The carriage ride back to the manor was silent except for the sound of hooves on cobblestone and my racing heartbeat.
I kept running through the facts like debugging code:
Bug Report: Kingdom.exe has encountered a fatal error
>Baron Helmore: Dead
>Master Edwin: Dead (for at least 24 hours)
>Lady Meridian: Arrested for conspiracy
>Conspiracy: Exposed but somehow still active
>Murderer: Unknown
>Doom flags: Accelerating
>My life expectancy: Plummeting
"Stop thinking so loudly," Cassian said. "I can hear your panic from here."
"I'm not panicking, Your Grace. I'm processing."
"You're doing both." He leaned back against the seat, looking exhausted. For the first time since I'd met him, he looked almost human. "Talk me through it. Your process. Because right now, nothing makes sense."
I took a breath. "In my... previous work, when we had a system failure with multiple cascading errors, we'd trace it back to the root cause. Find the first thing that went wrong and work forward from there."
"And the first thing that went wrong?"
"Six months ago. When Master Edwin was planted in your household." I counted on my fingers. "He starts embezzling funds, coordinating with Lady Meridian. They systematically turn the nobility against you. Everything proceeds according to plan. Then—"
"Then Edwin ends up dead," Cassian finished. "Before the conspiracy can be exposed or succeed."
"Exactly. Which means either the conspiracy had an expiration date we didn't know about, or someone decided to end it early." I looked out the window at the darkened city. "But here's what bothers me: if Lady Meridian wanted to silence Edwin, why not do it quietly? Why kill Baron Helmore at the most public event in the kingdom? Why create maximum chaos?"
"Because chaos is the goal," Cassian said slowly. "Not the conspiracy. The conspiracy was just... what? A setup?"
"A catalyst." The pieces were clicking together in my head. "Someone wanted you isolated and paranoid. They wanted the nobility fractured. They wanted the king to look weak. They created perfect conditions for disaster, and now they're lighting the match."
"But who? And why?"
That was the question. In the game, each route had different antagonists—corrupt nobles, foreign powers, extremist factions. But they all shared one thing: they wanted the kingdom to fall.
"Your Grace, in the original—in what I know—the kingdom's destruction always stems from one of five sources." I held up my hand, counting. "First route: plague outbreak from your brother's research. Second: war with the northern territories. Third: economic collapse from corruption. Fourth: demonic invasion through forbidden magic. Fifth: internal revolution."
Cassian stared at me. "That's... oddly specific knowledge."
"I told you, I know things I shouldn't." I lowered my hand. "But here's the problem. We're not in any of those routes. We're in all of them simultaneously. Someone's trying to trigger every doom scenario at once."
"That's impossible."
"Is it? Think about it. The conspiracy created economic instability—that's route three. Baron Helmore's death at the ball has the nobility in chaos—that feeds into route five. We've got poisonings that could easily be blamed on foreign agents—route two. And—" I stopped.
"And what?"
"Your brother. Lucian. Where is he right now?"
"At the academy. Why?"
"The academy. Where disease outbreaks always start in route one." My stomach dropped. "Your Grace, we need to send word to the academy. Immediately. Have them check for any unusual illnesses among the students."
"You think someone's already started the plague scenario?"
"I think someone's orchestrating everything. And if they're smart—which they clearly are—they're setting up multiple failure points simultaneously. If we stop one, the others continue."
The carriage pulled up to the manor. Guards surrounded us immediately, more than usual. Tom was waiting by the entrance, looking grim.
"Your Grace, Mr. Arjun," he said, falling into step with us. "Mrs. Blackwood wants to see you both. Says it's urgent."
"Of course it is," I muttered. "Everything's urgent now."
We found Mrs. Blackwood in the main hall, surrounded by nervous servants. Her usual composure was cracked at the edges.
"Your Grace," she said, bowing. "There's been an incident. In the servants' quarters. One of the maids—Clara—she's fallen ill. High fever. Delirium. The same symptoms as Mr. Wickham."
My blood went cold.
"When?" Cassian demanded.
"She complained of feeling unwell this afternoon. By evening, she was bedridden. The physician is with her now." Mrs. Blackwood's voice was steady, but I could hear the fear underneath. "Your Grace, if it's contagious—"
"Isolate her immediately," Cassian ordered. "Anyone who's had contact with her in the past two days needs to be monitored. And get that physician—I want to know if this is the same poison that affected Wickham."
"Your Grace, there's more." Mrs. Blackwood handed him a letter. "This arrived by courier an hour ago. Addressed to you personally."
Cassian opened it. His expression darkened.
