The laughter died in my throat, replaced by a silence heavier than stone. My hands were still pressed against my skull, fingers tangled in my hair, as the full, monstrous architecture of my existence unfolded in my mind.
I was… a pawn in the plan.
Not a son. Not even a failed experiment. A tool. A piece of ammunition crafted over nine years and fired at the Church on a precise, calculated trajectory. Every moment of my life in that gilded tower had been observed, guided, and manipulated toward a single end: to give Lord Theodore his casus belli.
Hahahaha…. AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Why didn't I notice it earlier!?
The scream was silent, trapped behind clenched teeth and the suffocating barrier. It echoed only in the vault of my own skull. The opalescent glow of my prison pulsed gently, indifferent to my unraveling.
The first meeting that ever happened… and what he said was I am perfect for his plans. Not a father's pride. An appraiser's verdict. He had looked at a newborn, seen the absence of the world's fundamental energy, and instead of grief or disappointment, he had seen utility. I was a blank slate upon which he could write his war.
He didn't want to waste a child. Not out of sentiment. Out of efficiency. Since I was Aetherless even if I died…. He wouldn't have cared and I'm sure of it. I was expendable. A low-risk investment. If the Church's assassination attempt succeeded, he lost nothing but a defective offspring. If it failed, as it did, he gained everything.
The reason that the bastard was not able to conquer the lands was because he didn't have any valid reasons to do so. The four-way power struggle. The fragile peace maintained for centuries. House Theodore was the strongest military power, but strength alone wasn't enough. To move against the Church, against Mareux, against the delicate balance, he needed legitimacy. He needed to be the victim, not the aggressor. He needed his enemy to strike first, in clear violation of law and treaty.
He wanted to have a valid reason. And I gave the valid reason.
The rumors. "Lightning genius." The whispers of my "great talent." I had been so focused on the danger they posed to me, I hadn't seen the target they painted on my back for them. That bastard controlled the rumor and the church could not allow another powerful Theodore to mature. They had to act. And act they did, with a poisoned potion meant to destroy my Aether channels.
The reason why he spread countless rumours was to make the church desperate. I was the bait in a trap set nine years ago. House Theodore military strength was increasing at a very high pace. And the family of House Theodore was unbelievably strong too. House Theodore's 7 children were all full of Aether. The seven golden children, paragons of magical power. And then, supposedly, an eighth, even more gifted. The threat was credible. The Church's fear was understandable.
Jealousy from House Mareux grew. Our rivals, watching their own less talented children fall further behind. They didn't know that I was Aetherless. My father took advantage of that. He fed the rumors, stoked the envy, and waited for the Church and Mareux to collude. The church took advantage of the House Mareux's less talented children and must have allied with them to be able to take down house Theodore. An alliance of convenience, born of shared fear.
Therefore they created the plan of making me channel less… but because of their mistake they made me Aetherless. The potion that destroys channels. The wrong vial. Their incompetence, my salvation. Since I survived the plan still continued. They were successful. From their perspective, they had crippled a Theodore prodigy. A victory.
Their mistake—my congenital emptiness—had merely changed the outcome from death to "curse." But the political damage was done. A High House child, deliberately crippled by the Church's own ritual? The scandal was a weapon my father could wield.
But they didn't know that I was Aetherless in the first place… They thought they had destroyed something that was never there. They didn't realize they were playing exactly into my father's hands.
This made them lock me into the jail and isolate me. The logical next step. A "cursed" child, a "disease" to be contained. The Church overplayed its hand, publicly condemning and imprisoning a noble son based on a "defect" they themselves had supposedly caused. The justification was paper-thin, but fear made the crowd accept it.
I sat on the cold stone bed, my breathing ragged, as the threads continued to unravel. It was all perfect.
The book that fell randomly and gave me language must be his doing. Of course. Who else could have placed a primer in my empty room, at the exact moment I needed it? Who else had the access, the motive, and the knowledge? He wasn't giving me a gift; he was sharpening his tool. The empty tower, the garden, the shed, the rooms also must be his doing. The eerie silence of the residential wing. The lack of guards. The "hidden" library with its obvious trapdoor under a pile of scrap. It wasn't a secret I had discovered through genius. It was a training ground he had prepared, obstacles placed deliberately for me to overcome.
That means he definitely gave language to me. For what reason?…to test me?... I replayed the years. The physical training he never acknowledged. The cipher in the library, a puzzle complex enough to occupy a child for years. No, there were two things…I need to look at this separately. The long game and the immediate test.
