Reign of the War King: Heavens Must Fall

Chapter 5: The Unseen Crest

The silence at the edge of the plaza was thick enough that you could hear ash from the burnt scroll settling onto the flagstones.

Marcus stepped forward, greaves clanking against marble, his eyes moving over the five men in front of him: Boros trembling on his peg leg, three young technicians with their heads pressed to the floor, and Leon, standing loose with his bag over one shoulder.

Freya came up behind him, knuckles white on her sword hilt. "General, the mirror shattered right here. The signal came from this spot."

Marcus didn't answer yet. He stopped three feet from Leon.

His heart was going like a war drum. He knew the shape of the War King: the dark abyssal plate, the closed horned helm, but almost no one alive had seen the man's actual face. He leaned in, searching Leon's eyes for anything: a flicker of mana, the golden burn of a crest.

Leon met his gaze without flinching.

Under his ribs, the War Crest slowed to a crawl. The instant the mirror had reacted, Leon had already pulled his aura in tight, smaller than a grain of dust. To anyone probing him, mana or otherwise, he was just an empty vessel.

"You." Marcus's voice dropped low. "Boy. Your name."

Before Leon could answer, Harold and a dozen elders came skidding up behind the generals, out of breath.

"General Marcus, please, step back. There must be some mistake. The artifact likely misfired off residual mana from the earlier duel!"

"Misfired?" Freya's eyes went cold. "The War King's Mirror was forged by the Imperial Enchanters. It reacts to nothing but a true War Crest."

"Yes, Lady Freya, but look at them." Harold's finger trembled toward the group. "Auxiliary staff. Commoners. And that one-" a dismissive gesture at Leon, "-that's Leon. A non-combat technician. Zero mana affinity. He couldn't light a candle with his own energy if his life depended on it."

Marcus's eyes narrowed. He put a heavy, gloved hand flat on Leon's shoulder.

A wave of General-tier mana surged through it into his arm, his chest, along every meridian. A direct scan.

Leon let it pass through him like water through a sieve. No resistance. No response. He let Marcus find exactly what Harold had promised: dry, dormant meridians, nothing running through them at all.

Marcus's shoulders dropped. The fire in his eyes burned down to ash.

"Nothing," he muttered, pulling his hand back. "Not a drop. His meridians are dead."

"I told you, General." Harold exhaled hard with relief. "A false reading of the residual wind mana from Lord Julian's duel must have thrown it off."

Julian, arm still bandaged, let out a loud, ugly laugh from the crowd. "The trash Son-in-Law, the War King? That's the best joke I've heard all year! He's a beggar who cleans our gear!"

Laughter rippled through the students. The terror that had gripped the plaza a minute ago dissolved into relief and mockery.

Sophia let out a slow breath. For one awful second, when the mirror shattered, her mind had gone completely blank. Marcus's confirmation snapped her back.

Of course. What was I thinking? A faint, self-deprecating smile crossed her face. Leon is quiet and sturdier than he looks, but the War King? Absurd.

Freya wasn't so easily satisfied. She circled Leon slowly, hand still on her hilt.

"Even with no mana," she said, "when my General released his pressure, every student within twenty yards flinched. You didn't blink. Your pulse didn't even change."

Leon looked at her, expression as blank as a wall.

"Master Boros told me to stand still when officers speak," he said, voice flat and simple. "If I move without permission, I lose the day's pay."

Boros, still kneeling, chimed in fast. "It's true, my lady! The boy's just slow! Doesn't know any better!"

Freya's brow furrowed, but she found nothing to push back against.

Marcus rubbed a hand over his face and turned away. "Enough, Freya. We're wasting time. If he's not here, the signal was a ghost reflection, or he's already gone. We inspect the Duke's estate next."

"Understood." Freya gave Leon one last suspicious look before falling back toward the carriages.

Marcus paused, turning to Harold. "The Northern Border is falling. In two weeks, the Court issues an emergency draft. Every third-year combatant mobilizes to the secondary line."

The smirks vanished off the students' faces all at once. War had just stopped being an abstraction. Julian went pale again.

"Two weeks?" Harold swallowed. "We'll prepare the rosters immediately, General."

"See that you do." Marcus's voice went grim. "And if anyone hears even a whisper about the War King's whereabouts, it goes straight to the Dragon Guard."

He climbed back into his carriage. The knights turned in unison, halberds clattering, and the procession rolled back out through the gates.

As the crowd broke apart, murmuring nervously about the draft, Leon bent down and picked his bag back up off the stone.

Sophia walked over, studying his face.

"You got lucky today," she said, cold and even again. "If Marcus had thought you'd tampered with a divine artifact, not even the Frostford name would've saved you."

"I was just standing there," Leon said, adjusting the strap.

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Go back to the workshop. The next two weeks are going to be chaos with the war preparations. Stay out of sight. I don't need my mother hearing you got dragged into something else."

She turned and walked off toward the high-elemental classrooms without waiting for a reply, her cloak snapping behind her.

Leon watched her go, then lifted his eyes north. Past the mountains ringing the capital, the sky carried a faint, sickly purple haze, the unmistakable color of Abyssal Miasma.

Two weeks until the draft, he thought, something cold flickering behind his eyes.

He pressed a hand to his chest. The War Crest was spinning faster now, pulling in the ambient magic around it, and the golden threads of the curse were snapping off dozens at a time.

Ten more days. Ninety-eight percent, and the rest goes with them.

He turned and walked back down into the dark of the maintenance stairs.

Let the gods send their beasts. When the northern sky falls, the War King takes his throne back.