The elf's eyes darted to Alystren—to the man claiming to be Alystren—and in that single glance, Northern saw everything he needed.

But he wanted to hear it.

"I... I..."

"Wrong answer."

Northern didn't even move his hand. The lightning simply jumped—a thin, precise arc that struck the elf's shoulder. Not enough to cause real damage. Just enough to make every nerve ending in his arm scream in unison.

The elf gasped, a strangled sound of pure agony, his body convulsing once before going rigid.

"That was setting one," Northern said calmly. "There are ten. By setting five, you'll lose bladder control. By setting seven, you'll start forgetting words. By setting ten..."

He shrugged.

"Well. Actually, I've never tried this on anyone, so I don't even know what will happen by then. Who knows—my predictions for five and seven might be wrong too."

Eisha watched from her position, her expression unreadable. She had seen glimpses of Northern's capabilities before, knew the devastation he was capable of. But this—this cold, methodical precision—was different. Far beyond anything she'd ever thought or expected.

This was her son as interrogator.

She found she didn't look away.

The elf was crying now, tears streaming down his face as the residual electricity made his muscles twitch involuntarily.

"He's... he's..." The elf's voice was barely a whisper.

"Louder," Northern said. "For the room."

"He is Alystren! But he's also the Peacemaker!"

Northern raised his chin, smirking slightly.

"Is that so...?" A cold light glowed in his eyes. "Continue."

"For the past fifty years, all of us have been on Tra-el, searching for the princess." The elf glanced at Eisha, doing everything to avoid meeting her gaze. "Alystren was someone that Lord Peacemaker took the skin of and became in order to find her. Our search led us to Thalen and his established Citadel. We integrated it."

He swallowed hard, the words coming faster now.

"Soon Lord Peacemaker gained the trust of Thalen and used his network to fund and carry out undercover searches. A couple months ago, we finally found a list of search complaints submitted to the Citadel. During that period, there were a lot of complaints—people requesting to pay huge amounts of money for Citadels to go and bring their children back from the academy."

His head stayed lowered.

"The name stood out differently, and I spoke to Lord Peacemaker about it..." His tone slowed, weighted with something like fear. "Lord Peacemaker. Not Alystren."

Northern furrowed his brows.

"Are you saying that they're the same person, and at the same time they're not?"

Eisha exhaled at the same moment the elf nodded.

Alystren, though, only looked more confused and lost—frantically, almost unbelievably looking between the elf and Northern, his mouth hanging open. He was sincere. Very sure that this was all nonsense they were talking about.

'He genuinely doesn't know,' Northern realized. 'That's either the greatest act I've ever seen, or...'

If he was another person, why would he ever lie about it?

"Peacemaker is a master of skin," Eisha said quietly. "It's an art he has learned to live. He was originally a crafter, before he became known as Peacemaker..." She paused, something complicated passing through her expression. "He truly might be capable of convincing himself that he is someone else. He is that scary of a man. But one thing I know—he is not reckless."

She looked into the elf's eyes.

"He has a code. There's something. How do you communicate with him?"

The elf looked at Alystren.

Alystren looked back at him with a dark frown.

"You bastard." His voice shook with anger. "I know what you're trying to do! You're trying to put me in trouble to explain yourself away and escape, right?" He glanced at Northern. "Rian! To think you'd actually believe this guy over me!"

Northern was silent for a moment. Then he sighed and shook his head.

"It's quite pitiful, actually. The life you thought you had built for yourself, the person you consider yourself to be... everything was merely an illusion."

Alystren stared at Northern with a small frown—like Northern was saying something absolutely nonsensical, and he was purely going to go crazy from how absurd it was.

He managed to calm himself down the next second, though.

"Listen, boy..."

But Northern had already stopped paying attention to him. Instead, he was looking at the elf.

"How do we bring this Peacemaker out?"

The elf hesitated.

Northern looked at him coldly. The lightning sparked, appearing out of thin air like a luminous thread.

"Have you forgotten your situation here?"

The elf lowered his head, as if in physical pain from what he was about to say.

"He has to go unconscious..."

"Unconscious?" Northern asked, strangely amused.

The elf nodded.

"I see. That's... oddly peculiar."

He turned to Alystren, balling his fist. "Oh well. If it's just getting you unconscious, that'll be surprisingly easy."

Alystren looked at Northern's fist and laughed shortly.

"Are you serious right now? You—the one who stood your ground against Lieutenant Dante—you want to punch me to get me unconscious?" He shook his head. "I don't think I'll ever wake up."

The words triggered something in Eisha's memory—the rift in Arcadia, and vaguely the things that had happened there. That was also the place where Bairan had come to be. And where Northern might have made major contact with the Chaos Prince's soul, aside from the vestige that he took.

'He's stronger than he lets on,' she thought. 'Even now.'

Northern looked at Alystren and offered the most harmless smile in the world while pulling back his fist.

"Well... let's find out."

Alystren's gaze darkened.

"You'd be foolish to think I'd just—"

His vision didn't even catch a glimpse of Northern's hand. All he felt was the pain of something that seemed carved from an iron mountain slamming into his stomach. Wind exploded from his back. He would have flown from the impact, but Northern immediately killed the momentum by holding him in place against the force.

The room shuddered slightly.

Alystren's pupils vanished.

His knees slowly hit the ground, and he fainted.

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