Reborn as the Empire's Blind Prince

3. A Change of Things

Lucian hesitated to return Isabel's greeting. He focused his False Sight on her. Though her physical features remained a translucent, shifting blur of white lines, he felt a strange, radiating warmth from her silhouette.It was steady, soft, and remarkably genuine.

"You can take over from here, Isabel," Garrett said, his deep voice echoing slightly in the vast corridor as he released the heavy leather handles of the wheelchair. "I'll see you later, Young Master."

"That's fine, Garrett. You are dismissed," Lucian responded, carefully measuring his words to match the clipped, regal tone he'd found buried in the old Lucian's memories.

Garrett offered a short, practiced bow, a clink of his armor accompanying the gesture before his footsteps began to fade into the distance.

Isabel stepped behind the chair, her touch on the handles light and careful.

"It's time for your bath, Master. Then I'll serve breakfast," she said warmly, easing the chair forward.

'How incredibly insulting,' Lucian thought, his jaw tightening as the chair began to roll.

'I'm being tossed around and handed off like a toddler who hasn't learned to walk. Is this how babies feel when people just scoop them up without asking? This utter lack of autonomy... it's dehumanizing.'

They moved into the central hall of the Starlight Castle. Even through his tightly closed eyelids, Lucian's vision shimmered.

The massive crystal chandeliers hanging high above refracted light into his False Sight, turning the ceiling into a sprawling galaxy of white sparks. It was beautiful, but it also reminded him that he was a prisoner here.

The Starlight Castle featured two grand, sweeping stairways leading up to the royal suites where his brothers stayed when they visited.

Lucian, however, remained on the ground floor. His room was the largest guest suite in the west wing, a compromise made by the palace administration because hauling a "blind prince" up and down the stairs daily was considered an unnecessary logistical strain.

'Fair enough, I suppose,' he mused, leaning his head back against the chair.

In the webnovels Ming Ho used to read back on Earth, the discarded, crippled princes usually ended up rotting in a drafty shed, a servant's quarters, or a literal stable.

Looking at his current situation objectively, this lavish ground-floor suite was a massive stroke of luck.

As they turned into the final hallway leading to his quarters, the wheels of the chair gave a sharp, lonely screech against the polished marble floor.

'I'm getting so tired of this,' Lucian thought, a headache beginning to pulse at his temples. 'My eyelids feel heavy. Keeping them squeezed shut is taking active effort. I haven't blinked in an eternity.'

Forgetting his own vulnerability for a fraction of a second, he let his eyes relax and opened them, just a tiny sliver.

Light burst into his eyes.

"Aargghh!"

He screamed, a short, violent sound that echoed off the high stone ceilings as he slammed his eyes shut again.

His hands flew up to his face.

It felt as though someone had shoved two red-hot rods directly into his pupils.

The natural light of the castle, combined with the hyper-sensitive gathering of his False Sight, created a blinding, searing cocktail of sensory overload that his unadjusted brain simply couldn't process.

Isabel gasped, her shoes skidding against the marble as she instantly locked the wheels of the chair.

She scrambled to the front, dropping to her knees.

To Lucian's closed eyes, Isabel blurred. He couldn't get a clear vision of her.

"Is everything alright, Master?" she asked, her voice trembling with real concern.

Lucian gripped the armrests, his knuckles turning white as he struggled through the wave of agony.

The searing pain slowly began to dull into a heavy, throbbing ache, but the burning afterimage of the hallway remained branded behind his eyelids.

He couldn't tell her about the False Sight. He barely knew anything about this world. He had to play everything safe.

"No... Yes. Yes, I'm fine," he managed to choke out, his chest heaving.

Through the darkness of his closed eyes, he saw a deep, swirling purple aura emitting from Isabel's silhouette, undulating and expanding with her every movement.

'Purple,' Ming Ho analyzed, his analytical mind kicking into gear despite the pain. 'Worry. Anxiety. Fear.'

The realization hit him like a blow on his face. He wasn't just seeing essence and magic cores; he was seeing emotion. He was seeing intent.

In a palace filled with vipers, liars, and politicians, the ability to read exactly how someone was feeling was a weapon sharper than any broadsword.

"I'm actually fine," he said, forcing his breathing to steady, trying to project calm. "The lights... they were just entirely too bright when I opened my eyes. They've been closed for quite a while, and the sudden flash was jarring."

"I'm so sorry, Master," Isabel whispered, her purple aura pulsing with a frantic, erratic rhythm. "I could have done a better job driving the chair. I should have warned you we were passing under the eastern windows... maybe it wouldn't have hurt that much."

'Why is she apologizing?' he thought, baffled. 'It's not like she physically pried my eyes open. And even if I tell her not to apologize, she's so conditioned by this place that she'll probably just apologize for apologizing.'

