The Leone Estate was a labyrinth of rising panic and echoing alarms, but Emilia moved through the chaos with a chilling, focused grace. Beside her, Sophia struggled to keep pace, her small face set in a mask of stubborn determination.
She had flatly refused to remain under the protection of Captain Rena's unit once the realisation hit: Amon was missing. To Sophia, a world where her brother wasn't accounted for was a world out of balance.
"Mother, look—this is it. This is the last place I saw him," Sophia said, her voice tight. They stood in a wide, opulent corridor where the air felt unnervingly still. The shadows here seemed thicker, clinging to the ornate tapestries like oil.
Emilia didn't answer immediately. She closed her eyes, her senses expanding beyond the physical stone and carpet. She caught it: a thin, rhythmic pulse of energy. It was a familiar resonance, sharp and refined.
"Sophia, stay behind me," Emilia commanded. Her voice had lost its maternal softness, replaced by the cold steel of a High Noble on a warpath. She snapped her fingers—a sharp, crystalline sound that echoed down the hall.
Instantly, the floor ignited with a ghostly, subterranean glow. A faint trail of iridescent particles, shimmering like crushed diamonds, wound through the air and settled into a path leading toward the balcony.
"Whoa," Sophia breathed, reaching out as if to touch the glowing dust. "Mother, how are you doing that? Is it a tracking spell?"
"It is more fundamental than a simple spell," Emilia replied, her eyes tracking the trail with predatory intensity. "Magium is the primal currency of existence. It is the energy used to manifest every magic and skill in this world. It is omnipresent, predating everything and destined to exist after the end of everything. It is constructed from Information Blocks—pure data and concepts that shape reality while existing independent of it."
She began to move, her boots clicking rhythmically against the floor as she followed the glowing wake. "Everything leaves a unique magium signature, a conceptual fingerprint on the environment. By isolating Amon's specific frequency, I can see exactly where his magium passed through the world."
Sophia followed closely, her eyes wide as she memorised her mother's explanation. She watched the way the light swirled around Emilia's hand, feeling the sheer weight of the authority her mother commanded over the very essence of creation.
"A unique signature," Sophia thought, a small, possessive grin tugging at the corner of her mouth despite the danger. "So, no matter where you run or where you try to hide, Amon... I'll always be able to find you."
The trail reached its peak brilliance at the balcony door, but as Emilia scanned the area, her eyes narrowed. Amidst the numerous fading magium signatures, she detected a foreign magium signature—one so distinct and jagged that her expression hardened into a mask of cold fury.
The trail diverted, snaking toward a secondary hallway. They followed the shimmering path until it stopped abruptly in a corridor choked with the scent of fresh blood.
Bodies clad in formal black suits and high-tech military equipment lay scattered across the marble, their lives snuffed out with surgical precision. Emilia surveyed the carnage with a detached, analytical gaze, her mind already reconstructing the struggle.
"Mother, this one is still alive," Sophia called out, her voice trembling as she knelt beside a fallen guard.
Emilia strode over, her shadow looming long against the wall. With a sharp snap of her fingers, an ethereal light washed over the dying woman. The ragged gashes in her armour knitted shut, and her shallow breaths steadied into a frantic gasp for air.
Emilia didn't wait for a recovery. She hauled the guard up by her collar, her eyes burning with an icy intensity. "Speak. What happened?"
"We were... ambushed," the guard stammered, coughing as life surged back into her lungs. "An Aimus mimic. It looked like one of us... blended right in. While we were escorting the heirs, it turned on us."
She looked up at Emilia, her eyes clouded with fatigue and shame. "Mr Crown tried to protect the Young Lady, but he was taken. That monster dragged them both through a distorting portal."
The world seemed to tilt for Sophia. The colour drained from her face, and her legs buckled, sending her to the floor with a hollow thud. "No..." she whispered, her voice small and broken.
Emilia's reaction was far more visceral. She didn't scream or weep; instead, a terrifying stillness settled over her. The temperature in the hallway plummeted instantly.
Frost began to spiderweb across the walls, and the air grew so thin it burned to breathe. The magium in the air seemed to tremble under the weight of her killing intent.
She didn't utter a word. With a final, sharp snap of her fingers, reality folded. In a blink of refracted light, Emilia, Sophia, and the trembling guard vanished from the hallway and reappeared instantly in the centre of the command room, where Alexia and the others were.
"What happened, my dear? Where is Amon?" Arnold rushed toward her, his face etched with visible concern.
Alexia stepped forward, her eyes darting between Emilia and the terrified guard hanging from her grip. "Why are you handling my soldier like that? Explain yourself."
