"GET BACK!"
The Grand Marshal's roar shattered the fragile silence. It was the trained, instinctual bellow of a commander on a battlefield, a sound meant to shake soldiers out of their stupor and herald imminent, earth-shattering violence.
Princess Aurelia flinched, startled by the sheer force of his voice. She was royalty, but Dros was a weapon in human form, and that weapon had just been primed.
Valerius and Seraphina, however, did not flinch. They simply turned their heads, their expressions shifting from calm reverence to a cold, synchronized glare of utter disdain.
To them, Dros hadn't just shouted. He had committed an unforgivable sin. He had disturbed the Master. He had bellowed in the Chamber of Stillness.
Lyno, already at the absolute peak of his terror, was pushed over the edge by the Marshal's roar. His mind simply snapped. The confluence of a shouting armored giant, a bowing princess, a murderous maid, and a lunatic wizard in his tiny bedroom was too much. The complex web of social anxiety, mortal terror, and profound confusion overloaded his nervous system.
His fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, chose "flight" with a desperate passion, and then tripped over itself.
"AAAAAHHHHHH!" he shrieked, a genuine, full-throated scream of someone who has seen the abyss and found it wanting.
He threw his blanket off and scrambled backwards off the bed away from the door, away from the scary people. He moved with the graceless, panicked energy of a startled squirrel.
His back slammed into the flimsy wall behind his bed.
THWUMP.
The impact was not particularly hard. Lyno was not a strong man. But the building was old. The wall was thin. And on the other side of that wall was the small, precarious shelf where Lyno kept his modest collection of knick-knacks: a painted stone his mother had given him, a cheap seashell from a seaside trip, and, most importantly, a "Commemorative Arcane Orb" he had bought from a traveling merchant for two copper pieces.
The merchant had assured him it was a "mood orb," which would glow different colors depending on his feelings. It had never worked. It just sat there, a dusty glass paperweight. What the merchant failed to mention (or likely didn't know) was that it was a faulty, low-grade scrying focus, discarded from a wizard's academy. It had a nasty habit of absorbing and then violently, uncontrollably discharging any ambient magical energy it was exposed to.
Lyno's room, thanks to the recent arrival of Valerius Zathra, a living conduit of immense power, was currently saturated with more passive magical energy than a royal treasury.
The small jolt from Lyno hitting the wall was just enough to rattle the shelf.
The mood orb wobbled.
It teetered.
It rolled off the edge.
CRASH.
It shattered on the floor.
For a single, silent moment, nothing happened.
Then, all the ambient aether that the orb had been passively soaking up for the past few hours discharged in a single, silent, focused burst. It wasn't an explosion of light or sound. It was an invisible, razor-thin plane of pure disruptive energy, no thicker than a sheet of paper.
ZZZZZZING!
The energy plane shot out sideways, perfectly parallel to the floor, at roughly waist height. It passed through the wall of Lyno's room as if it wasn't there. It passed through the bookstore's main floor. It shot out into the street.
And it sliced neatly through the base of the incredibly ornate, magically-reinforced, gilded Imperial carriage.
shhhnnk.
The sound was almost too quiet to hear.
Upstairs, no one knew what had happened. They only saw the aftermath of Lyno's panic.
Grand Marshal Dros stood frozen, his hand still on his sword hilt. He had expected an earth-shattering magical attack. He had expected a roar of power. He had expected... anything but this.
He saw the "Master" scramble away and scream. He saw him hit the wall. And then he felt it. A barely perceptible flicker in the aether. A wave of energy so subtle, so focused, and so blindingly fast that he wouldn't have noticed it if he wasn't already on high alert.
It had missed them completely. It wasn't aimed at him, or the Princess. It was aimed... outside.
A warning shot, Dros's mind concluded, the flawed logic beautiful in its precision. He didn't attack me for my outburst. He's demonstrating his power without causing harm to us. The scream… the scramble… it wasn't fear. It was a feint! A masterclass in misdirection! He drew my attention to his pathetic physical movements while unleashing a silent, undetectable attack elsewhere to show me the futility of resistance!
Valerius was equally impressed, but his interpretation was more philosophical.
"Did you see?" he whispered to Seraphina, his eyes wide. "He reacted to the Marshal's profane shout not with anger, but with a lesson! He created a sudden dissonance—a cry, a movement—to show the Marshal how a single, crude action can upset a delicate balance. It was an act of instructive chaos! Utterly brilliant!"
Down in the street, there was a collective, horrified gasp.
SCREEEEE...
The top half of the Imperial carriage, no longer connected to its base and wheels, slid sideways with a ghastly metallic groan.
CRUUUNCH!
It fell onto the cobblestones, landing with a sound like a giant dropping a priceless vase. The golden filigree was bent, the enchanted glass shattered, the imperial crest grotesquely twisted. It was utterly, comprehensively ruined. The symbol of Imperial authority, the very carriage that had carried the Princess, now lay in a heap of glittering wreckage.
Not a single person was hurt. The cut was so clean, so precise, that it had bypassed every living being.
But the message... oh, the message was terrifyingly clear.
Kaelen Dros heard the crash from upstairs. He risked a glance out the window. His blood ran cold. He saw the bisected carriage. He saw the perfectly clean, cauterized cut through solid enchanted oak and reinforced steel. A cut that his own greatsword would have struggled to make in a dozen blows.
His mind assembled the final, devastating piece of the puzzle.
The Master had been silent. The Princess had made her offer. He had shouted, interrupting the proceedings. In response, the Master had unleashed a casual, invisible attack that hadn't harmed anyone but had effortlessly destroyed a symbol of the Empire.
This was not a conversation. This was not a negotiation.
Kaelen Dros, the greatest military mind of his generation, finally understood.
It was an Unspoken Ultimatum.
The Master was not here to treat with the Empire. He was here to judge it. The Princess was not a diplomat. She was a hostage. And his own presence was tolerated only as long as he did not disturb the one holding the sword of Damocles over the entire nation.
He slowly, deliberately, took his hand off the hilt of his sword. He straightened his back and bowed his head, a gesture of submission he had only ever given to the Emperor.
"My... deepest apologies," he said, his voice a hoarse, humbled rasp. "I overstepped. It will not happen again, Master Lyno."
Lyno, still cowering against the far wall, just stared back. He had no idea what was happening, but the giant armored man had stopped shouting and was now bowing. It was a marginal improvement.
Princess Aurelia, having witnessed this entire exchange, came to the same conclusion as her Marshal, but with a different, more personal horror.
The Master has rejected me, she thought, her heart sinking. My father's offering was not enough. In response to the Marshal's crudeness, he destroyed my carriage... he destroyed the symbol of my dowry. He is sending a message back to the Emperor: The Empire has nothing he wants. He will not be bought or bound.
Her mission was a complete and utter failure. And now she, the Empire's Jewel, was trapped in the lair of a being whose power was absolute and whose intentions were terrifyingly unknown. Her carefully constructed regal composure finally crumbled, and a single, perfect tear rolled down her cheek.