Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If Cale was a normal transmigrated person, he wouldn’t have any issue with the current situation. He would thank his lucky stars for the god-given second chance at life.

However, he knows that for a supposedly uncommon phenomenon, it seems to happen to him a lot, and it’s always a god’s fault. And since it concerns a god that is arrogant enough to throw his soul in bodies from different dimensions as he sees fit, Cale has, in fact, a lot of issues with the current situation.

It’s not because he’s a baby - that’s one of the only two things he finds appealing. All he does is breathe and eat and sleep for days, and he thinks if he could continue this for all eternity he would be happy. The only other thing that gives him joy is the fact that he is lucky enough to be born in another ducal house - the Ducal Family of Robain, according to the insignia on the maids’ robes - and they have a shit ton of money. His crib alone is covered in obnoxious frills and golden accents that scream rich as fuck.

But the rest is dogshit, and Cale wants a fucking refund. Take me back , he begs the floating stars above his crib. One of them falls off and smacks his face, and Cale releases a string of curses that come out as baby warbling. 

“What’s wrong, Raziel?” A pair of arms wrap around his middle and pick him up, and then gently sway with him. “Are you hungry?”

Raziel . God’s secret. Cale clenches his fists, overcome by the sheer level of audacity.

In this life, he has an older brother. His name is Felix, and he’s so happy and enthusiastic and bright that Cale has to squint every time he looks at him - and even then, when Felix realises he’s staring, his face brightens so visibly that it’s like finding a light at the end of a very dark tunnel only to realise it’s the headlights of a train. It’s like Choi Han minus the trauma and high on energy drinks.

Even worse, Felix seems to find his frowning the most adorable thing on earth and will not cease touching the space between his furrowed brows. 

He’s doing it again. Cale wriggles with all his might, trying to get away, and the devil only laughs louder.

“Look at him,” he says proudly to a maid as he holds Cale up for her to inspect. Cale locks eyes with her, and tries to express the full extent of his disapproval. “Isn’t he the prettiest baby you’ve ever seen?”

The maid nods. And nods again. She’s nodding so ferociously that Cale fears her head will fall off. “Young master, he’s beautiful! He’s going to become the handsomest being in the empire - no, the entire world!”

Aigoo…

A year later, on one of the rare moments where Felix and Duke Robain both back home from work and playing chess together as per usual, Cale nearly suffers a heart attack.

“Father, don’t you think Raziel is too… quiet, for a child?” Felix asks, moving his rook to eat the Duke’s bishop.

Cale freezes where he’s sitting inspecting the match, almost falling off the alphabet cubes he’s using as a throne. 

Shit, was he supposed to cry more? He has no idea how babies work. Raon, On and Hong were probably not textbook examples of normal children, and even as Kim Rok Soo he hadn’t had the chance to interact with any babies.

The Duke mutters a curse under his breath as he watches his bishop be eradicated. “Well, he’s way more polite. You certainly had a pair of lungs in you when you were younger.”

Felix goes red and clears his throat. “I was a perfectly well-behaved child.” 

At this, the Duke releases a rather inelegant snort; Felix savagely makes a move to trap his king as penance, and the snort quickly turns into a sound of outrage. His prodigal son beams across from him, the picture of innocence.

“You unfilial son,” he accuses, pointing a threatening finger that does absolutely nothing to dampen Felix’s infernal spirits. “Let your father win for once. I miss the days I used to trounce you at this game. You’re no fun any more.”

“His Majesty is partial to chess,” Felix explains. From what Cale has managed to figure out, Felix is the Emperor’s personal guard, best friend, and minder all in one, and has managed to pick up an impressive array of skills in his efforts to keep the tyrant satisfied.

No wonder they’re so rich. Who else would be able to deal with Claude de Alger Obelia’s horrible personality? Cale’s luxurious lifestyle is built on his brother’s blood, sweat, and tears. He’s heard Felix complain to him often since babies are very convenient to rant to - as far as anyone knows, he wouldn’t understand or remember anything. A pity they’re wrong on both accounts.

It’s his brother’s voice that drags his mind from that train of thought. “You know what, I have a great idea,” he says, and the words alone bring a powerful sense of dread to Cale.

“Why don’t I introduce Raziel to His Majesty’s daughter? He’s only a year older than her!”

Apparently, when Felix said he’d introduce him to the Emperor’s daughter, he not only meant in secret, but also the day directly after saying it.

“You see, His Majesty would likely cut my head off for even mentioning the Princess, so I just have to resort to this,” Felix laughs. 

Hey , Cale wants to protest, isn’t this treason ? And isn’t this a country where treason can get you and your entire family beheaded ? Should you be laughing ? But his brother just cheerfully skips across expansive gardens and towards a palace in the distance. 

Cale stares dispassionately at a fountain as they go past. The statues on it are half-naked women posing seductively, and not for the first time he wonders how the Emperor can be such a dirtbag as to let this marble atrocity near his daughter’s eyes. Whatever. He’s too tired to think about anything. Yawning, he rests his chin on Felix’s shoulder. His eyes droop.

“Don’t fall asleep now,” Felix jostles him gently. “You’re about to see Princess Athanasia de Alger Obelia herself. According to her nanny, she’s very cute!” 

Cale doesn’t care if she’s a demon or an angel; he just hopes she’s going to be quiet enough for him to take a nap. 

“Ah, don’t misunderstand me though,” Felix hastens to console him, taking his silence as being offended. “you’re still the cutest.”

