Duke Austin didn't say anything right away after my answer.
He walked further into the room, hands clasped behind his back, eyes sweeping the space briefly before settling on the chair near the window. He didn't sit. Just stood there, back to the afternoon light coming through the glass, putting his face in a thin shadow that made his expression even harder to read.
"Lisa."
"Yes, Great Master."
"Leave us for a moment."
Lisa gave a short bow and stepped out without a sound. The door clicked shut behind her — and somehow that small sound felt louder than it should have in the silence of this room.
I waited.
Duke Austin turned to face me. For the first time since he walked in, something shifted in his expression — not softer exactly, but... more open. Like a mask peeled back by exactly one layer.
"Sit down," he said.
I sat on the edge of the bed. He took the chair he'd only been staring at before, turned it slightly, and sat with his back perfectly straight — posture I was starting to think he couldn't drop even in his sleep.
"Do you remember what happened that night?"
I thought about the question for a moment.
From Richard's memories, there was enough left — but all of it came in fragments, like photographs with half the edges burned away. The academy party. Music. Giant chandeliers lighting up the hall. Crowds of students from various noble families. Then a sound that wasn't really a sound, more like the air pressure suddenly changing — and after that, nothing.
"Not much," I answered honestly. "I remember the hall. I remember standing near the east side of the dining tables. Then..." I shook my head slightly. "Dark."
Duke Austin nodded, like that answer was exactly what he'd already predicted.
"Good," he said — and his tone had absolutely nothing warm about it. More like a confirmation of something he'd already suspected. "That means you weren't the primary target."
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
Duke Austin looked at me directly. "That explosion wasn't an accident, Richard."
---
The silence between us hung there for a few seconds.
I wasn't shocked — or more accurately, the Richard living in my memories wouldn't have been shocked. But me, the soul riding around in this body, felt something different. Something that felt like puzzle pieces starting to move toward the same picture.
"The investigation is still ongoing," Duke Austin continued. His voice was quieter now, deliberately controlled. "But there's already enough evidence to draw some early conclusions."
He stood up, walked to the window, and stood with his back to it again — this time I could see his face clearly. The lines on it were deeper than they looked at first. Eyes that were usually flat now held something heavy behind them.
"Thirty-seven students were injured that night. Eight died on the spot. Two more followed in the first week." He paused. "You survived because of luck — you got thrown into a corner that wasn't hit by the center of the blast. The ones who were standing closer didn't get the same chance."
"Who died?"
Duke Austin looked at me with an expression that for a moment felt like a reassessment — like that question was slightly different from what he'd expected from the Richard he knew.
"Children from mid-tier noble families, mostly. But among the seriously injured—" He stopped. "Crown Prince Aldric was in the same hall that night."
This time I actually went quiet.
The Crown Prince.
From Richard's memories I pulled up a picture — Aldric vas Alvan, two years older than Richard, fourth year at the academy. Tall, dark brown hair, grey eyes. A face that always looked older than it actually was. Popular with students because he never acted like someone who knew he was going to inherit a throne someday.
"Is the Prince—"
"Alive. Minor injury on his left arm." Duke Austin cut me off. "His personal guards managed to cover him before the second explosion."
"There was a second explosion?"
"One that didn't go off." For the first time, something that felt like very carefully contained fury slipped into his tone. "Found underneath the stage, twenty minutes after the first blast. If it had gone off — there would've been nothing left of that hall."
I processed this quietly.
Not just a riot. Not some magical accident that got out of hand. This was planned. Two blast points — one to trigger chaos, one to make sure there were no witnesses left standing.
And the Crown Prince was the target.
"Where is the investigation pointing?" I asked carefully.
Duke Austin looked at me again with that same expression — assessing, measuring. Then he took a long breath, walked back to his chair, and sat down.
"That's what I want to talk to you about."
---
He pulled something from inside the fold of his coat — a piece of paper folded several times, edges slightly crumpled like it had been opened and closed too many times. He set it on the small table between us but didn't open it.
"Three days after the explosion, a royal investigator found fragments of the magical device that was used. Not locally made." He pressed one finger on top of the folded paper. "The formula used a crystal condensation method that isn't known in any kingdom on this continent."
I waited.
"Except one place."
Duke Austin looked at me directly.
"The Valdres Empire."
That name landed like a rock dropped into still water — I could feel the ripples even through memories that weren't mine. The Valdres Empire. To the northeast, beyond the Harven mountain range that for decades had served as the natural boundary between two major powers. The relationship between Alvan and Valdres had been tense for a generation — ever since the peace treaty signed thirty years ago started fraying at the edges.
"But that's not enough for an official accusation," Duke Austin continued. "Weapons can be stolen. Methods can be learned. A good investigator doesn't jump to conclusions from one piece of physical evidence alone."
