Author's note: Dedicated to the one, who weirdly loves ravens, fantasizes about graveyards like the villain in her own mind-blowing book. But also, because this chapter has a brand-new POV character, whom she adores more than anyone.

***

Dylan stood silent and patient, with head bowed and hands clasped behind his back.

On one of the upper storeys of the Council mansion, wherein he had slithered back in—ironically with the use of his Fire-Water Magic, the thing which had him termed as a criminal—he struggled to slow his raging heart, frequently glancing ahead.

After the event down in the council room, where the Eclipses had almost shown a violent side, it was quite obvious what was about to come-

A loud croaky squawk reverberated in the silence of the chamber. Dylan flinched, caught off-guard.

"It went well, I presume," the wizened voice spoke.

Dylan gave a slight shrug, "Almost."

"Hmmm."

The afternoon sun shone behind a large window, where Grandfather stood. Since his face was a silhouette against the brightness, Dylan had to squint his eyes, frequenting glances at the old man, trying to gauge his temperament. Another squawk and Dylan fisted his palms. He never liked that sound.

The ravens got on his nerves.

Grandfather's crisp cloak skimmed after him, the cane in his hand tapping rhythmically against the floor as he moved from the window and made his way towards a rocking armchair near the mantelpiece lined all across the golden walls. He groaned when his hunched back rested against the plush seat and sighed aloud.

The small raven cradled in his arms, croaked again and Grandfather petted its head.

"Grandfather-" Dylan began.

"Dylan, I reckon you must not know what a group of ravens is termed?"

Surprised, he swallowed hard, "N-No, Grandfather."

"Unkindness."

Dylan's face showed his confusion. "That's... an odd term."

"Indeed." Grandfather paused to cough, "Though, ever since I was a boy, I had a very different term for them. Want to know, my dear?"

Dylan nodded.

"Misunderstood."

The silence around the noon-specked chamber was beginning to claw at his skin. "That's an even odder term, Grandfather," Dylan attempted humor, instantly regretting it. Not the damned time.

Grandfather gave a breathy chuckle, somewhere between a scoff and a laugh.

Dylan stood up straighter, wondering whether the bowtie around his neck was aligned properly, whether there was dust on his boots, whether his hair was tucked neatly.

The black raven, with round black eyes, and a thick black beak gave a gentle caw this time and Grandfather brushed two loving knuckles under its chin.

He cleared his catarrh aloud. "I have a task for you and your other comrades. Not the Princess, of course."

Of course.

"Follow that Councilor Jared. You know the rest, do you not?"

Sweat trickled down Dylan's temple. "Yes, Grandfather. But I... I don't think we need to involve others. I'll do it myself with a correspondence to our base camp."

Grandfather raised his wrinkled chin, looking at him for the first time. A smile played on his chapped lips, "Quite grown, eh, boy? The Summer Lord's support truly changed you, I take it."

The raven croaked.

A chill ran up his spine, as he kept a polite smile stuck to his face, glancing away from the ancient blue eyes. He had to remind himself to lower his head, eyes on the floor. The lifelong compliant habit was hereby broken...

...now that he worked for Doran and Eleni.

"Get the job done and meet me in the coronation. Till then stay out of trouble. All of you. Your job is to protect the High King's inner court. Nothing more, nothing less." Leaning forward, his breathy voice rumbled like thunder, "Out of trouble, boy. Did you hear me?"

Dylan nodded, swallowing at his dry throat.

"Pass me the pipe before you go," Grandfather said, resting his head against the armchair, closing his eyes, the raven snuggled to his chest.

Dylan, as always, obliged, head lowered.

***

Nova was floating in the middle of an ocean. His face barely over the surface and rest of him under a blanket of blue water.

The morning sunlight traveled through gray clouds of the autumn skies, casting a dim haze all around him. Cool, salty breezes of the isolated islet infiltrated his senses. Palm trees grew on the patch of coastal land, which was hardly even ten miles in width. Uninhabited territories were where he found himself these days, as if his portal knew exactly where he'd like to go.