Cale wants to roll his eyes so badly, and the moment they enter the palace, he decides that he’s not going to have a good time. He’s carried away from the sweet lull of the sun and cool breeze and down a stuffy corridor, his brother hell-bent on getting him to befriend a one year old.

A pretty lady with brown hair and blue eyes turns the corner, and immediately Felix brightens, walking faster and already calling out a greeting. Cale observes them as they talk, internally smirking at his brother’s shy attitude. You know not of the weapons you’re handing me , he thinks vindictively. Just wait until I can talk. I will get you back for all the humiliation .

It’s his policy to get back at whoever messes with him, with triple the amount of suffering.

Ah, the lady is looking at him. “Lillian York. Hello there, Raziel,” she says softly, and Cale can definitely see how this lady stood up to Claude and steadfastly hired herself as the Princess’s guardian. Her eyes are gentle and kind and in such a brutal world it takes steel to hold onto both of those traits.

Cale is sad on behalf of his brother and Lillian who’ve had to deal with that motherfucker of an Emperor. He supposes he can at least acknowledge her properly as a sign of respect.

He raises his arm, and his hand wraps around her finger, giving her a small - and probably rather sleepy - smile. Lillian stiffens and her face dons a rather odd expression, as if she’s been struck. Cale wonders if he’s just done something irreversible. 

Turning to Felix for support, he comes face to face with the full force of a starry gaze. Oh no .

“Raziel,” he says, his voice shaking from restrained emotion, “how are you so cute?” 

Lillian clears her throat, looking everywhere except Cale as if gaining her composure back. “I’ll allow him to meet the princess. Follow me, Sir Robain.”

Fuck .

Chapter Text

Athanasia is busy planning her escape in her crib when the door opens and Lilly hovers over her. She babbles out a greeting, wriggling her arms and legs.

“Princess,” she calls, her voice silver-soft as she picks her up and cradles her closely, “Felix is here with his brother. Do you want to make a friend?”

Athanasia frowns. A friend? And Felix’s brother at that?

She’s seen Felix a couple of times before, talked to him too - or rather, attempted to talk to him. (She’s still working on the coherency bit.) Any brother of his is bound to be a looker when he grows up - maybe he’s just as cheerful too?

Lilly turns, and Athanasia spots Felix at the doorway. He looks happy, but she thinks there’s a slight excitement to his expression that differs from his usual attitude. 

And he’s holding another child, with slightly darker, wine-red hair.

Their eyes meet.

They want me to befriend a guy that looks like he’s about to fall asleep standing?

Felix and Lilly put them down, and the boy lazily walks over to her.

They regard each other again.

Athanasia was wrong. This guy is not so happy-go-lucky - that much is obvious from his aloof features. But he is, like, super duper pretty. His eyelashes are too long and his garnet hair is mussed, probably from sleep. He’s cute without even trying. It’s a nice change of pace to meet other children for once. She’s been getting bored.

She beams at him, trying to ignore Lilly and Felix, who spectate the entire meeting and are clutching their hearts as if they’re having seizures. ‘Sup, dude .

He scowls (ok then) but suddenly he’s coming closer to whisper in her ear in a move that probably looks like a hug to anyone watching, and Athanasia clamps down on her fight or flight response. 

“You,” he says, a surprisingly cold voice for a child, regardless of his perhaps clumsy speech. “Who are you in that baby body?”

Her eyes go impossibly wide. No way. How does he know? What gave her away? 

Wait. Doesn’t this mean he’s transmigrated too?

She babbles at him excitedly. Who are you, where did you come from? Was it Korea like me?

She ignores the tiny bubble of relief that blooms in the corner of her heart - admitting it was there would mean admitting she was lonely and scared, and everything goes a lot more smoothly and a lot easier without it. 

The boy seems to detect something like it anyway though, because his eyes soften. Athanasia does not lean into him - anyone who says otherwise is lying.

It’s just that his reddish-brown eyes have the sombre look of someone who’s gone through hell, but his actions speak of gentleness so kind that it hurts, it makes her heart ache. That’s all she needs to quell her doubts.

Athanasia, recently transmigrated in the body of a tyrant’s daughter, wonders if he’s realised that he’s just established himself as her one and only dependable older brother.

She cups his face with her hands, and looks squarely at him. 

Run away with me in the future, my newly-acquired brother , she says. Or tries to. A string of half-coherent syllables falls from her mouth and she just wants to pass away at the confused frown that appears on his face. He frowns a lot, she notices, even as she averts her eyes out of embarrassment. She’s starting to understand that his default expression is a bitchy one of disinterest, and his other one is just frowning for all other emotions on the spectrum.

Athanasia taps the skin between his brows, and suddenly he looks exasperated. “Stop that,” he mumbles, batting her hand away with surprising gentleness despite his irritation.

She thinks, inexplicably, that he’s the type of person that just radiates paternal energy.

“You look tired,” he says, and even the childish voice he uses to get the words out can’t disguise the fact that whoever he was in the past, he was an adult. Lo and behold, a responsible, reliable adult! 

“Just go to sleep and stop bothering me.”

Athanasia gives him a shit-eating grin just to watch expectant horror bloom across that pretty face. She crawls into his lap, making herself comfortable, and falls asleep. 

Cale doesn’t really know what to do with the baby that just fell asleep on him. He’s never been good with kids, especially not hyper, bubbly ones like the Princess.

He wants to know how the fuck she fell asleep so fast. One moment he’s viciously thinking “ just go to sleep and let me go home! ” and the next she’s passed out like a limpet on him. He also wants to tell Felix to get his act together, because for some reason he’s crying tears of joy from where he’s kneeling on the carpet. Oi, where’s the dignity of the Emperor’s personal knight?

