"Information is like mana; if you don't control the flow, you're the one getting burned."
I was sitting in the back of the Old Tannery, sharpening the edge of The Remorseful Fang with a whetstone. The metallic shick-shick sound was the only thing cutting through the heavy silence of the room. Outside, the city was still screaming. Ever since the Gala of Ash, the Royal Guard had been kicking down doors in the upper districts, looking for a ghost that didn't exist in their records.
The door creaked open, and Maria stepped in. She wasn't wearing the emerald dress anymore. She was back in her greys, her hair pulled tight in a practical braid. She looked exhausted, but her eyes were glowing with a frantic kind of energy.
"The Prince isn't just angry, Jayden," she said, tossing a heavy leather satchel onto the wooden table. "He's desperate. And a desperate Albert is much more expensive than a calm one."
I stopped sharpening the blade. "What did you find?"
"He's bleeding gold," Maria explained, pulling out a crumpled map of the city. "The Gala was supposed to secure his funding from the southern dukes, but after you turned his 'tribute' into a circus, they're backing off. To make up for it, he's doubled the 'protection tax' on the slums. But it's not going into the city treasury."
I leaned forward. "Where is it going?"
"Blood-Mana," she whispered.
I felt a cold prickle on the back of my neck. Blood-Mana was forbidden for a reason. It wasn't like regular magic that drew from the atmosphere; it required the physical sacrifice of living things—usually livestock, but sometimes worse—to force a mage's core to expand beyond its natural limit. Albert wasn't just trying to be a Prince anymore; he was trying to turn himself into a monster.
"He's building a ritual site in the heart of the inner sanctum," Maria continued. "But he needs the physical ledgers—the real records of where that stolen money is going—to keep his donors from finding out he's stealing from them, too. If those ledgers ever went public, the other Noble Houses would tear him apart before I ever got the chance."
"Where are they?" I asked.
"The Iron Vault. It's a sub-basement under the Royal Bank. It's protected by a Grade 9 Anti-Magic Field. Even a High Mage would be paralyzed the second they stepped inside. Their mana would literally freeze in their veins."
I looked at my hands. The faint, black scales beneath the skin shimmered for a second before vanishing.
"An anti-magic field," I said, a small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. "Sounds like a nice place for a walk."
The Royal Bank looked like a fortress because it was one. Two dozen guards patrolled the perimeter, and the air hummed with detection spells. But they were all looking for magic. They were looking for a 'ping' on their sensory grids.
They weren't looking for a man who could scale a vertical stone wall using nothing but raw physical strength.
I reached the roof, slipped through a ventilation shaft, and began the long crawl down. The deeper I went, the heavier the air felt. It wasn't a physical weight; it was the "Anti-Magic" kicking in. For a mage, this would feel like drowning in tar. Every bit of their power would be suppressed, leaving them gasping for air as their internal circuits locked up.
I dropped from the ceiling into the vault's main corridor.
[Warning: High-Intensity Anti-Magic Field Detected.]
[System Note: Dragon Essence is a Primal Force, not Mana. Effect: Negligible.]
To me, the field felt like a cool breeze on a summer day. It was actually refreshing. My mind felt sharper, the "noise" of the city's magic finally silenced.
I activated [Dragon's Eye].
The world turned into a blueprint. I could see the tumblers inside the massive iron doors, the hidden pressure plates in the floor, and the faint, glowing trail of Albert's signature on the ledger room door.
I didn't use a lockpick. I simply reached into the mechanism, felt for the pins with my enhanced touch, and gave them a sharp, vibrating nudge with a pulse of Dragon Essence.
Click.
The door swung open. Inside were rows of shelves filled with gold bars, jewels, and ancient artifacts. To any other thief, this was the jackpot. But I didn't care about the gold. Gold is just metal.
On a central pedestal sat a thick, black-bound book. The Real Ledger.
I opened it. The entries were sickening. Thousands of gold pieces were diverted from "Slum Relief" to "Sacrificial Components." Names of merchants who had disappeared. It was all there—Albert's entire road map to a bloody throne.
"Too easy," I whispered.
I reached into my cloak and pulled out the forged ledger Maria had spent the last six hours perfecting. It looked identical. The weight, the smell of the ink, the weathered edges of the paper—everything was a match. But in this version, the money wasn't going to Albert.
According to these fake records, the money was being embezzled by Duke Vane—Albert's most loyal supporter and the man in charge of the city's military.
I swapped the books.
I could have taken the gold. I could have burned the place down. But I wanted something better than fire. I wanted chaos. I wanted Albert to look at his best friend and see a traitor. I wanted the snakes in the palace to start biting each other's tails.
As I turned to leave, I felt a strange vibration in my ring—the Sovereign's Vault. It was reacting to something in the room. I looked over at a small glass case in the corner. Inside was a single, rusted coin.
[Legacy Item Detected: Progenitor's Toll.]
I smashed the glass, grabbed the coin, and tucked it away. As a final touch, I reached up to my collarbone, where a single, loose black scale sat against my skin. I pulled it off—it felt like plucking a hair—and dropped it right in the center of the empty pedestal where the ledger used to be.
The black scale shimmered, its obsidian surface reflecting the dim light of the vault like a dark mirror.
"Let them eat each other," I whispered.
I exited the bank the same way I came in. The guards were still standing there, bored, staring into the night, completely unaware that their Prince's future had just been swapped for a lie.
I met Maria in the alleyway behind the Old Tannery. The moon was high, casting long, jagged shadows across the cobblestones.
"Is it done?" she asked, her voice hushed.
"The bait is set," I said. "By tomorrow morning, Albert will find the 'proof' that his Duke is stealing from him. And the Duke will find out that Albert has been keeping a second set of books. They'll be at each other's throats by noon."
Maria leaned against the wall, a long, shaky breath escaping her. "You're playing a dangerous game, Jayden. If they realize the ledger is a fake—"
"They won't," I interrupted. "They're too greedy to trust anyone. In their world, everyone is a thief. I'm just giving them someone to blame."
I pulled out the rusted coin I'd taken from the vault.
"But we have a bigger problem," I said, showing her the coin. "This wasn't just a coin. It's a key. The System says it belongs to a gate in the Abyssal Trenches that we missed."
Maria frowned, looking at the coin. "We can't go back there yet. The Prince has the entrance crawling with Tier 5 mages."
"I know," I said, looking toward the Royal Palace. "But we don't have to go back to the Trenches. The Trenches are coming to us."
As if on cue, a low, rumbling tremor shook the ground beneath our feet. It wasn't an earthquake. It was a rhythmic thumping, like a massive heart beating deep underground. From the direction of the Palace, a pillar of dark, violet light shot into the sky, tearing through the clouds.
The Blood-Mana ritual. Albert hadn't waited for the funds. He had started it early.
"He's doing it," Maria gasped, her face turning pale in the violet glow. "He's forcing the awakening."
I gripped the hilt of my sword. The obsidian metal was vibrating so hard it was humming.
"He's not just awakening himself," I said, my Dragon's Eye catching a glimpse of something moving inside that light—something massive, with wings that blocked out the stars. "He's accidentally calling something back. Something that shouldn't be here."
The cliffhanger wasn't the light or the monster. It was the scream that followed—a scream that didn't sound like it came from a human, but from the very throat of the city itself.
"Jayden," Maria whispered, pointing toward the Palace gates. "Look."
The Royal Guards weren't screaming in fear. They were screaming in pain as their bodies began to smoke, their mana being forcibly ripped out of them by the violet pillar of light.
Albert hadn't just found a way to get more power. He had turned the entire city into a battery. And I was the only one who could unplug it.