"What is it?" I asked.
He handed me the letter.
Dear Duke Valorian,
By now you've discovered that the game has changed. Your conspiracy theories, while entertaining, miss the larger picture. The pieces have been in motion far longer than you realize. Lady Meridian and Master Edwin were merely pawns—useful, but ultimately expendable.
The real question is: can you stop what's already begun? The poison in your household. The chaos at the palace. The fracturing of the nobility. These are not isolated incidents. They are opening moves in a much longer game.
You have three days to figure out the pattern. After that, the next phase begins, and I assure you, you won't enjoy it.
Play well,
A Friend
I read it twice, my hands shaking.
"This is it," I said quietly. "This is the other player."
"The what?"
I looked at Cassian. "Your Grace, I need to tell you something. Something I should have explained earlier, but I didn't think—I didn't want to sound completely insane."
"More insane than claiming to know the future?"
Fair point.
"In the world I came from, this place—this kingdom, these people—it was a story. A game. With set patterns, set outcomes, set routes to disaster." I held up the letter. "But someone else knows that too. Someone else from my world, or someone with the same knowledge. And they're not trying to prevent the disasters. They're trying to cause them."
Tom, who'd been listening from the doorway, spoke up. "Wait. You're saying someone is deliberately trying to destroy the kingdom? For fun?"
"Not for fun. For..." I trailed off, thinking. Why would someone trigger all the doom flags? What was the endgame?
Unless.
Oh no.
"Your Grace," I said slowly. "In the game—in the story—all five routes ended in destruction, yes. But there was a sixth ending. A hidden route that almost no one found."
"What happened in that route?"
"Total annihilation. Complete reset. The kingdom doesn't just fall—it's erased. Every person, every building, every memory. Gone." I looked at the letter again. "It was called the 'True End.' And it required triggering every single doom flag simultaneously."
Silence.
"That's insane," Tom said. "Who would want that?"
"Someone who wants to see what happens after everything burns," I said. "Someone who's curious about the reset. Someone who thinks they can survive it or control it."
Cassian took the letter back. "Three days. They gave us three days."
"It's a taunt. They want us to know they're in control. Want us to scramble and panic and make mistakes."
"Then we don't panic." Cassian's voice was cold steel. "We organize. We plan. We figure out their pattern and break it." He turned to Mrs. Blackwood. "Lockdown the manor. No one in or out without my personal approval. Double the guards. And someone bring me Wickham—if he survived one poisoning, he might recognize this new one."
"Your Grace, Mr. Wickham is still quite weak—"
"Then bring him on a stretcher. I need his expertise." He looked at me. "Arjun, you're going to map out every doom flag you know. Every trigger, every condition, every outcome. If this person is trying to activate them all, we need to know what we're defending against."
"That's going to take—"
"However long it takes. We have three days. Use them."
"And me?" Tom asked.
"You're going to help him. Also, I need you to send riders to the academy. Warn them about potential illness outbreaks. And..." Cassian paused. "And tell them to be wary of any new students who arrived recently."
"You think the heroine—the protagonist—might be involved?" I asked.
"I think we trust no one until we understand what's happening." He headed for the door, then stopped. "Arjun, one more thing. This 'True End' scenario. In the game. Did anyone ever survive it?"
I thought about the ending I'd seen once, watching over Priya's shoulder. The blank screen. The reset message. The achievement for discovering the hidden route.
"No," I said quietly. "No one survived."
"Then we'll be the first." He left, taking Mrs. Blackwood with him.
Tom and I stood in the empty hall.
"So," Tom said cheerfully. "We're all going to die in three days unless we stop a crazy person from triggering multiple apocalypse scenarios simultaneously while also dealing with poisoned maids and a kingdom in chaos."
"That's the situation, yes."
"Cool. Want some chai? I think better on chai."
Despite everything, I almost laughed. "You know how to make chai?"
"Arjun, I'm a professional gossip and occasional spy. I know how to make everyone's comfort drink. Yours is chai with too much ginger and a pinch of cardamom. I've been paying attention."
"That's... actually perfect. Thank you."
We went to the kitchen. While Tom boiled water and milk, I found paper and started sketching out what I remembered of the game's structure.
Five main routes. Each with specific triggers. Each with specific points of no return.
Route One - The Plague: Lucian's medical research goes wrong. Trigger: He discovers a sick patient at the academy. Tries to develop a cure. The cure mutates into a plague.
Route Two - The War: Tensions with northern territories escalate. Trigger: Diplomatic failure, followed by assassination of a tribal leader. War becomes inevitable.
