The week of grace granted by Emperor Moran II did not even see its third dawn before it vanished. Plans woven sluggishly within palace chambers, matching the slow crawl of ink drying on parchment, are so often torn to shreds by reality in a mere matter of seconds.
At the fourth hour before dawn, while the capital of Ozwald lay drowned beneath a pitch-black mist, it was neither a chamberlain nor a common messenger who knocked on the door of Prince Luai's basement office.
It was the Silver Guard—the Emperor’s personal executioners.
They burst into the room. Chairs were violently overturned. Tax ledgers scattered across the floor like dead leaves, and spears were leveled directly at the throats of Luai’s elderly clerks, whose bodies froze in sheer terror.
"By the order of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Moran II," thundered the captain of the Silver Guard, his armored hand resting heavily on the hilt of his enchanted blade, forged from Black Iron Mana Steel. "Prince Luai is to appear immediately before the Stone Throne Hall. No books. No documents. No delays, Your Highness."
Luai rose calmly from his chair, an act of sheer will, though his heartbeat quickened beneath an unreadable expression. He looked into the eyes of his father’s soldiers and saw no escort. They were the eyes of men watching a condemned man walk toward the gallows. Stepping between the rows of leveled spears, he left his dark wool cloak behind. As he ascended the cold stone corridors leading to the summit of the palace, his usual pragmatic intellect brought him to a stark realization: a vital gear within the system he had spent his life trying to comprehend had snapped somewhere far beyond his sight.
When the massive bronze doors of the Throne Hall swung open, a suffocating atmosphere greeted him, thick with the scent of burning wax and absolute tension. This gathering was neither secret nor intimate; the hall overflowed with northern nobles, iron-faced army commanders, and the high cardinals of Sanctus, standing in their pristine white robes behind Princess Jessica.
At the center of the hall, spread across the great council table, there were no silver goblets. Instead, there lay a torn piece of cloth, soaked with seawater and bearing the Imperial Crest of Ozwald. Beside it rested several charred, blackened documents. At the head of the table sat Emperor Moran II, leaning upon his silver cane. This time, he wore no mask of exhaustion. His sunken eyes were fully open—cold, terrifying, like the sky just before a storm. Beside him stood Crown Prince Lucas in full battle armor, gripping the hilt of his greatsword so tightly that his knuckles had turned stark white.
"Our accountant brother has finally arrived," Cassian mocked, stepping out from the shadows near the throne, his eyes gleaming with the malice he loved so dearly.
The Emperor turned toward Luai. Without a single word of introduction, he pointed his silver cane toward the blackened papers.
"Eight hours ago," Moran began, his voice dangerously quiet, "the Imperial vessel *Northern Star* was ambushed during a secret supply mission near the Forbidden Archipelago. Its cargo of Spiritwood was left untouched. Its guards were not taken captive. The attackers searched for one thing, and one thing alone: the Treasury Ministry's encrypted iron chest."
A genuine chill spread through Luai’s veins, yet his face remained a mask of stone.
"The chest," the Emperor continued, "contained the original master copy of the Blood Budget. Our debts. The central treasury's deficit. The maintenance costs of our enchanted armor. The hidden locations of our grain reserves." He paused, letting the weight of his words settle. "Those documents are now in the hands of the naval intelligence of the Republic of Lyridan."
The hall exploded into chaos.
"TREASON!" Lucas roared, marching toward Luai with heavy steps that shook the very floorboards. He pointed an armored finger directly at his younger brother. "Lyridan now knows we are bankrupt! They know my army does not possess enough grain to survive more than three weeks! They know every single weakness in our defenses!" His voice trembled with raw fury. "Who else had access to that chest, Luai? Who else opposed this war with his cursed numbers and ledgers? You sold the Empire's honor to the enemy just to prove your damned calculations were right!"
Lucas’s accusation did not spring from intellect, but from his fatal flaw. He viewed the world through a single, narrow lens: military glory. The moment his army's vulnerability was laid bare before the enemy, his courage dissolved into blind, panicked rage, rendering him ready to burn the entire hall down just to erase his shame. That recklessness blinded him from asking the only question that mattered: Who truly stood to gain from this leak?
