Chapter 21 – Banquet of Masks
Scene One: The Banquet Begins
The Grand Banquet Hall of Aflety Academy shimmered with enchantments. Floating crystals cast golden light, illusionary music hummed from invisible harps, and long tables bore delicacies from all across the Feral Lands—honeyed griffin meat, stormfruit nectar, magma-baked bread from the dwarves.
Tonight was no ordinary feast.
It was the Banquet of Masks, a ceremonial welcome to the foreign academies and their royal patrons.
Every guest wore a mask—some simple, others layered with ancient symbolism.
Evan entered late, his mask a smooth obsidian plate with silver claw marks carved across the eye.
A hush fell.
All eyes turned.
The boy who broke the Realm. The one whispered to be the heir to a divine path.
Scene Two: Foreign Thrones and Distant Fangs
Evan's gaze swept the hall. Nobles, scholars, beast-bonded lords. And then—he saw them.
Prince Kaelion of the Drakenblood, from the eastern islands. Hair like coiled embers. His beast, a Wyrm King, curled silently beside his throne.
Princess Maerys of the Frostveil Court, draped in moon-pale silks, her gaze colder than her Ice Phoenix's wings.
And Crown Heir Sirus Valen of the Imperial West, whose beast was said to walk between dreams and death itself.
Each watched Evan with veiled interest—and thinly concealed hostility.
They weren't just nobles. They were candidates. For something grander.
Lilith stood beside Evan, her mask resembling a crimson rose in bloom. "These aren't just students. They're imperial successors. This banquet… is a political stage."
Scene Three: The Assassin's Approach
Halfway through the feast, the music changed—slower, darker.
A dance began.
Masked students twirled beneath enchanted light. Evan stood near the obsidian fountain, drinking stormfruit wine, his senses sharpened by Nex's whisper in the back of his mind.
"Danger. Close."
A girl approached. Tall, in silver. Her mask was a blank mirror.
"Evan Rochel," she whispered, as they began to dance. "Tell me. Do you believe in fate?"
"No," he replied. "But I believe in danger hiding behind beauty."
She smiled.
And then her blade was at his ribs—disguised as part of her dress. Her beast mark flared—a Night Cicada, famed for silent kills and poison breath.
But Evan had already moved.
With a swirl of black mist and wind, Nex's aura surged through him—a partial synchronization.
His hand blocked the blade, poison searing his skin.
He grinned behind the mask.
"Wrong dance partner."
Scene Four: Clash in the Shadows
The duel was silent.
Hidden.
Each step of the dance matched a blow. Her beast appeared behind her, wings invisible to most. Evan's eyes, awakened by Caelith's elixir, saw everything.
One mistake.
One slip.
He caught her wrist, pressed his palm to her neck, and whispered:
"Who sent you?"
She smiled as blood leaked from her lip. "The Emperor already knows. But he still sent you, didn't he?"
A flash of dark light—and she vanished.
Not teleported.
Reclaimed by something else.
Scene Five: The Emperor's Truth
After the banquet, a message awaited Evan. A third letter.
This one was sealed in gold, with the crest of the Imperial Beast Guard.
Inside:
"The Convergence has begun. What you faced was a test—not by me, but by the one who opposes all tamers of the old gods."
"You are not my heir because of your family or your beast."
"You are my heir because the Cocoon chose you."
"The Path ahead leads not to glory—but to war."
"Prepare. The next assassin won't dance."
—Emperor Vaelstryx
Evan folded the letter slowly. Lilith and Rena waited outside.
He stepped into the moonlight.
His beast stirred beside him.
And somewhere far to the north, in the ruined lands where the God Beast Sepntis was once sealed—cracks began to form.
_____
Scene One: Midnight Visitor
The wind was sharp that night. The celebration had faded into whispers and candle smoke. Evan sat on the edge of the academy's outer courtyard, Nex's presence quiet but pulsing like a drumbeat in his soul.
Then—a flicker of movement.
Someone stepped out of the shadows. Not sneaking. Walking with the confidence of royalty.
It was Prince Kaelion.
No guards. No beast.
Just him.
"Quite the dance you performed," Kaelion said, eyes glinting like magma behind his draconic gold-trimmed mask.
Evan didn't rise. "And yet you were content to watch."
"I wanted to see if the rumors were true." The prince removed his mask. "That the Basilisk chose a human with eyes like storm glass."
Evan met his gaze. "And what do you think?"
Kaelion smirked. "I think you've been chosen by more than your beast. I think… the Cocoon isn't done with you yet."
Before Evan could respond, Kaelion tossed him a medallion—an obsidian coin etched with a draconic eye and three claw marks.
"When the Drakenblood move, you'll know which side to stand on."
And then he vanished, disappearing into the wind.
Scene Two: Forbidden Lesson
That same night, Caelith met Evan again in the stone chamber below Aflety.
This time, the Professor's expression was grim.
"What I'm about to show you is forbidden in all known nations," he said. "It can kill weaker tamers… and beasts who aren't ready."
Evan nodded. "Show me."
Caelith raised his hand. Runes formed in a circle—pulsing with blood-red light and green-gold script.
"This is called Beast Memory Sync. It lets you tap into your beast's ancestral instincts—memories passed down from ancient cores. Emotions, battle techniques, soul patterns."
Evan sat in the center of the circle. Nex's spirit curled behind him.
The ritual began.
And suddenly—
He was falling.
Scene Three: Memories of a Monster
He stood in a different world.
Burning skies.
Mountains of ash.
And before him—a colossal Basilisk, hundreds of meters long, coiled around a dying world.
It hissed.
A voice entered Evan's mind—ancient, broken, unfiltered.
"You are not the first. But you may be the last. We were gods once. Then hunted. Then sealed."
Evan stepped forward. "Why me?"
"Because your soul remembered the pain."
The beast turned its eye on him. And Evan felt it:
The memory of death. Of betrayal. Of the gods who feared the bond between humans and beasts.
Then it showed him an image—
A child born beneath two moons, wrapped in divine flame, holding a cracked egg of shadows.
Evan recognized the child.
It was him.
And then he woke.
Scene Four: The Vault Message
Rena burst into Evan's room the next morning.
"They found something in the Academy Vault."
They hurried to the Headmaster's private chamber, where ancient relics and beast contracts were sealed behind enchanted glass.
Lilith, Caelith, and a few elite professors were already there.
Floating in the center of the room was a fragment of an old contract scroll—half-burned, reeking of void magic.
One word pulsed on it, glowing black:
"RELEASE."
Beneath it, a symbol that chilled Evan to the core—the Cocoon Sigil. But corrupted. Cracked down the middle.
Caelith stepped forward, face pale.
"This… wasn't supposed to exist. It's a command. A trigger."
"A release order?" Evan asked.
Caelith nodded.
"Someone is trying to awaken a sealed God Beast. One that should never open its eyes again."
Scene Five: From Masks to War
That night, Evan sat beneath Aflety's crystal dome, watching stars that no longer felt distant.
Lilith sat beside him.
"We're not students anymore, are we?" she whispered.
"No," Evan said quietly. "We're pieces in a game started by monsters. And the board is breaking."
Nex coiled in spirit form above them, eyes glowing faintly.
Far beyond Aflety, in the northern ruins, the seal that held Sepntis the Beast God cracked once more.
And this time…
Something responded.
[End of Chapter 21]