"I would like to go see the ministers again," she told a knight of Smod. Then turned on her heels and began to walk back to the palace.
"BUT YOUR HIGHNESS! THIS IS BEING TOO ARROGANT CONSIDERING YOU ARE STILL A RUNAWAY PRISONER!" The caretaker shouted as he got on his knees.
Aefia stopped, freezing instantly. Silence descended heavily against the courtyard.
The caretaker recoiled, covering his mouth as he waited to see her rage one last time. She slowly turned to face him, but didn't walk towards him.
"If you really fear me..." she said, "then why did you give me a fake replica? Did you really think I was dumb?"
Aefia's voice dropped into a register so dangerously low it seemed to cause the frost on the surrounding stones to crystallize further.
The caretaker remained frozen on his knees, his hands clamped tightly over his mouth, his pupils dilated to pinpricks. The dozen Mides guards around the supply wagons pressed their foreheads harder against the frozen stone, terrified that even breathing too loudly would draw her gaze.
Aefia's garnet eyes locking onto the old man with a chilling, predatory stillness.
"Did you honestly believe," she began softly, taking one deliberate step forward toward the scattered, glowing dust on the floor, "that I wouldn't recognize the difference between genuine Astral Core vapor and a localized illusion ward? A clever trick, really. A surface-level enchantment designed to mimic the cold sting of arcana while hiding the fact that the core is nothing more than powdered glass and low-grade quartz."
She raised her left hand, brushing the pad of her thumb—where the blade had grazed her skin seconds before—against her index finger. There was no residue, no spiritual resonance, no trace of the ancient cleansing power required to sever a devil's tether.
"You spent five hours," Aefia continued, her voice unnaturally calm as she closed the distance between them, "not in thermal binding with the master smiths, but working with Kazimir's court illusionists to craft a counterfeit decoy. You hoped I would take this useless piece of glass into battle, rely on it when it mattered most, and realize too late that I had been handed a toy."
The caretaker trembled violently, tears of sheer panic spilling over his wrinkled cheeks as he desperately shook his head. "Y-Your Highness! I—I was forced! His Majesty's enforcers came to the reservoir right after you left! They threatened to burn my entire bloodline if I didn't—"
"Pfft... I don't care about your bloodline, caretaker," Aefia interrupted flatly, stopping right in front of him. She looked down at him, her expression stripped of all humor, leaving only a cold, unyielding void. "And I certainly don't care about Kazimir's desperate little parlor tricks."
She reached down, her gloved hand casually catching the hilt of Spectrum at her hip. She didn't draw the blade, but the sharp clink of the steel guard against her scabbard echoed through the dead silence of the yard like a death sentence.
"Where are the real stones?" she asked quietly.
"I-In the third wagon!" the caretaker wept, pointing a shaking finger toward the rear transport draped under heavy leather tarps.
"The real Sunstone, the Void-Quartz, and the Astral Core... they are sealed inside the iron chest in the third wagon! We hadn't even started the binding process because... because the court smiths said the matrix takes twelve hours to stabilize properly!"
Aefia glanced toward the third wagon. With a subtle flick of her wrist, a tiny spark of fire shot from her fingertip, slicing clean through the thick leather ropes holding the tarp down. The heavy canvas fell away, revealing a reinforced iron chest glowing with the distinct, authentic essence of the raw stones.
She turned her gaze back to the old man, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.
"So you lied to me," she murmured. "You delayed the forging, crafted a fake, and then had the audacity to scream at me about arrogance while kneeling in front of me."
"P-Please! Mercy, Your Imperial Highness!" the old man sobbed, pressing his nose into the frost. "I will forge it! I will forge the real one right now! I will personally oversee the thermal binding!"
"You are right about one thing," Aefia said, her lips curving into a sharp, terrifying line as she turned on her heel, her purple cape swirling behind her. "I am arrogant. But unlike Kazimir, I have the power to back it up."
She paused, looking over her shoulder at the kneeling Smod knights standing near the palace entrance.
"Take the caretaker and the iron chest to the forge wing," she commanded flatly. "Assign four vanguard guards to watch him. If the real dagger isn't finished and properly stabilized by the time I am done dealing with Kazimir and the ministers... break his hands."
