Ortis leaned back in his chair, one hand lazily gesturing toward the ceiling as if summoning the words from the air itself.
"The Arcane Eyes," he said, "are authorities that move the world outside the standard twenty-two Traits."
He let that settle.
"They are not limited to the Awakened. Mundane humans have possessed them. There have even been reports—exaggerated, of beasts possessing them as well though personally, I don't believe the latter."
Jamie, who had been raising her spoon to her mouth, paused. Her eyes flicked toward Ortis. Then back to her ice cream.
"That man," Ortis continued, nodding toward Wilcris, "Lysle, was it? He possesses the Arcane Eyes of Magnification. They allow him to see great distances. Useful for a hunter. Not particularly world-shaking."
Elias watched his uncle. The man was drawing something in the air with his finger—patterns that left faint trails of light.
"There are Some of these that are not really impresive and at best make daily tasks convenient. And ther are others that are...more significant."
Ortis's tone shifted. Still light, still lazy, but with something beneath it.
"The Eyes of Transposition allow the bearer to move objects across space by sight. The Eyes of Inversion can replace things with thier opposites within a limited field. The Eyes of Annihilation—" he paused, "—do exactly what they sound like."
Jamie's spoon stopped moving.
"These eyes do not merely boost perception or physicality," Ortis said. "They reshape the world based on said perception. The bearer looks, and reality adjusts to accommodate what they see."
Elara's hand moved to Ellaine's blanket. A subtle gesture. Protective.
"Those who possess these eyes are called Radiants," Ortis continued.
"The term comes from an ancient theory—that they see the world through some divine radiance. And perhaps, in seeing it, they can influence it. Act upon that vision. Make it... more."
The room was quiet.
"All right," Beth said.
Her voice was not loud. But it cut through the silence like a blade.
"The children aside—that information is something we're all know. I have encountered a fair number of people with these eyes. So get to the point. Or give the children a private lecture. Some of us don't want to sit here and listen to you talk."
Isra stirred in her bosom and she gently shook her back to sleep. Elias and Jamie both glanced at her. The same thought passed between them—unspoken, shared.
'Only Beth would have the balls to talk to Ortis like that.'
Wilcris, meanwhile, had gone pale. He looked at his wife with an expression of pure disbelief, then at Ortis, his face arranged into something that was probably meant to be apologetic but mostly looked like terror.
Ortis did not seem bothered.
He smiled. Lazy. Easy.
"I'm telling the children this," he said, "because major shifts are going to happen in their lifetime. They need to understand the board before they're placed on it."
His gaze moved around the table.
"Who knows what's going on?"
His finger pointed at Jamie.
Jamie blinked. She looked at the finger pointing at her, then at Ortis's face. She shrugged. Ortis's hand shifted.
Elias felt the weight of the room settle on him.
"The two girls," he said, his voice even.
"They possess Arcane Eyes. Very unique ones, if it warranted you stopping whatever you were doing to be here personally."
Ortis's eyebrow rose. "Why, do you think I have anything better to do?"
Elias met his gaze.
"Almost a year ago, you left your own daughter here and went back to wherever you came from. You didn't want to teach me personally. I doubt you came to Blackhaven because you wanted to save the city."
The silence that followed was different from before. Sharper.
Ortis tilted his head. "Oh? Bitter huh?"
Elias raised an eyebrow. "I feel nothing of the sort. Whether you were here or not, things would have ended up the way they did. One way or another."
Ortis studied him for a long moment.
"Seven years old and youre already quite the nihilist," he said, almost approving.
"With a sharp tongue too."
Across the table, Alaric's lips pressed together. He was trying—very hard—not to smile. Elara's expression, by contrast, was not pleased. Her eyes moved between her son and her brother with something like exasperation.
Ortis waved a hand. "We digress."
He looked at Elias. "Do you know what Arcane Eyes the two girls possess?"
Elias shrugged.
Aina spoke.
"They possess Dawn and Dusk," she said. Her voice was even, measured. "I heard you tell Aunt and Uncle when you arrived."
Ortis nodded. "The Eyes of Dawn hold authority over the future. The Eyes of Dusk hold authority over the past."
He let the words settle.
"Influence the future, and the past and present adjusts accordingly. Influence the past, and both present and future adjust accordingly."
Elara's hand tightened on Ellaine's blanket.
"The problem," Ortis continued, "is that these eyes have never appeared like this before. One or the other has appeared a handful of times throughout history—since the Age of Gods. The only exception is an ancient text of an individual who possessed both at once."
He paused.
"He ended up blinding himself. To contain the power. He became the apocryphal figure known as the Weeping Prophet. Most scholars say, myself included, a myth."
His gaze moved to the two infants.
