My world had shrunk to a cycle of three states: the performative weakness of daylight, the focused agony of nightly poison-purges, and the silent, shadowed reconnaissance of the sleeping palace. I was a ghost with a growing ledger of secrets.
The map and the primer were my bibles. I cross-referenced Kieran's hazy memories with the schematic, identifying not just rooms, but power centers. The Royal Mana-Channeling Pavilion. The Alchemical Laboratories. The quarters of my six elder siblings, each marked with their elemental sigils.
My first true target, however, was neither grand nor personal. It was logistical.
The water.
The poisoner was still active. Elara's rainwater was a lifeline, but it was risky for her and limited. I needed to neutralize the threat at its source. The primer's section on basic water-warding rituals gave me the idea. The palace's main well was protected by a simple, sustained Earth-Water enchantment—a mesh of mana that filtered impurities and alerted the water-mages to toxins.
I couldn't break the enchantment. But I could make it… unreliable.
On a night when the moon was shrouded, I made my way to the well-house, a small, domed stone building in a central courtyard. The mana here was a gentle, pulsing hum I could now perceive as a soft, aquamarine latticework woven into the stone of the well-curb. To a mage, it would feel serene. To my void-attuned senses, it was a bright, intricate web begging to be plucked.
This required a new application. Not a deletion, but a fraying.
I focused on the bead, feeding it a thread of my will—less than I used for a Void Pin, but sustained. Instead of creating a Pin, I imagined a Void Thread, infinitesimally thin. I directed it not to consume, but to abrade.
I extended a single, trembling finger and touched the cool stone where the mana lattice was densest.
The Void Thread leapt from my fingertip. There was no light, no sound. But in my perception, a tiny section of the bright aquamarine web simply… fuzzed. The precise, interlocking patterns of Earth and Water mana blurred at the edges, their connection growing tenuous. It was like pouring a drop of solvent on a masterfully woven tapestry. The threads didn't break, but they became weak, sloppy.
I repeated the process in five other key nexus points around the well-curb, each touch costing me a minute sip of my own vitality, leaving me colder, more hollow. The effort was immense. A fine sheen of sweat cooled on my brow despite the inner chill.
When I was done, the enchantment still stood. It would still function. But its sensitivity was compromised. It would now miss subtleties—like the specific, slow-acting poison meant for the seventh prince.
It was a silent, surgical strike. No explosions, no alarms. Just the first, deliberate crack in the wall of my prison.
The next day, I watched. I listened through my open door to the gossip of passing maids.
"…said the well-water tasted flat this morning…"
"…the scryers say the ward is stable, must be the spring thaw…"
No panic. Just minor, dismissed inconvenience. Perfect.
My success was a double-edged sword. The hollowness inside me was now a constant companion. Laughter, even the dark, ironic kind Liam had been capable of, felt foreign. My memories of the ocean, of my past life, were fading behind a grey filter. I was paying for my power with my humanity, coin by coin.
It was Elara who inadvertently gave me a reason to feel something again.
She brought my evening gruel and rainwater, her movements quicker than usual, her eyes red-rimmed.
"What's wrong?" I asked, the question coming out flatter than I intended.
She shook her head, placing the tray down. As she did, her sleeve rode up, revealing a brutal, fresh bruise circling her wrist like a violet bracelet.
I stared at it. The void inside me didn't stir with hot anger. Instead, it focused with the cold, absolute precision of a targeting lens. The numbness retreated one inch, replaced by a glacial clarity.
"Who?"
She tried to pull her sleeve down. "It's nothing. The head laundress, she's… strict."
"That's not a laundress's grip," I said, recalling anatomy from my old world. The bruise pattern indicated a large, strong hand, fingers and thumb pressing from opposite sides. "Who holds the debts now that Corvin is gone?"
A tear finally escaped, tracking through the dust on her cheek. "Steward Gorven. He… he took over Corvin's ledgers. He said services rendered must still be accounted for." She swallowed hard. "He wants me to… to report on you. Your every move. To confirm you are dying. He said if I please him, the debt might be… reassessed."
