The Grand Annex of the Warborn estate was designed to house visiting royalty, but it had never been subjected to a resident like Princess Lucy.
Within three hours of the Elven convoy's arrival, the lavish, velvet-draped wing of the manor began to physically reject its new occupants. The heavy stone walls, accustomed to the roaring hearths and the dense, fiery Aura of Vanguard Knights, were suddenly plunged into an unnatural, localized winter.
Duke Arthur stood at the entrance of the Annex hallway, his massive arms crossed over his chest. He watched as his seasoned household staff scurried back and forth, their breath pluming in the air despite being indoors.
"The fire-crystals are failing, My Lord," the head steward reported, his teeth visibly chattering. He was wrapped in a thick wool cloak. "We placed three high-grade volcanic crystals in the Princess's hearth, but they extinguish themselves within minutes. It is not a draft. The heat is simply... vanishing."
Arthur grunted, his sharp eyes narrowing as he looked down the corridor toward Lucy's heavy oak door.
Frost was creeping out from beneath the crack in the doorframe, mapping delicate, razor-sharp crystal patterns across the polished marble floor.
"Her physique is a vacuum," Sir Kaelen rasped, stepping out from the shadows near the staircase. The blind assassin had shed his wet travel cloak, but he kept his hand firmly on the pommel of his cane. "She does not project ice, Arthur. She consumes thermal kinetic energy. The closer you get to her core, the closer you get to absolute zero."
"Her healers said they had it under control," Arthur growled, though his voice was kept low.
"Elven healers rely on nature mana—wood and water," Kaelen explained, his empty eye sockets turning toward the frosted door. "But nature cannot heal a void. It can only try to numb it. The girl is in constant, agonizing pain. That is why she hides her face. The scar is not an injury from a blade; it is her own flesh continually freezing and shattering under the weight of her own uncontrolled core."
Arthur uncrossed his arms, a heavy sigh escaping his lips. He was a warlord who solved problems with heavy cavalry and broadswords. Having a terrified, freezing Princess slowly turning his guest wing into a glacier was a logistical nightmare.
"And the Church spies?" Arthur asked, shifting to a threat he could actually fight.
"Still on the southern ridge," Kaelen reported. "Three Priests of the Scrying Order. They have set up a scrying circle. They are trying to pierce the estate's wards to see who we brought inside the walls. If they identify the Elven Royal crest on the carriage, Vane will have the ammunition he needs to claim we are conspiring with non-humans."
"Double the perimeter guard," Arthur commanded, turning his back on the freezing hallway. "And have the Vanguard Mages reinforce the outer wards. I want an opaque dome over this estate. The Church sees nothing but fog."
"It will drain the Mages dry to maintain a shield that dense, My Lord," Kaelen warned.
"Then let them bleed," Arthur said coldly. "We have twenty-four months until Kaiser's twenty-second birthday. The board is set. We hold the line until the tomb opens."
One hundred feet below the frosted marble floors of the Grand Annex, the Sightless Sovereign sat in the pitch-black silence of the Leyline Nexus.
Kaiser had not moved from the lotus position. His hand remained resting on the hilt of Silence.
His initial, instinctual urge to invite the Elven Princess into the dark had been ruthlessly suppressed by his grandmaster logic.
She is terrified, Kaiser analyzed, his sensory web wrapped gently around the chaotic, freezing void of her chambers above. If I expose her to the rhythmic, structured madness of my Void mana now, her mind will shatter. She is a fragile glass cup, already cracking under the pressure of her own ice. To pour the abyss into her would be cruelty, not salvation.
He needed to strengthen the cup before he could fill it.
But he couldn't speak to her. He couldn't send her a letter. He was a ghost, a dead heir rotting in the dark.
If I cannot speak to the variable, I will manipulate the environment she resides in, Kaiser decided.
He expanded his Absolute Senses past the Grand Annex, washing over the entire Warborn estate. He 'watched' his father's Vanguard Mages rushing to the outer walls, frantically drawing intricate runic circles in the mud to reinforce the anti-scrying wards against the Church spies on the ridge.
Kaiser felt the Vanguard Mages draw upon the ambient mana of the air. It was weak, inefficient, and entirely desperate.
"Fools," Kaiser whispered into the dark. "You try to build a wall out of the wind while standing on a mountain of iron."
The Mages were ignoring the Leylines. Human spellcasters were terrified of the deep earth mana; it was too heavy, too chaotic to safely channel without blowing out their fragile cores.
But Kaiser was not a human spellcaster. He was the Anvil.
Without breaking his posture, Kaiser routed a microscopic thread of his continuous Aura down into the stone floor, connecting his core directly to the massive, sluggish river of the Earth Leyline.
He didn't draw the mana into himself to forge a blade this time. He used his Aura as a conductor's baton.
Shift, Kaiser commanded the deep earth.
Deep beneath the bedrock, the Earth Leyline sluggishly obeyed the sovereign's dense, pressurized will. Kaiser diverted a massive tributary of the dark, heavy mana, forcing it to flow straight up through the foundations of the Warborn estate, directly into the outer walls.
Up on the surface, the Vanguard Mages gasped in collective shock.
The magical wards they were struggling to maintain suddenly didn't need their frail wind mana. The stone walls of the estate literally began to thrum with a deep, terrifying vibration. The anti-scrying dome, normally a faint, shimmering barrier of translucent light, instantly solidified into a suffocating, impenetrable wall of dark, heavy gravity.
On the southern ridge, three miles away, the Church Priests sitting in their scrying circle screamed.
Their magical perception, which had been trying to delicately pry into the estate, was violently crushed by a tidal wave of raw Earth mana. The scrying crystal in the center of their circle violently detonated, sending shards of arcane glass tearing through their white robes.
"What in the Light's name was that?!" one of the priests shrieked, clutching his bleeding face. "The Warborn Mages do not possess that kind of density! It felt like the mountain itself looked back at us!"
Back in the Catacombs, Kaiser smoothly severed his connection to the Leyline, allowing the diverted tributary to settle permanently into the estate's walls. The Vanguard Mages would take the credit, Duke Arthur would assume his orders had been followed, and the Church would be entirely locked out.
The perimeter was perfectly secured.
Kaiser pulled his sensory web inward, bypassing the outer walls, bypassing the courtyard, and settling his focus entirely on the freezing chambers of the Grand Annex.
Princess Lucy was curled into a tight ball on her lavish bed, buried beneath six layers of arctic fox fur. Her Elven healers stood helpless in the corner of the room, their nature magic useless against the absolute zero of her core.
Kaiser listened to her erratic, shivering heartbeat. Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.