The grand library of the Ashborn estate was silent, smelling faintly of ancient parchment, dust, and the lingering scent of woodsmoke from the valley.

  When Arthur stepped through the heavy oak doors, he found the High Mage waiting by the unlit hearth. There was no tea on the table; there were no open ledgers to pretend with. The older man stood behind his back, his ember-colored eyes fixed on Arthur with the cold, piercing intensity of a predator cornering its prey.

  Arthur forced his shoulders to slump slightly, leaning into the persona of a weary, recovering thirteen-year-old.

  “You wished to see me, Master Marcus? Elias mentioned an inconsistency in the ledger."

  Marcus did not blink; with a snap of his fingers, the door clicked shut. “There are no ledgers, Oliver. Only a sequence of impossibilities that I have spent the last week thinking about."

  Arthur’s heart skipped a beat, but he kept his face perfectly innocent. "I don’t understand."

  “A boy wakes up from a near-fatal coma,” Marcus began, his voice a low, grinding rumble in the quiet room. “Instead of resting, he drags himself to this very library to seek out advanced texts on territory archives. Days later, that same boy forcefully unseals his own mana core with an unknown technique no thirteen-year-old would know about."

  Arthur opened his mouth to speak, but Marcus stepped forward, his voice rising in volume.

  “At dinner, he casually slips up, speaking of metal-washing techniques that not even seasoned forge masters fully grasp. And then...” Marcus reached into his robe and tossed a small piece of folded parchment onto the table. It opened to reveal a single fleck of black mud. “...My contacts in the lower rings report a noble boy moving through the mud veins, chasing a Viper thief. A chase that perfectly aligns with the undercity rot on your scrubbed boots and the sudden, debilitating limp you attempted to hide with a cramp."

  Arthur swallowed hard, maintaining the facade. He widened his eyes, letting a tremor of childish fear enter his voice. “Marcus, I-I can explain. I just read a lot of the older books! And I sneaked out because I was tired of being locked in my room. I wanted to see the city—"

  "Enough."

  The word was spoken quietly, but it hit the room like a physical shockwave.

  Marcus unleashed his aura.

  The air in the library instantly turned to lead. Gravity seemed to double, then triple. The atmospheric pressure slammed into Arthur, forcing him down in the leather chair beside the table. The sheer, suffocating weight of the mage's mana pressed his lungs, making the blood roar in his ears.

  Marcus walked slowly across the room, stopping inches from where Arthur was pinned. The ember glow in his eyes flared with raw, terrifying power.

  “I am done playing games with you,” Marcus whispered coldly. “This is going to be the last time I ask this question. Who are you really?

  For a long second, Arthur fought the pressure, his mind racing through the variables. Denying it at this point was impossible. Keeping his silence would only worsen his situation.

  So, he made a choice.

  Arthur stopped slouching.

  He stopped fighting the urge to breathe, forcing his lungs into a slow, controlled rhythm.

  The trembling in his hands ceased. Slowly, agonizingly, he lifted his chin against the crushing weight of the magical aura and looked the High Mage dead in the eye.

  The frightened thirteen-year-old boy vanished entirely. In his place sat a cold, calculating intelligence.

  “I don’t know exactly who I am,” Arthur said. His voice was no longer pleading. It was flat, analytical, and utterly calm.

  Marcus narrowed his eyes, the pressure in the room increasing slightly. “Speak plainly. Are you an enemy infiltrator? A possessing spirit sent to destroy this house from within?

  “When I woke up in that bed,” Arthur continued, ignoring the threat, “I woke up with memories of another man. Another life entirely. I remember a world that operates on entirely different rules and laws. I am a fractured mix of Oliver’s instincts and this... other mind."

  Marcus did not waver. “A convenient story for an enemy wearing a young lord’s face."

  “An enemy?” Arthur let out a short, humorless laugh that sounded utterly wrong coming from a child’s throat. “If I were an enemy, Marcus, would I have thrown myself in front of a werewolf for your daughter?"

  The High Mage froze. The ambient mana in the room flickered.

  Arthur pressed his advantage, leaning forward against the crushing pressure. “I didn’t even know who she was in that moment. I only knew that she was from the bloodline. I let that beast rip my chest open to keep her alive. Is that a risk an assassin would take? Is that the strategy of someone trying to destroy this family?

