TVisTV Book 3: Chapter 42 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 42 - The Liberation of Aran

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

- Albert Camus.

The young de Sariens girl went through the hard military lines of the Church, followed by the entranced bishops; she waved goodbye to them at an undeclared border, their expressions worried by their latest political gamble. The military orders were disciplined, their men in armor so polished it positively shone. Head held high, she went through the only slightly friendlier “ducal escort” of her father, really siege lines in all but name. The men here were of a different sort, all veterans of border wars, their equipment bearing the signs of proud use. The scars of predators that had won against fearsome prey. Hard men who were not impressed by a slip of a girl, no matter if she was the daughter of the man who had called them. It would have been a harrowing thing for anyone who was not Seraphina de Sariens. 

Two lifetimes of privilege had shaped her as surely as steel was shaped by fire. Two lifetimes of certainty that the world would bend—if not willingly, then inevitably—to her desires formed an armor no forge could rival. The stares slid off her. The tension did not touch her. In a world thick with magic, overwhelming belief in oneself was a different, quieter sorcery, and often the most dangerous of all.

And where the young girl walked, her escort followed.

Gravens wore his worry openly, as he had for weeks now; it had become his natural expression. Miriam looked as though she stood perpetually on the edge of collapse, fingers tight, breath shallow, eyes darting. Sir Frest, by contrast, appeared preternaturally calm. He had followed Seraphina through stranger corridors and far deadlier storms than this. To him, this was merely another day of service. The rest of the escort barely registered in her awareness. They had done their job, and she was finally here.

It was enough that a serpent lay nestled between her breasts, patient and torpid, and that the promise of a dark hero—one she could summon at any moment—hung lightly from her neck. It was a power of almost apocalyptic scale, a power that could crack kingdoms and rewrite histories. And yet it had to be wielded carefully. The world was forgiving of rulers and tyrants alike, but it was unforgiving of monsters.

Deep within her, beneath the perfect poise and beauty that bent rooms around her presence, lay the true source of her Charisma: Seraphina wanted to be loved. Praised. Worshipped. Adored. Far more than she ever wanted to be feared. That hunger had driven her first to the stage, to become a singer before she ever became the acting president of a chaebol. Love, after all, was a far more stable currency than terror.

Still, there was a freedom in power—true power. In knowing that the lives of those who opposed you could rest entirely in your hand. In another life, when she had been Mirae, she had maintained a “deletion fund”: a discreet account meant to finance the systematic ruin—or quiet erasure—of anyone who made themselves her enemy. She had rarely needed to use it. She learned early that simply having such power was often enough. An invisible sword over the heads of her enemies, or simply those she did not care for much.

Head held high, Seraphina entered her father’s area of influence, where the soldiers were more accustomed to her presence. Her retinue, wisely, remained outside.

The moment she crossed the threshold of the command tent, she was engulfed by a mountain of steel and muscle, smelling of leather, sweat, and war. There was only one man in the world who could claim her so completely, so suddenly.

She was lifted off the ground as if she weighed nothing at all.

Despite herself, Seraphina let out a thoroughly unladylike screech—sharp, startled, and utterly destructive to the serene image she had so carefully cultivated.

“SERA!” Anatoli roared with laughter as he swung her about without the slightest ceremony.

“Sera… my love, shouldn’t you be at school? You are quite a long way from Meridian.”

And voice, well, the voice cut sharper than any blade.

Seraphina froze. She knew that voice. She had feared it since childhood. Well, a part of her had, at least

Her father set her down—not gently this time—as a very real, very primal fear seized her chest.

“Yes, well! That is quite right!” Anatoli began hastily. “We paid a great deal of money for that new wing and the gardens—”

One look from Anaselena silenced him.

Her mother did not look like she belonged in a war camp. She wore a gown of fine make, perfectly fitted, with heavy Kronir fur draped elegantly around her shoulders. Anatoli himself was clad in thick plate armor meant to turn aside the mundane weapons of men. Anaselena wore armor of a different kind—armor that deflected arrows, fate, and futures alike.

Her Sight.

It was both sword and shield, her greatest weapon and her greatest defense. Except, of course, where Seraphina was concerned. Her daughter was her blind spot—the one place even Anaselena’s vaunted power could not see.

“Let me look at you,” Anaselena said, her tone cool, appraising. She studied Seraphina as one might examine a work of art—critical, proprietary, intimate. In the true sense of the word, she had made her. “You’ve grown again. And your hair is finally getting longer.” A pause. “That boyish look never suited you.”

Each word landed with surgical precision, sounding less like observation and more like judgment—less like affection and more like an ongoing critique of Seraphina’s very existence.

And Seraphina, for all her power, stood very still for a long moment. The air itself seemed to hesitate with her. Part of her wanted to lash out, to snap back, to rail against the comment—the small, petty strike at her hair of all things. It was an insult disguised as intimacy, a reminder of control wrapped in familiarity.

The worst part was that, on some quiet, treacherous level, she agreed with her mother. She did look better with longer hair. The knowledge sat bitterly in her chest. What she truly despised was not the truth of it, but the way it had been brought up at all—sharpened, polished, and used against her like a blade pressed gently to the throat.

