Night fell differently in the western fiefs.
In the capital, darkness arrived softened by lamplight and patrolling boots, by the glow of windows and the steady hum of a city that never truly slept. Here, beyond the reach of polished marble and gilded corridors, night came like a lid closing—quiet, cold, and absolute. The sky turned to ink. Stars pricked through it in hard, indifferent numbers. The wind carried the scent of damp earth and riverwater, and when it slipped between tents and wagons it did so like a thief with practiced fingers.
Their camp was set on a low rise a short distance from Asmora Village, chosen by the Knights Gallant for defensibility and sightlines. Wagons formed a partial ring, lanterns hung from iron hooks, and the griffons slept with their wings tucked tight, restless even in slumber. There were tents for the laborers, a separate canvas pavilion for the knights, and a modest, sturdier carriage converted into a private space for Alaric—less a luxury than a necessity, because even in the mud of a broken fief, a prince could not be left unattended.
Gina Othel still tried.
She tried in the same way she had always tried: by standing between Alaric and the world with her hands empty and her eyes sharp, as if vigilance alone could cut fate into a shape she preferred.
But the world was not shaped by preference.
It was shaped by will, and Alaric's will had been hardening for years.
For three days after the discovery of the sealed archway, Alaric resumed mana training without assistance.
It was not an act of rebellion for rebellion's sake. It was not a childish refusal to be guided. It was a conclusion reached after quiet observation—after remembering the way his mana had shifted when different tutors instructed him, after feeling the subtle tug-of-war in his chest whenever someone tried to force his flow into a single clean channel.
Assistance had been meant to help.
Instead, it had become a mold.
A constraint.
It had trained him to fit other people's expectations of what a Deva child should be: either Lune or Aurora, either cold or heat, either one path or the other. And each time he tried to follow their instructions perfectly, he felt his growth slow, as if his mana itself resented being pushed into a shape it did not naturally want.
So he stopped letting them push.
He began training alone, the way his mother had first taught him before tutors and politics had intervened—by breath, by heartbeat, by focus.
He rose before dawn those three days, slipping out of his private carriage while the camp still dozed, and sat on a flat stone near the edge of the rise where he could see the river glint faintly in moonlight. Gina usually noticed. Gina always noticed. But dawn was the hour when even Head Maids had to blink eventually, and Alaric had learned the art of moving quietly without looking like he was moving quietly.
He sat cross-legged, cloak wrapped around him, hands resting on his knees. The air bit at his cheeks. His breath fogged in front of his face in soft, pale puffs.
Heartbeat, he reminded himself.
He listened to it. Felt it. Counted it.
Then he breathed deeper and reached inward—not with force, not with greed, but with a slow, careful awareness, as if dipping fingers into water to test temperature.
The mana answered him.
It was there, as it had always been: a reservoir that did not feel infinite, but did feel his. It gathered beneath his ribs, a mingling of cool thread and warm current that refused to be neatly separated. When he guided the cool thread first, it came willingly—slipping through him like moonlight over snow. When he guided the warmer current, it rose more slowly, heavier and stubborn, like sunlight trapped under stone.
He did not choose one.
He let them braid.
At first the braid was uneven. One strand would surge while the other lagged. His chest would tighten, his concentration would wobble, and he would have to release the mana back into stillness before he strained himself into a headache or nausea.
But each time he tried, it became easier.
By the second day, the braid held longer. By the third day, it held until his fingers tingled and his spine felt strangely straight, as if his body had decided it could stand taller than it currently did.
He did not tell Gina.
Gina had become many things to him over the years—guardian, instructor, constant shadow. He trusted her with his life in the simple, practical way one trusted the person who had pulled poison from his world before it could reach his mouth. Yet he had also learned that Gina, for all her competence, had her own limits.
Her fear was one of them.
She feared the palace's eyes. She feared the crown's machinery. She feared the way power drew predators.
And Alaric—James Silver behind those young eyes—understood that the first time he truly unlocked something, he wanted it to be his before it became theirs.
So he trained alone.
On the third night, when the camp quieted and the laborers' snores became a steady background rhythm, Alaric sat in his carriage-space with a small lantern turned low. The flame was a pinprick, more ember than light, because bright light drew attention and attention drew questions.
He placed both palms on his own abdomen the way Asimi had done long ago, and he closed his eyes.
Breathe. Feel. Guide.
He drew the cool thread up.
He drew the warm current after it.