  The silence that followed was deafening. Marcus stared at the boy—at the eyes that held too much weight in them. Slowly, the ember glow in his eyes dimmed.

  The suffocating pressure vanished.

  Arthur gasped, his lungs burning as air flooded back in the room. He gripped the armrests of the chair, coughing softly, but he never broke eye contact with the Mage.

  Marcus took a step back, his face an unreadable mask of deep, silent calculation. He looked at the mud on the table, then back to Arthur.

  Arthur didn’t give him the chance to fully recover. He leaned forward, his voice dropping to the ruthless, pragmatic tone of an architect diagnosing a failing structure.

  “I only want the best for the Ashborn family,” Arthur said quietly. “But look around, Marcus. My father is working himself into an early grave over a royal quota that is designed to break him. The syndicates are bleeding the city dry right under our noses, and the estate’s foundations are rotting. If we stay on this path, we are going to get wiped out sooner or later."

  Arthur rose from his chair.

  Not as a child.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  As an equal.

  “I have the knowledge to fix it,” he stated, the absolute certainty of a master engineer ringing in his voice. “I can rebuild this territory. I can save this family. So help me, Marcus."

  The High Mage looked at the boy standing before him. The silence stretched, heavy with the weight of treason, ambition, and a desperate truth.

  “You speak of rebuilding this house from rot,” he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “You ask me to turn a blind eye to a mind that is not entirely of this world, operating in the shadows on my Lord’s house."

  Arthur didn’t flinch. “I am asking you to let me save it."

  Marcus stepped forward, closing the distance between them. He extended a scarred, calloused hand.

  “You have my silence, Oliver. And you have my assistance,” he said, his amber eyes narrowing into slits. “But mark my words. If at any moment you prove to be a foe—if your shadows turn on this family, or if Aria comes to harm because of your ambitions—I will not ask for explanations. I will burn you to ash where you stand.”

  Arthur looked at the High Mage’s hand. The terms were brutally clear. He reached out and gripped it firmly.

  “Deal.”

  The heavy tension in the room finally snapped. But before either of them could speak another word, the doors of the library creaked open.

  Layla stepped slightly into the room, bowing her head. “Apologies for the interruption, Master Marcus, Young Master. Lord Roderick requests your presence in the central courtyard. The Royal Messenger is preparing to depart.”

  Arthur and Marcus exchanged a single, calculating glance. The Cold War was over. The real war was beginning.

  “We are coming,” Marcus said smoothly, his aura completely suppressed.

  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ? ? ? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  The air in the central courtyard was biting cold.

  Arthur stood beside the High Mage on the stone steps, watching as a dozen exhausted estate workers heaved the final wooden crates onto a massive, circular platform embedded in the courtyard stones. The platform was ancient, carved from dark metallic stone and etched with deep, geometric grooves that Arthur’s eyes immediately tracked. It looked less like magic and more like a macro-scale circuit board.

  At the center of the courtyard stood Lord Roderick Ashborn. He looked slightly ragged, but his posture was iron-straight. He had done the impossible.

  Standing opposite him was the Royal Messenger.

  The man was a jarring contrast to the grim reality of Ashford City. He was dressed in pristine, opulent silks of silver and gold, a fur-lined cloak draped over his shoulders. He looked at the soot-stained workers and the crates of Umbral Iron with a thinly veiled sneer of disgust.

  “I must confess, Lord Ashborn,” the Messenger said, his voice carrying a mocking, aristocratic lilt. "When the King set the one-week deadline for this volume of iron, there were... concerns... regarding your failing infrastructure. I am quite surprised you managed it.”

  “The Ashborn family honors its duties to the King,” Roderick replied, his voice dry and raspy from the forge smoke.

  The Messenger chuckled, brushing a speck of dust from his sleeve. “Indeed. Though one must admit, Lady Luck was on your side this time. Let us hope her favor doesn’t run out before the next order. The King’s armies are expanding, and the demand for your iron will only grow. Do try to keep your furnaces lit, Lord Roderick.”

