The Crown Prince In Hiding

You don’t need to know everything. Tell the seniors… you’re not important enough for me to share my personal life.

He wasn’t ignorant.

He knew his place among the scholarship students and never said a word about it.

You’re not important enough for me to share my personal life.

Yes, exactly.

But it infuriated Rafinya like nothing before. That line wasn’t just a dismissal.

It felt like being looked down upon from a great height.

Looking down on something lesser, in a different division, a different league, a different game, a different world.

One fist clenched, the other biting her nails.

“Uh… Rafinya?”

“I’m not in the mood to hang with you guys.”

“Er… okay… we’ll go then.”

The young woman stormed off the sports field, her face clouded with irritation… and deep unease.

Yes, Dan was leaving.

Yes, the “fairness” Rafinya craved would return.

But it didn’t make sense. It felt wrong, unnatural. Dan would leave without answers, and Rafinya would be left with endless questions…

Casca was sponsoring him. That was the truth.

But it should’ve been her!

It should be her, not him!

What made him better? What did he have?

Rafinya wanted to study this man to defeat him, driven by burning ambition. Casca needed to notice her. She wanted to be in that woman’s eyes!

It was clear now—he had something… and he hid it. He even let her knock him out in the arena. What was behind it? Was it some grand goal worth enduring pain and humiliation for?

Splash!

Her face plunged into the sink, water soaking her uniform, but she didn’t care. Rafinya, her long, one-sided hair wet, stared into the mirror, hands gripping the sink.

“That guy… he’s strong…”

The image of the ball slicing through the air replayed. Her instincts screamed it was real, but what she saw was just the tip of the iceberg…

“I need more… I want to see more… What technique? What method?”

And it turned into eagerness.

“I have to know…”

Sheffield Library. Lunch Break.

“Mr. Fury, has anyone told you how scary you are when you’re mad?”

“They’re all dead.”

“?”

“Kidding. I wasn’t mad. Just a friendly warning.”

“A friendly warning that you’d get mad.”

“You don’t have to quote me on everything.”

He said,

“Shutting down someone like that won’t do any good… like with Lamar.”

Fury flipped to the next page of his book.

“And she won’t spill to anyone, I’m sure.”

“Why so sure, Mr. Fury?”

“Her ego won’t let her. If she blabs, people will think she’s obsessed with a weakling like me, which would ruin her pride. Snake eating its tail, simple.”

“Sharp, Mr. Fury. I get it now…”

“So, how’d it go? Testing Rafinya’s data. You good?”

“Too short, but I think I could beat her.”

Dan turned another page.

“Use me as a benchmark. Me versus you: I’d be mush. Me versus her: knocked out cold.”

“Not the same. I was fighting to survive, not for grades.”

“Isn’t your life tied to grades?”

“Mr. Fury, don’t tease.”

“Not teasing.”

“I thought you were a demon back then… well, you are a demon, but like, a demon demon.”

“Read your book, human human.”

Silence fell. Both read on. Nora studied material for the next two weeks, while the prince sought answers far more vital to his life.

Dan was buried in stacks of books in the Sheffield Library.

But what he sought was in a specific section…

Natural Sciences.

Casca’s voice echoed in his mind.

The answers you’re looking for might be here.

Answers about where we came from.

Dan scanned the rows of tomes, pulling one from the shelf.

A work by Professor Darwin C.

“Professor Darwin, huh?”

Professor Darwin C. was a towering intellectual from Luminus, gone for 150 years. His work shook Mathema’s natural sciences, revolutionizing their worldview and thinking.

And Professor Darwin’s work… sparked a crisis of faith in Luminus.

Though he was long dead, his influence and writings endured, his most powerful study challenging even divine mandates.

Evolution.

“…Evolution…”

It was a merciless poem of natural selection—a cosmic mechanism, undeniable, sculpting life from the first droplet of primordial cells to the eyes of creatures gazing at the stars.

Evolution wasn’t mere change—it was nature’s cold, powerful selection.

The strongest didn’t always survive, but the “fittest” did.

Those who adapted, who turned pain into fuel—every life on this earth was a reflection of struggle, survival, and triumph in a silent battlefield.

Bones buried, muscles forged, claws sharpened—not by divine plan, but by nature’s law.

Evolution was both creator and destroyer—a faceless deity etching the fate of countless species into the essence of life.

It had no heart, no mercy.

Life didn’t arise for a grand purpose, only as the result of billions of failed experiments.

Bones beneath stone.

The lament of extinct species.

The silence of eyes that once hunted in the night—all a mournful hymn nature sang to craft the “fittest.”

It was engineering without a designer, without order, without end, without meaning, without victors.

Evolution was a curse woven into the blood—a decree from the unseen that nothing would remain unchanged forever.

The prose, refined by the soul of a man gone 150 years, struck the demon prince’s heart like a hammer.

A daring, defiant essay challenging the CIS religion revered by millions, a poem describing something never taught in scriptures, something defying divine authority.

They called him a heretic. People cursed him. Religious institutions targeted him, even tortured him as punishment.

But even in his final moments, Professor Darwin C. stood by his beliefs until death.

His public hanging in Luminus couldn’t stop the seeds he’d planted.

This book’s survival, here in Artheris’s library, was proof his conviction wasn’t in vain.

This act profoundly impacted Prince Fury. He admired anyone who sacrificed their life for their ideals, whatever they were.

Fury spent hours with this book, grappling with the concept of “evolution” until the sky turned orange.

He was silent… all day.

He read on, even as Nora, sitting beside him, left and returned. Fury stayed rooted.

“Mr. Fury.”

“!”

“The library’s closing.”

“…Is it?”

It was as if the book’s contents had consumed him, oblivious to time and physical strain. His mind was locked on every word.

Nora had never seen him like this.

He clutched the book, refusing to let go.

“Mr. Fury, did you find your answers?”

“Not quite, Nora… It just raised endless new questions.”

He stared at the book.

“What’s buried in the earth? What came before us? I’ve never encountered anything like this… In my entire life, this is the first time I’ve met an idea so bizarre. Nora, I think… this might actually give me answers.”

!

The Snowhaven princess stared at him, then down at the book.

“If I recall… this book was banned for 140 years for contradicting CIS doctrine. Professor Darwin was executed, but he entrusted this work to a Mathema friend, who preserved it in the Mathemus library. That’s the legend.”

“Luminus killed him just for saying something that contradicted their teachings?”

“150 years ago… yes.”

“You’re saying challenging something no one’s seen was worth being branded a traitor?”

“Yes, Mr. Fury.”

Dan nodded slowly, his thoughts unreadable—perhaps grappling with human folly, pitying these hairless apes, or both.

“Ever read it, Nora?”

“No… As I said, it was only made public ten years ago. It’s a new concept, and I haven’t had time to dive in.”

“Which is why Casca never mentioned it…”

Because she didn’t know. The book was still banned when she was born.

He gripped the book tightly with both hands.

“I’ll understand it myself.”

He declared.

“I’ll understand what this man tried to tell the world.”

“Mr. Fury…”

The prince was usually laid-back, but Nora had never seen such fierce determination.

It was as if a fire reignited, as if his life’s purpose, lost in a decade of emptiness, was refilled.

Fury was serious.