"Understood, Your Highness!" the lead knight snapped, stepping forward instantly to haul the wailing middle-aged man to his feet.
Without another word or a backward glance, Aefia adjusted the collar of her black suit coat, smoothed down her red tie, and marched back toward the grand archway of the palace. The dawn light caught the gold embroidery of her vest, casting a brilliant, regal sheen across her shoulders and reflecting at the sides of her face as she stepped into the shadows of the corridor.
She came to a stop by the tall double-doors of the throne room again.
The guards stationed outside didn't even attempt to raise their halberds. They flattened themselves against the stone pillars, eyes fixed firmly on the floor as she approached.
Inside, the eight ministers remained bound together in a miserable heap on the cold stone floor, their robes rumpled and their faces pale with exhaustion. One flinched as the doors slammed shut behind her, while the powerful one squeezed his eyes shut, trembling like a leaf.
She crouched down slowly, resting one hand casually on the hilt of Spectrum while her garnet eyes scanned their terrified faces.
"Comfortable?" she asked, her voice light and laced with venom. Though she had a smile that seemed polite on the surface.
"Y-Your Highness..." He choked out, his voice cracking. "We told you everything we know! The garrison codes, the supply routes, the border seals—we left nothing out!"
"You gave me the logistical framework of a dying kingdom," Aefia corrected quietly, tilting her head. "Which is useful, but terribly dull. I want the real details now. I want Kazimir's grand design. Every secret order, every hidden contingency, and every single dark little pact he made behind closed doors."
"We don't know anything else!" Another wept, pressing his bound wrists against the stone. "He kept us in the dark about the inner sanctum! He only used us to manage the tax rolls and public decree!"
Aefia's expression hardened. In a blur of motion, she drew Spectrum from its scabbard. The cold edge pressed lightly against the skin of his right wrist, drawing a single, bright bead of crimson.
"You have ten seconds to realize that you do know," Aefia murmured, her gaze dropping to the thin line of blood. "Or I start removing the hands that signed his decrees. Let's start with yours, Lord. Do you prefer your left or your right?"
"Wait! Wait! I will talk!" He shrieked, pressing his body backward against another in a desperate panic. "There... there is a private archive! Beneath his personal chambers! He keeps his true journals there—the ones detailing the experiments, the blood seals, and... and why he was so obsessed with your power!"
Aefia paused, the blade lingering just a millimeter above the minister's skin. "My power? What about my power?"
"Yes!" He sobbed, gasping for air. "He... he knew what you really were before anyone else in the Empire did. He called you the Guardian of Death, remember?... The true heir of the Third Aethalgard! He said your bloodline holds the key to transcending mortality!"
A dark, bitter shadow flickered across Aefia's garnet eyes. She already knew the truth of what she carried within her, but hearing it spill from the trembling lips of a terrified bureaucrat confirmed every lingering suspicion.
So they were aware too. No wonder there were limited number of people who found my action justifiable at the execution. That devil Jack must have put some sort of threath upon those ministers.
Aefia slowly slid Spectrum back into its scabbard with a sharp, echoing click.
She stood up, looking down at the cowering ministers with an unforgiving smile.
"Thank you, Lord," Aefia said softly, turning her back on them. "Your honesty has just earned you a much quicker death than the one waiting for your master."
She turned to walk out the door. "Chain them up and prison them in the dungoens below. Make sure they are treated how I was. Remember who the ruler of South Mides is now."
"NO! YOUR HIGHNESS! YOU CAN'T DO THIS! PLEASE!" A minister shouted from behind her.
"And gag them please. If they still won't stop, stitch their mouth up." Aefia coldly ordered, her hand reaching out to the handles of the door.
"PLEASE YOUR HIGHNESS! WE KNOW YOU HAVE MOTIVES!"
It made her stop, and turn her head over her shoulder. Her brows furrowing together in curiousity and irritation. "What?"
The minister, gasping for breath and shivering against the cold stone, scrambled slightly forward on his knees despite his bound wrists.
"It's true! Every word of it!" the minister blubbered, tears streaming down his face as he stared up at her. "Kazimir isn't just trying to conquer the borderlands—he is preparing a full-scale, continental war against the Smod Empire! He has been drafting secret dispatches to your mother, the Empress, demanding that she formally strip you of your title as Crown Princess on charges of treason and state subversion!"
