Twenty-six hours ago
"This is the secondary magic crystals reservoir," Aefia muttered under her breath as she stood in front of its gates. The blizzard was chilling, but it wasn't enough to overcome the fire element she had. Her cloak fluttered loudly behind her, snapping in the wind as she walked towards the gate.
The heavy iron doors of the reservoir bunker towered over her, frost-crusted and reinforced with ancient stone arches. Two heavily armored guards stood stationed at the entrance, their spears clinking against their steel breastplates as they tried to ward off the biting cold.
Through the whiteout of the snowstorm, she pulled her hood down lower over her face, keeping her head tilted toward the snow as she tried to slip quietly past their line of sight into the shadowy recess of the side entry.
She was nearly through the archway when a boot crunched sharply against frozen gravel.
"Hey! You there! Halt!" one of the guards barked, snapping his spear toward her direction.
Aefia froze for a fraction of a second, her jaw tightening beneath her collar. So much for keeping this low profile.
The two guards marched over, their heavy iron boots kicking up sprays of powdery snow. The lead guard leaned in, squinting through the driving snow before a ugly, mockingly wide sneer spread across his face.
"Well, well, well... look what we have here," he sneered, nudging his partner with the shaft of his spear. "Hey, look! It's that prized prisoner, the Crown Princess! The most famous right now in Mides is a runaway!"
The second guard burst into a loud, mocking laugh, adjusting the grip on his halberd. "What's the matter, Princess? Got lost on your way back to your cozy little dungeon cell? Or did you think a fancy title meant you could just waltz into a restricted military vault without a pass?"
"I would tell you to turn around and walk back, but His Majesty put a very generous bounty on your head," the first sneered, his eyes glinting with arrogant greed. "How about you make this easy for us and get on your knees? Maybe we won't drag you through the mud too roughly."
Aefia let out a long, slow exhale, her breath pluming white in the freezing air. The quiet, secretive stance melted away in an instant.
She slowly raised her head, throwing her hood back completely, her garnet eyes burning with a cold, terrifying intensity that instantly cut through their smug grins.
"You really should have just pretended you didn't see me," Aefia said softly, her voice dropping into a deadly, razor-sharp deadpan.
Before the lead guard could even process the sudden shift in her aura, Aefia moved.
A localized wave of dense, searing heat burst from her palms, snapping outward like an invisible whip. The sheer thermal force slammed into both guards, shattering their spear shafts and hurling them violently against the iron gates. They hit the heavy doors with a dull, echoing thud, slipping onto the snow-covered stone, completely unconscious before their bodies even settled into the drifts.
"Useless," she muttered, adjusting her cloak as she stepped over their slumped bodies.
She pressed her palm against the frozen lock of the main gate, releasing a concentrated pulse of fire straight into the keyhole. The iron hissed violently, the internal mechanism melting into useless liquid slag within seconds. With a firm, decisive shove, the heavy doors groaned and swung inward.
The air inside the subterranean vault was instantly warmer, heavy with the sharp, metallic tang of raw arcana. Long rows of glowing crystal crates lined the hall, casting eerie blue shadows across the stone ceiling.
A frail, elderly man in elaborate silver robes dropped his clipboard with a loud clatter, stumbling backward in absolute terror as she strolled through the doorway.
"Y-Your Imperial Highness?!" the caretaker stuttered, his knees knocking together beneath his heavy robes. "How... how did you bypass the perimeter guards?! The King declared you—"
Aefia was across the room before he could even finish his sentence. In a single, fluid motion, her fingers locked firmly around his throat, pinning him back against the wooden edge of a sorting desk. She didn't crush his windpipe, but her grip was tight enough to make his breath hitch violently.
"You are going to take me to the magic crystal reservoir," Aefia said smoothly, her garnet eyes locking onto his. "And you are going to do it right now. If you so much as breathe out of line or attempt to touch those alarm runes on the wall, I will burn this entire facility to ash with you inside it. Am I clear?"
"J-Just... don't kill me! Follow me, please!" the caretaker squeaked frantically, clutching at her wrist.
She released him with a slight shove, keeping half a step behind him as he scurried down a winding spiral staircase leading deep beneath the vault floor. At the bottom lay the heart of the facility: a sunken chamber housing rows of dark, pulsating necromantic stones encased in glass containers.
"Open the main cartridge," Aefia commanded flatly.
With shaking fingers, the caretaker keyed in the access codes. The heavy glass casing slid back with a low hiss. Aefia drew a small silver needle from her sleeve, pricked the tip of her index finger, and let a single, concentrated drop of her own blood fall directly onto the central necromantic stone.