  Arthur narrowed his eyes from the steps. He isn’t just mocking him, Arthur realized. The king gave a one-week deadline fully expecting my father to fail. This quota was a manufactured execution order.

  “The iron is loaded,” Roderick said coldly, ignoring the bait. “Take it to the capital.”

  “With pleasure,” the Messenger smirked. He stepped backward onto the circular platform, joining his armored escort among the crates.

  He reached into his robes and pulled out a translucent crystal that glowed with a dense, white light.

  Arthur leaned forward slightly, his eyes locked on the crystal. He could actually feel the density of the mana trapped inside from thirty feet away. It wasn’t just a glowing rock; it was a high-capacity mana battery.

  The Messenger raised the crystal and crushed it with his hand.

  The reaction was instantaneous. The white mana didn’t explode outward; it inverted. The geometric grooves etched into the circular platform flared with blinding light, drawing the shattered crystal’s energy.

  Arthur watched in absolute fascination as the air above the platform violently wrapped. The light bent inward, creating a localized sphere of spatial distortion. The sound of the wind was abruptly cut off, replaced by a deep, resonant hum that vibrated in Arthur’s teeth.

  And then, with a sound like cracking glass, the platform was completely empty.

  The crates, the escort, and the Messenger were simply gone. A rush of cold air slammed into the empty space where mass had existed a fraction of a second prior, kicking up a swirl of courtyard dust.

  Arthur stared at the empty stone circle. It was the first time he had witnessed high-tier spatial magic, and his brain stalled, struggling to process the sheer, physics-breaking reality of what he had just seen.

  As the dust settled, Marcus stepped up beside him. The High Mage’s eyes lingered on the empty platform before shifting down to the young heir.

  “Rest for now,” Marcus murmured quietly, his voice carrying only far enough for Arthur to hear. “But come to the library later this afternoon. It is time we finally affirm your magical affinity.”

  Arthur gave a nod as Marcus turned and followed Lord Roderick back into the estate.

  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ? ? ? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  An hour later, back in the quiet safety of his bedroom, Arthur knelt beside his bed.

  He reached deep under the mattress, his fingers brushing against the hidden floorboard, and pulled out his concealed stack of sketches and a notebook. He spread the rough blueprints of blast furnaces, economic flowcharts, and diagrams across the floor.

  Arthur sat cross-legged among his secrets, grabbed a blank scrap of parchment, and rapidly sketched the geometric grooves he had memorized from the courtyard platform.

  He stared at the drawing, his analytical mind finally catching up to his eyes. And began to break the impossible event down into mechanical steps.

  Mass displacement, Arthur thought, tapping the back of his quill against the floor. Instantaneous spatial folding. He thought about the white crystal the messenger had crushed.

  He had theorized that it wasn’t a spell component but rather a single-use, high-capacity mana battery. And the platform itself? It wasn’t just carved stones. The grooves likely were a hard-wired coordinate matrix, creating a closed circuit for the mana crystal to discharge into.

  But as Arthur looked at the diagram, the economic reality hit him.

  If the king could move metric tons of dense iron instantaneously, why were the kingdom’s roads still filled with merchant carts?

  The cost, Arthur realized, his eyes widening slightly.

  The sheer density of mana required to fold space meant those crystals had to be astronomically expensive to mine or forge, which meant that teleportation wasn’t a standard transportation network.

  It was an obscene luxury. And the king likely allowed its usage today because the Umbral Iron was too vital to risk on the roads.

  Arthur dropped his quill, leaning back against his bedframe.

  He glanced out the frost-edged window. The pale sun was only just reaching its peak in the sky; it was barely noon. He had a few hours before Marcus expected him back in the library.

  For the first time in four agonizing days, the crushing weight of paranoia lifted just enough to let his sheer mental exhaustion catch up to him.

  He gathered his blueprints, aligning the edges perfectly before hiding them carefully back inside the floorboard beneath his mattress.

  Arthur lay back on the bed; he closed his eyes to rest. In a few hours, he would finally see exactly what kind of magic his own body was capable of.

  Oblivious to him, the majestic owl above the wardrobe was staring intently at him, as if trying to peer into his soul.

  Its blue eyes glowed in the dim room…

  And for the briefest moment…

  The bird tilted its head.