2026-10-08 09:16:36
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Chapter210:His Majesty Prefers to Do It Himself
The chains made a dignified sound against the palace floor.Elias respected that. If a person was going to be arrested on purpose, the least the restraints could do was provide proper atmosphere.Nia did not share his appreciation. She walked beside him with her wrists bound in black anti-magic iron, her chin lifted, and her eyes fixed on the tall doors at the end of the corridor. The spellbreakers around them believed they were escorting prisoners. Elias had already taught every clasp, lock, blade, bootlace, and heartbeat in the procession who truly held whom."Heavy?" he asked inside her mind.Nia glanced at the chain across her wrists. "Did you tamper with them?""Master, what an accusation. I merely persuaded the restraints to have flexible loyalties.""So yes.""All of them. Also the guards. Also the left hinge on the throne room door, though that one was mostly for personal satisfaction."Nia almost smiled. Almost.Then the doors opened.The throne hall of Sandstorm's old royal
Chapter209:Sneaking Mission, Nia
Nia's plan for entering the royal cemetery involved a tunnel.Elias had suspected this. The shovel in her bag had been an omen."Master, there is a gate.""Gates are for people who wish to be noticed.""There is an invisible ladder over the wall.""Too obvious.""I can move us directly inside through folded space.""No respect for tradition."He stared at her. She stared back with the solemn authority of a woman who had personally declared subterranean trespassing a cultural heritage practice.The tunnel mouth lay beneath a collapsed fountain in a forgotten service yard. It was even smaller than the first one.Elias crouched. "You made this when you were what, twelve?""Fourteen.""That does not improve the engineering.""It has worked for decades.""For you."She looked him up and down. "You can become younger.""I refuse to alter my body to accommodate your criminal infrastructure."Five minutes later, he had altered his body slightly to accommodate her criminal infrastructure.They
Chapter208:The Break in the Interference
The first treatment did not cure Arlushu.It did something more valuable: it proved the command could be interrupted without killing the host.Elias drew three diagrams in the dust because the forbidden library had many priceless manuscripts and, apparently, no respectable chalk. Nia watched him work with the expression of a mentor trying very hard not to look proud."The mark feeds on agreement," he said. "Not conscious agreement. Instinctive agreement. Every time the host feels fear of magic and accepts that fear as natural, the eye roots deeper. Arlushu's family line survived because doubt became hereditary too.""Doubt can be inherited?" Anna asked."Stories can. Questions can. Habits of refusing lies can. Sometimes that is enough to damage a god's neat little machine."Nia loved that answer more than she intended to show.Arlushu described everything he remembered from Nia's mother: the princess secretly reading magic theory, arguing with her father, collecting evidence that anti
Chapter207:Are You Certain?
The forbidden library smelled of dust, iron locks, and books that had been hated too long to remain polite.Rows of chained tomes filled the chamber. Some were grimoires. Some were histories. Some were ordinary mathematics texts labeled dangerous because they had once been taught by mages.An old librarian moved slowly between the shelves, one hand on a cane. His name was Arlushu. His soul-light flickered unevenly, like a lamp shielded from wind by stubborn hands.Beside him stood a girl of ten or eleven, Anna, carrying three books nearly larger than her chest."Grandfather," Anna whispered, "why do we keep books everyone says are evil?"Arlushu sighed. "Because people who burn knowledge eventually need someone to remember what they destroyed."Nia's eyes softened.Elias stepped out of the shadow with her.Anna yelped. Arlushu turned, opened his mouth to call guards, and found the sound gently stolen before it reached the air."No harm," Elias said. "No shouting either. Both are usefu
Chapter206:A Disguise in Fate
They could not break into the city's collective subconscious by force.Elias tried a needle-thin probe first. The black ward reacted by turning every nearby thought toward them like hunting dogs lifting their heads.He withdrew before it could bite."Soul ward, mind command, and an observer hook," he said. "If I kick the door, whoever built this may feel it across whatever hole he is hiding in.""Can you hide us?""From souls? Yes. From minds? Usually. From destiny?" He considered. "Fortunately, I stole a key to that house recently."A thread of fate-light appeared between his fingers, silver and faintly indignant at being misused. He wrapped it around them until Nia felt her own presence blur.They were no longer intruders. They became a possibility the city had always expected to overlook."That feels illegal," Nia whispered."Most useful magic does."They passed through the ward.The inner mindscape of the desert city opened before them, and Nia wished it had not.Thousands of huma
Chapter205:No Unreasonable Guesses
Elias returned to the alley with a middle-aged seamstress unconscious in his arms, a furious cat under one elbow, and a drunk man floating upside down behind him in a bubble of silence.Nia stared."Explain.""Research materials.""That is not an explanation. That is a confession wearing glasses.""I needed examples from three different social categories. Commoner, merchant household, and minor administrative bloodline. The cat was accidental."The cat looked personally unconvinced.Nia's smile became winter. "And you thought bringing an unconscious woman into an alley was the clearest way to express that?""In retrospect, I see possible misunderstandings."She punched him into the upper wall. Softly. For her.Elias peeled himself off the stone and decided not to mention that the blow had helped him verify a structural weakness in nearby masonry.After he returned the subjects safely, erased their fear, and bribed the cat with fish, he brought Nia to a hidden chamber under a closed ba
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