Lucian took a slow, deep breath, trying to merge Ming Ho's modern empathy with Lucian's royal status.

"Well... I'm sorry that you have to be the one solely responsible for me," Lucian spoke softly.

Isabel's aura spiked violently, then froze completely.

In the Valerian Empire, it was fundamentally blasphemous for a master to apologize to a servant. Ming Ho knew this fact clearly from Lucian's memories, but his true soul didn't agree with it. She was human just like him, he thought.

Isabel turned her face away, and through the False Sight, Lucian watched her heavy purple aura immediately soften into a flushed, erratic pink.

'Pink... What does this mean?' He questioned. 'Maybe she's embarrassed.'

"Master... please don't say that," she spoke softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

"What? Are you going to start giving me orders on what to say and what not to say?" Lucian teased, injecting a bit of lightness into his tone to break the suffocating tension.

Isabel jumped, her hands fluttering in front of her. "No! I didn't mean it that way. I would never, ever order my master." She bowed her head low, her aura swirling with deep embarrassment.

Lucian noticed the pink, embarrassed aura slowly transition into a softer, neutral blue. She was calming down. She felt safe.

Lucian smiled, a genuine one this time. "Don't feel embarrassed, Isabel. I was only teasing you. Besides, I smell like a rose bush and dry dirt. Let's move."

Isabel nodded, stepping back behind the chair.

She wheeled him into his private bathroom, a massive chamber of dark slate and brass.

She moved efficiently, preparing the deep sunken tub with steaming hot water, crushing fragrant, medicinal herbs between her fingers and dropping them into the bath.

"Master, the bath is ready," she announced.

Ming Ho found it deeply unsettling that she fully intended to bathe him.

In his previous world, he was an independent student; he handled his own life.

Right now, he was only pretending to be blind to survive. He had tolerated the humiliating wheelchair ride because he had to, but he drew the line at this.

Lucian stood up slowly from the chair, wrapped in a thick silk towel around his waist.

"You can leave. I'll handle this myself," Lucian said firmly.

Isabel froze. She had been handling this exact routine for years, washing the helpless prince without a second thought. And now, he was dismissing her.

She bent her head down, her aura immediately flashing back to that anxious purple. "Have I offended my Master? If I have—"

"No, you didn't offend me," Lucian interrupted, keeping his voice gentle but authoritative. "I just feel I should start taking responsibility for some things in my own life. I need to learn to do this."

"As you wish, Master," Isabel said, bowing before quietly backing out of the room.

At the sharp click of the heavy door shutting, Lucian let out a massive sigh of relief. He dropped the towel and stepped down into the sunken tub.

The water was insanely hot, nearly scalding, but somehow this royal body was perfectly accustomed to it.

As he sank into the water, he ran his hands over his own legs and chest. Without his eyes open, he relied entirely on touch.

His muscles were pitifully thin, gained from years of sitting in that chair. There was no warrior's bulk, no scars of training. He was incredibly frail.

He bathed in silence, letting the heat soothe his lingering headache.

When he finally wrapped himself in a fresh robe and stepped out of the bathroom, Isabel was waiting by the bedside dining table. Her mouth slightly parted in shock at seeing him emerge perfectly fine without her assistance.

"Let me help—" she insisted, stepping forward.

"I'm fine, Isabel," Lucian pushed back gently. "I've been in this exact room my whole life. I know where the walls are. I can perceive some things, even if it's just by smell and memory."

Isabel silently served him his food. He ate methodically, tasting rich, heavily spiced meats and soft bread that tasted better than anything Ming Ho had ever afforded on his strict college budget. When he was done, he asked Isabel to clear the dishes away and leave him to rest.

Alone at last, Lucian collapsed backward onto his massive, feather-stuffed bed.

'I feel refreshed now,' he thought, staring up at the dark ceiling through his closed eyelids. 'Now... how do I get into the royal library without blowing my cover?'

He reasoned it out. With Isabel hovering by him nearly twenty-four hours a day, and Garrett guarding the perimeter, there was absolutely no way he could casually stroll into the archives during daylight hours. The only option was to go at night, when the Starlight Castle was completely dead and asleep.

'Midnight will be the best time to go,' Lucian thought, his jaw setting with determination.

'There is far too much I need to know about this world. The mechanics of the Awakening Ordeal. The specific power system. The history of this lineage. It's incredibly dangerous how little I actually know about the board I'm playing on.'

Lucian took a deep, grounding breath. He raised his right hand, keeping his eyes shut, and looked at his palm through the glowing white filter of his False Sight.

He stared at his weak essence for a long time, watching the faint energy flow through his veins, before slowly clenching his fingers into a tight, white-knuckled fist.

'This is my second chance to live. This has become my life now... This is my world. I'm not going to be a victim again. I'll own it, and I have to make the absolute most of it.'

He remained on the bed, his mind sharp, waiting for the sun to finally set.