Somehow, she found the strength to speak before that blade cut deeper. “I came because Father has been causing a great deal of trouble… I understand that you may be disappointed, but this is—”

“Disappointed is not the half of it,” Anaselena cut in smoothly, her glare sharp enough to wilt flowers and men alike. “Not half by far. This is not a matter of young love or teenage whimsy. A promise was made. A promise was broken.” Her voice hardened. “To the de Sariens family.”

She leaned forward then, close enough that Seraphina could smell her perfume, cupping her daughter’s cheeks with possessive familiarity. “Your father bled and fought to place his cousin upon that throne. He shed blood, broke men, and burned bridges. And this,” she continued as her fingers tightened slightly, “is the reward. An insult. And would you believe it, Sera, this is not just about you.”

“Mother! You cannot seriously be thinking of making war with the King!” Seraphina burst out. “That’s treason! and Velens, I am not even sure I want him in any way!”

The words rang hollow even as she spoke them. They sounded small, petulant, hopelessly outmatched by the scale of what loomed before her. “It could tear the Kingdom apart…”

Her dreams turned to ash in her mouth. The carefully curated world she had tried to preserve—clean, orderly, fixable—collapsed inward, revealing something ugly and brutal beneath. A gritty, grinding war. A grimdark spiral she had wanted to avoid at all costs. The ultimate reward was an ultimate fantasy. And, she had already waded through enough filth and blood to last several lifetimes. The sewers of Meridian were quite enough, thank you very much, a part of her mind stated.

“And we are not here just for Velens,” Anaselena said lightly, straightening Seraphina’s dress as if smoothing wrinkles in cloth could do the same for destiny. Her gaze swept over her daughter with cool appraisal, tinged with the unsettling intensity of someone who lived half a step ahead of the present. There was something unmoored in her eyes, she had the look of someone who had already walked paths yet to be taken.

“Well,” Seraphina muttered, “I gathered you were not here for a picnic.”

She immediately regretted it. She had forgotten, just for a heartbeat, that she was standing before a greater predator. It was defiance. And defiance was something Anaselena tolerated only as long as it amused her.

Cold crept over her mother’s face, frost edged with venom. “As I was saying, little Sera, there is more to this than your investigation. The King, if our contacts in the city speak truly, has become possessed of a very particular madness.”

“Madness?” Seraphina echoed, genuine confusion breaking through her composure. “What are you talking about?”

“The King, in his infinite wisdom,” Anaselena replied flatly, “has declared a witch hunt. A ban. A censure upon those who wield what the uneducated insist on calling magic.” Each word landed with deliberate weight. “Even now, the smoke of the pyres stains the skies of Aran.”

No. No, this was far too soon.

Seraphina reached instinctively for a chair that wasn’t there, the shock briefly stripping her of coordination as well as thought. The King’s Madness. An event that was never meant to happen yet. Not for years. She had seen it in the story. Planned around it. Accounted for it.

She had pushed too hard. Too early.

Now the world—no, Fate itself—was pushing back, correcting course with brutal indifference. Not in the way she had predicted. Not cleanly. Not safely.

The Butterfly Effect was working overtime, overcorrecting with spiteful precision. When the world revolved around you, such thoughts were almost inevitable.

Staggering back, she dimly noticed the look her mother gave her, a look that was all knowing, sharp, steeped in cursed mystery. As if Anaselena had been waiting for this exact reaction. As if she had known all along.

“But how… those who can touch Mana, those on the Path—they wouldn’t endure this quietly,” Seraphina said at last, her voice hollow and distant. “And why?”

She already knew the answer. Still, she needed to say it aloud. Needed something solid to anchor her spiraling thoughts.

“They aren’t,” Anaselena said. “They resist. The King is not so foolish as to move against all who wield Mana—that would be suicide. No, there was an attempt on his life. An assassination. He is using it as pretext to strike at those who command the higher forms—the Greater Arts. The rest…” Her lips curled faintly. “Fuel for the flames. Sacrifices to bind the populace to him through fear. A political purge, draped in the holy trappings of a crusade. He is targeting the lowest hanging fruit.”

No. It was worse than that. Madness layered atop the rot of a dying king, paranoia feeding on decay.

In the original story, the heroine had resolved this cleanly—Divine magic, a cured King, a crown indebted, and the marriage to Velens neatly justified along the main route.

But there was no heroine now. There was only the villainess. Only Seraphina de Sariens—and she had no intention, even if she could, of healing a mad king.

She exhaled slowly, a sigh far too heavy for someone of her apparent years. “What is it we must do, Mother?”

“What we must do,” Anaselena said softly, satisfaction threading her voice, “is resolve this problem. Certain… farsighted individuals have already laid groundwork. Your arrival now, while not strictly necessary, adds a certain legitimacy.” Her eyes gleamed. “We would not merely be liberating a city. We would be liberating it for a reason.”

“But the Church…” Seraphina began.

“Yes, my darling,” Anatoli interjected calmly, his face worried at the grave sin of interrupting his wife. “Their forces nearly rival my own. That is precisely why I have not ordered a costly assault.”

Anaselena smiled then, slow and wicked. “Ah, yes. The Church. And yet, my dear daughter… I believe you possess something uniquely suited to dealing with them. Something rather inconvenient for their faith. Don’t you?”

Seraphina swallowed. She knew. The witch Anaselena knew. And her mother knew that she knew. And that knowledge sent a cold shiver crawling down her spine.