Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

There was one on top of the wine cellar inventory ledger, one sitting directly on the spy’s pillow.

Sebastian wasn’t a fool.

He knew exactly who was folding those ducks. And he knew what was happening to the traitors in the household.

’She is not an angel,’ Sebastian thought, a grim, deeply amused, highly respectful smirk touching his scarred lips. ’She is a miniature syndicate boss operating a shadow government out of the master bedroom. She has purged the estate’s intelligence leaks in less than two days without issuing a single verbal command.’

Well, even if a child is a monster or terrifying Abyss walker, a ghost from hell, a father’s worry for their child would be the same.

The veteran knight looked at the heavy oak door, offering a silent, pitying thought to the brooding Archduke inside.

’You worry about the Capital eating her alive, Your Grace,’ Sebastian chuckled internally, resting his hand on the hilt of the concealed dagger beneath his tailcoat.

’You should be worrying about her eating the Capital. If the Emperor tries to play his political games with that child, he is going to find himself outmaneuvered, blackmailed, and financially ruined before he even finishes his morning tea.’

Sebastian resumed his stoic, silent guard, feeling infinitely more secure in the future of the Nacht bloodline than he had in fifteen years.

The Reaper was terrifying, yes.

But the Mushroom? The Mushroom was an apocalypse herself.

***

While the Archduke of the North agonized over his daughter’s imaginary fragility, thousands of miles away, on the absolute opposite side of the Empire, an actual, literal crisis of catastrophic proportions was actively unfolding.

The Far East of the continent was a region defined by its mystical heritage.

It was a land of enchanted forests, floating mountains, and rivers that flowed backward.

And at the geographical center of this magical anomaly stood the Aethelgard Mage Tower.

The Tower was not merely a building.

It was an impossibly massive, spiraling spire of white marble, blue crystal, and polished gold that pierced the very clouds.

It was the undisputed epicenter of arcane research, the premier academy for the continent’s most gifted spellcasters, and the home of the Supreme Archmages.

Usually, the Tower was a place of quiet, intense, academic study.

Mages floated through the vast libraries, cauldrons bubbled softly in the alchemy labs, and the faint, chiming sounds of magical theory being debated echoed through the grand halls.

Tonight, however, the Aethelgard Mage Tower resembled a disturbed anthill that had just been set on fire.

Absolute screaming panic gripped the upper echelons of the spire.

In the Grand Observatory, a massive, glass-domed room at the very peak of the tower, filled with spinning brass astrolabes and glowing crystal seismographs designed to monitor the continent’s leylines, dozens of elderly, highly respected, incredibly powerful mages were running around like headless chickens.

”The reading cannot be accurate! Recalibrate the focusing crystals!” screamed Elder Mage Vane, a frantic, highly stressed man with a long, white beard that was currently singed at the edges.

He was furiously tapping a massive, glowing blue crystal sphere that was currently flashing a violent, angry red.

”I have recalibrated it six times, Elder!” wept a junior researcher, clutching a massive stack of smoking, burnt parchment.

”The array is not malfunctioning! The mana density practically shattered the primary sensor!”

”Show me the epicenter!” demanded Elder Sylas, an imposing woman in flowing purple robes, pushing her way through the panicked crowd.

”Where did the surge originate from? Did the demonic rift in the North open?!”

”No! That is the most terrifying part!” Vane shrieked, pulling his own hair.

He pointed a trembling finger at a holographic map of the continent hovering in the center of the room.

On the glowing map, a pulsing, blindingly bright violet center was marked.

It wasn’t in the North. It wasn’t in the South either.

It was located directly inside the Imperial Capital.

”Three days ago,” Vane gasped, his voice dropping into a horrified whisper, the entire observatory falling silent to listen to the data.

”At midnight, a shockwave of pure, Supreme-tier dark mana echoed across the continent’s leylines. The purity of the signature is staggering. It possesses a density and a gravitational weight that easily, effortlessly rivals the combined output of the Tower’s Top Ten Grandmasters.”

The mages gasped.

Several of the older scholars actually had to sit down, clutching their chests.

”A powerhouse of that magnitude... hiding in the Capital?” Elder Sylas breathed, her eyes wide with shock. ”How is that possible? A mana core of that size cannot be concealed! We monitor every child born in the Empire! How did a Supreme Archmage slip through our detection net?!”

”They must have possessed an ancient, legendary cloaking artifact,” Vane hypothesized frantically, pacing around the holographic map.

”But whatever cloaking mechanism they used, it dropped for exactly twenty minutes three days ago. The mana was unleashed in a massive, targeted, astral projection. And then... it vanished again.”

”Have we pinpointed the exact coordinates within the Capital?” Sylas demanded.

”Negative,” the junior researcher whimpered. ”The interference from the Capital’s ambient wards is too dense. We know the general sector, but we cannot isolate the specific estate or individual.”

Elder Vane stopped pacing.

He slammed his fists down on the brass railing of the observatory.

”We must find this person,” Vane declared, his voice trembling with a mixture of academic greed and desperate terror. ”An unregistered, untrained Supreme Archmage wandering the political viper’s nest of the Capital is a walking magical nuclear bomb. If the Imperial Court gets their hands on them, or worse, if they experience a mana-deviation... the entire city could be wiped off the map.”

”We must dispatch an envoy immediately,” Sylas agreed urgently.

”We must scout this individual. We must bring them to the Tower, offer them sanctuary, tutelage, and unlimited access to the archives!”

A sudden, strange, highly suspicious silence fell over the gathered elders.

The mages looked at each other with strange smiles.