A gargantuan sea serpent had passed him an hour ago, making his heart race and he dared not move. However, a brief moment later the creature had closed its eyes and dipped its giant, porous head before diving into the water with a loud splash. Nova had wanted to feel fear... fear of being attacked but even the creatures seemed to recognize who he was, recognize the part of the Throne which resided in him.

Hours later, Nova lay on the warm sands of a summer desert under bright, glaring sunshine. Atop a hill he was sprawled, bare-chested and bare feet, an ankle over another raised knee, hands tucked behind his head, eyes closed and breathing even. All around him spread an expanse of soft, sun-drenched golden sand. He could smell warmth. He could smell silence. He was just another speck of sand in the vastness.

The butter yellow sun would've burnt him into crisp meat, but now... his body soaked it as if it were just fresh rays of hope. His pale face would've burnt and he'd be sweating profusely, but now... nothing. Nova was supposed to belong everywhere, be one with all seasons.

Sudden movements down the hill, made him propel up on his elbows. Tiny figures - few nomadic shepherds were climbing the sandy hilltop, their fleeced sheep walking ahead in tandem. Nova quickly pulled a kerchief from his pocket and covered the lower half of his face, but made no further attempt to move.

Why, he came here first.

The herd of sheep walked all around him, one of the lambs jumped over his stomach and he chuckled. The six shepherds, in short tunics and straw hats on their heads, eyed him as if he were a naked lunatic lying in the middle of nowhere, with a drenched tunic and boots now covered in sand beside him. Nova simply pointed a finger to the right, and put on a local summer lilt, hardening his voice.

"Your little sheep's run off, mates."

It did the trick of taking their attention off him.

Earlier before sunrise, when sleep had been a fickle business, he had made a rash decision and found himself in the lair of the Spring Realm, where Zephyr rested alongside other dragons of the Aquarius House. The creatures did not bode well with other seasons than their own and he had entrusted his old friend, Angus-Lord of House of Aquarius-to keep his dragon safe, while Nova resided in Autumn Realm.

Perhaps, Nova imagined it but he could feel his white fuzzy companion smiling when the portal landed right next to him, in the meadowy lair where spring breezes drafted with the creature's swoosh of tail. Zephyr nudged his snout into Nova's chest, and Nova petted him below his eyes, along his cheeks where the scales were lesser and soft furry skin met his palms. Nova, as always, wished for Zephyr to be the size of a kitten whom he could carry around and nuzzle his face in the fur. But this was a dragon, his glorious pearly white beast, with one broken horn and wings as wide as the skies above.

"And how are we doing, Zef?" Nova grinned.

Zephyr gruntled a happy noise, loud enough to wake up an entire village.

"Yes, yes I'm doing fine too, thank you for asking. Can you believe that I'm the Conqueror now?" And running away from the responsibilities.

Zephyr flapped his wings, giving rise to a gentle storm.

"Alright, apologies," Nova smiled, holding his giant snout in his palms. "I'll get you the crown of the 'Conqueror's Dragon' right after the coronation, I promise. Be a good boy for me until then."

With a heavy heart he parted ways, promising to visit him more often, for Nova was never taking someone's presence in his life for granted.

Evening fell and he found himself under Winter skies laden with stars, cross-legged in the middle of a snowy hilltop. The moon was already out in the violet haze and he stared at it, as if it were a pearl fetched from the oceans. The chilly wind played around him. He wanted to feel cold, like he did before. He wanted to feel his teeth chatter and rub his palms along his arms, to stop the shivering. But that was a luxury, a High King couldn't afford.

Palming the white pristine snow, Nova absent-mindedly made four snowballs, placed them on top of another, found a quill in his overcoat's pocket and stuck it on the top one—nose of the snowman-smiling a little to himself.
Then let out a sigh.