Aefia let out a dry, incredulous breath, her eyes narrowing further. "Strip my title? Does he genuinely believe my mother would trade away her own and only daughter based on the frantic scribblings of a desperate usurper?"
"He didn't just plan to rely on letters," another minister chimed in, terrified of being left out of the confession.
"Once you were legally stripped of your royal status and rendered politically powerless, Kazimir's court necromancers were going to cast a permanent mind-lock spell on you! They planned to bind your soul to an obedience seal, turning you into a mindless puppet—a living weapon of mass destruction that Mides could deploy against any opposing kingdom!"
"A war tool," Aefia muttered, the words tasting like ash in her mouth. "He wanted to chain me to a leash and use my own blood to build his empire."
"Yes! Exactly!" the first minister sobbed, nodding frantically. "He wanted to make Mides the most powerful, influential superpower on the entire continent. He believed that with absolute military might and your magic capabilities under his direct control, no other nation would ever dare defy him."
Aefia slowly let go of the door handle, turning her entire body back toward the cowering group of men. She reached up with one gloved hand, pinching the bridge of her nose and rubbing her forehead as a throbbing headache began to build behind her temples.
"This makes no sense," she said flatly, her voice dripping with a mixture of utter exhaustion and sheer bewilderment. "What did he actually hope to achieve with that much influence? A crown made of ash? A continent of ruins? If everyone is dead or enslaved, who is left to bow to him?"
"You don't understand the rot at the core of this kingdom, Your Highness," a third minister whispered, his voice trembling so violently he could barely form the syllables.
"Mides has been a corrupted state for generations. It runs on forbidden arts. Whenever someone outside these walls discovers the truth—whenever a traveler or a foreign scholar uncovers the dark magic we use—they don't just execute them. They use soul-binding necromancy to turn those truth-tellers into dolls—wiping their minds and handing them over to the local orphanages."
"Yes," another minister confirmed, weeping openly now. "They corrupt the minds of children from a remarkably young age, slowly bending their wills so that by the time they grow up, they are entirely obedient, emotionless trained tools for the Mides military machine. It's a self-sustaining cycle of indoctrination and dark sorcery."
"And recent events?" Aefia prompted, her tone dropping just a bit.
"It started months ago," the minister confessed, his face pressed against the stone. "A foreign trade delegation from the high courts visited Mides. The late King was confronted about the rumors of dark magic. The delegates demanded proof, warning that if Mides was truly a corrupted nation relying on soul-craft, the empire would cut off all diplomatic ties and launch a punitive crusade."
The minister swallowed hard, a fresh wave of terror washing over him.
"To save face and prove they weren't reliant on dark magic, the crown needed a massive, undeniable victory over the Smod Empire to assert dominance. But how do you provoke an empire without starting a war you aren't ready for? That's why Kazimir came up with the plan to stage a series of high-profile serial killings right along the frontier—crimes designed specifically to lure you, the Crown Princess, out into the open."
Aefia stared down at them. Wow... What a plan.
"And then came the imprisonment," the minister continued, his voice cracking. "He thought locking you away would give him leverage, a political asset to bend your mother to his will. But he never anticipated what you actually were. He never expected that bringing the Guardian of Death inside these walls would be like inviting a plague into his own keep."
A dark, grim satisfaction settled over Aefia's features as she listened to the confession. It was almost poetic.
"So now," Aefia said softly, stepping closer to the bound men, "Kazimir is losing. Every dark ritual he attempted has backfired, and my presence here is actively tearing his kingdom apart from the inside, exposing every single drop of Mides' corruption to the light."
"He thought he could control everything," the minister wept, closing his eyes in defeat. "He thought his ambitions were foolproof. But... but truly, as the old saying goes: if you have bad intentions, nothing will ever go right."
Aefia let out a short, cold laugh that held no humor whatsoever. She turned her back on them once more, walking toward the heavy doors.
"Take them to the dungeons," she ordered the guards standing outside, her voice echoing down the corridor. "And gag them as I said. If they try to speak another word of nonsense, stitch their mouths shut."
But then she stopped by the door, turning her head over her shoulder.
"And one more thing..."