Luai stepped forward, entirely ignoring the spears of the Silver Guard, and looked directly into Lucas’s furious eyes.
"If I had sold those documents to Lyridan, Your Highness, I would not have allowed the ship to burn. And I certainly would not have permitted these charred remains to reach our father's table." He slowly turned his gaze across the court. "Lyridan had no need to buy me. Someone orchestrated that ship's route. Someone sold its precise coordinates near the Forbidden Archipelago. Someone wanted this bomb to explode... right here, inside this very court."
Luai’s eyes locked onto Princess Jessica. She stood entirely composed amidst the drifting clouds of Sanctus incense. Or rather, she appeared composed—save for the edge of her silk fan, which trembled ever so slightly.
"Prince Luai is attempting to divert attention, as he always does," Jessica said sharply. "The truth is painfully obvious. Who benefits most from portraying the Empire as financially crippled? Who insisted on naval strategies and endless negotiations with the Lords of the Archipelago? Was it not your maritime plan, Luai, that sent Imperial ships toward those cursed islands in the first place?"
The nobles loyal to Sanctus murmured in agreement, yet suspicion spread just as quickly toward Jessica herself. After all, the Church stood to gain the most from the Empire's bankruptcy—its loans, its mounting influence, and its rigid religious conditions would become absolute. Here lay Jessica's greatest weakness: her unwavering faith that Sanctus alone could save Ozwald blinded her to how easily others could weaponize that very faith against her, cracking the grand prestige she had spent years building.
Amidst the growing turmoil, Cassian smiled, quietly savoring Lucas's fury and Jessica's unraveling. Seizing the moment, he stepped toward the Emperor, his voice dripping with rehearsed sorrow. "Your Majesty, the documents are lost. Lyridan will exploit our weakness within days. We do not have weeks to investigate treason. We must declare a state of emergency, temporarily suspend the Treasury officials, and transfer the management of defense to a smaller council... which I would be honored to lead alongside the generals. A diplomatic solution with Lyridan may still be within our reach."
In that single move, both Cassian's greatest strength and fatal weakness were laid bare. His strength was manipulation; he was the one who had leaked the ship's route to Lyridan, manufacturing the crisis to destroy Luai and Lucas in a single stroke. Yet his weakness was equally glaring: he relied so heavily on the shadows that no one truly trusted him—not Lucas, not Jessica, and certainly not the nobles. The moment suspicion shifted toward him, the web of lies around his neck began to tighten.
Luai lowered his gaze to the map, staring at the exact coordinate where the *Northern Star* had fallen. His mind raced desperately for an escape. He knew his economic strategy; he knew the Merfolk and the Lords of the Archipelago controlled the Mist Currents, and if Lyridan possessed the Blood Budget, their military superiority was now a terrifying reality. But Luai faced his own fatal limitation: he possessed no raw power to execute his designs. His maritime strategy depended on secret agreements not yet secured. A single betrayal, a single leak regarding the Magical Salt of the Dwarven Continent, and everything would collapse. He stood armed with nothing but his intellect, surrounded by hostile armies and unsheathed swords.
"Your Majesty!" Lucas shouted again, drawing his sword halfway from its scabbard. "Give me permission to mobilize the First Legion! Lyridan believes we are weak because of those papers, so let us strike first! Break their bones before they can exploit this knowledge! To die honorably in battle is better than starving here because of accountants and traitors!"
The generals roared in approval. War. Immediate war. To them, only blood could cleanse this humiliation.
Then, from the quiet corner of the table, Marina moved. The youngest princess approached the charred papers, her slender fingers touching the black ash. Her mysterious eyes reflected the flickering candlelight as she spoke softly—so softly her words were nearly swallowed by the shouting, yet they carried a terrifying chill.