The Conqueror of the Four Realms was... trying.

Trying to belong, to embrace the present, to look forward at the future, to let go of the past...

Jacket slung over a shoulder, Nova had watched a street play in the Spring Realm, the performers portraying a heart-wrenching tale of lost love and when they started a ballad about their new High King, he retreated; ate at a small eatery in the Winter Realm, amidst prattling families; purchased an overcoat to replace his ruined tunic and the sturdiest leather shoes from a jolly summer merchant. Then set out back to his lavish, regal chamber in the Autumn palace, summoning his portal.

But as he closed his eyes, the images of a harrowing yesterday bombarded on him. A dungeon with no room to breathe... his brother standing tall and graceful outside the bars... Nova in chains, having given up changing his mind, had tried even begging to be released. Them staring at each other—one with hurt, one with zero remorse—until he walked away, making sure Nova was ready for the next duel. Ready to trick the Throne with identical faces.

Normal people didn't sit in their chambers doing... nothing. Kings and Queens did not idle their time away like him. But he found himself with no energy at times. His world was... tilting and yet it wasn't. His days were slipping out of his hands like sand clutched tight. His life used to be a glitterball which he held in his palm, and now, it was just a snowball - brittle and cold. The flowers and the land whispered of wellness, as if he was sick...

You have conquered the whole world but can you conquer yourself?

***

The portal, as he realized was his salvation and the reason for his soon-to-arrive death.

The shimmering portal of sorcerous light and fire, had yet again dropped him in a land which was silent, just as he had come to like—but this silence was ominous.

The grim statuette again. The graveyard!

Nova didn't make the same mistake twice and hadn't carelessly stepped out of his chambers to tour the Four Realms without any weapon on him. A small sheath of curvy daggers was fixed to the hook of his breeches. Slithering a hand under his overcoat, he fisted the hilt of the sheath and moved towards the rickety gate of the graveyard beyond which the statuette of the old Conqueror stood tall and poised. Grass waist-high and the fence of trees thicker than all men's moustaches combined, the overgrowth around the square-shaped graveyard smelled like it had received fresh rain.

Then he saw it...

...a boy sat cross-legged on the soft mud, his back facing Nova.

Nova gulped.

"Hello, there," he called, cautious and... friendly.

For a moment, when he got no response, Nova took another step forward just to freeze, for the boy had ever-so slowly craned his neck back.

"You," said the boy, in a mild voice, "shouldn't be here, good sir."

With the boy's side profile now exposed, Nova took a good look at him. Young, with a kiddish face, slightly crooked nose and white hair neatly combed, stray curls dangling over his temples. Dressed in a tunic, tucked under his overalls, he looked like he... lived here.

"And you should be... here?" Nova asked, the slight trepidation from earlier enlarging.

The young boy nodded in earnest, before turning around in his seat on the ground and facing Nova with a curious look in his dark eyes. Nova attempted a smile, and surprisingly the boy mirrored it.

Bolstered now, Nova squatted down a few paces away, coming to the boy's eye-level. He had many a questions bubbling: Who are you? Where are we? Why does the portal keep dumping me here? Why this graveyard?

"Are you alright?"

The boy simply stared as if putting words together. Slowly, he answered, "I will be."

A wild wind blew in the silence, and then Nova felt it. Felt it hard and fast. The cold. The shiver. The fear. Everything he had wanted to feel. His heart raced, as he saw the boy looking him up and down, from his trimmed golden hair, to his scrunched-up undercoat, the overcoat skimming the mud, tight breeches with the sheath of daggers tucked, to his dirtied boots stained with soil of all the Four Realm—scrutinizing Nova as if he had never seen another human before.

"Are you not afraid of sitting alone near all these... tombstones?" Nova asked.

After yet another long haul, the boy tilted his head, "What's the worst that could happen?"

Nova clicked his tongue, "I can list ten things that could."

