused—and he could not read the scale. "Um... yeah. It didn’t go that well," he stammered.
Ashborn’s chuckle broke the tension: light and surprised. "Didn’t go that well?" he repeated, then a sharper breath of laughter. "He almost got killed by an abyss scorpion."
Avin’s eyes darted to Ashborn, narrow and suspicious. Then, impossibly, a small, almost private chuckle skipped across the Duke’s stern face. Avin’s brain misfired. He laughs? The idea was foreign—this was no brittle, courtly tick but a real, softened sound.
"I told you you were not ready," the Duke said, fingers steepled around his cup. "It’s all right, however. You will learn more at the academy."
"Ah... yes," Avin mumbled, still fuzzy on what this Academy meant in practice. The name felt like a promise and a threat both.
Silence folded back over the hall. Then, quietly, the Duke said, "I heard what happened to Gloria and Miranda."
Avin’s stomach dropped. The man kept his head bowed, the weight of grief or distance cutting a shadow across his features. "I would have stopped it if I had known," the Duke added almost to himself.
"Right," Avin breathed. Sadness bled into him, real and sticky. For a moment he felt like a child again—small, ashamed, unable to fix the damage his single word had done.
But the Duke’s expression shifted like a weather change. The sadness was stripped away as though the sun had been drawn back in. Warmth rearranged his features into a steady, soldierly smile.
"Do not dwell on what is past," the Duke said, voice gentle as command. "Finish your food—Ashborn and I have matters to discuss." His gaze swept the table, then landed with an almost playful, paternal edge at Avin’s plate. "Go get ready for your departure tomorrow."
Avin blinked. "Tomorrow?" The word slipped out before he fully understood the shape of it.
He rose to leave, breath hitching in the hollow of his ribs, but the meaning hit him only once he was standing in the doorway. He turned; panic unspooled like a live wire.
Tomorrow? Academy? Leave? Thoughts scrambled. He fled the dining hall with his heart hammering, the Duke’s words pounding behind his ears.
In his room he planted himself on the bed and tried to think straight. The Academy. Departure. Preparations. The list looped in his head like a broken gear.
"There has to be something I have to do to prepare..." he muttered. His foot tapped an impatient rhythm on the floorboards. Plan after useless plan flicked and died.
There would be fighting, he knew that. He would have to stand and move and be judged. His fingers fumbled for the one thing that felt like an anchor—himself finding power through practice.
"Ah... the weapon, power-up thing," he said aloud, thinking of the rituals and strange techniques he’d half-remembered. If there was anything that could give him a real edge, it was that.
He pushed off the bed with a clumsy, optimistic hop. "Off to the arena, I guess."
He left his room with the awkward, hopeful stride of someone trying not to drown in the next day’s unknown.