"Amon and Costoria were kidnapped," Emilia said. Her voice was a low, frozen blade that cut through the room's tension. "We were outplayed by those rats. This wasn't an invasion; it was a planned kidnapping of the Crown and Leone heirs."
She shoved the guard toward Alexia, the woman stumbling onto the floor. "Your 'elite' security failed to detect an Aimus mimic in their own ranks. They were slaughtered where they stood, leaving Amon and Costoria defenceless against that inferior lifeform."
The room plunged into a suffocating silence. The air, already chilled by Emilia's fury, grew heavy with a new, crushing weight. Alexia didn't speak, but her aura expanded into an overwhelming tide of maternal rage.
Before her, the usually composed Arnold stood rigid. His expression was cold, and he clenched his fists so tightly that blood started to flow from them.
. . .
The lead researcher stared at the monitors, her irises, which resembled a cross being constricted by a snake, like every Aimus loyalist, pulsing with a cold, rhythmic light. "The Crown boy is an anomaly," she noted, her voice devoid of emotion. "His magium density is far too high for his age. If we remove those restraints to facilitate the process, he'll destroy this facility before the first specimen can reach him."
"Then what is the protocol?" her colleague asked, glancing at a secondary display. Behind reinforced glass in the lower levels, several shadowed forms shifted with frantic, unnatural energy. "The specimens are already at the peak of their hormonal cycle. Their aggression is spiking; they won't remain manageable for long."
The lead researcher tapped a rhythmic pattern against the console, her mind weighing variables. "We need him docile, but physically responsive. If his mind is active, he is a threat."
A third researcher, a woman with a sharp, hungry gaze, stepped forward. "Why not shatter his psyche directly? A few hours of continuous sensory and sexual overload will break any eight-year-old's will. We could turn him into a mindless husk that lives only to serve the specimens' needs."
The lead researcher waved the suggestion away with a sharp, dismissive gesture. "Tempting, but inefficient. We are dealing with biological purity. Some of our primary specimens—the mutated cockroach strains, for instance—are hyper-sensitive to foreign pheromones. If we 'prime' him ourselves, the specimens may perceive him as contaminated and kill him instead of breeding."
The room fell into a frustrated silence. Conventional neuron-altering chemicals were reliable, but the week-long induction period was a luxury they didn't have. They needed a psychological collapse that was instantaneous and total.
The hiss of the pneumatic door broke the quiet. The mimic commander sauntered in, her appearance transformed since the abduction.
Thick, mottled brown tentacles slithered from her back like restless serpents, occasionally brushing against the floor. She had swapped her guard uniform for a tactical green tank top emblazoned with the Aimus insignia and loose-fitting baggy jeans.
"So, what'cha doin'?" she asked, her grin wide and predatory as she leaned against a console.
"Trying to find a way to shatter the Crown boy's psyche," the lead researcher admitted, scratching the back of her neck in frustration. "We need him broken immediately, but we can't risk physical contamination or slow-acting drugs. Any ideas, Commander?"
The mimic's eyes flickered toward the monitor, watching Amon's still, restrained form. A tentacle coiled around her waist, its tip twitching with a life of its own.
The mimic commander stepped into Amon's cell, sauntering over to the centre of the sterile room. Her tentacles swayed behind her, casting long, erratic shadows against the white walls.
"What have you done to Costoria?!" Amon's voice cracked the silence, sharp and trembling with a fury that strained against his restraints.
"Relax," the commander replied, her tone smooth and dismissive. "We don't intend to use her for the specimens yet. First, we'll convert her—break that noble spirit until she's one of us. Once she's properly indoctrinated, she'll make a fine breeder for our dogs and insects."
She knelt on the cold floor, her movements deliberate. Without flinching, she bit deep into her index finger. As the dark, thick blood welled up, she began to trace a jagged circle onto the floor. The copper scent of her blood filled the air.
Amon watched, his eyes narrowing as he tried to identify the pattern. "What are you doing?"
"Setting the stage," she whispered, her focus remaining on the floor. The blood didn't just sit on the tile; it pulsed, the distorted magium within the liquid vibrating in violent harmony with her intent.
"I wanted to show you the experimentation on the Leone girl, but that spell of yours is a nuisance," the commander said, finally looking up with a malicious, perverse smile. "At first, I thought it was just a high-rank shield. I was going to bluff, tell you it was unbreakable just to make you watch me tear it apart. I wanted to shatter your will by showing you the breeding experimentations we'd do to her."
Her smile widened, her hand moving with unsettling muscle memory as she continued to trace the patterns without looking at them. "What I didn't expect was the trap. A teleportation sequence that is hidden inside the shielding layers. You rigged it so that the moment the barrier is breached or tampered with, she's pulled through space and time directly to the Leone Matriarch."
