Reborn as the Empire's Blind Prince

4. Cassian Everstar

(Dear readers, this chapter is a bit immersive, read calmly. Love author.)

Lucian slept through the daylight hours, forcing his battered body to rest so his mind would be razor-sharp when the sun finally fell.

He waited for the dead of night, for that specific silence that only came when the sprawling Starlight Castle was entirely at rest.

He lay perfectly still, listening to the endless ticking of the clock on his stone wall.

From what he could piece together from his fragmented memories, it was roughly two in the morning. The patrols would be sparse. The servants would be asleep. It was time to move.

He swung his legs over the edge of the large, feather-stuffed bed.

The stone floor was biting cold against his bare feet, sending a shiver up his calves.

He looked toward the wooden door, then his closed eyes drifted back to the wheelchair sitting idly in the corner of the room.

'I should take it,' he thought, his jaw tightening.

It wasn't exactly quiet, the wheels had a frustrating tendency to screech against the marble but it was his ultimate alibi.

If a royal patrol guard caught him walking on his own two feet, standing tall in the middle of the night, his cover was instantly blown, and he would likely be charged for deception.

But if they found him slumped in the chair? He was just the pathetic, helpless blind prince who had gotten lost.

"Curse this," he muttered, dropping his frail weight into the leather seat and gripping the wheels.

Ming Ho didn't know the exact route to the royal archives; the old Lucian had never been allowed inside, deemed too useless to require an education.

But Ming Ho had an analytical brain. He recalled a passing conversation where Garrett had mentioned seeking comfort in the profound, dusty peacefulness of the library when the castle became too chaotic.

'The armory and the training grounds are on the right side of the castle. They generate constant noise, vibration, and foot traffic,' Lucian deduced, wheeling himself carefully into the pitch black corridor.

'If Garrett goes there for absolute peace, the library must be located on the far left wing of the ground floor.'

He pushed the chair forward slowly, his arms straining, wincing at every tiny squeak of the rusted axles.

Just as he approached the intersection of the main hall, a figure emerged from the dense shadows.

Lucian froze, his breath catching in his throat.

His False Sight captured the glowing, translucent silhouette stepping into his field of vision.

He studied their gait intensely. It wasn't Garrett's heavy, armored stomp, nor was it Isabel's hurried, anxious shuffle.

The figure was tall, draped in flowing, elegant garments that seemed to swallow the ambient noise.

Long hair trailed behind them. Lucian couldn't see the physical colors, but through his closed eyelids, he could see the aura.

It was white. White was meant to be neutral, but the emotional intent radiating off this person felt like absolute zero. It was a freezing suffocating calm that made the hairs on Lucian's arms stand up.

The old Lucian had never actually seen his brothers, but Garrett had described them to him, with their unique personalities.

'Calm, completely soundless footsteps. Long silver hair. A presence with intensity,' Lucian assessed, his grip tightening on the wheels until his knuckles ached.

'The Third Prince. Cassian Everstar.'

This was his first actual confrontation with a member of his own bloodline. The old Lucian had been strictly banned from attending any of his brothers' Awakening Ordeals.

"He can't see, so why bring him out? His mere existence is already an embarrassment," his father, the Primarch, had decreed years ago.

Lucian braced himself, his heart hammering against his ribs. In the transmigration webnovels he used to read back on Earth, the arrogant older brothers always went out of their way to humiliate, beat, or demean the weak protagonist.

'What's the worst that could happen?' Ming Ho thought, refusing to lower his head. He kept his posture stiff, waiting for the inevitable cruelty.

He waited for Cassian to reach him. The Third Prince stopped directly beside the wheelchair. He didn't speak, nor did he summon a weapon or attempt to hurl an insult.

Cassian simply reached out, tapped Lucian twice on his shoulder, and continued walking.

Lucian gasped, his lungs desperately pulling in air.

'Wha—' He tried to speak, but the words died on his tongue. He slowly turned his head, his closed eyes watching as Cassian vanished down the hall without a single backward glance.

His footsteps remained entirely silent, as if he wasn't even walking.

'What did that mean? Why did he tap my shoulder?'

Lucian slowly brought his trembling hand up to touch the spot where Cassian's fingers had rested. He was in absolute disbelief.

In a family that completely ignored his existence, a family that treated him worse than the dirt on their boots, and with the inherited grief of the old Lucian, that double-tap felt incredibly loud. He felt seen.

'No. It was just a stupid tap. It doesn't mean anything,' he told himself, violently shaking the thought away.

He couldn't afford to trust anyone, especially not an Everstar monster.

'The only thing I need to do right now is learn the lore of this world and figure out how to play my cards.'