His plans of using me were different and the library was different. The library wasn't about the war. It was about me. He wanted to see what I would become when left alone with knowledge and motivation. He was assessing my intelligence, my resourcefulness, my capacity for deception. The algorithms were the final exam. And I had passed, decoding the Church's greatest secret.
The guard said that they are doing this for the first time… this is because that bastard must have suggested 'the last message to your loved ones'… The "last words" letter. An unprecedented mercy from the Abyssal AER jail. A procedural anomaly that existed solely for me.
He predicted that I will send a hidden code… to my sisters… Once I got my hands on the letters. He knew me. He had spent nine years observing me. He knew I wouldn't accept death quietly, that I would fight back with the only weapon I had—information. He planted the letters, knowing I would encode the truth about the Church, knowing I would send them to the sisters most likely to investigate.
Fuck! And I also gave them time!! 3 years!. Now he can easily prepare and attack the church! My carefully calculated two-and-a-half-year decoding window. I thought I was buying myself survival time. Instead, I was giving my father the operational timeline he needed. He knew exactly when the accusation would surface. He could marshal his armies, coordinate his allies, prepare the narrative. When Lyra or Elara finally deciphered my message and brought it to him, he would be ready. Not surprised. Not outraged. Prepared.
Everything was in his plans! The realization was a physical blow, doubling me over on the cold stone bed. Every act of defiance, every secret triumph, every moment I thought I was outsmarting my circumstances—he had anticipated it all. He had built the maze and watched me run it, timing my progress, noting my choices.
Shit… Man… Once they decode… my sisters will definitely show it to him and that will give him a valid reason and war against the church will start. A noble child's dying accusation, decoded years later, revealing that humanity's spiritual authority is a puppet of their ancient enemy. The scandal would be absolute. Mareux, exposed as collaborators, would be destroyed. The King would bow to the inevitable. The dragon's centuries of manipulation would be laid bare.
Because he knows that this will happen he would have prepared a large army. This was his plan after all. Conquer everything.
I stared at the shimmering barrier, my reflection a ghost in the opalescent surface. My father's face, superimposed on my own. The same cold calculation in the eyes. I had inherited nothing from him but a capacity for strategy, and he had used it to sign my death warrant.
Oh… wait… the EMPTY… rooms… that I noticed early on… that only suggest that he's doing this for every child!.. A chilling new thread. The residential wing wasn't abandoned. It was prepared. Empty chambers waiting for occupants who would be tested, observed, shaped. My seven siblings—had they all undergone similar trials? Had they all found hidden libraries, solved secret ciphers, been groomed for specific roles?
No if he was then he would have conquered… everything by his plans… But he didn't…. Alistair, the heir, was a warrior. Lyra, the second, was an assassin of unseen things. Elara, the third, was quiet, perhaps an intelligence asset. Each had their purpose. But none had triggered the final phase. None had been the perfect catalyst.
The reason is because he didn't want to lose any talent. Each child was a valuable asset in their own right. To use one as bait, as a sacrifice, would be to waste that potential. And because I don't have Aether he decided to use me with this plan. I was the only expendable piece. The one child whose loss wouldn't weaken the family's magical power. The perfect pawn.
The reason he put the algorithms in the library must be to check or test something out… I don't really know what he wanted to check… but I passed. Perhaps it was a test of deductive reasoning. Perhaps he wanted to ensure the child who discovered the Church's secret was clever enough to use it effectively. Perhaps he simply wanted to confirm that I was, as he suspected, the one who would see the threads others missed.
Also I don't know how many children passed. Had any of my siblings found the cipher? Had they read the words "THE CHURCH IS CONTROLLED BY A SUPERIOR DRAGON" and done nothing? Or had they reported it to him, and he had simply filed the information away, waiting for the right moment, the right child, the right political conditions?
Shit…
The single word was inadequate. A lifetime of inadequacy. I had spent nine years trying to become strong, to outwit my fate, to forge myself into a weapon. And all along, I was being forged by a blacksmith who saw me as nothing more than a sword to be swung at his enemies.
I lay back on the cold stone bed, staring up at the low, oppressive ceiling. The opalescent barrier pulsed gently, a heartbeat of contained nothingness. Somewhere above, in the world of light and Aether, my father was preparing for war. My sisters were receiving letters they wouldn't understand for years. My sacrifice was being transformed into a casus belli.
And I was here, at the bottom of an ant-nest prison, the architect's perfect pawn, finally seeing the board for the first time.
I had no moves left. No gambits. No hidden reserves of strength or knowledge. The trap was sprung, the game was in its final phase, and I was no longer even a participant. I was the memory of a dead child, a martyr crafted from living flesh and abandoned in the dark.