Mali's mind was a singularity, a point of infinite density and zero comprehension.
"My Prince. We are here to bring you home."
The words didn't compute. They were noise, just like the sizzle of the food stalls and the haggling of the crowd. But the silence that followed… that was real. The entire, chaotic market had gone utterly still. Even the Level 2 baker, perpetually wiping his hands on his apron, was frozen, a statue of flour-dusted terror.
Mali's eyes darted from the kneeling, golden god-General to the fifty statues of death behind him, to the impossible, silent ships hanging in the sky.
"I… I think you have the wrong person," Mali stammered. His voice sounded thin, pathetic, a mouse squeaking at a dragon. He instinctively let go of Princess Riri's arm, scrambling back a step.
"There is no mistake, Your Highness," the General said, his voice resonating with an unshakeable, terrifying certainty. He did not rise. He simply waited, as if Mali's acceptance was a foregone conclusion, a law of physics.
Riri, standing between them, was pale. The agonizing pressure had returned to her the moment Mali let go, but her eyes were not on the General. They were locked on Mali. Her brilliant, analytical mind was connecting the dots: the void in his aura, the impossible relief she felt when he touched her, the sheer, elemental power she had felt him siphon away. He wasn't a void. He was a vacuum.
"It was you," she whispered, so low only he could hear. "You took it."
Before Mali could process her words, his vision glitched.
It wasn't a speck of dust or a moment of dizziness. The world itself tore at the seams, and a pane of shimmering, blue-gold light snapped into existence in front of his face. It was sharp-edged, translucent, and covered in writing that he somehow understood instantly.
[LEGACY SYSTEM - v.1.0 (ADAPTED INTERFACE)]
[BOOTING... SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETE.]
[WELCOME, LOST PRINCE.]
Mali let out a strangled gasp, stumbling back another step and swatting at the air. The window didn't budge, following his line of sight. He looked left; it followed. He squeezed his eyes shut. It was still there, burned onto the back of his eyelids.
He was having a seizure. He was dying. He was insane.
[NEW QUEST RECEIVED]
"No... no, no..." he whimpered, pressing his palms to his temples.
This sudden display of madness finally snapped the local guards out of their stupor. Their leader, a proud Level 4 Elementalist named Captain Valerius, stepped forward. He was a brave man, which, in this moment, made him a very foolish one.
"In the name of the Royal House of Toten!" Valerius shouted, his voice cracking only slightly. He drew his longsword, and it crackled to life with visible currents of Air Karma. "Identify yourselves! You are in violation of..."
"Silence."
The General's voice cut through Valerius's proclamation. He didn't shout; he just spoke. And he still hadn't stood up. He slowly turned his dark, helmeted gaze toward the Captain. "Toten. We are aware of this world's designation. Your local authority is not recognized, local. You are interfering with the retrieval of an Aethel Imperium asset."
"Asset?" Valerius sputtered, insulted. "He is a citizen of this village! Surrender now, or face the judgment of..."
The General sighed. It was a sound of profound, galactic-level weariness. He didn't even look at his men.
"Enforce perimeter. Non-lethal."
"Non-lethal," Mali's panicked brain registered. They had a 'lethal'.
The fifty golden soldiers moved as one. They didn't charge. Ten of them, in the front rank, simply raised their rifles. They didn't crackle with elemental energy. They just hummed.
"Stand down!" Valerius roared, and bravely charged, his Air-enchanted sword held high, ready to unleash a Level 4 cutting gale.
He never made it.
There was no beam of light, no explosion. Just a deep, gut-thudding THWUMP. A wave of invisible, colorless force erupted from the soldiers' rifles.
Valerius's karmic shield, the swirling barrier of hardened air, shattered like a pane of glass. The man himself was slammed flat to the cobblestones as if swatted by a giant's hand. He didn't just fall; he cratered, the stones around him cracking. He tried to push himself up, his face a mask of purple-red strain, but he couldn't move. He was pinned, helpless, by a force his mind couldn't even comprehend.
His men, who had been charging right behind him, suffered the same fate. THWUMP. THWUMP. THWUMP. One after another, they were flattened to the ground, their armor groaning, their limbs pinned by an impossible weight.
The entire "battle" was over in three seconds. It wasn't a fight. It was a chore.
The remaining forty soldiers formed a perfect, silent circle around Mali, Riri, and the General, their rifles pointed outward at the screaming, scattering villagers. The market square was clear.
In the center of the silent circle, the General finally, gracefully, stood. He was immense, a full head taller than Mali, a true giant of gold and white. His helmet retracted with a hiss of steam, revealing a human face. He was older, his dark skin carved with scars, his eyes a piercing, intelligent gray. He looked exhausted, relieved, and deeply annoyed.
"Mali," he said, and the name on his lips sounded strange. "That is the name you have been using. I am General Kaelen, of the First Scion Guard. We must leave. Immediately."
