2025-09-15 01:35:28
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Chapter 60: Bloodline of Lies
The downfall of House Croft was sudden and complete. It was not a loss in battle or in money. It was a social and legal destruction. In a period of mere hours after Felix's announcement at the ball, the Baronet's creditors, sensing vulnerability, drew upon their loans. By dawn, heralds openly erased the Croft name from the lists of nobles, their coats of arms emblazoned defaced on public memorials.The family didn't only lose their position; they lost their identity. They were nothing. Less than nothing—nothing at all—they were a joke. "As false as a Croft" joined the common phraseology overnight.The other noble houses watched in stunned silence. They had seen Felix employ truth as a weapon before, but this was different. This was not a policy denunciation or a record clarification. This was an existence attack. He hadn't just disproven a fact; he had disproven a person. He had eliminated their purpose for being.The Court of Quills became a ghost town. No lord wanted to advance thei
Chapter 59: The Whispered Treachery
The stress of maintaining the illusion of the war was a ceaseless, grinding burden to Felix's mind. Each edited report was another brick added to a psychic burden that slumped his shoulders and etched new creases of weariness into his eyes. He moved through the capital as though possessed, his focus inward, maintaining the gossamer, unseen constructs of untruths that were propping up the kingdom's spirits.It was during this exhausted vigilance that the Codex had started whispering a different, alternative truth. Initially, it had been but a faint thrum along the edge of his perception, a discord in the Unseen Tide that had no connection to the fields of war or grain tithe. It was more delicate, more intricately threaded into the power matrices of the city.He walked with Liora through a plaza ruled by a row of commanding statues—the "Hero-Kings" of the great noble houses. Valerius, Croft, Montague. Each accompanied by an ornate plaque presenting a glorious pedigree back to the First
Chapter 58: Ink Storm
The war was not going well. News, filtered through the king's censors and delivered in sternly controlled broadsheets, spoke of "strategic withdrawals" and "gallant holding actions" along the northern border against mountain clans. But the Codex, always analytical, saw the shapes in the spaces.Annotation: Royal War Bulletin #14. Claim: "Enemy repulsed with heavy losses at Serpent's Pass." Cross-Reference: Northern garrison grain shipments increased by 300%. Medical spirit deliveries increased by 500%. Chances of "Victory": 2.3%. Chances of disastrous defeat and rout: 97.7%.The king was losing a war. And he was lying about it in order to maintain an illusion of power and continue imposing the taxes for it. The reality of the Founding Writ already had weakened his power domestically; a defeat in war could end it entirely.Felix knew this was a vulnerability. A desperate king was a dangerous king. He would lash out. He would look for scapegoats. The “heretic” who had weakened the natio
Chapter 57: Kael's Shadow
The popular applause was a crown of thorns for Felix. They offered him a weak, populist armor, but at the same time, they made him the perpetual foe of the powers that be. The nobility's first indignation had become cold, calculating anger. They could not strike him openly, not with thousands watching his every move. So they sought an instrument to strike in the darkness he had led them into.They found it in a familiar form: Kael.The Storm Blade had not left the kingdom. Embarrassed and angry at his defeat at the Academy, he had been wallowing in the Seed's worst parts, drinking his house's empty purse and faking his indignation. He was a spark over tinder, and the royal faction were all too keen to provide the kindling.He was called to not a resplendent palace, but to a modest townhouse owned by a shell company that traced back to Duke Valerius. The one who welcomed him was not a lord, but a spymaster named Vex, a man with the dead fish stare and the bearing of a statue.Your batt
Chapter 56: The People's Cheers
The news was not confined to the throne room. It could not be. It was too explosive, too fundamentally world-altering. It spilled out of the Citadel with the courtiers and functionaries, a wave of truth rippling through the layered strata of the city.At first, it met with disbelief in the lower echelons. A rumor. A dream. The idea that the First King himself had forbidden the backbreaking taxes and the lord's prerogative to keep them tied to the land was too good to be true.But the rumor was specific. It had a number: one part in ten. It had a phrase: "shall not be bound to the land." And it had a source: the strange, fact-finding academic from the Academy who had defied the king and the whole court.Felix and Liora, expecting arrest or worse, had barricaded themselves in their room. The knock on their door that evening, though, was not from the city watch. It was from a delegation of the Baker's Guild, their aprons still dusty with flour, their faces etched with a desperate hope."
Chapter 55: Truth Restored
The lead-lined coffer lay on the rough table of their rented room, a low, ominous mass that seemed to suck the light from the air. The Ward on the ancient scroll within wasn't just a lock; it was a presence, a silent, sleeping guardian of immense power. Felix could feel it even through the lead, a low, threatening hum that resonated on the lowest levels of the Unseen Tide.He didn't attempt to open it for days. He simply sat and held it, his hands on the chill metal, his consciousness extended. He wasn't trying to break the Ward. He was trying to learn its language.Annotation: Royal Ward of Secrecy (King's Edict Variant – Lv. 99). Purpose: To protect. To conceal. To punish presumption. Mechanism: Psychometric trigger. The Ward is not activated by force or ingenious unlocking spells. It is activated by the reader's intent. To deactivate it, one must show one's intention is aligned with the Ward's innermost, truest purpose—not to discover, but to protect the truth it guards. Penalty fo
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