The stone hissed, a toxic crimson thread coiling inward as her blood subtly altered its energy. The corruption wouldn't detonate the storehouse, but the moment Kazimir tried to draw from the barrier loop, the energy would misfire and drain his internal reserves instead.
She stepped back, wiping her thumb clean on a nearby cloth. The caretaker stared at the altered stone, his face drained of all color as he looked between them and her face.
"How... how are you even doing this?" the old man whispered, his voice trembling. "You are supposed to be in the deep cells... how are you standing here right now?"
Aefia completely ignored his confusion. She leaned back against the console, folding her arms as her gaze drifted toward the deeper, uncharted shelves at the far end of the reservoir.
"Tell me something, caretaker," she said, her tone shifting into a quiet, almost conversational inquiry. "Hypothetically speaking... if a person had a devil living inside their skin from birth—a parasitic entity bound straight to their life force—how would one completely remove it without killing the host?"
The old man blinked, caught entirely off guard by the abrupt question. "A... a devil bound from birth? That... that requires a complete cleansing of the host's spiritual conduit! Standard dispelling magic would just rupture the organs and kill them instantly!"
"I am not asking for standard magic," Aefia said coldly. "Give me the precise method."
"The... the ancient texts mention a thrice-forged conduit made only for the Guardians and by the Guardians," the caretaker stammered, frantically rubbing his hands together.
"You would need three specific, exceptionally rare elemental crystals: a concentrated Sunstone from the eastern ridge, a dormant Void-Quartz, and a raw Astral Core. If forged together into a single, specialized dagger, the blade can slice through the entity's spiritual tether without damaging the physical flesh of the host."
She tilted her head to the side, unimpressed. "You say it is made by Guardians and used my Guardians... Then how do you know what only the Guardians know?"
"Uh... That..." The caretaker looked away, "it happened so that the late King of Mides had tried his best to gather as much information about magic as possible until he knew he crossed the boundaries. He... Wanted Mides to become the Kingdom whom the entire world reached out for any sort of problems. So he knew this... And I had come across this knowledge not so long ago."
"Hm..." Aefia breathed out through her nose. "Fine then... It seems like a convincing reason anyway. Make the dagger..."
The caretaker immediately looked up at her in fear. "Y-Your Highness! I don't know how!"
"But you know the ingredients? And its effects?" She asked, looking down at him as if he were a mere bug. "Tsk... What a waste—"
"I will make it!"
"...?" She raised an eyebrow.
"I will have it made."
Aefia's eyes narrowed slightly. Without another word, she turned and walked straight into the deep storage racks at the far end of the chamber. She bypassed rows of standard power stones, stopping in front of an ancient, iron-bound chest on the lowest shelf. With a flick of her wrist, a tiny burst of heat melted the iron locks instantly.
Resting inside the velvet lining were three distinct, unrefined stones: a glowing golden Sunstone, a pitch-black Void-Quartz, and a shimmering Astral Core.
She picked up all three stones and tossed a detailed schematic parchment onto his desk—a design drawing for a thin, specialized curved dagger with intricate grooves along the blade.
"You are going to take these three stones," Aefia commanded, pointing at the blueprint, "and you are going to have your master smiths forge them into this exact artifact. Customize the grip to my hand measurements, balance the weight toward the hilt, and ensure the edge is honed to a razor finish."
The caretaker stared from the blueprint to the priceless stones in utter disbelief. "T-To forge an artifact of this caliber requires hours of continuous thermal binding—"
"Then you had better start right now," she cut him off, her garnet eyes locking onto his with an unyielding weight. "Because I expect this artifact, along with the secondary magic crystal reserves scheduled for shipment, to be delivered directly to the royal palace courtyard at early dawn tomorrow."
"To... to the palace?!" he squeaked. "Under whose authority?!"
"Under mine," Aefia replied with a cold gaze. "If those crystals and that blade are not at the keep by the time the sun clears the southern ridge, I will personally return here to tear this mountain down stone by stone."
She stepped towards him, gripping him by his hair and yanking his head back, forcing him to stare directly into her eyes.
"You saw what I did to the late King. You maybe even heard who I am. I don't have boundaries and things I can't do if I wish."
She released his hair with a shove, "well then... We shall meet again at the palace courtyard tomorrow morning... That is if you are even alive by then."
She turned toward the stairs, her cloak snapping behind her as she melted back into the freezing blizzard outside.