Mali was paralyzed, his gaze flicking between the pinned, groaning form of Captain Valerius and the holographic window that was still in his face.
[STATUS] the window read, a [TAB (1/4)] highlighted.
NAME: MALI
TRUE NAME: [LOCKED]
TITLE: Lost Prince LEVEL: 1
DEBUFF: Imposter Syndrome: All (CTL) and social-based actions suffer a -50 penalty.
"This... this isn't real," Mali whispered, pointing at the window only he could see. "I'm... I'm sick. You're not really here."
"I assure you, Your Highness, we are very real," Kaelen said, his eyes softening for just a moment. "And your awakening has lit a beacon. It's like a bonfire in a dark forest. Our enemies—the ones who forced your parents to hide you here—have seen it. They are already moving. We are on a clock."
"My parents?" Mali latched onto the word. "My parents are dead! The Corrupted..."
Your adoptive parents are dead, Your Highness," Kaelen corrected, his voice firm, all traces of softness gone. "Your true parents, the Emperor and Empress, died to buy you this life. Their sacrifice ends today."
Kaelen stepped forward and grabbed Mali's arm. The grip was not violent, but it was absolute. It was the grip of a machine. "You have no choice in this. You are coming with us. Now."
"Wait!" Mali yelped, digging his heels in. He looked at Riri. She was the only other person in this bubble of insanity. "What about her?"
Kaelen glanced at the Princess for the first time. His helmet-less gaze was analytical. His eyes flickered, as if reading data. "A Level 7 local anomaly. Impressive. But she is not our concern. You are."
"I... I can't! This is my home!"
"This was your cage," Kaelen said. He tapped a device on his wrist. "Kaelen to Sovereign. Extraction is a-go. Transport."
"No, wait!" Mali yelled, pulling back with all his might. But his strength, the only thing he'd ever had, was nothing.
A column of brilliant, blinding gold light lanced down from the sky, engulfing Mali, Kaelen, and the entire Scion Guard. The sights and sounds of the market—the smells of dust and luma-fruit, the screams of the villagers, the groans of Valerius—vanished. They were replaced by a deafening roar, the smell of sterile ozone, and a sensation of being torn apart and reassembled, atom by atom.
The light faded. The journey had taken two seconds.
Mali fell to his knees, vomiting. He wasn't in the market. He was inside.
He was in a room so vast it felt like a new sky. It was all white and gold, gleaming, impossibly clean. He was on a metal deck, and through a shimmering force-field that covered one entire wall, he could see the blue sky of Toten, impossibly far below. He was in one of the ships. A hangar bay.
The fifty soldiers were already marching away, their armored boots echoing in the cavernous space.
"Lock the hangar! Spin up the main drive!" General Kaelen was already barking orders to unseen crewmen. "I want jump calculations yesterday! Get us out of this 'Local Karma' sinkhole!"
Mali was shaking, his body drenched in a cold sweat. The System window was back, flashing insistently.
[NEW QUEST RECEIVED]
[MAIN QUEST] Embrace Your Birthright > Description: You are a prince, but you think like a pauper. The universe cannot name a soul that refuses to be seen. To unlock your power, you must first believe you are worthy of it.
He stared at the words, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He looked down at his own hands. They were covered in dirt, his knuckles calloused, a splinter embedded near his thumb. The hands of a porter. The hands of a nobody.
"I want to go home," he whispered, the first tears of shock and terror tracking clean lines through the grime on his face.
"Home is what we are fighting for, Your Highness."
Kaelen's voice was softer. He was standing beside Mali. He gestured to the massive, wall-sized viewport on the other side of the hangar.
"Look."
Mali, trembling, forced himself to his feet. He walked to the window. The ship was already moving, climbing with a silent, terrifying speed. He saw Toten, his entire world, shrink from a landscape to a map. He saw the curve of the planet, a beautiful sphere of blue and white. He saw his three moons—Kaelus, Elara, and the faint red smear of Vorlag—hanging against the black.
Then the ship turned.
And Mali saw what was waiting on the other side.
It was not empty space. It was a fleet.
His breath caught in his chest. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ships. They hung in the void like a swarm of golden-white daggers. Some were the size of his village. Others were the size of the mountains behind his village. In the center, a ship so vast it dwarfed the others, a flagship that could swallow his entire continent. It was an image of power so absolute, so crushing, that his mind simply refused to accept it.
His STATUS window flicks, bright and cruel.
[DEBUFF] Imposter Syndrome: Effects intensified.
Mali pressed his dirty hands against the cold, clear viewport, staring at the impossible diamond spoon he had been given.
He wasn't a prince. He was a mistake. A speck of dust in a galaxy of gods. And he was, without a shadow of a doubt, in more trouble than he had ever been in his entire life.