Elias returned to the lab and walked closer to Dreke, who was in a deep sleep. If his chest wasn't heaving up and down, it would have been hard to tell him from the dead.
"Sleep, dear brother. Sleep while I prepare a beautiful dream for you..."
....
Elias emerged from the shadows, appearing before the mansion that was assigned to him. And just as he had thought, the guards who were supposed to be protecting his brother were nowhere to be seen.
They had already left the place, trying to find him, while he was right where he was supposed to be.
He waited there for ten minutes before he saw another person. It was a middle-aged woman with glasses resting on the bridge of her nose.
"Are you Elias Ashborn?" she asked.
"You must be from the Academy. I have been waiting for you." Elias reached out his hand towards the woman.
"This is your new Academy Identification. Don't lose it this time." The woman placed the badge in Elias's hand and turned away.
She didn't seem to care in the slightest about the two lifeless bodies of second-year students that were lying outside the mansion.
"You might be an Ashborn, but please act in moderation while you are here." Only a single sentence from her was left behind as she disappeared.
"Since when did the students of this academy act in moderation?" Elias answered, but no one was here to hear him.
He used his Academy Identification to open the gates of the Mansion and entered, putting the long day to an end while the Ashborn Family Guards kept searching for him throughout the Academy.
Even the Guards couldn't be too brazen in the absence of Dreke, so they tried to ensure that they weren't seen while searching. However, that also made their search take longer.
After searching all the open areas that they could access, they returned to the Residential Area three hours after the incident. The bodies were still there, making them believe that no one had arrived here yet.
"Did you find anything?" they asked each other at the same time. But their questions served as the answers themselves.
The Guards stood outside Elias's mansion, still unaware that the person they were looking for was right inside.
"What should we do? We might need the help of the Academy in this, but the Academy won't take us seriously. Even our presence here was supposed to be a secret that the Academy turned a blind eye to..."
"What can we even do? Of course, we need to inform the lady of the house. Only she can pressure the Academy. We might get punished, but it's not as if there is any other escape."
The two guards were exhausted, and even somewhat scared, as they thought about their future.
It would be good if they were just demoted or beaten, but if they were sent to serve in the forbidden areas of the universe that were controlled by the Ashborn Family, then that was a nightmare they didn't want to experience.
"You better pray that our punishment is not that..." One of the guards said, before flying towards the docks where the Ashborn Family Ship was present, to send a signal to the family.
"Anything but that!" The other guard followed after him, keeping the pace.
....
Inside the luxurious mansion, Elias fell on the bed and closed his eyes. He hadn't slept for even a single second since the first trial, his body still functioning on the adrenaline rush for the most part.
"Are you going to sleep?" He had barely closed his eyes when he heard the familiar voice appear in his head.
"What do you think?"
"But you just kidnapped your brother."
"Does that mean I can't sleep?"
"Who sleeps right after kidnapping their brother? Especially when that brother seemed to hold a higher position in the family than you?"
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Even the Guards of the Family hadn't shown Elias any respect which convinced Astralious that he didn't hold any significant position in the family.
It was slightly surprising for him since the boy held so much talent, but that didn't change anything.
He had kidnapped the person who held a higher position. Even if they were his own family, were they going to let this go without any form of punishment?
If he was in Elias's place, he would have been thinking of ways to apologise to the family. And here, the boy was planning to sleep without a single care in the world?
"How many brothers have you kidnapped, to know that it's not normal?" Elias weakly answered before turning sideways on the soft bed which made him feel like he was sleeping on the clouds.
"Don't worry. In our family, it's completely normal. In fact, there never goes a day when one brother doesn't kidnap the other. So you can also rest easy and stop bothering me."
"Is it normal?" Astralious's face turned weird as he thought about it. "What a strange ritual."
Although it sounded weird, he couldn't find any flaws in the story. He didn't know the Asbborn Family to that extent and didn't know what they actually did. So he believed Elias's words and thought that maybe it was truly normal for him.
"In that case, you should've told me before. I was worried for no reason." He finally sighed in relief, living in complete ignorance.
He stopped bothering Elias and let the boy finally fall asleep. Unfortunately, as a constellation, he couldn't sleep.
Throughout the time, he remained on the barren landscape, trapped by the chains as he waited for the morning so he could finally talk to someone, as the boredom had been killing him for centuries.
"What did you say?! My son...?" In the Ashborn Palace, a woman stood up and the cup in her hand fell to the ground, shattering into hundreds of pieces.
In another part, a shadow had delivered a similar message to the Lord of the House who had a very mute reaction instead.
"Is everything written here, true?" he asked, barely raising his voice beyond talking to himself.