The Royal Dungeon smelled of rust, old straw, and human despair.
It was cold. A deep, wet cold that seeped into the bone, far worse than the biting winds of his Northern homeland.
Fyrion Snowrend was chained to the wall. His wrists, raw and bloody, were a testament to the torturer's lack of imagination. The man had been asking the same questions for three days, his voice a dull monotone of violence.
"Who helped you? How did you bypass the Imperial Concubine's guards? Speak, dog!"
The lash fell again. Fyrion's back, already a ruined map of flesh, split anew. He didn't scream. He just let out a quiet, tired sigh.
'Iron salts on the whip,' he thought, his mind raced not with pain, but with analysis. 'Crude. It promotes infection, but the pain is unfocused. A sloppy, inefficient method.'
He was Fyrion, Grandmaster Alchemist of the Empire. One of only five, and the youngest by three decades. He had refined the formula for the [Sun's Tear Elixir], stabilized the [Azure Soul Pill], and single-handedly supplied the Royal Army with enough rejuvenation potions to win the war against the So foreign army.
And he was being tortured by a ham-fisted brute who couldn't tell the difference between a confession and a lie.
The irony was acidic.
They weren't asking about his alchemy. They were asking about the Imperial Concubine, Yi Ru, a beauty from the east. A woman he hadn't spoken more than three words to in his life.
They accused him of having an affair.
Fyrion almost laughed, a dry, rattling sound that turned into a cough. An affair. Him.
He was a eunuch.
He had been made one a decade ago, "in honour of his service," so that his unparalleled genius could be "safely" brought into the Inner Palace to serve the royal family directly.
He was a tool, polished and gelded, and now, apparently, a tool to be broken.
The heavy iron door of the dungeon creaked open.
The torturer, a bear of a man, dropped his whip and fell to his knees. "Your Majesty."
Fyrion didn't look up. He didn't need to. The cloying scent of [White Gardenia] perfume, a blend so expensive it could fund a small army, cut through the dungeon's stench.
Only one person in the empire wore it.
"Leave us," a voice like silk sliding over steel commanded.
"Yes, my queen as you order!"
The torturer scrambled out. And then in contrasts he heard the movement of the person approaching.
Footsteps.
Light, impossibly graceful. They stopped just outside his cell. He could see the hem of a royal purple dress, embroidered with a golden phoenix, its hemline unsoiled by the dungeon's filth.
"A Northern barbarian, even a genius alchemist, is still just a dog," the Queen whispered. She was veiled, a phantom of grace and malice in the dark.
Fyrion's head snapped up. The chains rattled. "The affair... it was a lie."
He knew it but hearing it directly form the architect of that lie was different.
The Queen laughed.
"Fufufu…"
A light, delicate sound.
"The affair? That simpleton? She was a tool, just like you. A predictable, stupid tool to solve a predictable, stupid problem: you."
She glided closer, her veiled face just inches from the iron bars. "I've been patient, Fyrion. I've waited ten years. I watched you perform miracles. I watched you win a war for my useless husband. But you never gave me what I truly wanted."
"My... my formulas," Fyrion rasped.
"Your mind," she corrected, her voice sharp. "But you're a Northerner. Stubborn. Loyal. You think your destroyed Aura Core made you humble, but it just made you proud."
She sneered rising her head once again and continued, "You refused to share your secrets with me, your patron."
It was true. His Aura Core, the organ that allowed humans to refine mana, had been demolished in his youth.
It was why he was "Fyrion the Rubbish," the firstborn disgrace of his family, Snowred. It was why he'd turned to alchemy—the only craft that didn't require an intact core, only a brilliant mind.
And it was why, he now realized, the Queen had "graciously" saved him from his fallen family. A "rubbish" alchemist with no power of his own was the perfect slave.
Until he wasn't.
"You've outlived your usefulness, Fyrion," the Queen said, her voice turning bored. "Your alchemy was valuable, but the Northern territories... they are more valuable. And with you framed for treason, your family's lands are finally forfeit to the Crown."
Fyrion's heart stopped.
"My family... you framed me to take... my land?"
The Queen tilted her head, as if confused by his question.
"Oh, the land? That was just the legal justification. No. I had your people killed three weeks ago."
The world stopped. The cold of the stone, the sting of the lash, the rattle of his chains—it all faded into a roaring, deafening silence.
"My...people... my workers... all...?"
"You're a genius, Fyrion. Don't be so slow. It was a bandit attack. Terribly tragic. As the last surviving member of your line—and a eunuch, no less—your bloodline is now extinct. Your lands, your formulas, your legacy... it's all mine."
It all clicked. Ten years. His family's "accidental" fall. His "rescue." His "raise". His "power"
And now, his castration. The false accusations.
It wasn't a series of unfortunate events. It was a single, meticulous, decade-long conspiracy.
He wasn't a victim of fate. He was a pig, fattened for slaughter.
He didn't feel despair. He didn't feel sadness.
He felt a rage so pure and so cold it burned away every other thought. It was a white-hot pinpoint in the hollow cavity of his chest.
"I... will... kill you..."
"You will die," the Queen corrected him, bored. She produced a small, porcelain cup from her sleeve and slid it through the bars.
It was filled with a dark liquid. "[The Black Lotus Kiss]. Your own creation, I believe. A 'mercy' for high-born traitors. Drink it. Or my guards will force it down your throat."
Fyrion stared at the cup. The irony was suffocating. He, the Grandmaster Alchemist, would die by his own formula.
He looked at the veiled monster who had taken his family, his body, his honor, and his life.
He lunged.
"I will haunt you even after my death!"
The chains snapped him back, but not before he spat a mouthful of blood and saliva at her purple dress.
The Queen recoiled, not in fear, but in pure, aristocratic disgust. "Animal."
She didn't wait for him to drink. She nodded to the shadows. "Poison him. Make it slow."
Guards entered. They forced his jaw open. The bitter, almond-scented liquid burned its way down his throat.
The last thing Fyrion saw was the Queen turning away, her purple dress vanishing into the darkness.
His last thought wasn't of his lost family. It wasn't of his stolen formulas.
It was of her.
A singular, all-consuming, refined rage.
'I will...Kill…you'
The world went black.
...
...Cold.
So cold.
Colder than the dungeon.
A biting, dry, familiar cold. The scent of pine resin and frozen stone.
Fyrion's eyes snapped open.
He wasn't on a stone floor. He was in a fur-piled bed, in a room carved from dark, Northern wood. The wind howled outside the thick, ice-caked window.
His family's mansion. The frozen North.
He was alive.
'A... a dying hallucination?'
He looked at his hands. They weren't the scarred, potion-stained hands of a 30-year-old Grandmaster. They were the thin, uncalloused hands of a teenager.
He was wearing a simple wool tunic. He was... small.
He threw the furs off. The room was freezing, but he didn't care.
He stood up, his legs shaking.
He looked down at his body.
He was thin. He was weak.
But he was...good, his little brother was as good as ever.
His hands moved, his breath catching in a desperate, terrified, hopeful sob. He fumbled with the ties of his trousers, his fingers numb and stupid.
He checked.
He was 19 years old. He was in his family's hall.
And he was whole.