Moving a castle garrison takes three supply wagons, forty pack mules, and a quartermaster with a megaphone. Moving Seraphina Valerius out of the Scholarship Dormitory took eleven minutes and a single canvas rucksack.
She returned from the eastern campus just after four o’clock, stepping through the front door of the apothecary while the afternoon sun slanted gold across the floorboards. Over her left shoulder hung a faded olive-drab bag that wasn't even half full. In her right hand, she carried a small wooden crate containing two spare uniform tunics, a whetstone she didn't even need anymore, and a battered tin cup.
I paused in the middle of crushing dried Cinder-Berry husks at the counter, looking at the meager pile as she set it down beside the loft stairs.
“That’s it?” I asked, resting my pestle against the stone rim of the mortar. “Where’s the rest of your luggage? Blankets? Winter cloak? Sentimental childhood stuffed bear?”
“The dormitory blankets belong to the Academy quartermaster,” Seraphina replied evenly, unbuckling her sword belt only to hang the Ashen Bough on a heavy iron peg she had driven into the timber post right beside her new corner. “If you take them off the premises,Master Barnaby docks your monthly stipend by four silver. And bears are terrible ambush predators. Too noisy in the brush.”
“I said stuffed bear, Seraphina, not a live grizzly,” I sighed, wiping the red berry dust from my palms onto my apron. “Come on. Help me drag the spare oak chest down from the loft so you actually have somewhere to put your shirts, and I’m giving you the thick wool quilt from the cedar trunk upstairs.”
“My corner is three feet from Pip’s stove pipe,” she pointed out, following me into the back workshop where we had cleared out the cozy nook tucked directly beneath the rise of my wooden staircase. “It’s already warmer here than the barracks ever were in July.”
She wasn't wrong. Thanks to Pip’s new double-riveted copper coal scuttle—which the little clay owl had spent the last two hours proudly filling and re-filling with glossy black anthracite—the back workshop radiated a steady, dry heat that smelled faintly of toasted rosemary and cedarwood.
We dragged the heavy canvas cot from the conservatory and wedged it snugly into the alcove beneath the stairs. Once I threw a thick, sheepskin-lined quilt over the mattress and tossed two feather pillows onto the headboard, the little space looked less like a guard post and more like a built-in reading nook.
Tax Evasion immediately waddled over from the hearth, hopped onto the centre of the new quilt, turned around three times, and collapsed with a heavy, contented grunt right in the exact spot where Seraphina’s knees would go.
“See?” I said, dusting my hands off. “Certified by management. Now, before it gets dark and Master Corvus’s bruised ego inspires him to send a couple of Guild apprentices down Bramble Lane with a crowbar and a bag of salt, let’s talk perimeter defense.”
Seraphina stepped back over to the stone workbench, her gaze sharpening as she looked down at the ingredients I had laid out on a sheet of oiled parchment.
“You said we weren't using standard Academy ward-stones,” she noted.
“Standard Academy ward-stones cost thirty gold crowns each at the Enchanting Guild, hum like a nest of angry hornets whenever someone walks within ten feet of them, and can be bypassed by any second-year mage holding a basic brass grounding rod,” I said dismissively. “If Corvus sends someone to sabotage our greenhouse tonight, they’ll be carrying Guild-issue ward-breakers. They’ll expect magic.”
I picked up a jar of fine, silvery-grey powder I had scraped from the bottom of Pip’s firebox earlier, alongside a bowl of translucent, sticky resin harvested from the stems of our leftover Weeping Ghost-Caps, and a handful of dried, hollow Pop-Seed Pods I’d plucked from the ditch outside.
“So,” I continued with a wicked little smile, “we aren't going to give them magic. We’re going to give them chemistry.”
[Alchemist’s Appraisal (Lv. 4) — Active]
[Available Tactical Recipe: "Siren’s Sneeze-Trap (Alchemical Landmine)"]
[Components: 1x Hollow Pop-Seed Pod + Pulverized Cinder-Berry Seed Husks + Pressurized Hydro-Ether Resin + A pinch of Blue Night-Lichen.]
[Mechanism: Non-magical pressure trigger. Completely invisible to [Detect Mana] and immune to Guild Ward-Breakers.]
[Effect upon Compression:
Detonates with a localized 110-decibel acoustic pop.