The boy looked around Nova, as if searching for someone, before staring back into his eyes. "You are alone, too. Aren't you afraid?"

A punch straight to the heart.

"Who are you?" Nova asked.

"Who are you?" The boy asked, tilting his head.

Over their heads, the statuette of the Conqueror loomed, casting a shadow between them like a rigged line.

"I asked you first, lad," Nova gave him a teasing smile, while his heart hammered against his chest. Just don't be a dead person's phantom.

"Cruz."

Nova bobbed his head, feigning nonchalance. What kind of name was that?

He moved a little forward in his squat position and extended a hand to the boy, "I am Ronald. Might I ask you a few questions, Cruz?"

The kiddish boy looked at the open hand, then at Nova, bit his lip, craned his neck back at the line of trees behind, as if scared someone was going to find and scold him soon. But tentatively, he raised his hand and touched Nova's palm, looking straight into Nova's eyes.

A zing shivered down their point of contact and everything after that was a blur.

Nova was flung backwards as if the air had carried him, and his back hit the gate with a thud. He grimaced before he felt waves and waves of magic surrounding him and a... growl. An actual growl fell on his ear and he wished this were a nightmare.

The boy was nowhere to be seen.

Another attack of a whirling wind hit him and this time, when his back hit the metallic gate, it got uprooted and hurled along with him, far away from the graveyard's ground. A storm whirred ahead of him, a gray spiral of hurricane. The powerful windy vortex, made Nova's hair fly, his flimsy undercoat stick to his body. He cursed himself for marveling at the magnificence of its beauty.

Now was not the time.

"Hey, kid... uh, Cruz..." he called aloud, standing up with a bone cracking in his back with the movement, "I thought we were friends, eh."

You always trust people a little too much.

Another elemental bout was fast approaching his way and that was when Nova's instincts fell into place.

He jerked his hands and let his magic flow. His inexperience with the four elements slapped him in the face as he struggled to decide which power to let out, but mostly on a reflex it was... Air.

Yes, he had dueled in the Conquest. Yes, he had won it all, as people said. But he had been in a trance all the time, with no recollections of it. And this, in the moment, was him using his powers, with control back under his grasp after two long years, him being him, him being hopelessly in love with the art of Elementation, him floating on a cloud of his own creation.

Legs wide open and firmly pinned to the ground, arms flexed in concentration and mind converged on his innate element, Nova let a storm out from his fingertips, and overlapped it with Cruz's magic. The hurricane was whirling in left-to-right rotation and Nova made a counter one to stabilize it. With one strong punch in the air, he directed both the windy powers to levitate up and vanquish with a 'poof.'

Nova smiled at the night sky like a classified fool.

Next moment he remembered he had to look for the mysterious lad in question. He kept rotating his wrists, putting one protective shield after another around himself. As he stepped forward, deeper into the graveyard, away from the statuette, his boots crunched up dried leaves, the noise heightened in the eerie silence. Nova wanted to be on the defensive. For the love of the Throne, the boy looked like a kid. A powerful kid, but a kid nevertheless.

"Cruz, that was rude, alright?" Nova raised his voice. "Why would you do that?"

And then he heard another growl, a low rumble like that of a spiked panther's skirting along marshlands, laced with an undertone of humanness. Nova walked in the direction, towards the line of trees, with confident footsteps.

What's the worst that could happen?

***

More than ten things could, as it turned out.

The clouds moved, covering the waning moon and turning everything eery and black. Nova was as good as a blind man now. Somewhere behind him, a raven squawked, making him jump.

Scare me one at a time, please.

He inflamed his palms, letting his Fire element illuminate the surroundings. But all he saw in the dimness... were two golden eyes, white hair and a shadowed face...

Nova had always been a laid-back bloke, easy-going even in the face of dangers, curious more than scared, always ready for any risk, any adventure... but this was something that brought a frown on his forehead and a chill slithered on his spine.