"After that, the eyes did not appear again. Until now."
Beth's voice cut through again.
"How can you be so sure?" she asked. "That our daughter has one of these?"
Ortis looked at her. His expression did not change.
" Because I am a Paragon."
Beth did not look away.
"With all due respect—we cannot accept your words as truth just because of your rank. So what if you're a Paragon? So what if you're better than us in the world? That doesn't mean you can just say things and scare us."
There was a hint of anxiety in her voice. Beside her, Wilcris nodded vigorously. His voice, when it came, was shaky.
"S-she's right. We—we appreciate you telling us, my lord, but—"
Ortis raised his hands.
In the space between his palms, the air changed.
Fragments—like shards of crystal—began to manifest. They caught the candlelight, refracting it into shades of blue. They broke away from each other, spun, reformed into what appeared to be a fractured star. Pulsing with an otherworldy glow.
"I suppose," Ortis said, his voice still light, "it's best I simply show you."
The shards shot outward.
Elias did not have time to react. Neither did anyone else. The fragments passed through the air, through the candlelight, through flesh—and entered their chests.
Elias opened his eyes.
He was still in the dining room. He was also somewhere else.
The world had layers now.
He could see the walls—the stone, the mortar, the dust settled in the cracks. He could see through the walls, into the corridor beyond, into the kitchens, into the courtyard where a servant was snuffing out a lantern. He could see the Flow moving through everything—rivers of light, currents of darkness, spiraling, drifting, weaving through stone and flesh and air.
He could see the Anti-Flow too, moving inversely alongside the Flow.
It was similar to the space Deus had pulled him into. The 4.5 dimension. The sensation he had felt when he inadvertently activated Bloody Wonderland—the world rendered not as it was, but as it was to Ortis.
He saw the sigils.
Each person at the table was marked. He saw them floating above their chests as if woven into their flesh.
Jamie's The Emperor. Authority over Disorder and Change.
Alaric's The Wheel of Fortune. Time itself.
Ortis's The Hierophant. Souls and spiritual energy.
Aina's The Star and The Emperor—two authorities, intertwined.
Wilcris's The Chariot. Acceleration and Deceleration.
Beth's The Sun. Energy, transformation, the flow of power.
And the infants—
Elias felt them before he saw them. Two sources of energy so bright they seemed to pulse, to breathe, to push against the world around them. He turned his gaze toward his mother's arms.
Ellaine's eyes were open.
She was crying.
Isra was crying too.
And with their cries, the world trembled. The Flow around them twisted, churned, recoiled. The Anti-Flow surged toward them and was pushed back. The very fabric of the room seemed to bend, to warp.
Elias's head throbbed. He reached up—
The vision cut.
The shards left his chest in a burst of light, returning to Ortis's waiting hands. The star reassembled then dissolved.
Elias blinked.
His cheeks were wet. He touched his face.
Tears.
He was weeping. He looked across the table. Jamie was wiping her eyes with her sleeve, her expression bewildered. Aina's expressionless face was wet and she calmly wiped it with a napkin. Wilcris was sobbing openly, tears streaming down his face as he tried—and failed—to compose himself.
Beth was crying too. Her shoulders shook. Her hands gripped the edge of the table. But she was looking at Ortis, not at her tears.
"I'm fine," she said. Her voice cracked. "I'm fine."
Wilcris wrapped an arm around her. He was still crying himself.
Elara wiped her face once. Once. Then she looked down at Ellaine, who had stopped crying, whose eyes were closed, whose tiny chest rose and fell in sleep.
She smiled.
Alarics's hands were folded on the table. His face was composed but his eyes were red.
Jamie stared at her empty ice cream cup. She raised it to her open mouth and shook it when nothing came out. She looked at Elias but he was not looking at her.
Ortis's gaze lingered on Elias for a moment. Then he looked away.
"Now," he said, "what say ye, unbelievers?"
No one answered. No one needed to.
He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, the easy arrogance returning like a coat he had shrugged off and now put back on.
"I felt it," he said. "When they were born. And not just me. Anyone with any way of sensing the astral plane felt it. The shift." His eyes moved across the table.
"They will come for these children.I assure it."
Elias's mind was racing. He had seen the two baby's Trait Sigils
The Hanged Man.
The authority over Fate and Destiny. And with the Arcane eyes of Dawn and Dusk, over Causality and Retrocausality. The past and the future, bound in the present to two small bodies.
These two were too powerful for their own good.
Jamie nudged him.
He looked at her. She was holding up her empty cup.
'More.'
Elias stared at her.
She nudged him again.
He reached out, took the cup, and set it aside without looking away from Ortis.
Jamie made a small sound of protest. He ignored it.
Ortis was watching them. There was something in his expression as he focused on Elias.