Gorven. The name clicked. A functionary, fat on petty corruption, loyal to whichever sibling or minister lined his pockets. He was the next link in the chain. A tool, not the hand that wielded it.
But he was the hand that had bruised Elara.
The void in my chest hummed, a low, resonant frequency that was neither approval nor disapproval. It was simply… attention.
"Tell him what he wants to hear," I said, my voice devoid of warmth. "Tell him I fade by the hour. That I speak in fever dreams of my mother. That I cannot keep water down."
She looked at me, confused. "But… you are stronger. The poison—"
"Is still there," I interrupted. "And I am still playing a part. Play yours. Gain his trust. Learn who he speaks for."
"And my debt? My family?"
I met her gaze. "Gorven will forget your debt." The certainty in my tone surprised even me. It wasn't a promise. It was a statement of fact.
She left, fear and a fragile, desperate hope warring on her face.
My next move was not about poison, or water, or information.
It was about sending a message.
I needed to understand my enemy's terrain. Steward Gorven's office was in the administrative wing, a place of ledgers and locks, far from the opulence of the royal suites. That night, I went there.
The door was locked with a physical iron lock, more sophisticated than the one on my room. I could have spent my will to fray its internal mechanisms, but that was wasteful. Instead, I used a different tool: Liam's knowledge.
A bent wire from my bedframe, filed sharp on stone, became a lockpick. It was slow work with my still-weak fingers, but the principles were universal. After five minutes of agonizing tension, the lock yielded with a soft click.
Inside, the room stank of tallow smoke, cheap parchment, and sweat. I ignored the ledgers on the desk. I went to the strongbox, a heavy iron-banded thing secured with a similar lock. This one took longer.
Inside, I found my prize: a private ledger. Not of palace goods, but of personal favors, bribes received, and debts owed. And there, on the latest page, an entry:
"Investment: Seventh Prince Disposal (ongoing). Patron: [a symbol, not a name—a stylized 'V' intertwined with a flame]. Annual stipend received. Expenses: Apothecary silence, Servant compliance (see: Elara). Balance: Positive."
A symbol. A patron who didn't use a name. The flame suggested Fire affinity. My eldest brother, Crown Prince Valerius, was a powerful Fire-aspected mage. But it was too obvious. A second brother, Victus, had a weaker fire affinity and a reputation for cunning.
I committed the symbol to memory. Then, I looked for Elara's debt record. I found it, a shockingly large sum incurred by her father for "lost medicinal stores." The paper was crisp, recent. A fabrication.
I didn't take it. Taking it would alert him.
I placed my hand over the entry. I focused not on the paper, but on the information. The fact of the debt, its hold over her. I fed a trickle of will into the bead and performed the smallest, most precise act of voiding yet.
I didn't destroy the ledger. I voided the ink.
Not all of it. Just the specific lines detailing the amount, the date, the false reason. Under my palm, the dark ink faded, not to a blur, but to the perfect, untouched yellow of the old parchment. As if it had never been written.
The record of Elara's family debt was now a blank space on the page. An administrative ghost.
Gorven would remember the debt, of course. But he would have no proof. In a world of ledgers and seals, proof was power. Without it, his hold was gossip and threat. Weak.
I left everything else untouched. I relocked the strongbox, the office door, and melted back into the shadows.
The next day, I waited. I didn't have to wait long.
Just before noon, a commotion erupted in the administrative wing. Shouting. The sound of something being thrown.
Gorven had opened his strongbox.
The message was sent. Not with a knife, not with a threat.
With an eraser.
Someone, somewhere, now knew that the invisible, dying prince was not quite as invisible as they thought. And that the tools being used against him had a funny way of… disappearing.
The void in my chest gave a quiet, satisfied pulse. It was the closest thing to emotion I had felt in days.
I was no longer just surviving, or learning.
I was on the offensive.
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