Releases a five-foot aerosol cloud of atomized Cinder-Capsaicin and bioluminescent blue lichen.
Causes immediate, violent sneezing fits, temporary tear-duct flooding (30 minutes), and dyes the intruder’s skin and hair a permanent, glowing cobalt blue for 14 days.]
In Crown of Thorns, Siren’s Sneeze-Traps were the ultimate rogue-class griefing item. They did zero lethal damage—which meant setting them around your property violated zero Imperial laws regarding deadly force on campus—while making it utterly impossible for the culprit to show their face in public for two weeks without confessing to trespassing.
Over the next hour, with Seraphina holding the tiny hollow seed pods steady in a pair of brass tweezers, I injected each pod with a pressurized drop of sticky Ghost-Cap resin, packed them tight with the hyper-spicy Cinder-Berry powder and glowing blue lichen spores, and sealed the seams with quick-drying beeswax.
By six o’clock, we had twelve walnut-sized pods sitting in an egg carton on the table, looking completely indistinguishable from ordinary fallen acorns.
[Alchemy Success!] [Item Crafted: Siren’s Sneeze-Trap (12 Units)] [Quality: Silver-Tier (95% Purity — Extra-Permanent Dye Variant)]
[Special Note: Only boiled vinegar mixed with pig bile can scrub the blue lichen stain off human skin before the two-week timer expires.]
[System Notification: You have crafted 5 distinct Alchemical Recipes outside the Royal Guild Codex!] [Hidden Class Prerequisite Met: "Heretical Apothecary" (1/3 Conditions Fulfilled).]
I paused as that last line of golden text flickered across the bottom of my vision.
Hidden Class Prerequisite.
Right. In the game’s system architecture, every student at the Royal Academy started with a generic base title—like my current [Pragmatic Mercenary (Rank F)]—until they fulfilled three specific milestone triggers before the end of Term One. Seraphina would unlock her [Divine Sword Saint] class once she mastered aura projection and defeated her first Grade-2 Rift boss.
Apparently, my constant sequence-breaking of the alchemy rules was nudging my character sheet toward a secret crafting class the Royal Guild didn't even know existed.
“Let’s go plant some acorns,” I said, grabbing a small garden trowel and heading out the back door into the cool Friday twilight.
We spent twenty minutes circling the perimeter of Property 14-B.
Unlike a traditional noble estate, our cottage only had three realistic points of entry for a sneak thief: the front porch steps, the narrow mud alley running beside the rainwater collection barrels, and the back garden path where the conservatory glass met the treeline of the Southern Woods.
Seraphina knew exactly how a scout or an assassin moved in the dark.
“Don't put them on the centre of the flagstones,” she murmured, crouching beside the rain barrel where the shadow of the weeping willow was thickest. She tapped a patch of damp moss right beneath the lowest glass window latch. “Anyone trained in stealth avoids stepping on flat stone because leather soles scrape against grit. They’ll plant their lead foot right here in the soft moss to lever the window open.”
“See, this is why you’re Head of Security,” I said, digging a shallow half-inch divot into the moss and nestling three of the pressurized pods right beneath the green surface so only a thin veil of pine needles covered the triggers. “If I’d planted them myself, I would’ve just lined them up on the welcome mat like decorative pumpkins.”
“That would only catch Prince Julian,” Seraphina said dryly, rising smoothly to her feet and brushing the dirt from her knees. “He never looks at the ground when he walks.”
By the time the sky turned the deep, velvety indigo of full night, all twelve traps were buried around the glasshouse locks, the rain barrels, and the back gate. I hung a small wooden warning sign on the front gate—DANGER: EXPERIMENTAL FERTILIZER IN USE, DO NOT STEP OFF THE COBBLESTONES—purely so Master Barnaby couldn't fine me if a stray syllabus courier wandered into the bushes, and we headed back inside to lock up for the night.
Dinner was roasted garlic sausages, warm sourdough rolls, and a pot of heavily buttered cabbage—simple, filling, and glorious after a long week of hustling.
By ten o’clock, the rain had started again, a soft, rhythmic drizzle pattering against the conservatory roof. Pip banked the furnace down to its quiet overnight glow, curled up inside his shiny new copper coal scuttle with his chin resting on the rim, and went straight into standby mode.