“I knew it,” the grown-ass man groans, sounding like he’s on his deathbed, “I knew that the two of them together in the same room would be a deadly combination for my heart. Look at them, Miss Lillian.”

Lillian, at least, appears to have some sense, because she suggests that he get off the floor first.

Cale thinks about the consequences of just telling Felix that he wants to go home. On one hand, he won’t have to be here anymore. On the other, he’s probably going to be bullied into talking every day, into answering inane questions like, “aren’t you a good boy? Who’s a good boy?” Everything he said to the Princess was too quiet for the others to hear so he has the luxury of deciding.

He chooses to slump over the Princess’s back and take a nap too. He doesn’t care if he’s branded a late bloomer that isn’t able to talk. Energy conservation is key. 

And even though it’s going to be a pain, he’s going to get strong enough to be able to take at least one hit from the Emperor in the worst case scenario. Surviving is the highest priority and being killed by a bloodthirsty, lame excuse for a father… simply unacceptable.

He wouldn’t have to worry about any of this bullshit if the God of Death fixed his fucking mistake and just brought him back to where he came from. Earlier, when he saw the princess, a familiar warm-cold feeling coursed through him, the same weird ass thing that happened when he made an oath of death. It was one of the things that made him realise that his transmigration probably had something to do with that kid.

I’m going to kill that god.

A dark smirk stretches across his face, obscured by his red hair.

Chapter Text

When Cale wakes up the next day in a giant four-poster bed, but with no cat paws pushing insistently on his scalp and no dragon whispering promises of world destruction if he didn’t get up, he briefly thinks -

I’d rather not wake up at all.

Cale sits up, running a hand through his hair and staring around his empty room. Heavy drapes over large windows, polished, gold-accented wooden furnishings, plush burgundy carpet, carefully decorated ceiling, sparkling chandelier.

Suddenly, feels horrid contempt towards these riches. 

“I really am trash,” he tells his teddy bear, carefully placed next to his pillow on Felix’s insistence. In fact, it’s his brother that actually got him the thing, ecstatically informing him that it has the same ‘adorable scowl’ on its face as ‘our beloved Raziel’. Just for that, Cale wants to throw it off the terrace.

Cale Henituse is lucky enough to have the privilege of living in such a mansion, inheriting an impressive lineage, and being lovingly bestowed with gifts every other day - and yet he’s being this ungrateful. Truly, he is the trash of the trash.

At this point, the Cheapskate would say things like ‘if it upsets you, let’s set everything on XXX fire!’ but there’s no voices screaming expletives or calls for arson. There haven’t been for two years now, and he still doesn’t quite understand why. Even in the Sealed God’s test, the Ancient Powers were imprinted on his soul, whether they were weakened or not. Logically, they should have tagged along. Or at the very least, if not their voices, their powers.

There are three possibilities he’s thought of.

His current baby body can’t support all the Ancient Powers, and they’ll naturally reappear as it grows stronger and more stable. After all, when he acquired them all, he still had the original Cale Henituse’s athletic physique as his saving grace. He dislikes this possibility immensely. It means that he’s going to have to start an exercise regime to build up the same muscle he had as Kim Rok Soo, and the idea of it makes him want to lie down again and go to sleep.

Second possibility, the God of Death did something to his soul. After all, if transporting it as he likes and drop-kicking it in different dimensions isn’t an issue, why would blocking his power not be within his abilities? But, why send him here and guide him to the Princess, without powers at his disposal?

At first, Cale thought that he was sent to protect her from the Emperor. Felix may not have directly mentioned the massacre at Ruby Palace, or Claude’s feelings towards his daughter, but he is pretty sure that the Princess’ deadbeat father poses the biggest threat to her as of now. That familiar feeling like he’s taken a dip in very cold water and then slowly roasted in a spit over a bonfire simultaneously is very characteristic of the God of Death, and it’s suspicious that he felt it when he laid eyes on her.

That possibility is missing critical information. Why the Princess? How is she more important than dealing with the White Star, who has an overinflated ego, ambitions to become a god, and a crime record longer than Choi Han’s lifespan? He may be sealed for now, but the longer Cale’s over here the more likely it is that everything over there will go to shit. Unless the time difference is extreme and a year here is five minutes over there or something.

This possibility means Cale can’t do anything about it. This, he loathes completely.

Third possibility, this universe’s “laws” do not allow Ancient Powers. Although he never mentioned it, he did find it odd that in Roan there’s magic and dead mana, and in Korea even if you’re a mage you can’t do magic for shit, despite there being innate powers like Record. That implies that those two universes have a different set of laws and probabilities for what is “possible”. Maybe mages are just conduits for magic, and the magic has to actually be a force present in the world for them to use it (fuck, he should have asked Eruhaben-nim more about magic). Maybe Korea’s just lacking in magic. 

So, it isn’t that far-fetched that here in the universe where Obelia exists, you are restricted to the magic system here, and no other powers are allowed. For this one, Cale probably needs to interrogate a magician in the future - which he was going to do anyway, if only to find a way back home.

Aigoo, I just want to go back to sleep. Suddenly, he feels like crying as he imagines his slacker life waving goodbye.

But, he has to try his best. He needs to go back. Choi Han, Alberu, Eruhaben-nim and everyone else will probably be fine, but Raon, On and Hong are just children, and the moment he became their guardian he had a duty to look after them.

Which he can’t do if he’s stuck in this cursed Empire, lazing around in bed. 

