Jin pulled himself off the cold floor.
The thick, green gel dripped from his pale skin. He shivered in the quiet room. He did not yell for help. He did not run out into the hallway.
Arthur's mind took complete control. He was a logistics manager. When a massive crisis happened, you did not panic. You locked the doors. You assessed the damage. You took a full inventory of your assets.
He looked around the royal medical wing. It was a massive, circular room built from smooth, white bone. Strange, glowing veins pulsed softly in the walls.
He walked over to a tall mirror carved from dark, polished stone. He looked at his new reflection.
He saw a young man, barely twenty years old. He had sharp, aristocratic features, jet-black hair, and pale skin. He was handsome, but he looked incredibly fragile. His shoulders were narrow. His chest was flat. He looked like a stiff breeze could break his ribs.
Jin stared at his own eyes in the mirror. They were dark and wide.
This was his new asset. It was a terrible asset.
He was at Foundation Level 3. In the Apex Empire, that was the equivalent of a newborn baby. His siblings were monsters who had spliced their DNA with apex predators. They breathed fire. They had skin like iron. They commanded armies of mutated soldiers.
Jin had nothing. He had no army. He had no wealth. He had no power.
Worse, he had a massive target on his back.
He looked back at the broken bio-pod. The purple poison Vanya gave him was designed to be silent. It melted the soul and left the body intact. It was meant to look like the Trash Prince simply died in his sleep. His weak heart finally gave out. It was a clean, untraceable murder.
If Jin walked out of this room alive, Vanya would know the poison failed.
She would not smile and apologize. She would simply try again. She would send assassins. She would poison his food. She would tear his head off in the middle of a royal banquet and claim he attacked her. No one in the empire would care. Weakness was the only true crime in Chimeria.
Death was dancing directly on his head.
The invisible blade was resting right against his neck. If he made one wrong move, the blade would drop.
Jin walked away from the mirror. He found a heavy, dark silk robe hanging over a bone chair. He wrapped it around his shivering body. He needed a plan. He needed a strategy to survive this toxic environment.
His first priority was time. He needed a buffer to understand his new reality.
He walked over to the heavy wooden doors of his sanctum. He pressed his hand against the biological lock.
"Seal the wing," Jin ordered. His voice was slightly raspy. "No visitors. No servants. The Second Princess's medicine is making me rest."
The bone doors clicked heavily. The heavy biological deadbolts slid into place.
He was locked in. He was safe for a few days. Vanya would expect him to be dead. When he did not come out, she would just assume the poison was taking its time.
Jin spent the next three days in absolute, focused isolation.
He did not sleep. He paced the massive, empty rooms of his private wing. He treated Jin's inherited memories like a massive corporate dossier. He reviewed every single file.
He learned the names of the powerful bio-sects. He learned the complex, brutal rules of the royal court. He mapped out the political alliances of his monstrous siblings.
But most importantly, he studied Jin.
He could not act like Arthur. If he walked out of his room with a straight spine and cold, calculating eyes, people would notice. In the Apex Empire, sudden changes in personality meant a demon had possessed you, or a parasite had eaten your brain. The imperial guards would burn him alive just to be safe.
He had to act exactly like the Trash Prince.
He stood in front of the dark mirror for hours. He practiced his posture.
Arthur was used to standing tall in boardroom meetings. He forced his shoulders to slump forward. He curved his spine slightly, making himself look smaller. He practiced breaking eye contact. The real Jin never looked his older siblings in the eye. He always looked at the floor.
It disgusted Arthur. He hated acting weak. It went against everything he built in his old life.
But pride was a useless metric. Pride got you killed. Survival was the only thing that mattered. If acting like a terrified coward kept the invisible blade off his neck, he would be the best coward in the empire.
He practiced his voice. He made it softer. He added a slight, nervous hesitation to his words. He learned how to flinch when a loud noise happened.
By the end of the third day, the transformation was complete.
Arthur the logistics manager was completely hidden. He was buried deep inside a mental vault. On the outside, there was only Jin. The fragile, pathetic, useless seventh prince.
The isolation buffer was running out. He could not stay hidden forever. He had to eat. He had to show his face, or Vanya would send her guards to collect his corpse.
On the morning of the fourth day, Jin sat in a large, high-backed chair made of pale wood. He wore fresh, clean silk clothes. He stared at the heavy wooden doors of his sanctum.
He felt a deep, cold knot in his stomach.
The real test was coming. He was about to step into the shark tank. He had to fool monsters who could hear his heartbeat from across the room.
Suddenly, the heavy biological locks on the main door clicked open.
Jin froze. He had not given the command to unseal the wing. Someone had bypassed the royal security with complete ease.
The massive doors swung open without making a single sound.
The air in the room instantly turned freezing cold. The glowing veins in the bone walls dimmed slightly. A heavy, suffocating pressure washed over the room. It felt like a massive predator had just walked into a cage with a wounded bird.
Jin engaged his new persona instantly.
He slumped his shoulders. He pulled his knees tightly together. He widened his eyes and forced his hands to tremble slightly against the armrests of his chair. He looked absolutely terrified.
A shadow detached itself from the dark hallway.
It stepped into the light of the room. It was a woman. She was tall and completely covered in a heavy, dark grey cloak. A cracked obsidian visor completely hid her face. She made no sound when she walked.
Jin knew exactly who she was from his memories. She was the only person in the entire empire who belonged to him.
Nyx had arrived.