Up in my loft bedroom, I changed into a warm flannel nightgown, braided my dark hair loosely over one shoulder, and walked over to the wooden railing overlooking the lower workshop to check the lantern before blowing it out.
Down below, in the warm amber glow of the stove, Seraphina was sitting on the edge of her new cot beneath the stairs.
She had taken off her boots and her outer tunic, wearing a plain, loose-fitting white cotton undershirt that left her lean, scarred shoulders and the fresh white bandage across her left deltoid bare. Resting across her knees was the Ashen Bough, which she was wiping down with a dry chamois cloth out of sheer, ingrained habit.
Tax Evasion was sprawled across her left ankle like a furry manacle, fast asleep.
“You know that wood doesn't rust, right?” I called down softly, leaning my forearms on the smooth pine railing of the loft.
Seraphina looked up. From this angle, with the warm orange light of the firebox catching the sharp planes of her cheekbones and turning her silver hair the colour of spun pewter, she looked remarkably peaceful.
“Force of habit,” she admitted quietly, setting the cloth aside and leaning the dark wooden blade within easy reach against the wall. “If you don't clean your weapon before you sleep at the border, the sergeant makes you run five miles in chainmail before breakfast.”
“Well, the only sergeant in this building is twenty pounds of orange fur, and his only rule is nobody moves their legs once he falls asleep,” I said. I hesitated for a second on the railing, looking down at her quiet face in the semi-darkness. “Are you really okay sleeping down there, Seraphina? It’s not exactly a Rose Spire four-poster.”
Seraphina looked around the warm, timber-framed workshop—at the rows of drying lavender bundles hanging above her head, the gentle amber glow of Pip’s core in the stove, and the dry roof keeping the autumn rain off her skin.
Then she looked back up at me leaning over the loft railing.
“In the scholarship basement, my room shares a wall with the boiler pipes and smells like wet drainage,” she said softly. “And every time footsteps pass in the corridor after midnight, you wonder if it’s third-year nobles coming to dump cold water under the door for a laugh.”
She pulled the thick, sheepskin-lined quilt up over her shoulders, careful not to wake the cat pinning her ankle, and rested her head back against the feather pillow while still looking up at my loft.
“This is the best room I’ve ever had, Evelyn,” she said, her voice dropping into a low, sleepy murmur that blended right into the sound of the rain. “Go to sleep. If anything crosses the willow tree tonight, I’ll wake you up.”
My chest felt ridiculously tight—in a way that had nothing to do with whalebone corsets or narrow mana channels.
“Goodnight, Seraphina,” I whispered, turning down the brass wick of my lantern until the cottage sank into cozy, rain-washed darkness.
“Goodnight, Evelyn.”
I didn't wake up to Seraphina calling my name.
I woke up at two-fifteen in the morning to a hand clamping gently over my mouth—warm, calloused, and smelling faintly of chamomile and cedarwood.
My eyes flew open in the dark.
Seraphina was crouching right beside my mattress in the loft, having climbed the wooden stairs without making a single floorboard creak. In the pale moonlight filtering through my dormer window, her slate-gray eyes were wide awake, bright, and remarkably amused.
She lifted her finger to her lips, then pointed toward the rain-streaked window overlooking the side alley of the glasshouse.
“Two of them,” she whispered against my ear as she took her hand away. “Just crept past the willow tree. Carrying an iron pry-bar and a burlap sack that smells like rock salt and rot-beetle grubs.”
Rot-beetle grubs. The classic Guild sabotage play: dump a sack of mana-eating larvae and rock salt into a rival’s herb beds at two in the morning so their entire conservatory withers into black slime before dawn, then send an inspector at nine o'clock to revoke their license for "unsanitary blights."
I scrambled out of bed, pulled my wool cardigan over my nightgown, and crept silently over to the dormer window beside Seraphina.
Pressing my forehead close to hers so we could both peer through the bottom corner of the glass, I looked down into the shadowy mud alley beside our rainwater barrels.
Down below, two figures in dark, hooded oilskin cloaks were creeping on tiptoe along the wall of the conservatory. Even with their hoods up, I recognized the gangly, hunched posture of the lead figure immediately—it was Julian’s third-year bootlicker from the infirmary, Senior Apprentice Vane, accompanied by another junior Guild clerk carrying a heavy iron crowbar.
In Vane’s left hand, a small brass Guild Ward-Breaker rod was glowing with a faint green light, sweeping back and forth across the glasshouse walls to check for alarm spells.
