Yorl winces behind his glasses. I’ve never seen a celeon polymath. Lawguards, sure. But not polymaths. They’re either rare or, knowing Vetris, discriminated against. If that’s the case, it would definitely be true that Varia is one of the few who can manage to make him one.

He turns his yellow head wearily back to me, his voice a drone. “A thousand years ago, the humans and witches united against the valkerax threat that was razing the kingdom.”

“Right, Old Vetris,” I agree. “You can skip ahead—I’m not quite as slow as I look.”

Yorl just stares at me like I’m a particularly boring piece of art. “With the combined powers of the polymaths’ knowledge and the witches’ magic, they were able to devise a method to control the valkerax.”

“You mean like the beneather runes?” I ask. Yorl’s stare turns to a flat glare, and I put on a smile. “Sorry, sorry. You have the floor. Until I decide to lay down on it out of utter boredom.”

“Beneather runes simply forbid a valkerax to leave or enter a set area.” Yorl’s annoyed expression lifts the longer he gets to speak. “Such runes were devised by Old Vetris and given to the beneathers, yes. We have them carved into the walls of the arena we keep this valkerax in. But you are much more familiar with the other method the Old Vetrisians invented.”

Yorl holds up his paw, showing me each of his clawed fingers and putting one down for every new point he makes. “Valkerax heal at a surprising rate. It’s why they are so difficult to kill. Nothing compared to a Heartless, of course, but faster than any other creature in the world. The Old Vetrisians discovered that by taking a part of the valkerax and anchoring it to a magic-infused object, any witch who touched that object could command the valkerax, and any of their future offspring, to do their bidding.”

My unheart goes cold as the hunger slithers through my ears: just like us. chained like us.

“You mean…Heartlessness?” I mutter.

Yorl shakes out his half-grown mane. “If anything, it was a prototype of the Heartless curse. But yes. Heartlessness was developed later, purely by the witches and their magic alone, using methods based on Old Vetrisian valkerax control.”

My mind races back to the books I’ve read, the histories I pored over in Nightsinger’s cabin with naught else to do. The books were never specific about how the Old Vetrisians managed to save the world from the valkerax rampage, but now…

“That’s how Old Vetris sent the valkerax into the Dark Below,” I marvel. “They commanded them?”

Varia nods. “Precisely. Old Vetris forced them under, and the beneathers sealed them there with the runes. Those of us above can live in peace, while the beneathers act as their jailors.”