Route Three - Economic Collapse: Corruption and embezzlement drain the kingdom's resources. Trigger: Multiple nobles default on debts. Trade routes collapse. Mass starvation.
Route Four - Demonic Invasion: Forbidden magic research opens a portal. Trigger: Someone desperate enough to seek power from beyond. Usually happens when all other options fail.
Route Five - Revolution: The commoners rise up against nobility. Trigger: Inequality, suffering, and a charismatic leader to unite them.
I stared at my notes.
The conspiracy had already set up route three. Baron Helmore's death was destabilizing the nobility—route five. If someone at the academy got sick, that was route one. The northern territories were already tense—route two.
That left route four. Demonic invasion.
"Tom," I said. "Who in the kingdom would be desperate enough to seek forbidden magic?"
"Right now? With the chaos at the palace? Probably half the nobility." He poured the chai, the smell of ginger and spices filling the kitchen. "But if you're asking who'd actually go through with it... there are rumors."
"What kind of rumors?"
"About Count Rothford. Before he got himself arrested for tax evasion last year, there were whispers he'd been collecting forbidden texts. Dark magic stuff. The kind that gets you executed if the church finds out."
Count Rothford. The man whose handkerchief was planted in Wickham's room. The man who'd been part of the conspiracy.
"Where is he now?"
"Still in prison, I think. The king never got around to his trial." Tom handed me a cup of chai. "Why?"
"Because if someone wanted to trigger a demonic invasion, they'd need someone with knowledge of forbidden magic. Someone who's desperate. Someone who might make a deal if offered the right incentive."
"Like getting out of prison and getting revenge on everyone who betrayed him?"
"Exactly like that."
We both sipped our chai in silence, thinking.
"Arjun," Tom said finally. "In this game you keep talking about. Were there any good endings?"
"A few. If you made all the right choices. Romanced the right person. Prevented the right disasters at the right time."
"And what happened in those endings?"
"The heroine saved the kingdom. Married one of the capture targets. Everyone lived happily ever after." I set down my cup. "But those endings required perfect information, perfect timing, and usually involved the heroine having mysterious powers that solved everything."
"Do you have mysterious powers?"
"I have anxiety and accounting skills."
"Close enough." He grinned. "Look, I don't understand half of what you're talking about with these 'routes' and 'flags' and whatnot. But I understand this: someone's trying to kill a lot of people, and you're trying to stop them. That's simple enough for me."
"It's not that simple—"
"It is, though. Everything else is just details." He stood, collecting our cups. "Now come on. Let's go map out your doom flags before the actual doom arrives. I'll help you organize. And maybe we'll figure out who's behind all this before they murder us."
We returned to the study, where I spread out my notes across the Duke's massive desk. Tom found more paper, more ink, and somehow produced a corkboard and pins from somewhere.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
"I'm resourceful. Now, explain to me how these doom things work."
I spent the next hour explaining the game's structure. Tom listened, asked surprisingly insightful questions, and helped me create a visual map of all the interconnected disaster scenarios.
By the time we finished, the board looked like a conspiracy theorist's fever dream—threads connecting different events, notes about triggers, timelines for each route.
"Okay," Tom said, studying our work. "So if we can prevent the plague, stop the war, fix the economy, prevent demonic invasion, and stop a revolution, we save the kingdom."
"When you put it that way, it sounds impossible."
"Most things do before you do them." He pointed to the plague route. "This one. The disease at the academy. That's happening now, yeah? With your maid getting sick?"
"Possibly. Or it's a coincidence. Or it's something else entirely."
"Right. So we start there. Figure out if it's the same poison as before or something new. If it's new, we trace it. Find the source. Stop it from spreading."
I nodded slowly. "And while we do that, we need to watch for the other triggers. Prevent them before they activate."
"Can we do all that in three days?"
"I don't know. But we don't have a choice."
A knock at the door. Wickham was wheeled in on a chair by two servants, looking pale but conscious. The physician followed, looking worried.
"Your Grace requested my presence," Wickham said weakly.
Cassian entered behind them. "Wickham, thank you for coming. I need your expertise. Another person in the household has fallen ill with symptoms similar to your poisoning. I need to know if it's the same."
"Has she ingested wine recently?"
"I... I don't know. Mrs. Blackwood?"
The head maid, who'd followed them in, shook her head. "Clara doesn't drink wine. She's quite religious. Only water and weak tea."
"Then it's different," Wickham said. "The poison that affected me was wine-soluble. Bitter almond scent. Fast-acting but not immediately lethal—they wanted me incapacitated, not dead. If this girl has the same symptoms without consuming wine, it's either a different poison or a different delivery method."
