The days that followed were a masterclass in deception. I played my part perfectly—the prince fading before the court's indifferent eyes. The search for Corvin turned up nothing but whispers of ghosts in the north wing and a lingering unease. No one connected his disappearance to me. I was a footnote, a non-threat, which was exactly the armor I needed.
But inside, I was waging a silent, brutal war.
The Void Pin. That was the name I gave the power. My power. Each night, locked in my room, I would focus on the bead of nothingness at my chest and will a single Pin into existence. It was a painstaking, agonizing process. The first time had been instinctual, driven by terror. Now, it was a grim exercise in precision.
I would visualize the poison's structure—the map of its corruption I could now sense like a foul embroidery on my soul. I would select one single, tiny nexus of its pattern. Then, I would feed a sliver of my own will, my own vital essence, into the sphere and command the Pin to unstitch that one knot.
The sensation was always the same: a lance of ice-cold clarity, followed by a wave of soul-deep depletion, as if I'd bled from a wound no one could see. Then, a patch of warmth and relief, small but profound, as my body reclaimed clean territory.
The cost was terrifying. After each session, a deep, cold fatigue settled into my bones. My emotions felt flattened, distant. The vibrant panic, the hot rage—they were muted, as if part of me was being eroded along with the poison. The Edge of the End. I was balancing on it. Every use of the power brought me closer to a void not of my making.
But the progress was undeniable. The constant tremor in my hands lessened. The fog in my mind receded, allowing Liam's strategic clarity and Kieran's fragmented memories to merge more seamlessly. I could think.
And I began to plan.
My immediate problem was twofold: sustenance and information. The gruel was insufficient for recovery, and the water was still poisoned. The distilled water from condensation was a stopgap, yielding mere mouthfuls for hours of effort.
Elara was the key. She was my sole point of contact, a thread of guilt and fear I could pull. When she delivered the next meal, I didn't pretend to be asleep.
"Elara," I said, my voice still weak but clear.
She froze, the tray rattling in her hands.
"I know you saw," I said, keeping my eyes on the ceiling. "I know what you told the captain. You saved me."
"I… I don't know what you mean, Your Highness." Her denial was automatic, fragile.
"You gave me a direction. To the cellar. That was a kindness, even if others meant it otherwise." I finally turned my head to look at her. "Corvin is gone. He won't be paying anyone's debts now."
Her face went ashen. She understood the implication. Whatever hold he or his master had over her family, it was now unsettled, dangerous.
"I need your help," I said, laying it bare. "Not as a prince. As someone who doesn't want to die in this room. And I think you don't want to be the one who has to carry the tray out when I do."
It was a cold calculation, appealing to both her compassion and her self-preservation.
"What… what can I do?" she whispered, capitulating.
"The water is poisoned. I need a clean source. Not from the kitchens. A rainwater barrel. A stable trough. Anything untouched by the palace's usual chains." I held her gaze. "And food. Anything you can spare. Cheese rinds, oat sacks, anything that won't be missed."
It was a risk. If she reported this, it would prove I was not the helpless invalid I seemed. But the fear in her eyes when she remembered the cavern… that was my leverage.
She gave a tiny, sharp nod. "There is a rain cistern for the gardeners. It's foul, but… it's not from the well."
"It will do. Thank you, Elara."
She left without another word. That evening, tucked beneath the bowl of gruel, was a small, hard wedge of yellow cheese wrapped in a clean rag, and a twist of parchment containing roasted chickpeas. And the water pitcher, when I sniffed it, carried the faint, green scent of stagnant rainwater.
It was a feast. It was hope.
The second part of my plan required leaving the room again. I needed to learn about this world's systems. Magic, politics, economy. Prince Kieran's education had been neglected, but Liam's mind knew the value of information. The palace had to have a library, or at least, a scribe's repository.
A few nights later, my body stronger from cleaner calories and another minuscule deletion of poison, I used the key again. I had a new objective: find a map of the palace, and any basic treatise on mana theory or imperial history.
Moving through the midnight corridors was easier this time. My senses were sharper, my movements quieter. The cold bead against my chest seemed to drink the shadows, making me less visible. I found the scribe's annex—a dusty, low-ceilinged room adjacent to the steward's offices. It was unlocked.
Inside were rolls of vellum, ledgers of grain shipments, and tedious genealogies. But in a corner, I struck gold: a child's discarded primer, "The Elements & You: A Young Scholar's Guide to Mana." Next to it was a cracked leather folio containing a schematic of the palace's old wings, including the derelict north section and the ice cellar, marked with a small, ominous symbol that looked like a closed eye.
I took them both.
Back in my room, I devoured the primer by the dying embers of my fire. The magic of this world, it explained, was based on affinity and cultivation. Individuals were born attuned to one or more of the core elements—Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Wood, Metal. They drew in ambient "mana," refined it within their core, and expelled it to cast spells. Strength was determined by affinity strength, core capacity, and cultivation technique.
Prince Kieran had been tested at age five. The result: "Mana-Inert." No affinity. A core like a closed stone. A social and practical death sentence in the Aethelian Empire.
But as I read about the flow of energy, the patterns of drawing and expelling, a chilling parallel formed in my mind. Cultivation was about absorption and expression. A controlled cycle.
What I did with the Void Pin was… the opposite. It was targeted deletion. Un-making. It didn't absorb mana; it erased matter and energy, converting it into void. And the fuel was my own will, my own essence—a kind of anti-cultivation.
I was not mana-inert. I was something else entirely. A void-attuned. A cultivator of nothingness.
The realization was followed by a more practical one. If I understood how normal mana flowed, perhaps I could predict its patterns. See the "structure" of spells, or poisons, or even living things, the same way I saw the poison's lattice. It wouldn't make me a mage. But it might make me a better surgeon with my terrifying scalpel.
Days bled into a week. Elara's clandestine aid continued. My strength grew, though the deep cold inside me grew alongside it. I had erased nearly a third of the poison. The cost was a persistent emotional numbness, a distance from my own fear and anger that was both a blessing and a curse.
Then, the primer gave me another idea. It spoke of "mana-sensitive" materials used in testing. A common one was Verdant Moss, which glowed blue in the presence of raw mana.
If my power was the antithesis of mana… what would it do to such a material?
During my next nightly excursion, I scraped a patch of the glowing fungus from the cavern wall. Back in my room, I placed a tiny fragment of it on my table.
Focusing, I generated a Void Pin smaller than a grain of sand. I directed it to touch the moss.
The effect was instant. The soft blue glow winked out. Not dimmed. It was extinguished, completely and utterly. The moss itself turned grey, brittle, and crumbled to dust a second later. It hadn't just died; its fundamental magical property had been unmade.
A slow, cold smile touched my lips—one of the few strong emotions that could penetrate the void's chill.
I had a tool. Not just for healing. For sabotage. For creating silent, untraceable failures in anything reliant on mana.
The game was changing. I was no longer just surviving.
I was learning to fight back.
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