“Nothing,” Vane’s muffled, arrogant whisper carried faintly up through the rain. “Not a single mana-ward on the windows. I told Master Corvus she spent all her money on the glass roof. Pry open that lower vent, dump the grubs into the nettle pots, and let’s get back before the night watch rounds the corner.”
Beside me at the window, I felt Seraphina’s shoulder vibrate silently against mine. She was holding her breath, watching the precise patch of damp moss beneath the lower window latch like a hawk watching two field mice walk toward a trapdoor.
“Three,” I whispered under my breath. “Two. One.”
Down in the alley, the junior clerk raised his iron crowbar, braced his shoulders, and planted his heavy leather boot squarely into the soft moss beneath the window latch.
POP-POP-POP!
The sound wasn't an explosion; it was the ear-splitting, sharp crack of three pressurized champagne corks firing inside a tin trashcan at point-blank range.
Instantly, a dense, glowing cloud of neon-blue mist and weaponized red pepper dust erupted straight upward from the moss, engulfing both hooded apprentices from the knees to the eyeballs.
For two seconds, there was absolute, stunned silence in the alley.
Then the screaming—and the sneezing—started.
“MY EYES! BY THE GODDESS, MY EYES ARE ON FIRE—ACHOO!”
“IT’S ACID! SHE PLANTED ACID—ACHOO! ACHOO! GAH, IT’S IN MY MOUTH!”
Down below, the two hooded figures went completely berserk. Dropping the iron crowbar and the sack of rot-beetles into the mud, they crashed blindly into the rainwater barrel, knocking the lid off and dousing themselves in cold water—which only caused the hydrophobic Ghost-Cap resin in the blue lichen spores to bind instantly and permanently to every square inch of their exposed skin.
Even in the dark alley, their faces, hands, and hair were now glowing like twin radioactive sapphire lanterns.
Blind, weeping rivers of spicy snot, and sneezing so violently they were practically folding in half with every step, the two glowing blue apprentices shrieked in terror as Tax Evasion—woken from his beauty sleep—appeared in the lower conservatory window and let out a ferocious, yowling hiss against the glass.
“DEMON CAT! RUN! ACHOO!”
Stumbling over their own cloaks, colliding with the garden fence, and leaving a trail of glowing blue footprints up the muddy cobblestones of Bramble Lane, Master Corvus’s elite sabotage squad fled screaming into the night—straight toward the main campus gates where the Academy Night Watch was currently stationed with lanterns.
Up in the dark loft, I pressed both hands over my mouth to stifle a laugh so hard my ribs hurt.
Beside me, Seraphina didn't even try to hide hers. She leaned her forehead briefly against the wooden window frame, her shoulders shaking with quiet, genuine laughter as the distant echoes of “ACHOO! MY FACE!” faded up the hill toward the dormitory checkpoints.
“Two weeks?” she whispered, turning her head to look at me in the moonlight, her slate-gray eyes crinkling warmly at the corners.
“Fourteen days minimum,” I grinned back, our faces barely six inches apart in the dim alcove of the window. “Unless Master Corvus wants to explain to the Headmaster why his two senior infirmary apprentices showed up to Saturday morning roll call looking like bruised blueberries, he’s going to have to scrub them down with boiled pig bile himself.”
I looked down at the iron crowbar and the tied burlap sack of rare Abyssal Rot-Beetle Grubs lying abandoned in the mud below our window.
[Alchemist’s Appraisal (Lv. 4) — Active]
[Item Detected: Live Abyssal Rot-Beetle Larvae (1-Pound Sack)]
[Standard Use: Illegal agricultural sabotage.]
[Hidden Alchemical Property: When roasted at 300°C and ground with sulfur, the carapaces yield High-Purity Mana-Eating Ash—the primary catalyst required to brew Gold-Tier [Spell-Breaker Smoke Bombs].]
[Market Value: 80 Gold Crowns.]
My smile widened into something purely, delightfully mercenary.
“Even better,” I murmured, reaching down to pat Seraphina’s bare shoulder before turning back toward my warm bed. “He just delivered eighty gold crowns’ worth of free bomb ingredients right to our yard. Go back to sleep, Head of Security—tomorrow morning, we’re sending Master Corvus a thank-you basket.”