FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 206: Chapter 206: Vulture’s Sanctum & Dark Conspiracy

Deep beneath the vibrant, emerald life of the upper city, the Great Heartwood had its scars. Here, in the “Deep Roots,” the air was stagnant and cold, smelling of ancient decay, damp earth, and the acrid, stale scent of Zharun incense…something that can make one forget all their worries and enter a state of absolute bliss.

This was a place for the things the Veynar preferred to forget…. rotting wood, discarded history, and people who had given up on themselves and now thrived in the dark.

Elder Thorne had managed to slip out during the chaos of the crowd’s entry. He was currently in a private sanctuary, a room hollowed out of a massive oak that the Heartwood had long ago abandoned and allowed to rot, a place where the light of the “Sun” couldn’t reach. The walls here were weeping with black fungus, and the only light came from a single, sputtering wooden stake.

His Vulture phantom was no longer the arrogant, shrieking predator it had been in the Hall. It had retreated entirely into Thorne’s shadow, manifesting only as a faint, shivering outline of translucent feathers. The phantom had felt the “White Sun” more acutely than Thorne had; it had felt the absolute suppression of the sun-core higher than S tier’s aura, and it was currently paralyzed by a primal, spiritual fear.

Thorne was not shivering, but his face was ashen, the hooked nose casting a skeletal shadow against the wall. He stared at a map of the Orrath Forest, his fingers twitching over the territories already marked as “Zharun Annex.”

The door to the sanctum slammed open, rattling the rotting timber.

Korash stumbled in, looking like a ghost of the arrogant warrior he had been that morning. His soot-smeared face was twisted into a mask of pure, murderous envy. His Boar phantom was gone, suppressed back into his core, leaving him looking smaller, weaker, and pathetically weak.

“We have to kill him,” Korash hissed, his voice cracking with the strain of his rage. “Father, did you hear them? They’re singing for him in the plaza! They’re calling him the Savior! Even though he is nothing but a freak, a cheating freak!’

Thorne didn’t look up. “Sit down, Korash.”

“Did you see them?” Korash didn’t seem to have heard and hissed, his voice cracking. “They knelt. Even the Warchief. They knelt to a stranger. To a boy who has been here for three days!”

He stopped and slammed his fist into the wooden wall, the impact cracking the grain. “I’ve trained for ten years, Father! I’ve bled for this tribe! I awakened in eight hours… a genius! And he… he does it in five minutes? He breaks the Sun-Stone?”

“Silence, Korash,” Thorne spoke louder this time.

The Elder was sitting at a stone table, his hands finally still, though his face remained ashen. He was staring at a small, semi-translucent vial on the table. Inside, a thick, violet-black liquid swirled, looking like a trapped storm of shadow.

“His power is… problematic,” Thorne admitted, his voice a low, toxic rasp. “If he survives the Rite of the First Soul, Veylara will have the mandate she needs to execute us both. She will call for a ’cleansing’ of the Council to prepare for next expedition. The Zharun alliance will die, and the Veynar will march to their own extinction under a boy who doesn’t even know how to hold a spear.”

Thorne leaned forward, the Vulture phantom on his shoulder appearing for a brief, flickering second, its spectral eyes reflecting the dark vial.

Thorne finally looked up. His eyes were cold, calculating, and entirely devoid of the fear his son was radiating. “You think I don’t know the stakes? I promised the Zharun Chief that the Heartwood would be his by the next full moon. I told him the Veynar were a broken beast waiting for a new master. And now, this… this ’Divine’ boy has given the beast a new set of teeth.”

“So, what should we do? Do we just watch? No, absolutely not!” Korash hissed. “Otherwise, he’ll take everything! Even Kira. And without getting Kira. I won’t be able to become the next Chief.”

“Patience, my son,” Thorne said, his voice a cold, dry rustle. As he leaned forward, the light reflecting in his pupils like two tiny, dying stars. “Strength is not just about the size of the fire, Korash. It is about the control of the flame. That boy is a wild star. He has the core, yes, but he has no anchor. No beast soul to channel that energy.”

“We cannot let him bind a soul,” Thorne said. “A Sun-Core of that density needs an anchor. Without a soul-spirit to channel that essence, his core will eventually burn his physical body to ash. It’s like putting a lightning bolt in a wooden box. The Rite is his only way to stabilize.”

“That’s why he needs the Rite,” Korash said, his eyes narrowing as the gears began to turn.

“Exactly, he cannot be allowed to pass the Rite,” Thorne hissed, his voice a low, toxic rasp. “If he binds a high-tier spirit, Veylara will never agree to the merger. The Zharun Chief, Vane, is a man of limited patience. He sent the Marauders to soften the Veynar because I promised him the Heartwood would be his by the next full moon.

If this ’Divine One’ stabilizes the tribe’s spirit, Veylara will find her spine again, the Zharun Chief will have my head for failing to deliver the Heartwood.”

“Then we kill him tonight,” Korash said, his hand reaching for the bone-knife at his belt, his eyes bloodshot with hate.

“No,” Thorne said, his voice dropping into a register so low it was barely a vibration in the stagnant air of the room. His eyes narrowed, the pupils constricting until they were nothing but sharp, black needles. “You absolutely can’t do that.”

Korash froze, his hand still white-knuckled around the hilt of his bone-blade. “But Father, the longer he breathes, the more they worship him! Didn’t you say we need to get rid of him before the ritual?”

“Let them worship,” Thorne hissed, leaning across the stone table until his hooked nose was inches from his son’s face. “Everyone’s eyes are on us right now. Do you think everyone in the tribe is a fool? Others may be the fool, but not the veylara. She seems to have sensed something.” Thorne warned, his voice taking on a tone of genuine, deep-seated dread. “If that boy so much as chokes on a star-fruit tonight, Veylara will have our heads on the ritual poles before the sun even thinks about rising. She doesn’t even need proof, she only needs a reason.”

Korash froze. He looked at his father, his breath hitching. In his mind, Thorne had always been a titan… fearless, arrogant, the man who dared to question the Warchief openly in the Council and mock her traditions. He had spent his whole life watching his father manipulate the Elders like puppets.

But seeing him now, with his hands trembling slightly and his eyes darting toward the shadows, that image of the “fearless Elder” shattered. All of his father’s bravado suddenly seemed like a hoax, a mask worn to hide a man who was utterly terrified of the woman sitting on the Heartwood throne.