‘Weak human, get up!’

‘He’s so lazy, nya!’

‘Grandpa Ron’s coming with the lemonade!’

He throws the covers off him and, for the first time in a long, long time, stretches.

When he opens the door, he finds his nanny’s face approximately two centimeters away from his face. It overlaps with Choi Han’s from once upon a time, and instinctively he slams it shut again, goosebumps erupting all over his body.

Why does this always happen to me?

He opens it again, acting like nothing happened. He should build up his trashy reputation again; last time was fun.

She doesn’t say anything about his mistake. Instead, she beams brightly. “Good morning, young master Raziel!” 

Ah, there’s another thing he hates. Cale would rather let himself be slapped by Venion Stan than to ever introduce himself as “Raziel” Robain. Adopting a name meaning “God’s secret” already feels like a slap in the face after three forced transmigrations. Could he just change the name to Cale? That will be a bit weird, but people adopt nicknames very easily when they’re used frequently enough.

“Good morning,” he grumbles, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

He opens them to see her looking at him like she’d very much like to pinch his cheeks. He knows that look. Grandma Kim had it often enough, and as Kim Rok Soo his cheeks suffered a lot of torment. He takes a cautious step back.

“Where is Felix and Father?”

“You can’t see them yet, young master.” His nanny ushers him back into the room. “Let’s get you dressed first.”

She bustles back from the closet with a pile of clothes in her arms, looking like they’re one step away from tottering over. Cale doesn’t know whether to feel impressed or not.

“Now then,” she sighs, looking at them with excitement, “how shall we dress you today? What colour would you prefer?”

Cale thinks of draconic eyes blinking at him solemnly. “Dark blue.”

“Is it because you saw the Princess yesterday?” His nanny asks, smiling at him knowingly. “Her eyes are beautiful, are they not? The royal line inherits a specific type of magic, and the jewelled appearance of the irises are indicative of that.”

Cale quirks a brow. Should she be using such complex words while conversing with a child? Is this just a step in his early education? Damn, the Robain standards are high. He told his nanny not to let the Duke and Felix know he’s started to talk, giving the excuse, “ I want to be good at it first before I show father and brother! ”

It worked splendidly. And she’s taken it upon herself to help him master language by using flamboyant words and sentence structures - he’s kind of glad for it. Record is helping him more than ever, but there’s only so much he can pick up from the conversations of adults. They usually censor themselves around children.

Oh. The nanny is looking at him, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“Not really,” Cale finally answers her in the driest, rudest tone he can muster. “I just like dark blue.”

Unfortunately, to her he just looks like a child that’s pouting because she revealed his thoughts so insensitively, and she giggles as she dresses him in a navy blue sailor’s outfit. “Of course, of course.”

Cale hates it here.

Chapter Text

Cale and his nanny are ambushed before they ever manage to get to the dining room for breakfast.

The thing is, Cale struggles to even comprehend how it happened, because one moment he was holding his nanny’s hand (at her insistence) and walking down the corridor, thinking about how the frames of the portraits on the walls were very much pure gold, and the next somebody’s tackling him and nearly breaking his legs. Cale thinks he hears his nanny scream.

“Raziel!” 

It is, unfortunately, a familiar voice.

“Ijekiel. Get off.” I can’t breathe . He’s being strangled in a tight hug.

“Oh! Sorry,” the child says, and he really does look sorry so Cale can’t even be mad. He clicks his tongue as Ijekiel retreats and nervously stares at him. Probably worried he’s mad and won’t talk to him anymore, because children are strange like that. His nanny is in the background, worriedly trying to make sure they’re getting along. Does she think he’s some kind of rabid beast?

“What are you doing here?” Cale asks bluntly, helping him get up and dusting him off. Cursorily, he checks him for any bruises. He ignores the relief that emits from those golden eyes. Yes, yes, I’m not angry so stop looking at me like that.

Ijekiel shuffles on his feet and wrings his hands. “Father said he has work.” He looks up at him through his lashes. “Are you busy?”

Cale frowns. Does that mean Duke Alpheus is with Duke Robain in his office? As far as he knows, the aristocracy doesn’t really have reason to visit each other’s houses outside of the meetings at the palace. Some of them organise play dates between children of similar ages, but they usually drop them off with a valet or handmaid and then leave - that’s how he met this kid. 

Not that it’s any of his business. He has a suspicion that if he questions it a bit too much, he’ll get involved again. What was it that Raon said once?

‘If the human set out to destroy a rock, he’ll take out a whole mountain.’

His chest feels tight.

“I need to eat,” Cale sighs, turning back to his nanny.

Ijekiel goes through some gruelling mental gymnastics. Cale can predict his train of thought:

I’ve already had breakfast. But if I say that, I can’t go with Raziel. But I can’t go to the dining room if I’m not eating. But I don’t know what to do in the mansion if I’m not with Raziel. 

His nanny decides for him. “Young master Alpheus,” she calls, squatting down to look him in the eyes. “How about you head to the library and pick a book to read? Young master Raziel will come to you soon. He was planning on going to the library anyway.”

No, I was not .

Ijekiel turns to him to verify with pleading eyes. They look too much like On and Hong’s, but especially On, with that hair.

“Yes, I was planning on going to the library,” Cale says, his mouth running without his input. 

Fuck.

“Ah, so cute,” his nanny mutters, giggling under her breath. There’s a blush on her face and Cale wants it to wipe itself out. “Young master, do you like Lord Alpheus?”