He braided them, not forcing one to dominate, not allowing one to vanish, and as he held them together, something inside him shifted—subtle at first, then unmistakable.
It felt like a latch clicking.
Like a door that had been pressed against for years finally giving way.
His mana, once a reservoir he could feel but not truly use, began to circulate with purpose. It rose into his chest, flowed into his shoulders, down his arms, and there—at the edge of perception—it condensed into something sharper, more structured.
A boundary.
A threshold.
His breath caught.
The air around him seemed to thicken, not with pressure like the barrier at the archway, but with responsiveness—as if the world had been waiting for him to speak in a language it understood.
He opened his eyes.
For a heartbeat, nothing looked different.
Then he felt it again—an internal expansion, a subtle widening of capacity, as though his body had accepted a new truth.
First Sphere, he thought, and the thought came with a rush of vindication that made his chest tighten.
Magic. Not just mana sensitivity. Not just warmed fingers and steadied limbs.
Magic.
He focused, and somewhere in the back of his mind, a familiar sensation stirred—the same feeling as when the System window had flickered into his infant sight years ago. It did not fully manifest, not in glowing words and brackets, but he could feel the structure of it.
As though the world itself had opened a new set of rules.
He lifted one hand slowly.
Mana gathered at his fingertips without effort.
The lantern flame, small and weak, trembled.
Alaric's eyes narrowed.
He did not dare cast anything inside the carriage. Even the smallest spell could draw attention, could wake the wrong ears, could make Gina appear with her face already set in fury.
But the realization burned inside him like a secret sun.
The archway.
The runes.
The barrier that had pulsed in response to his presence, as if tasting his mana and deciding he did not belong.
If the world had rules, then barriers did too.
And if barriers had rules, then perhaps the first sphere was enough to touch them properly.
Alaric's heart hammered, not with fear but with the dangerous thrill of possibility.
He waited until the camp had fully settled. He listened to the knights' murmurs fade. He listened for Gina's footsteps—her habit of checking his space twice before letting herself rest.
When he heard her outside, speaking quietly to a knight and then moving away, he moved.
He eased the carriage door open without letting it creak, slipping out into the cold. The night air bit immediately at his cheeks. He pulled his cloak tighter and held his breath, listening.
No one shouted.
No one stirred.
He moved between wagons the way he had learned to move between palace curtains—quiet, low, purposeful. His boots were small, and the frozen ground muffled them. He passed a lantern pole and kept to its shadow. The griffons slept with their eyes half-lidded, but none lifted their heads.
At the edge of camp, he paused.
Beyond the rise, the land sloped downward toward the basin where Asmora lay. A faint cluster of lights marked the village, small and tired. Beyond that, the hills loomed darker shapes against the starry sky.
The archway waited there.
Alaric inhaled slowly, drew a thin braid of mana into his core, and began walking.
The trek was harder at night. The ground was uneven. Frost slicked stones. Once, his foot slid, and he caught himself with a small gasp that sounded too loud in the quiet. He froze, listening, expecting a shout or the rush of armored steps.
Nothing.
So he continued.
By the time he reached the base of the hills, his legs ached, his breath came quicker, and the mana braid in his chest pulsed steadily—present, controlled, like a hand on his shoulder.
He climbed, slower now, careful. The cold air burned his lungs. The stars seemed sharper overhead. When he crested the second hill, the archway emerged from darkness like a pale bone jutting from earth.
It was more unsettling at night.
The carved stone seemed almost luminous in starlight, its delicate patterns catching faint silver sheen. The inscriptions along the curve were harder to see, but they were there—thin lines like scratches made by careful hands. And in the center, the barrier shimmered faintly, as if it too had been waiting.
Alaric approached, heart thudding.
The barrier reacted immediately—light rippling, runes flaring in layered geometry. The air before it pressed gently outward, warning him away.
He lifted his hand, but this time he did not stop purely out of caution.
He let his mana rise into his palm.
The barrier's shimmer changed.
It tightened, as if focusing.
Alaric swallowed.
His mind reached back to the words he had memorized from the archway—those vaguely elven syllables that had lodged in him like a half-remembered spell from another life. The letters had looked like D&D elvish. The cadence had felt like something meant to be spoken aloud, not merely read.
He drew a steady breath.
Then, in a voice soft but clear, he recited:
"Ha tel' itas arta bren na enialaith, desha siilen bren shesh be'inway."
The words left his mouth and hung in the air like a key being turned.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the barrier pulsed.
Not outward in warning—inward, as if listening.