Pushing Cassian from his mind, he wheeled himself to the end of the left wing and pushed his weight against the heavy, intricately carved oak doors of the royal library.

The room was vast, completely dark, and utterly silent.

Even with False Sight active behind his closed eyelids, the translucent outlines of the bookshelves were faint, muddy, and muted. It was like trying to look at a photograph through a thick layer of fog.

He wheeled himself into the center of the room and stopped, frowning.

Ming Ho's scientific mind began to churn. Something about this didn't make sense. He sat in the dark, the silence of the library closing in on him, and began to slowly unravel the logic of his own eyes.

'What actually is sight?' he asked himself.

'Back on Earth, sight is just photons...light bouncing off physical objects and entering the retina. In a pitch-black room, there are no photons. There is no light, so it is hard to see.'

He raised a hand in front of his closed face. He could still see the faint, translucent outline of his fingers.

'If there is no light in this room to bounce off my hand... how am I seeing it? Even through my closed eyelids?'

The realization crept in slowly, breaking down the assumptions he had made in the garden.

False Sight didn't rely on the sun. It didn't rely on chandeliers or candles. It was generating its own light.

The system notification termed False Sight as a Primordial-level gift. That meant he had a god-tier energy source that was implanted directly into his optical nerves.

'When I was in the garden,' he reasoned, his pulse quickening,

'I opened my eyes, and the sunlight nearly blinded me. I thought the sun was just too bright for a blind kid. But that wasn't it.'

He pressed his fingers against his temples, the physics of his cheat skill finally snapping into crystal-clear focus.

'It wasn't the brightness. It was a collision. My eyes were projecting false light outward, and the sun was forcing natural light inward. Two completely different, violently powerful energy waves collided directly on my retinas. That's what caused the searing pain.'

He took a slow, deep breath. "Let's try this again."

He was in a windowless room, deep in the castle, at two in the morning. There was no natural light to cause a collision.

Slowly, carefully, trembling with anticipation, he opened his physical eyes.

No pain. No stabbing agony.

Instead, the library exploded into magnificent, hyper-detailed clarity. It wasn't the translucent vision, the muddy blueprint he saw with his eyes closed. It felt like reality itself had been upgraded.

He could see entirely through the thick wooden shelves. He could spot microscopic strands of cobwebs clinging to the high vaulted ceiling.

His eyes darted around, processing information at a terrifying speed. He could immediately differentiate the ancient, decaying books from the newly bound ledgers just by looking at the density of their glowing energy.

He could see floating particles of essence hanging in the stale air, vibrating with magical residue.

Suddenly, his vision snapped forward, zooming in on the intricate leather spine of a book fifty feet away with dizzying, telescopic speed.

He felt a violent wave of vertigo and immediately snapped his eyes shut.

'Shit!' Lucian hissed, gripping the armrests of his chair to keep from vomiting.

'Everything became so clear... but it's way too fast. I can't control the zoom.'

He kept his eyes shut, letting his brain cool down. He had been utterly wrong about False Sight. He categorized the true mechanics in his mind, cementing the rules of his survival:

Case 1: False Sight emits its own god-tier vision. When he opens his eyes in the daylight, the natural light collides violently with his magical sight, creating a sensory overload that shocks his brain and causes immense pain. He must keep his eyes closed during the day.

Case 2: When his eyes are closed, his eyelids act as a physical barrier. They block the natural light out, but they also severely restrict the False Sight. It gives him a moderate, safe, but muffled translucent vision.

Case 3: In total darkness, there is no natural light to cause a collision. Opening his eyes allows the False Sight to operate at maximum capacity without restriction. Absolute clarity. X-ray penetrating vision and Telescopic detail.

It was an irony that made a jagged smile pull at his lips. The blind, unfortunate prince, the embarrassment of the Everstar lineage, had inherited a primordial sight that was god-level.

The true irony was that everyone would think he was blind, when he was actually operating above them.

'If I can strengthen my body... if I can train my mind to eventually withstand the collision of daylight and false light... what then?'

The thought was staggering, but he forced it aside. He had to walk before he could run.

He carefully opened his eyes again in the dark. This time, he forced his heart rate down.

He kept himself perfectly calm, asserting strict mental dominance over the sensory input so it wouldn't zoom or shift wildly.

His vision stabilized. The dark, sprawling library was as clear to him as a sunny day, illuminated by his own internal power.

Lucian stood up slowly from his wheelchair, his bare feet silent against the cold stone.

He walked past the towering rows of glowing books, his god-level sight piercing through the shelves, scanning for the answers he desperately needed to survive the Ordeal.