Reborn As A Useless Mage, But I'm Already The Angel Of Death

09

Adrian had always believed that cunning outlasted strength. A strong man could break a wall. A cunning man could make the wall fall on its owner and walk away before anyone thought to ask who was standing nearby. More importantly, a cunning man left no witnesses capable of answering that question.

The Blackwood estate buzzed with activity well past midnight. Guards patrolled every corridor and garden path, their lanterns cutting arcs through the darkness as they searched for threats that did not exist. Gideon had not yet returned from the Empress's palace, and every servant in the household walked on eggshells, speaking in whispers and flinching at sudden noises.

Adrian closed his bedroom door, drew the curtains, and sat down in the leather armchair beside his desk. The room smelled faintly of cedar and old books, familiar scents that belonged to a version of himself who had never marched to war.

A soft knock. Then the door opened without waiting for permission.

Thalia entered carrying a silver tray with a single porcelain cup, steam curling from its surface in thin, fragrant wisps. She had changed out of the Ravenshaw maid's uniform and now wore the black and white livery of a Blackwood household servant, her pale hair pinned neatly beneath a modest cap.

"Cherry blossom tea." She set the cup on his desk. "I found the blossoms in the kitchen stores. I hope the preparation meets your standards, my lord."

Adrian lifted the cup and breathed in the scent. Pink tinted liquid, sweet and floral, with that distinctive undertone of something almost bitter beneath the surface. Exactly the way she used to make it.

In his previous timeline, Thalia had prepared this tea for him during the quietest hours of the war, those rare stretches between battles when the camps fell silent and exhaustion hung over everything like a fog. She would appear at his tent with a tray and two cups, one for him and one for herself, and they would sit together saying nothing while the tea cooled. Those were the closest things to peace he had experienced in years.

She did not remember any of that. This Thalia had been dead for four centuries until he resurrected her three days ago. The shared history they carried existed only in his mind.

"It is perfect." Adrian took a sip and set the cup down. "You always made it exactly the same way."

Thalia tilted her head slightly, curious. "Always? My lord, this is the first time I have prepared tea for you."

"A poor choice of words. I meant to say it tastes exactly as I imagined it would."

"You imagined how your maid's tea would taste before she ever made it?"

"I have an active imagination."

Thalia accepted this without further question, though her pale eyes lingered on his face a moment longer than necessary. She was perceptive. In his past life, that perceptiveness had saved his life at least twice.

"My lord, may I ask about the technique you used tonight? During the elimination of House Ravenshaw."

"Which one?"

"The one I did not recognize. You called it Origin Art when you spoke to me at the estate. I have served House Blackwood's bloodline since its founding, and I have never encountered any branch of Dark Arts by that name."

Adrian leaned back in his chair. "You have not encountered it because it did not exist until I created it."

Thalia's composure cracked by exactly one degree. Her eyebrows rose. "You created an entirely new branch of Dark Arts?"

"The five traditional branches cover most practical applications of Dark Mana, but there are gaps. Spaces between disciplines where interesting things happen when you force two or more branches to overlap in ways they were never designed to. Origin Art is my attempt to formalize those overlapping spaces into a coherent system."

"How many techniques does it contain?"

"Currently, seven. Dissever, which you saw tonight, severs metaphysical bonds, contracts, bindings, anything that connects one entity to another through mana. Gluttony drains ambient mana from surrounding sources. Shadow Blink, which brought me to the Ravenshaw estate, uses shadow as a transportation medium. Reincarnation, which brought you back, is technically the oldest technique in the system."

"You are telling me that my resurrection was an experiment."

"A successful experiment."

"How reassuring."

Adrian smiled. In his past life, Thalia had helped him refine at least four of those seven techniques. She had been his testing partner, his sounding board, his most honest critic. Several of Origin Art's core principles had come from conversations with her during those long nights between battles. In a very real sense, Origin Art was as much hers as it was his.

She deserved to know that. But explaining it would require explaining the regression, and he was not ready to share that with anyone yet.

"You are the only person I have told about Origin Art." Adrian met her eyes. "I trust you completely, Thalia. Remember that."

Something shifted in Thalia's expression. The formal mask softened, and for just a moment, the ancient warrior beneath the maid's uniform looked genuinely moved.

"I will not betray that trust, my lord. Not in this life or any other."

"I know you will not." He said it with a certainty that confused her, but she did not press.

"One more instruction before you go. For the next three days, blend in with the rest of the household staff. Do not attract attention. We depart for Ashgate Academy with Lilly and Maya Sinclair, and I will need you close."

"Understood. And the matter of the Empress's castle? Should I position agents within her staff to monitor developments?"

Adrian's jaw tightened. The suggestion was tactically sound. Thalia was perfectly suited for infiltration work. But the Empress's castle was where she had died the first time, in his original timeline, discovered and executed by imperial guards while carrying out a mission he had sent her on. The memory of finding her body in that cold stone corridor still woke him up at night.

"No." His voice came out harder than he intended. "Stay away from the castle. That is not open for discussion."

Thalia studied him for a moment, clearly sensing the weight behind his refusal, but she inclined her head without argument. "As you wish, my lord."

She departed silently, closing the door behind her with the practiced quiet of a woman who had spent centuries moving through spaces without being noticed.

Adrian lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. His body ached with the deep, bruising exhaustion that came from pushing too much magic through too young a frame.

His mind, however, refused to rest.

House Ravenshaw's territory would need to be divided. The Empress would distribute the land and resources among the four remaining Great Houses, a process that would generate weeks of political maneuvering and inter house tension. Good. Tension between the houses meant their attention would be focused inward rather than outward, buying him time to operate without scrutiny.

The Holy Empire spy hidden within the Empress's castle was another variable he chose to leave undisturbed. He knew who they were, had discovered their identity during the war in his previous life, but exposing them now served no purpose. A known spy was more valuable than an unknown replacement. Better to let them continue reporting carefully curated intelligence back to the Holy Empire while Adrian decided exactly what truths and lies he wanted the enemy to receive.

The Holy Empire's response to House Ravenshaw's fall would be predictable. Caution. Investigation. They would spend weeks trying to determine whether the Dark Empire had been weakened enough to exploit, and by the time they concluded it had not, the political landscape would have shifted again.

All of this depended on one critical detail. The underground laboratory beneath the Ravenshaw estate, preserved intact as Adrian had ordered, contained irrefutable evidence of the family's demonic contracts. When investigators eventually uncovered it, both empires would reach the same conclusion, that a Demon Lord had turned on its own servants and destroyed them from within. A perfectly logical explanation that pointed blame away from Adrian and toward an enemy both empires already feared.

The misdirection was clean. The evidence was planted without being planted. And the boy responsible was lying in his childhood bedroom drinking cherry blossom tea.

Adrian closed his eyes and tried to sleep, knowing tomorrow would be worse. He needed to prepare for the academy departure, finalize his plans for the Hollow Labyrinth, and somehow survive whatever exhausting shopping expedition Lilly and Maya were inevitably going to drag him on at the Ironhaven city market

.

He was already tired just thinking about it.