Cale has the vaguest impression that whatever his answer is going to be to this question, he will never be able to take it back. She already thinks he has an infatuation with the princess and that’s more than bad enough, he shudders to think of how insufferable she’s going to be if he says anything positive about Ijekiel. 

“He’s annoying,” he claims brusquely, putting a piece of steak in his mouth.

She laughs. “Sure, sure.”

Cale takes a fortifying breath, and sharply exhales his frustrations out. He looks at the table.

There’s no wine, dammit. Take me back.

“What are you doing?” Cale asks, leaning on the bookshelves.

Ijekiel startles where he’s sitting on the closest couch, a book on … the official language of Pascal sitting on his lap? It looks pretty thick.

He cocks his head. “Can you read that?”

Ijekiel nods. Huh. Maybe this level of literacy is normal for kids in this universe? So, he wouldn’t stand out too much if he revealed he can talk or he picks things up a bit faster. It is good information to know. He was getting tired of filtering himself and being careful about how he acted anyway. 

Cale walks to the adult section. If he has to be in the library, he might as well familiarise himself with the place he’s in. Culture, etiquette, language, politics. He has no idea about anything in the Obelia Empire, and he has to change that quickly. Survival first and foremost, after all. What if he bows the wrong way in front of that motherfucker Claude and he gets wiped out where he stands? He shudders.

It takes him fifteen whole minutes to retrieve the books he needs and put them on the couch. By the end of it, he’s already out of breath. His baby body is inconvenient in many different ways - Cale can’t even go to the toilet without his nanny standing outside, concerned he’s going to fall in or something.

Finally, he plops down next to Ijekiel, finding him staring quizzically at the number of books he’s brought over. Cale smiles back at him with faux friendliness and picks up the first volume, his other hand unbuttoning his shirt.

And then, he starts reading.

Five minutes in, he’s finished one book and Ijekiel is gawking.

How? His eyes ask.

Cale puts a finger in front of his mouth. “It’s a secret,” he whispers, and Ijekiel nods fervently. 

The boy goes back to his own book, but the more completed tomes Cale drops to the floor, the more excited glances he throws at him. He’s getting tired of trying to imagine that nobody is there. It brings back too many memories of the Mercenaries Guild’s Directory, especially while already using Record, and it’s starting to give him a migraine. Cale’s already flushed, strands of hair clinging to his sweaty forehead, and he feels mildly like a chicken somebody’s forgotten in the oven.

“Heavens,” he hears someone gasp out after a while, so Cale looks up from his very last book - one on Siodonna - and blanches immediately at the sight of Felix near the library’s double doors.

Motherfucker .

“I was wrong, father!” Felix yells, slamming open the doors without so much as a by-your-leave. Ijekiel trots behind at his heels like a puppy, and his brother’s holding Cale up by the midriff like he’s presenting a trophy. 

Cale suddenly feels like an animal at a zoo as both Dukes Robain and Alpheus turn to look at him. 

Exhilarated, Felix explains, “Raziel is not quiet because he’s a late bloomer, he’s just a genius! And he’s only three years old!” 

No, please. Ijekiel, I thought it was normal, Cale despairs, looking at the child with betrayal. Ijekial just stares back with quiet joy.

“What did he do?” Duke Robain asks, looking a bit annoyed. To be fair, they had intruded in a discussion that seemed pretty important, judging by the mass of documents strewn around his desk. Yes, let’s not bother them any longer. Let’s just leave, Felix.

Felix ignores his pleading gaze. “He was reading a book on Siodonna! The really thick one mother got from the dancing troupe that visited the palace!”

Duke Alpheus raises his eyebrows. “Maybe he wanted to feel grown up,” he suggests drily, taking off his glasses to polish them.

“For ten minutes? Children are easily distracted and get restless quickly,” Felix denies, looking unfairly offended, in Cale’s opinion, by the Duke’s common sense and logical conclusion. 

“Raz was reading!” Ijekiel pipes up on the side, looking confused as to why they even had any doubts about Cale’s supposed ingenuity. Child, shut up, please . “He read lots and lots! I only read Pascal though,” he finishes, frowning sadly at the floor.

Cale panics. That had been a secret! A secret, Ijekiel! 

He needs to distract them. He thrashes in Felix’s hold until he’s let down, and then grabs Ijekiel consolingly. “How much more do you know? Teach me, I don’t know Pascal! You’re amazing!” He exclaims, desperate. He throws his Raziel-can’t-talk-until-he’s-better-at-it plan out of the window; some sacrifices must be made for the sake of the greater good.

“Really?” Ijekiel blooms like a flower that’s been watered, and Cale has to squint in his general direction instead of looking head-on for the sake of his eyesight. Ijekiel’s father makes a noise like a dying seal. Cale can empathise.

“Then,” Duke Alpheus hums, “how about this?” He grabs a document from the pile and hands it to Cale, squatting in front of him and placing a gentle hand on his head. “Raziel, can you read this for me?”

Cale looks at the paper.

It’s a crime record, and there’s a picture of a dude with a rather long face and haunted eyes above a rather vivid list of his crimes. So. Obviously, the Duke doesn’t actually believe Felix.

But now it’s a matter of principle, and Cale is irritated.

Why does he believe that his son is the only one who can read more advanced material for his age? And why does he have the audacity to touch him, or to have that condescending look in his eyes toward him? Him , a three year old child ?

Cale smiles brightly at him and clears his throat, the Duke smiling back at him indulgently.