"Could it be contagious?" I asked. "An actual disease rather than poison?"
The physician spoke up. "That was my concern. The fever pattern is consistent with some infectious diseases I've read about. But those diseases typically spread more quickly. If it were truly contagious, we'd expect to see more cases by now."
"Unless we're in the early stages," I said. "Unless this is the first infection, and the spread just hasn't happened yet."
Everyone looked at me.
"Quarantine her," I said firmly. "Full isolation. Anyone who's had contact needs to be monitored. And we need to trace everywhere she's been in the past three days. Everyone she talked to, everywhere she ate, anything she might have touched."
"You're thinking this is deliberate," Cassian said. "Someone infected her."
"I'm thinking we can't afford to assume it's not."
He nodded. "Make it so. And physician? I want hourly updates on her condition. Any change, good or bad, I need to know immediately."
After they left, taking Wickham back to rest, Cassian looked at our doom flag board.
"This is what we're up against?"
"This is what I know about. There could be more."
"Wonderful." He studied the connections we'd drawn. "The letter said three days. That means they're on a timeline too. They need specific conditions met by then."
"The true end route," I said. "All flags triggered, all routes converging. Maximum destruction."
"Then we don't give them what they want. We disrupt their timeline. Break their pattern." He pointed to the plague route. "If the disease is already here, we contain it. Prevent the spread. No epidemic, no route one."
"And route two? The war?"
"I'll send word to the northern territories. Open negotiations. Offer concessions if necessary. Anything to prevent escalation."
"Route three? The economic collapse?"
"Already being handled. With Lady Meridian arrested and the conspiracy exposed, the king can reverse the embezzlement. Restore confidence." He looked at Tom. "Route five. Revolution. That requires a charismatic leader to unite the commoners, yes?"
Tom nodded. "Someone who can speak their language. Who they trust."
"Then we make sure no such leader emerges. We improve conditions in the city. Food distribution, lower taxes, visible reforms. Take away their reason to revolt."
"That leaves route four," I said. "Demonic invasion. We need to find Count Rothford. Make sure he doesn't make any desperate deals."
"I'll send word to the capital. Have him transferred here, under guard. If he's the key to that route, we keep him locked away."
It was a good plan. A comprehensive plan.
It wouldn't work.
"Your Grace," I said quietly. "In the game, every time someone tried to prevent all the routes simultaneously, they failed. You can't be everywhere at once. You can't stop everything."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"We find the person orchestrating this. Cut off the head. Without them actively triggering the flags, the routes are just possibilities, not certainties."
"And how do we find them? They've been operating in shadow for six months."
I looked at the letter again. The pieces have been in motion far longer than you realize.
"They made a mistake," I said slowly. "They revealed themselves. Sent you this letter. They're confident, maybe overconfident. And confident people make mistakes."
"Such as?"
"Such as assuming we'll react predictably. That we'll scramble to stop every fire while they light new ones. But what if we don't?" I met his eyes. "What if we set a trap?"
Cassian's expression shifted. Understanding dawned.
"You want to let one of the routes proceed," he said. "Let them think they're winning."
"Exactly. We visibly defend against four routes. Pour all our resources into stopping them. But we leave one vulnerable. Make it look like an oversight."
"And when they move to trigger that route—"
"We catch them in the act."
Tom grinned. "That's either brilliant or suicidal."
"Probably both," I admitted. "But we're out of other options. We can't defend everything. We can't be reactive. We need to take control of the board."
Cassian studied the doom flag map. "Which route do we leave vulnerable?"
"Whichever one they're most likely to trigger next. Whichever one fits their timeline." I thought about it. "The plague. Route one. It's already starting with Clara's illness. It's the most dramatic, the most visible. And it plays into fear—nothing destabilizes a population faster than disease."
"You want to let a plague happen?"
"I want to let them think a plague is happening. We quarantine Clara, yes. We take proper precautions, yes. But we make it look like we're overwhelmed. Like it's spreading despite our best efforts. We leak information that the disease is in the manor, in the city, maybe even at the academy."
"And when our mysterious orchestrator comes to accelerate the plague—"
"We grab them."
"That's assuming they come themselves instead of sending agents."
"They will. They're too proud not to. This letter?" I held it up. "This is showboating. They want us to know they're in control. They want to see our fear." I smiled grimly. "So we give them what they want. We look afraid. We look defeated. And when they come to gloat, we spring the trap."
Cassian was quiet for a long moment. Then he smiled—that dangerous smile I was starting to recognize.
"Three days," he said. "They gave us three days. Let's make them count."