By the time Caedrion and Aelindria arrived at the great hall of their ancestral home, they found Baelius on his knees.
The prisoner guarded by their Null warriors,armed with magically enhanced armor and weapons, who had long since sworn their loyalty to House Ferrondel.
While not as capable as House Ignarion’s Elite Spellsword Guard, these men made up for their lack of magical ability with techniques designed deliberately to counter Magi, and equipment infused with the Architect’s power.
The men were concealed behind full-faced helms, plumed with feathers of long-forgotten beasts of a primordial era.
If their posture was anything to go by, they treated the very presence of an outside Magus as a threat to the House their ancestors had sworn to serve in perpetuity.
However, Caedrion’s father, Lord Malveris, and his aunt Sylene seemed far more relaxed as they sat on their thrones, waiting for the arrival of their progeny, who showed up precisely when they were needed.
Lord Malveris Ferrondel noticed his son and heir’s entry immediately, motioning with a deferent tilt of his chin toward their new prisoner.
"He says he has escaped imprisonment, wrongfully accused by House Ignarion for poisoning you. We have interrogated him quite thoroughly, yet his story never changed."
Sylene rolled her eyes, scoffing at the mere idea of such primitive techniques, and cast an almost scornful glance at the man sitting next to her.
"Brother, must you really entertain such barbarism? With my magic, I would have him spilling his guts within a mere three seconds."
Malveris simply looked at his older sister, the mother of Aelindria, with an almost exhausted expression.
He knew the statement was as literal as it was metaphorical.
Luckily for him, Aelindria stepped forward, furrowing her brow at Baelius before walking right past him and kneeling before her uncle, the head of her house.
"Father... Caedrion and I already suspect the culprit. If he gives us the same name, we will know whether he speaks truth or falsehood."
Malveris, who was indeed like a father to Aelindria, perhaps the only one she had ever known, despite being her uncle by blood, shifted his gaze from the young maiden and instead cast a furious glare at his prisoner.
"Well... go ahead. Tell her. Tell her what you’ve professed before me, on the name of the Eidolon which birthed your house."
Baelius, having seen Aelindria for the first time in the flesh, and having witnessed the fierce yet equally feminine grace in her eyes, understood immediately, this was indeed the woman his younger half-brother had fallen madly in love with.
He sighed heavily as he revealed the name.
"Valerius Ignarion... my younger half-brother. He has... a bit of an obsession with the young lady of your house, and is willing to kill your heir to ensure they do not wed. He, however, was quite short-sighted in his thinking, and angered our father—as it appears this was not the will of Ignarion as a whole, merely its heir. As a result, he hastily framed me, and as a Nullborn, my defense means nothing to the Elders and their council."
Aelindria silently nodded her head to her father, who sighed heavily as he rested his forehead in the palm of his hand.
"A foolish and short-sighted heir is perhaps the worst curse a noble house could ever be given. Especially given the fact that this is House Ignarion we are thinking of. Caedrion, my son, what do you wish to do with him?"
Caedrion had found the whole ordeal rather insightful. He stepped forward, examining Baelius as if he were a test subject more than a living man.
"Curious... You are Nullborn? Such is a rarity... Do you possess the power of the Crucible?"
All eyes immediately drifted to Caedrion in disbelief. He had openly spoken of a taboo, without the slightest care in the world.
Nullborn were rare precisely because of the dilution it caused to the Eidolon’s blood, which flowed through the veins of a Magus.
But to speak of such power, or the idea of it even existing, was simply not tolerated in polite society.
And yet Baelius seemed neither offended nor terrified. Rather, he was curious about Caedrion’s lack of spite.
It was like a breath of fresh air to witness someone not spit upon the ground he trod, but instead see him as something more than just a disgrace.
Even though Caedrion was staring at him as though he were reading a technical data package, trying to understand the information contained within.
It caused Baelius to break out into laughter until he calmed himself, feeling the first tide of relief wash over him since his mother’s sacrifice.
"Yes... I do. But it is not suitable for war. At most, I could forge a sword with its heat... I don’t believe anybody has ever asked me that question before."
Caedrion immediately understood the value someone like Baelius provided to him, and to his ultimate ambitions, in comparison with a full-blooded Ignarion, who while powerful, were incredibly volatile.
He raised his hand and cast a spell. The glowing rust-colored light from his palm broke the chains that bound Baelius, freeing him on the spot.
The guards instinctively shifted toward the disturbance, hands ready on their blades as if preparing for a showdown with a hostile intruder.
And then Sylene stood up from her seat, gripping the panels of its armrests so intensely she nearly crushed them between her fingers.
"How!?! Only the Lord has the ability to undo the bindings! How did you manage to do it?"
Malveris himself was staring at his son as if he had violated the first law of physics, Aelindria as well. With mouths agape, eyes widened in disbelief.
As for Caedrion, he stared at them all as if they were the ones who had gone mad, explaining himself in the most casual of tones.
"Not at all... The runes on his bindings were advanced in composition, but I simply spotted the weakest chain in its sequence and broke it. Like a load-bearing pillar in this very room, once I tore it down, the rest of the structure collapsed."
And with that single line, Caedrion hadn’t just freed a prisoner, he had torn open the very laws upon which magic was built.