“Jophiel Damper, age thirty-five, prosecuted fifth of March, tried and found guilty by the Court for colluding with dark magic practitioners, embezzlement, grievous bodily harm, human trafficking, identity fraud, manslaughter and torture. Do you want the trial script as well, Lord Alpheus?”

Cale cheerfully studies his face. The Duke is no longer smiling.

“That’s incredible, Raziel,” Duke Robain exclaims, smiling from ear to ear and perching him on his arm. “We need to get you a private tutor! Do you want to go to the Academy in Arlanta?”

And now, Cale is also no longer smiling.

Chapter Text

Fortunately, Cale isn’t conscious to deal with the consequences of his admittedly rushed actions.

He’s not conscious to hear Duke Robain’s and Felix’s panicked yells when they finally take notice of his flushed, sweaty face and fever, or their gasps of horrified realisation when it dawns on them that Duke Alpheus just handed their precious Raziel an all-too-graphic description of some of the worst crimes imaginable.

He’s also not in any state to hear Felix and Duke Robain as they hover anxiously at his bedside, rapid-firing questions at the hapless doctor of the estate, who keeps dampening a cloth and dabbing it over his forehead.

Or Ijekiel, who is sniffling quietly next to him like a hand-wringing mother and probably getting Cale’s hand wet from his tears. He’s holding it very tightly indeed, and even out of consciousness Cale’s fingers twitch in his small grasp in a vain attempt to escape.

Overall, it is a very messy business, and Duke Alpheus has already been kicked out with a promise to have Felix himself take Ijekiel home tomorrow afternoon. Apparently, no matter how much he tried to persuade his son to leave Cale be and join him in the carriage, Ijekiel accused him of some not-very-nice things, and Duke Alpheus had been left to crawl home after a resounding loss against his rebellious five-year-old child.

Nobody felt very sorry to see him go.

Cale returns to consciousness with the sound of soft weeping in his ears, and it feels so familiar that for a second he is awash with relief, thinking he was back home.

Then he opens his eyes and is greeted by Ijekiel’s blotchy face hovering over him.

“What the fu—” He jerks upright on his bed, the duvet falling to his waist, and nearly concusses the kid with a headbutt. At least Cale still has the good sense to bite down on his tongue before he can spit out the full expletive—and then he realises it doesn’t matter anyway, because it came out in the Common Western tongue and Ijekiel would’ve just heard a startled exclamation.

“Ijekiel,” he breathes out, panting hard and hitting his chest, trying to calm his heart down. “Don’t do that. What are you even doing in my bedroom?”

Ijekiel’s eyes instantly water again, and Cale curses everything and then himself.  “Hey, stop that,” he quavers, awkwardly laying a hand on the kid’s shaking shoulder, “I’m sorry—” 

It seems that’s the wrong thing to say too, because Ijekiel starts trembling even more and burying his face in the crook of Cale’s neck, until they’re both in an awkward position on the bed —Ijekiel holding on for dear life, sobbing his little heart out, and Cale wishing he were still passed out. 

“Raziel,” Ijekiel sobs, stumbling over the words through his tears, “I’m sorry, I should have told them you weren’t well—”

“—Nonsense,” Cale gripes impatiently, trying to escape the kid’s clutches but giving up when it only results in more sniffling. He sighs and sags like a limpet, surrendering to being treated as a comfort toy for now. “You’re not my minder or my nanny,” Cale mumbles, patting him on the head and hoping it will calm him down.

Kid, please just get off. He wants water, and, rather more urgently, the bathroom.

Not to mention, someone’s clothed him in a nightshirt—someone who obviously didn’t think things through, because now it’s not only uncomfortably wet on his right shoulder, but it’s also really bloody cold. Cale regrets shoving the covers off himself so hastily.

He gives a cluck of impatience. “Honestly, you’re such a handful,” he says, pushing Ijekiel away to look him in the eyes. They’re glistening with the sheen of fresh tears, but at least they’re not being averted. “Ijekiel, listen to me,” —Cale gives him a nice, strong shake— “I’m alright. It’s not that big a deal. Everyone gets sick from time to time.”

“Really?” Ijekiel sniffs, rubbing at his eyes.

“Yes,” Cale reassures, half a mind on Ijekiel and half on his insistent bladder. “It happens sometimes when we’re tired or stressed or for a million other reasons.”

“That’s a lot of reasons,” says Ijekiel, frowning. “Is my body that weak too?”

Ouch . I know it’s true, but to imply it so strongly to my face with such devastating innocence . 

“No,” Cale admits, disguising an eye roll by looking up at the ceiling of his four-poster, as if the cherub painting there is more interesting than usual. “Some people are more prone to getting sick.”

Ijekiel now looks far more interested at the prospect of learning something than continuing his weeping fest. “Like you?” He asks curiously.

Argh. Subtlety, Ijekiel! 

Cale smiles extra brightly. “Yes, like me. Not to worry, I can get stronger if I exercise, and then it won’t happen that much.”

The boy ponders that for a second, before coming to some sort of agreement with himself. “I’ll help you,” he declares, a serious spark in his golden eyes as he detaches himself from Cale ( finally! ). “We’ll exercise together! I’ll tell my father to find us a good swordsmanship teacher!”

No, Ijekiel! Fuck no.  

“That’s such a great idea,” Cale cheers, a hidden note of utter despondency echoing in his voice, unbeknownst to everyone except himself. “But you don’t have to go to such trouble—”

A knock interrupts whatever false nonsense he’s about to pull out of his ass, and Cale is sincerely grateful, thinking that maybe Ijekiel will forget about the swordsmanship instructor now.