"Bloody Hell!" he whispered.

Cruz was not Cruz, and before he got a better look at the difference in his features, the fire had flickered down from his fingers. A growl erupted; hackles rose on his skin.

"Mind using words?" Nova swallowed hard as he stood in a defensive stance.

Cruz, of course, did not use words.

Nova was yet again thrown off, like a pebble kicked with a mere toe. All his senses erupted as pain overpowered, bruised like a squished lemon. This time he rolled off, face first. Some Conqueror he was to taste mud—they should put this in the ballad.

A dribble of blood traveled down his temple to his jaw and suddenly Nova looked up at the sky with a deadly realization.

Earlier the clouds had moved, making it all dark. It was like Eleni's power... the star-summoning. He was as good as dead, if he were facing an Eclipse, young and untrained one at that, who could manipulate the sky.

And then it began to rain.

Wincing in pain, Nova wished he himself were an Eclipse, giving him the boon of amalgamating all his powers and to let out something apocalyptic but he was the Throne's 'beloved,' with the four powers to use... one at a time, not together. Not an Eclipse, not something to be feared by the bigoted people.

Somewhere close in the darkness, amidst the opaque curtains of the heavy rain, Cruz let out a low noise; thunder rumbling from his chest. A croak... an echoing croak of a raven reverberated around again, penetrating the harsh pounding of raindrops on the mud below. Nova sighed, wiping the blood with the sleeve of his overcoat.

He struggled to stand up, with pain flaring up in his bruised body. He blinked his eyes rapidly to stay conscious, as soundless lightning illuminated the whole space, reminding him of the night of the finale of the Conquest.

That was enough for Nova to lose his momentum and collapse on his knees.

The protective shields around him broke. Body skimmed the wet mud with an invisible force. His wet hair fell over his eyes, obscuring his vision and next he knew, a boulder hit him hard from the side, tossing him away like a twig.

Nova knew when a battle was his to fight and when it was his to lose. He flinched at the injury on his arm, at the blood dripping down through the sleeve of his new grey overcoat; even the fabric was torn off. He realized that he had to use his portal to get away from here and come again later, better prepared to investigate whatever the Hell was wrong. Had to figure out where this graveyard was located, why the portal brought him here twice?

Why amidst these dark, unknown shadows of the Four Realms?

Surely, people must live around here and Cruz was... well, a peculiar danger.

Breathing heavily, he stood up. Rotated a hand, spell dripping through his lips, and the portal cackled open behind him. With squinted eyes, he tried to locate the boy—or the beast he had become. Footsteps seem to approach him, as if a phantom walked the ground. Nova took two steps back, a hand's breadth away from the portal.

"What are you, Cruz?" Nova bellowed in the deafening noise of the rain and thunder.

"I told you," A disembodied voice spoke, "you shouldn't be here."

Yes, well, a little late for that.

A blur leaped on Nova, talons grazed the flesh of his right arm, drawing blood.

Damn this.

He couldn't risk using the portal and carrying this monstrosity along. With all his might, Nova blindly kicked into the air. His boot hit a hard stony... torso and the weight was momentarily off him. A thud rang close to him as the boy hit the ground.

He would've felt horrible for kicking a young boy but the blood dripping from his teared-open flesh, throbbing ache in his head and the broken bones spoke a different story. Warning bells rang in his head when a group of ravens started cawing in a chorus, ushering his urge to just flee.

Touching the orangish-white glow of the portal, envisioning his chambers in the Autumn Realm, Nova cradled his bloodied bruises and burning questions, and did just that. Flee.

***

While he dropped onto a fluffy ivory rug staining it with his drenched body from rain and blood, wings fluttered behind him before the portal vanished. A raven flew out and Nova stared at the wet bird who appeared frightened and lost, trapped and sick—out of place in his golden royal chamber.

Nova limped over to a window, and opening it wide, silently guided the raven out... towards freedom.

***