The runes flared, brightening from pale shimmer to a clearer, whiter light. The air thickened, then thinned, the pressure vanishing as though released.
The barrier dissipated.
It did not shatter. It did not explode. It simply… parted, like fog peeled away by a sudden wind.
Alaric stared, stunned by how natural it looked—as if the barrier had never been meant to block him once he knew the right words and carried the right mana.
His heart pounded.
He stepped forward.
The air within the archway was colder than the night outside, as if the ruins beyond held their own climate. Stone fragments and collapsed walls lay in shadow beyond. A stair descended into darkness. The scent that drifted out was old—dust, damp, and something faintly metallic.
Alaric crossed the threshold.
The moment his foot passed fully through, the barrier spread back out behind him with a soft ripple, sealing itself like a skin closing over a wound.
Alaric spun, eyes widening.
The shimmer was back—solid, bright, unyielding.
He lifted his hand, pressed his palm lightly against it.
The barrier did not push. It did not pulse. It simply refused.
A chill crawled up his spine.
He was inside.
And the door had closed.
For a heartbeat, fear tried to rise—small and sharp. He forced it down. Panic was noise, and noise was how people died.
He turned back toward the ruins.
They were closer than they had appeared from outside. Broken stonework lay scattered like bones. The archway stood at the edge of a broader ruin-field, remnants of walls and columns half-sunk into earth. The stair descended between two cracked pillars, leading into a lower space where darkness pooled thicker than night.
Alaric inhaled and drew mana into his core again, letting it pulse gently. The air here reacted to it—faint motes of light flickered along some stones, like dormant enchantments stirred by the presence of someone who could finally speak to them.
He took one cautious step forward—
And heard voices.
"Prince!"
Gina's voice cut through the night like a blade, sharp with fury and relief both.
Alaric jerked his head toward the archway. On the outside of the barrier, silhouettes appeared: armored knights with weapons drawn, their forms tense in the starlight. Behind them, Gina stood with her cloak thrown over her shoulders, hair slightly disheveled as if she had run hard enough to abandon dignity.
Her amber eyes were wide.
"You—" she began, and the word sounded like it might become a scream.
The Knights Gallant captain stepped closer, staring at the barrier with grim disbelief. "The prince is inside," he said, voice tight. "How—"
Gina's gaze snapped to the barrier, then to Alaric, then back to the barrier again as if refusing to accept what her eyes told her.
"You disappeared," she hissed, each word carved in anger. "Do you have any idea—"
Alaric lifted both hands, palms open, small gesture of calm.
Gina did not calm.
Her eyes burned. "I noticed too late," she said, voice low and shaking. "You were gone and the camp—by the gods, Alaric—"
Alaric's chest tightened at the sound of his name spoken without title, raw with emotion.
He stepped closer to the barrier, close enough that Gina could see his face clearly through the shimmer.
"I reached the first sphere," he said, voice quiet but steady.
Gina froze.
The Knights shifted, a ripple of surprise among them.
Gina's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again as if her anger had collided with the weight of what he'd just said.
"You… what?" she whispered.
"I unlocked it," Alaric repeated. "And the archway responded."
Gina's hands clenched at her sides. "So you decided," she said, voice rising again, "that the proper response to unlocking magic was to run away into ancient ruins like a fool?"
Alaric flinched slightly, not from the words but from the truth behind them.
He swallowed. "The barrier wouldn't open before," he said. "Now it did. I needed to know."
"You needed to live," Gina snapped.
Her gaze flicked frantically over the ruins behind him as if expecting something to leap from the shadows and drag him down the stairs. The knights raised their weapons higher, their stances tightening.
Gina stepped closer to the barrier and pressed her palm against it.
The shimmer held.
"Open," she demanded, as if sheer authority could command ancient magic.
Nothing.
Her jaw trembled. "Open!" she hissed again.
The barrier did not so much as pulse.
Alaric stared at it, heart thudding, the reality settling heavy: he had entered, and his entrance had sealed him away from everyone else.
He looked back at Gina through the shimmer.
"I'm here," he said, softer now. "I'm not hurt."
"Not yet," Gina whispered, voice breaking on the edge of rage and fear. "And I cannot reach you."
Alaric's fingers curled slightly, mana pulsing in his chest as if sensing the tension.
The ruins behind him were silent.
But silence in old places was never reassurance.
And outside the sealed archway, Gina Othel stood with knights and griffons and all the Empire's teeth at her disposal—
Yet for the first time since she had met him, she looked utterly powerless.