"So there are still things that don't add up."
"A lot of things that don't add up." He leaned back, and for a moment he looked like a man carrying weight he'd been hauling alone for way too long. "What bothers me most isn't where the weapon came from. What bothers me most is how they got it in."
I frowned.
"The royal academy has multiple layers of magical protection," he explained before I could ask. "Detection barriers, dangerous artifact filters, a surveillance system that gets updated every semester. To be able to smuggle two explosive devices into that hall without triggering a single alarm—" He stopped. "Someone had to know exactly where the gaps in that system were."
Inside job.
I didn't say it out loud, but from the way Duke Austin's expression shifted slightly, it looked like he'd already read where my head was going.
"You're quick," he said. Not a compliment — just an observation.
"Who has access to information about that protection system?"
"The academy staff, obviously. Some members of the royal council who oversee the security budget. And—" He paused. "Certain families whose sons and daughters hold important positions within the academy."
That sentence hung in the air with weight completely out of proportion to its length.
"Does Father have a specific suspicion?"
Duke Austin didn't answer right away. He picked up the folded paper on the table, finally opened it — and I saw a list of names written in black ink, slightly faded in some spots.
"Three families whose names keep showing up at different points in the investigation." He didn't hand it to me, just read from it. "The Voss family — the head of the family is the Minister of Internal Security, and his son is at the academy, one year above you. The Crane family — they've held the contract for supplying protective magic to the academy for the past twelve years. And the Maren family."
That last name made me tense up slightly.
From Richard's memories, I knew that name well enough. The Maren family — old nobility with a long lineage, and one name that stood out the most: Edric Maren, Richard's close friend at the academy. Or someone who'd been presenting himself as a close friend all this time.
"Lord Edric Maren was the one who found Richard after the explosion," said Duke Austin, like he was reading my mind again. His tone didn't change. "He was the one who carried you to the medical post. Without his help, you likely wouldn't have survived."
I tried not to show just how complicated that information was to process.
A savior who's also a suspect. Or a suspect who's also a savior. Or neither — maybe just someone who happened to be in the right place because he already knew the explosion was coming, and made sure one of the victims survived for his own reasons.
Too many possibilities. Too few facts.
"What's the point of all this?" I asked finally. "If the Valdres Empire really is behind this — what are they trying to achieve by killing the Crown Prince?"
Duke Austin folded the paper back up, put it away, and looked at me with the most serious expression he'd had since walking into this room.
"That's exactly the right question," he said quietly. "And the answer is simpler than you'd think — and at the same time a hell of a lot more dangerous."
He stood up, walked back to the window, stared out at the wide palace grounds below.
"If Crown Prince Aldric dies in an attack — and that attack can be attributed to a militant group that's been quietly funded by Valdres — the King of Alvan won't have a choice." His voice dropped lower. "Parliament will force a declaration of war. The people will demand it. Even the factions that have been the loudest voices for peace won't be able to hold back that wave."
I understood where this was going.
"And Valdres is already ready for that war."
Duke Austin nodded, still with his back to me.
"Alvan is not." Those two words dropped with a weight that needed no further explanation. "The past three years, the military budget has been cut twice in a row by the peace faction in parliament. The border fortresses along the Harven pass haven't been renovated since your grandfather's time. The frontline forces are short on experienced officers because the last generation never actually fought a real war." He finally turned, looking at me. "Valdres has been preparing for this for years. We're only just now figuring that out."
The room felt smaller than before.
I was sitting on a fancy bed, inside the body of a sixteen-year-old duke's son, in a world that wasn't mine — and suddenly the scale of what had just been laid out in front of me felt completely out of proportion with all of that.
This isn't just political assassination.
This is a casus belli that's been engineered for years.
"Why is Father telling me all of this?" I asked quietly. "I just came out of a coma. I'm still—"
"Because you almost died in it." Duke Austin cut me off, but not harshly — more like someone who didn't have time to dance around things. "And because the people who tried to kill the Crown Prince that night knew you were in that hall too. Whether they deliberately let you live, or whether you just happened to survive by chance—" He stopped. "Until that's answered, you're no longer just my son recovering from an injury."
I looked at him.
"You are a living witness to the attempted assassination of Alvan's heir to the throne." His tone shifted into something harder, colder — the voice of a Duke, not a father. "And whoever planned that night, they're not done yet."
That last silence stretched on for a while.
Outside the window, wind moved through the leaves in the palace garden. Somewhere in the distance, a clock tower struck — three times, slow, like it had no idea the world had just gotten a little more dangerous than it was a few minutes ago.
Damn, I thought quietly.
I thought I'd finally retired.