He’s very grateful indeed— until it opens, revealing Felix and Duke Robain. Both of them have red noses and eyes like Ijekiel, but at least they’re not bursting into tears seeing him awake. That relief is short-lived, though, when they scream his name out loud enough for the cooking staff to hear from downstairs, and then sprint across his chambers to his bed.

“How are you feeling, son?” Duke Robain frets, feeling his forehead with the back of his hand. Ijekiel shuffles off the bed to make room, but hovers nearby like a bad itch. “You don’t have a fever anymore,” the Duke breathes out, wilting from relief.

Felix sits on the other side of the bed, the mattress sinking down from the weight and the covers getting pulled in his direction. Cale, shivering, fights to unobtrusively pull them over his lap again.

“Forgive me, Raziel,” his brother says to him glumly, pleadingly holding his hands in his own. There’s goosebumps on his arm, but Felix is, unfortunately, looking at him with entreating eyes and they go unnoticed. “I was just so excited to see you reading that I didn’t check on you.”

Cale absently tries to express his forgiveness through a close-mouthed smile while he makes a last-ditch effort to recover his duvet. It is unsuccessful, and he hunches into himself in defeat and pursuit of warmth.

Felix looks like he’s dying. “Are you mad at me, Raziel? I’m so sorry! I’ll make it up to you, I swear.” No, wait. I’m not mad damn it all, I’m just fucking cold , and I need to go to the toilet.

“Father!” Felix whips his head around to look at the Duke. “He’s mad at me, isn’t he? How do I fix this!”

The Duke stares back, sombre. “Good luck, son.”

“Good luck, Felix!” Ijekiel chimes in.

“I’m right here, you know,” Cale grumbles. At once, three faces turn to him, radiating a combined aura of purity and dejected guilt. He sighs. “Felix, I’m not mad. Just get off my bed.” So that I can get up and go to the toilet, for fuck’s sake .

Silence permeates throughout the room. Felix stands up, hiding his face with his hands, and walks speedily out of the room, the sound of a suppressed sob escaping between his fingers before the door clicks shut.

Cale frowns in abject confusion.

Ijekiel and Duke Robain eye each other knowingly. The Duke pats Cale on the shoulder. “It’s alright, son. You have every right to be mad at me and your brother. Take your time and we will talk later. In the meantime, try to think about whether you’d like to go to the Academy in Arlanta and let me know what you decide.”

What the fuck…? Cale nearly pees himself out of fear. “Father, wait,” he calls out urgently, stopping the Duke in his tracks before he leaves the room, “I don’t want to go to the Academy. I would prefer a private tutor.”

The Duke throws him a quizzical glance. “Why?”

Cale frantically searches for a good excuse, something hard to argue against. Finally, he lands on, “I don’t want to be away from my family.”

The Duke covers his eyes with a hand. “I see,” he answers, his voice trembling the slightest bit. “Then, we’ll get you the best tutor we can find. Only the best for the House of Robain.”

Then, he hurries out so fast it’s like he’s escaping from a bloodthirsty dog, for some reason still covering his face. Ijekiel giggles and follows him out with a bright “ see you at lunch, Raziel! ”

The door closes behind them, and there’s blessed silence.

Cale collapses back onto the cushions with a sigh of bone-deep exhaustion.

“Felix, where’s Ijekiel?” Cale asks his brother at lunchtime when they’re all gathered around the dining table.

Felix startles so badly that the piece of steak on his fork falls off, and he averts his eyes. Why are they so red? “I’m so sorry, Raziel. I took him home —I promised the Duke he’d be back home by the afternoon while you were... in bed. The young Lord Alpheus wasn’t very happy about it.”

Cale sighs and puts down his utensils. Felix flinches at the quiet clink! they make, and his patience snaps. “Why do you keep apologising?” He demands.

“What?” 

“You keep saying ‘sorry’ to me. I’m not angry with you and you didn’t do anything wrong—so why are you apologising?”

Felix looks bewildered. “You’re not mad?”

Cale gives in to the urge that’s been slowly growing ever since he arrived in this gods-forsaken world, and rolls his eyes. “Do I need to repeat myself? We’re going around in circles.”

Good. He should just be as rude as possible, now that they know he can speak. Maybe then he’ll be discouraged from it, like he was by his ever-dependable Eric-hyung at the nobles’ meeting.

The Duke and Felix stare at him —it must be working wonders already. Are you shocked by my trashy attitude?  

“What?” Cale says defensively, using his glass of grape juice as a shield from their gaze.

“Are children supposed to talk like that?” The Duke asks, face awash with disbelief.

“I don’t think so,” Felix replies, looking marginally more cheerful and closer to his typical self. “Our Raziel is special.”

“But Ijekiel talks the same way I do,” Cale protests, gripping onto normalcy with all he has.

The Duke furrows his brows at him. “Raziel,” he tells him, “you do know that Ijekiel is two years older than you?”

Cale freezes.

What?

Sometime after lunch, Felix has to go to the Palace while the Duke retreats back into his den of workaholism, and Cale has some much-needed time alone. His nanny must be somewhere in the mansion looking for him, but…

Fine, he’ll just confess it to himself outright. He’s hiding from his nanny. There’s only so much anxious fretting he will tolerate from people who are pretty much strangers to him —before arriving, he got away with using maybe twenty words maximum a day, but in this world it has inflated to thrice that and he’s only been talking for one day . It’s exhausting.

So, hiding in the library seems like the better option.

