Chapter 6: Family Dinner

Perched atop a sprawling granite promontory overlooking the rolling, emerald valleys of the western provinces, the Ducal Manor consisted of four massive, crenelated towers connected by sweeping curtain walls of pale limestone, all draped in creeping ivy that glowed with a faint, phosphor-green luminescence after sundown.

The courtyards were paved in smooth, seamless river stone; the ornamental fountains featured life-sized marble statues of previous Everhart patriarchs wrestling various species of fauna; and the corridors were so absurdly wide that Lucien was certain one could comfortably drift a mid-sized carriage through the portrait gallery without grazing the wainscoting.

The staff treated him with a level of coddling that made him feel like a particularly precious porcelain teacup carried through a hurricane.

"Young Master Lucien!" the ancient head butler, Edwin, a man so impossibly straight-backed and weathered he resembled an antique grandfather clock dressed in a tailored tailcoat, had gasped upon finding him wandering the east gallery.

Edwin had practically materialized out of the shadows, his gloved hands hovering inches from Lucien’s elbows as though expecting the boy’s femurs to snap. "You are still sick! Should I summon the palanquin? The bath chairs? Shall I have four footmen carry you upon the velvet divan?"

"I am merely walking, Edwin," Lucien had said gently, working hard to keep his voice modulated to the soft, polite cadence he remembered from the origianl Lucien’s memories. "My legs appear to remember their purpose."

"A miraculous fortitude!" Edwin had proclaimed to the vaulted ceiling, his monocle trembling with emotion. "I shall instruct the kitchens to roast another calf immediately. Protein for the spirit!"

"Please don’t roast a whole cow on my behalf, Edwin, I only came out to find the library."

"The south wing, My Lord! Allow me to clear the hallways of drafts and loud noises!"

Navigating his family, however, had required a far higher degree of sociopolitical agility.

Lucien had spent forty-eight hours thoroughly cross-referencing his past-life literary knowledge of The Astral Sovereign’s Dawn with the original owner’s inherited episodic memories, and what he discovered had filled him with a mixture of immense relief and exasperation.

In the vast majority of webnovels Lucien had consumed during his previous existence, noble families operated under the social ethics of a pit of starving vipers.

If a child was born without a blazing elemental core or an ancient bloodline tattoo, they were usually banished to a drafty woodshed, forced to subsist on cold turnip water, and routinely beaten by third-cousins named ’Young Master Ren’ or ’Lord Reginald’ until they stumbled upon an ancient ring containing the soul of a senile martial god.

House Everhart, however, was wonderfully broken in this regard.

They were a Ducal House, commanding vast swathes of fertile western territories, iron mines, and an entire standing legion of heavy earth-vanguard infantry, yet their domestic life was startlingly free of homicidal aristocratic intrigue.

The reason, Lucien discovered with no small amount of amusement, was because Duke Darius Everhart was a terrifyingly practical man who viewed magical geniuses not as blessed divine gifts, but as massive, high-maintenance structural hazards.

Lucien had observed this firsthand on the evening of day five, when the family had finally gathered in the smaller, private dining salon for dinner.

At the head of the long, polished walnut table sat Duke Darius, wearing a simple, heavy woolen tunic that stretched tight over shoulders like granite boulders.

To his right sat Duchess Seraphine, looking serene as she delicately dissected a roasted quail with silver cutlery.

And then there were the siblings.

Across from Lucien sat his older brother, Caelan.

Caelan was twenty-four, broad-chested, and possessed the kind of blinding, chiselled jawline that belonged on imperial propaganda posters recruitment drives.

He was also an A-Rank Lightning Warrior.

This meant that whenever Caelan became mildly agitated, which occurred roughly every twelve minutes, the silver cutlery near his plate would begin to twitch.

"I’m telling you, Father, the formations the academy instructors are teaching this term are complete rubbish," Caelan was barking, gesturing emphatically with a bread knife. A tiny, audible zzzt of violet static snapped between his thumb and the blade, causing the salt shaker three inches away to slide backward.

"They’re still relying on the defensive shell tactics from the Third Cataclysm! If you face a monster with a static perimeter, you’re just serving them a packed lunch! You need aggressive, forward-thrusting plasma arcs! You punch through the flank before the carapace can calcify!"

"Caelan," Duchess Seraphine said softly, not even looking up from her bird. "You are magnetizing the butter knife again. The footman cannot pick it up."

Caelan blinked, looking down.

The silver butter spreader had adhered firmly to the underside of his wrist. "Ah. Apologies, Mother." He gave his arm a violent shake, sending the knife clattering into his water goblet with a loud splash.

To Lucien’s immediate left sat Elara.

At seventeen, his younger sister looked like a fragile ice sculpture brought to life by an overambitious painter.

She had inherited their mother’s pale platinum hair and striking blue eyes, along with an innate A-Rank affinity for Glacial Sorcery.

The downside was that Elara had the baseline emotional temperature of an irritated glacier.

While normal teenagers slammed doors or rolled their eyes, Elara expressed her teenage angst through meteorological anomalies.

As she sat there, silently dissecting a bowl of chilled pear compote, the air within a three-foot radius of her chair was cold enough to cause Lucien’s breath to fog.

A delicate, intricate pattern of frost had crept across the walnut table from her placemat, slowly encasing her fruit wine glass in a thin, decorative layer of rime.

"You know what, if you punch through the flank with plasma, brother," Elara remarked, her voice flat, crystalline, and devoid of human inflection, "you merely detonate the creature’s bile sacs. The resulting acid mist would dissolve the frontline infantry’s boots. It is an idiotic strategy favored only by barbarians who substitute electricity for cranial activity."

Crack!

A small and sharp icicle formed on the lip of her water glass.