Two days before the Crown Prince's arrival, the palace shifted. No official decree was broadcasted. No banners were unfurled. No bells tolled.
Yet everyone… was terrified.
The servants communicated in hushed whispers. The guards were noticeably more volatile. Even the visiting nobles who frequented the estate became acutely guarded with their choice of words.
As for Cael… he was observing. Always observing.
"Fear does not materialize out of thin air," he murmured serenely. "It is forged from prior experience."
If the entire population dreaded the Crown Prince to this magnitude, it quantified a solitary truth: they had witnessed precisely what he was capable of executing.
The following morning, the royal procession arrived.
Dozens of armored knights. Pitch-black banners. Heavily ornamented carriages. But what harvested Cael's undivided attention more than anything else was the silence. An unnatural, suffocating silence.
It felt as though the very air… was bending.
Then, he emerged.
A young man in his early twenties. Jet-black hair. Exceptionally handsome features. Calm eyes. Eyes that were far too calm.
The moment Cael's gaze locked onto him, he froze. For the word above the prince's head remained anchored there:
**[Calamity]**
But then… something else materialized. Something Cael had never witnessed before. A torrent of chaotic, black text flashed above the prince, flickering violently. It would appear, distort, and instantly dissolve, only to repeat the cycle.
It was as if the System itself… was entirely incapable of reading him.
The prompt flared immediately:
> **[Error]**
> **[Analysis Failed]**
> **[Reason: Target level exceeds the current capacity of the System]**
>
For the very first time, Cael felt a sensation akin to apprehension. Not fear. Rather… profound caution.
Nightfall descended, and a colossal banquet was staged.
The nobles, the military commanders, the high-ranking knights—everyone was in attendance. Cael, meanwhile, was merely a slave standing passively behind his mistress. At least, that was the narrative everyone else accepted.
He was listening. Harvesting data. Until a jarring anomaly transpired.
While the Crown Prince was engaged in conversation with a cluster of high nobles, his eyes abruptly halted. He pivoted his head, projecting his gaze directly toward Cael.
Straight at him.
Time locked down for a single heartbeat. It was a solitary glance, yet it was more than sufficient. Cael felt an intrusive sensation—as though someone were physically peering inside his mind, dissecting his thoughts, laying bare his secrets.
Then… the Crown Prince smiled. A microscopic, enigmatic curve of his lips, before he casually returned to his conversation.
But that fraction of a second was enough to trigger a violent reaction from the System.
> **[Severe Warning]**
> **[Interest detected from a Highly Dangerous Target]**
> **[Probability of User Detection: 38%]**
>
Cael narrowed his eyes.
*Did he see through me?*
No. It was not that simple. It was worse. The prince had sensed his anomaly.
In the dead of night, Cael was pulled from his calculations by a sound.
Soft, measured knocks. Three times.
He swung the door open to find a young maid standing in the corridor. Her face was deathly pale, her frame visibly trembling.
"Sir…" She hesitated, her voice cracking. "The Crown Prince requests your presence."
An absolute silence held the corridor for a long stretch of seconds. Then… Cael smiled. A cold, calculated smile.
The game had finally commenced. And he knew a fundamental truth: if the Crown Prince was indeed a calamity, the absolute safest place to survive a cataclysm… was to stand directly at its epicenter.
Or… to become the calamity yourself.
Meanwhile, in a distant expanse within a pitch-black chamber of the Imperial Palace, an old man snapped his eyes open.
Directly above his head, a solitary word manifested:
**[Prophecy]**
He whispered in a ragged, trembling undertone:
"He has arrived…"
"The one who has absolutely no right to exist."