CAIUS: Crown of Threads and Shadows

As their consciousnesses snapped back into the physical training chamber, Old Bones carefully slipped the black spatial ring onto his finger, gazing down at it like a child holding a rare gem.

Caius folded his arms, an amused smirk lingering on his lips. ”Send word for the Patriarch and Sereth. Have them report to the training chamber immediately.”

Old Bones blinked, looking up from his ring. ”The Patriarch and Lord Sereth, my lord?”

”I have two more rings prepared for them,” Caius said smoothly. ”Though they will only be receiving one Vel’xul Stalker each.”

Old Bones’ chest puffed out instantly. A smug, wide grin broke across his dark, wrinkled face. ”Only one?”

”Only one,” Caius confirmed with a quiet chuckle. ”You are the Steward of the castle, Old Bones. Your burden, and your authority, is higher.”

Without missing a beat, the old dark elf bowed hastily and vanished into the shadows, practically gliding out of the chamber to deliver the summons.

A short time later, the heavy basalt doors of the training arena swung open. Patriarch Vane and his son, Commander Sereth, strode inside, their expressions a mix of curiosity and solemn respect. As the premier leaders of the dark elf clan, father and son were accustomed to grave matters, but the sudden summons to Caius’s private training grounds kept them on high alert.

”My Lord,” Patriarch Vane said, bowing deeply alongside Sereth. ”You called for us?”

”I did,” Caius replied flatly. He tossed two black spatial bands through the air. Vane and Sereth caught them with practiced ease, examining the intricate spatial runework.

”Bond those rings with a drop of your blood.”

Exchanging a quick glance, father and son sliced their thumbs, smearing crimson across the bands. The spatial metal flared violet, linking directly to their aura.

Caius didn’t waste time with explanations. Raising his gauntleted hand, he snapped his fingers.

Space groaned violently. Two pitch-black spatial rifts tore open in the middle of the arena, spilling a freezing, predatory abyssal aura across the floor. Out stepped two Vel’xul Stalkers, sleek, four-eyed, faceless nightmares with bladed obsidian dreadlocks and double-edged spatial tails dripping with shadow-venom.

The reaction was instantaneous.

Patriarch Vane’s jaw dropped, his mana erupting instinctively in a defensive aura as he shifted protectively in front of his son, recoiling two full steps. Sereth’s hand flew directly to his sword hilt, his eyes widening in unadulterated horror as a cold sweat broke out across his forehead.

”By the Ancestors!” Sereth gasped, his breath hitching as the four vertical eye slits of the Stalker locked onto him. ”My Lord, what... what blasphemous horror is this?!”

”Wait! Stand back, Sereth!” Vane shouted, his voice cracking slightly as he braced to defend them both. ”Where did such a beast come from?!”

Caius stood back, leaning casually against a stone pillar, a low chuckle escaping his chest. He didn’t say a word. Instead, he gave a subtle nod toward Old Bones, who was standing to the side with his hands tucked neatly into his sleeves, practically bursting with self-importance.

Stolen story; please report.

Old Bones stepped forward, clearing his throat with theatrical grandeur.

”Calm yourselves, calm yourselves! You embarrass the clan with such undignified squawking,” Old Bones chided, his voice laced with the heavy, condescending authority of a veteran scholar lecturing toddlers.

Sereth glared at him while keeping his eyes glued to the monster. ”Old Bones! Are you insane?! Look at that thing!”

”I am looking at it, Sereth, and it is merely a refined masterpiece,” Old Bones boasted, walking right up to one of the terrifying abyssal stalkers and casually patting its arm, a move that made Sereth’s heart leap into his throat. ”What you see before you is an Abyssal Stalker from the deepest dark rifts! Our Lord personally hunted them, dissolved their wild animalistic skeletons, and re-architected their very species from the bone up!”

Old Bones began pacing back and forth in front of the two frozen dark elf leaders, waving his hands dramatically as he delivered Caius’s technical breakdown with his own colorful flair.

”He purged their primitive beast minds and replaced their biology with custom humanoid meridians! He wove Obsidian Lattice into their muscles, forged 360-degree combat eye matrices into faceless obsidian armor, and embedded artificial essence beads directly into their crown points!” Old Bones raised his hand, proudly showing off his own ring. ”They are tethered directly to the spatial rings in your hands! Inside is an artificial sun array feeding on ambient mana, serving as a continuous charging cradle and a private mental training domain!”

Vane and Sereth stood paralyzed, their mouths hanging open as they processed the absolute madness of what they were hearing.

”He... he re-engineered an abyssal predator?” Vane whispered in utter disbelief, looking toward his son.

Old Bones smirked, puffing his chest out to its absolute limit. ”Indeed. A singular puppet for each of you to command in times of dire need. Naturally, as the Steward of the Castle and our Lord’s primary shadow, I was entrusted with two.”

Sereth looked from the terrifying Stalker bowing before him to the smug old dark elf, and then dropped his gaze to the black metal band in his palm. Before he could speak, Old Bones leaned in toward him, dropping his theatrical cadence for a moment as his eyes glinted with a mischievous, nostalgic light.

”Commander Sereth,” Old Bones whispered softly, tapping the young commander on the shoulder. ”Think back. Do you remember when you and our Lord fled from the castle back then? When the two of you were forced to trek through the outer edges of the Abyss?”

Sereth’s brow furrowed, his body still tense as he kept his hand white-knuckled on his sword hilt. ”Of course I remember. It was a nightmare.”

”Do you remember the four-eyed beast?” Old Bones asked, gesturing with a long, dark finger toward the silent Vel’xul Stalker bowing before Sereth. ”The one that stalked you and Lord Caius through the freezing dark for days? The shadow predator you couldn’t track, that hunted your steps in the pitch black?”

Sereth froze. His gaze snapped from Old Bones back to the four vertical eye slits burning in the faceless obsidian mask before him. The blood drained from his face until his dark skin turned a sickly ash gray.

The memories came rushing back, the sleepless nights during their desperate flight, the suffocating paranoia, the terrifying shadow-stalker that had hounded him and Caius as they fought just to survive the dark rifts. That four-eyed monster had been an apex nightmare of the Abyss, an untouchable demon that had treated them like prey.

”No...” Sereth breathed, his voice barely a whisper as horror washed over him. ”It... it can’t be...”

”Oh, it is,” Old Bones smirked, crossing his arms and puffing out his chest. ”This is that exact same species of monster. Except while it hunted you and our Lord years ago, Lord Caius went back into its domain, hunted them down, tore out their skeletons, and put them on a leash for us!”

Sereth’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. He stared at Caius with wide, uncomprehending eyes, a cold sweat drenching his collar. To flee from a nightmare alongside his master was one thing. To realize that Caius had later returned to that same hellish domain, systematically slaughtered those apex predators, re-engineered their species, and handed one over as a pet left Sereth utterly speechless.

”My Lord...” Sereth managed to croak out, looking at the bowing abyssal predator, then at the black ring in his palm, and finally at Caius. ”You... you domesticated the nightmare that hunted us...”

Watching the old dark elf lecture the patriarch and his son with smug flair while Sereth stood paralyzed in awestruck terror, Caius finally broke into a loud, genuine laugh that echoed off the basalt walls of the training chamber.