With a final, sharp stroke, she finished. The drawing was a sprawling, intricate magic circle, the engravings far too complex for a standard magic circle. It hummed with a sickly, rhythmic light—a summoning array designed to bridge a gap between worlds.
"You really are a genius of the Crowns," she said, standing up and wiping her bloodied finger on her jeans. "But that journey ends today. You're starting a new one now... as our prized breeder."
With an ominous, echoing laugh, the commander turned on her heel and vanished into the hallway, the heavy bulkhead door hissing shut behind her.
. . .
My calculations were never off. I had anticipated the ripple effects of capturing Lax rather than letting Sophia execute her. In the original narrative, Lax's suicidal ritual was the catalyst—a desperate act that tore open warp-gates across Imperial territories. It was a stage set for Sophia's prowess and Seraphina's growth. By removing Lax from the board, I had effectively broken the plot.
But the System doesn't tolerate a vacuum.
When that quest to win the Leone family's favour appeared, the gears clicked into place. The System was course-correcting. It was balancing the scales by manufacturing a crisis of equal magnitude to replace the one I had averted. It was a new timeline, synthesised in real-time.
I knew the Aimus were coming. My casual banter with Costoria wasn't just for show; it was the groundwork. To become the "favourite," I needed a bond forged in something deeper than a polite introduction.
When the guard appeared, I saw the mimic immediately. I could have ended her then, but a simple rescue in a hallway is a Tuesday for a family like the Leones. Gratitude wears off. To truly embed myself in their good graces, I needed a grander stage.
Kidnapping wasn't a failure; it was an investment.
By allowing the mimic to take us, I bypassed months of political manoeuvring and slow-burning relationship building. Saving the heir from the heart of an enemy stronghold while simultaneously dismantling the stronghold? That is how you secure a legacy.
The mimic thinks she's trapped a child. The researchers think they're observing a specimen. They see the dampening field and the high-tech restraints, and they feel secure. They don't realise that I didn't just walk into their trap—I brought the trap with me.
I watched the mimic leave, my gaze shifting to the pulsing crimson circle on the floor.
The restraints were a sophisticated piece of engineering, but they were built on a fundamental misunderstanding of my capabilities. They dampened the flow of magium to prevent the manifestation of complex magic and A-rank skills, but [No Longer Human] wasn't an A-rank skill. Even with the dampened magium flow, I could trigger it. I could end this farce in an instant, but the thing crawling out of the rift stayed my hand.
The crack in reality groaned, widening until it swallowed the light of the sterile room. Then, it stepped through.
The figure was a towering silhouette draped in robes the colour of fresh arterial blood. A jagged, spiky crown sat atop a head that defied focus; its features were a blurred, shifting static, as if the world itself were trying to censor its existence. It didn't belong here. It didn't belong anywhere.
As it approached, the casual confidence I'd maintained since the kidnapping began to erode. A cold, heart-wrenching dread seeped into my bones. My instincts were screaming. This wasn't a mutation or an Aimus experiment gone wrong. This was a horror that didn't belong in this world.
The figure stopped inches from me. The silence was absolute, heavy enough to make my ears ring. It leaned down, its distorted face mere inches from mine, peering at me with an alien, clinical curiosity.
Then, the static failed, and its distorted face was fully visible.
. . .
The commander mimic emerged from Amon's cell, a jagged smirk playing on her lips.
"Commander, what have you done?" The lead researcher intercepted her, face pale, voice tight with panic.
The commander offered a dismissive wave. "Relax. It won't kill him—not his body, anyway. His psyche, however, is forfeit." She stepped toward the exit of the observation deck. "Turn off the monitors when the King appears."
She vanished into the hall without a backward glance.
"Ma'am, I don't understand the concern," a junior researcher ventured, glancing at the flickering screens. "Isn't breaking the Crown boy the objective?"
"Ma'am! A spatial rift!" another researcher shouted, pointing at the monitors. Above the Commander's crude blood sigils, the space tore open like wet parchment.
"Kill the feed. Now." The lead researcher's voice was a cold blade.
The researcher hesitated, confused, but the authority in her gaze brooked no delay. She struck the console, and Amon's enclosure plunged into static.
"Ma'am," the junior researcher whispered into the sudden silence. "What did she summon?"
"The Red King," she replied, her eyes fixed on the blackened screen. "They say to look upon his face is to drown in infinite knowledge. Any mind is bound to shatter upon receiving that much knowledge."
The researchers traded glances, the air in the room suddenly cold.