"This ash... it does not belong to ordinary Ozwald parchment." She raised a few grains between her fingertips. "The royal paper used for the Blood Budget is crafted from Spiritwood treated with mana enchantments. When burned, it leaves no black residue." Her eyes narrowed. "This ash is mixed with Black Sulfur powder. And Black Sulfur exists only within the magical cannons of Lyridan."
An absolute, heavy silence fell over the room. Everyone stared at Marina, the mysterious ticking bomb of the family. The girl everyone believed to be entirely detached from reality had noticed a physical detail they had all overlooked in their haste to accuse one another. Marina represented a hidden, terrifying power tied to the secrets of the Continent of Fire and ancient sacrifices, yet her weakness remained: others could easily use her as a key, while she remained blissfully unaware of the political machine crushing her family.
Luai seized the opening instantly. "Marina is correct, Father. Lyridan did not steal the documents in secret. They burned the ship deliberately and left these remains for us to find. Why? Because they want Lucas to do exactly what he is begging for right now. They want to provoke us. They want us to violate the Blood Budget, launch a reckless land war, and destroy ourselves over wounded pride."
Luai turned back toward Emperor Moran II, trying desperately to read his expression. And there, the most terrifying figure in the grand play finally revealed himself.
The Emperor looked at his children, at the ashes, and at the stolen documents. There was no fear in his eyes, nor any anger. Instead, that faint smile returned to his lips—only this time, it was wider, colder, and utterly triumphant.
Moran inhaled slowly, his fingers tapping the armrest of his throne with a steady, victorious rhythm. In that horrifying moment, Luai understood something that shook him to his absolute core: Emperor Moran II had never intended to wait a week to choose the best plan. He had known about the ship before it ever fell. Perhaps... he had allowed the documents to leak deliberately.
The Emperor understood that the monsters hiding inside his own Empire would never show their teeth without an external threat. This was his ultimate test. He had allowed the treasury to wither, allowed the conflict with Lyridan to fester, and exposed the Empire's weakness before its greatest enemy—all to answer a single question: Which of his children possessed the intelligence, the ruthlessness, and the black pragmatism necessary to rule an Empire filled with wolves and traitors? The war had never been against Lyridan; the war was a bloody examination for the throne.
Yet Moran possessed a fatal weakness as well: he could not interfere directly to save anyone, for doing so would expose his grand design. If the crisis spiraled completely out of control on land or sea, Ozwald would plunge into the abyss, taking him with it.
Slowly, Emperor Moran II rose to his feet, leaning upon his silver cane. His voice cut through the arguments like a cold blade. "The enemy possesses our documents. Our honor is shattered. Our losses are now reality. The Blood Budget strictly forbids me from granting Lucas a full army, and the traitor among us remains in the shadows."
He pointed his cane toward the map, sweeping it north, then east. "Lucas. Take five thousand soldiers—the maximum permitted by law without invoking the Blood Budget—and secure the northern fortresses. You are our first line of defense." He shifted his piercing gaze. "Jessica. Your negotiations with Sanctus will continue, under my direct supervision."
Then, his eyes locked onto Luai’s, a gaze so intense it felt as though it would split his skull. "And you... Prince of the Budget. You have four days. Prove to me that the Vein of Mist within the Forbidden Archipelago can strangle Lyridan financially... before their armies strangle us. If you fail, I will regard your financial report as an act of high treason. And your head..." A faint, cruel smile played on the Emperor's lips, "...will be the first gift I offer Lucas to warm his soldiers in the north."
The Emperor swept out of the hall, enveloped by his Silver Guard, leaving Luai standing entirely alone inside a den of wolves.
For the first time in his life, Luai realized that his extraordinary intellect had finally collided with something far more terrifying: his father’s mind. The Imperial system was collapsing because everyone inside it was dangerously, brilliantly intelligent. No plan could succeed completely anymore; every scheme was destined to shatter beneath the knives of betrayal.
Luai gathered his composure, his cold eyes hardening as he turned toward his terrified clerks waiting out in the corridor. He whispered softly to himself:
"Four days... Either I strangle Lyridan and the Lords of the Archipelago with mist and magical salt... or I will be the next ash scattered across that table."