***
The biting wind of the early morning swept through the central palace courtyard, carrying with it the faint, ozone-heavy scent of raw arcana. High above, the sky bled a bruised shade of violet and cold gold as the sun crested the southern mountain ridge.
Clink. Cluck. Click.
Aefia stepped out onto the frost-dusted cobblestones, her purple cape snapping softly against her ankles. Beside her, the royal guard bowed deeply before stepping back, gesturing toward the center of the yard.
There stood two heavy supply wagons draped in imperial canvas, surrounded by a dozen kneeling Mides soldiers. Right in front of the lead wagon, trembling so violently his silver robes practically rattled against the stone, was the caretaker.
On a low pedestal before him rested a lacquered wooden box lined with deep crimson velvet. Resting in the center was the forged artifact: a sleek, curved dagger that seemed to drink the pale dawn light.
The blade shimmered with an unstable, iridescent sheen—the golden veins of the Sunstone coiling tightly around a pitch-black Void-Quartz core, while a faint, ethereal vapor rose from the Astral Core at its hilt.
Aefia walked over, her heels clicking cleanly against the flagstones. The caretaker flinched with every step she took, pressing his forehead nearly flat against the freezing ground.
"Y-Your Imperial Highness..." the old man squeaked, his voice cracking with sheer terror. "It... it is done. Completed less than an hour ago under continuous thermal binding, precisely as you commanded."
Aefia didn't answer immediately. She reached down, her gloved fingers curling around the hilt. The weight was immaculate, balanced perfectly toward her palm, shaped to her exact hand measurements. She drew it from its velvet bed and brought it up to eye level, her garnet eyes reflecting the strange, tri-elemental glow of the metal.
Slowly, she pulled off her left glove with her teeth and brought the tip of the blade down against the pad of her thumb. She didn't press hard, but the moment the metal grazed her skin, a sharp, cold sting shot up her arm—a sensation like liquid ice meeting raw fire.
"Careful, Your Highness!" the caretaker stammered frantically, lifting his head just enough to watch her. "The artifact... it is extremely fragile! The spiritual tethering matrix is balanced on a single thread! It can only be used once! The moment the blade pierces the host and the devil's entity melts away, the resonance will completely shatter the crystals into dust! If you strike the wrong angle, or if the host's blood isn't drawn at the exact heart of the tether, the feedback will destroy the dagger before—"
Aefia tuned out the rest of his frantic rambling, her expression completely flat as she turned the blade side to side, inspecting the groove work along the flat.
"Your Imperial Highness!"
A Mides herald came sprinting out of the palace's side colonnade, his face pale and slick with sweat. He stumbled onto his knees a few paces away, holding up a golden scroll sealed with the royal crest.
"Message from King Kazimir!" the herald panted, gasping for air. "His Majesty... His Majesty requests an immediate ceasefire! He wishes to negotiate terms in the grand hall before... before any further hostilities commence! He is willing to discuss a full peace treaty!"
Aefia didn't even look at the scroll. She tapped the flat of the glowing dagger against her chin, a thoughtful, entirely unimpressed hum escaping her lips.
"A ceasefire?" she murmured, her voice dripping with dry, dismissive irony. "Tell Kazimir that I am the Crown Princess of the Smod Empire. If he wants an audience to beg for his life, he can write a formal petition and wait in line like everyone else. My schedule is far too full today to reserve time for a hiding king."
"B-But Your Highness—"
"Dismissed," she deadpanned, not giving the herald another second of her attention.
She looked down at the delicate, shimmering dagger in her hand. Then, with a casual flick of her wrist, she opened her fingers.
CRACK.
The priceless, thrice-forged artifact plummeted to the courtyard floor, striking the frozen cobblestones hilt-first. The fragile, high-strung magic matrix snapped instantly; the blade fractured into a dozen glowing, useless shards that dissolved into glittering dust against the stone.
The caretaker let out a strangled, horrified shriek, clutching his head in utter disbelief.
"Y-YOUR HIGHNESS! THE CRYSTALS! THE CONDUIT! IT TOOK THE MASTER SMITHS FIVE HOURS—"
Aefia looked down at the pile of dust, then slowly turned her cold, garnet eyes back to the weeping caretaker.
"The balance was off by two millimeters toward the point," she said smoothly, her tone as light and pleasant as if she were commenting on the weather. "And the Astral Core vapor is far too unstable. Remake it right this instant. You have until I finish taking Kazimir's crown."