He also hasn’t yet had the time to consolidate his knowledge from all the books, and it’s a jumbled mess in his brain right now. It’s like listening to the news without any context or prior knowledge of the politics, where you’re scrambling to organise and put the information in its intended place to fill in the blanks.

The library is utterly still, a scent of parchment and old paper calming his senses. It seems he’s been thrown into another universe without electricity, because candle sconces are stuck on the walls, giving off a dim, flickering light and throwing the library’s shadowy corners into sharp relief. Cale throws his head back, looking at the domed vault ceiling —a fresco sprawls on it, grand like everything else in this mansion—and breathes .

He’s very glad for the quiet, even though the library seems too big all of a sudden.

His fatigue should by all accounts be alleviated, but instead he feels it settle in his soul and makes its home there. Cale’s familiar with it, has always had it persistently lying over him like a heavy rug, but he always had people around him lightening the burden.

This time, he’s so very alone.

Cale releases a sharp exhale before getting up and walking to the magic section, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other mechanically.

The Fundamentals of Magic , Volume I of XII. Basic Casting for Beginner Magicians . Simple Spells and Spellcasting Methods for Aspiring Magicians , Part I of III. 

He fingers the spine of the first one before taking it off the shelf, feeling the smooth leather cover. My goodness, how much money does this family have to be able to afford leather books? Pulling out the next two volumes in the series off the shelf while he’s at it, he retreats back to his shadowy crook and opens tome number one.

The worst thing a budding magician can do is be ignorant of what the power they are using really is. Magic, at its core, is a force like any other. People are its conduits, like storage spaces, if you will, and whether one can harness it or not depends on the quality and effectiveness of that storage space. 

Cale frowns at the inky cursive, thumbing the yellowish paper. His guess had been right. Then again it would have been a bit weird for people to be mana generators themselves—it would’ve been like bioluminescence, and since humans can hardly spare the energy to walk around and use their overly-complex brains, they certainly wouldn’t have the capability to generate energy faster than their body consumes it. Oh, to be a bioluminescent jellyfish , Cale muses. Swimming along in the open ocean, no thoughts except food. Never before has he felt such intense jealousy.

People who are good conduits and can be host to a large amount of mana at a time, are called ‘magicians’. It is typically easy to tell who is, and who isn’t, both via a spell and through personal observation. When mana is utilised with a clear spell and intention in mind, magic circles are visibly formed; when utilised with only an intention and powered by emotion, it will only show traces of primitive magic circles, like wisps of coloured smoke. Emotional spell-casting usually results in a type of physical change in the appearance of the caster’s eyes. Glowing eyes, or a pulsating limbal ring are common examples. 

So, if someone has glowing eyes, you turn tail and run. Cale nods to himself. That’s very good information to know. It also lines up nicely with his considerable hands-on knowledge of monster-hunting from the apocalypse. In Korea, if anyone ever saw glowing eyes, they would be far more likely to book it, and probably shit themselves, than to stand around chatting.  

On the other hand, the spell to check for whether one is a magician or not, is as follows: resigno magicae spatium— detect magic space . The caster should have clear intent, and should see a simple, white magic circle (refer to Figure 3). 

Cale stares at the book, trying to decide whether to check or not.

Finally, he gives in. It’s unlikely to work anyway. He’s never had an affinity for magic, no matter the universe. “ Resigno magicae spatium ,” he enunciates, feeling very silly.

A white circle materialises at his palm.

“...What the fuck .”

Chapter Text

Cale Henituse, newly bestowed with the name Raziel, is a magician.

Cale sits in that shadowy alcove in the massive library, his blank eyes pinned to the book in his lap. The caster should see a simple, white magic circle . He raises his gaze to his palm, where the circle is still luminescent and present, like a large platter —the kind he held when he was still working as a waiter back in Korea.

Cale shakes his hand violently, trying with increasing mania to make the thing disappear. There’s a slowly budding fear in him that this ability will bring him a huge amount of trouble, even if it does present him with a way to protect himself. It’s like taking Raon, a dragon, the most powerful existence in the world, under his wing, except with none of the joy and affection.

His eyes start shaking, and he feels coolness at his neck and forehead where he’s starting to get cold sweats and chills. The circle vanishes into wisps of white light as Cale snatches up the book and desperately scours through the section again.

Nope. No matter how many times he reads it, the words are still there.

Which means that Cale Henituse is a magician.

He drops the stupid tome, and it falls to the carpeted ground, the pages wrinkling in protest at the rough treatment. Cale doesn’t care. His head is full of anxiety, like heavy smoke permeating through his thoughts of relaxation, smothering them until they’re nothing but dwindling embers and ashes. 

Does that mean that if he returns home in this body, he would continue to be a magician there?

‘Human, now that you’re a mage, I’ll teach you everything you need to know! Because I’m great and mighty!’

‘Aigoo, unlucky bastard, I suppose I’ll have to show you a few things. You’re so hopeless. Let’s start from the very beginning, you have a long way ahead of you—’

‘Young master Cale, don’t worry! If you have any trouble, you can ask me! I’m not as good as Eruhaben-nim or Raon-nim, but I’m confident I can answer some of your questions!’

Gooseflesh erupts across his skin, down his arms and back, and he shivers. No! I will never be able to rest like that! No way!

That’s right  —there’s no guarantee he has enough magic to be useful anyway. He probably has a truly humiliating amount that will ensure he receives overflowing pity and disdain.

If Cale will be unable to hide the magic anyway  —depending on the magician’s experience and level of power, it seems they have the ability to sense other magicians and how much magic they have— then he will only use it for urgent purposes. It’s not like him to leave something that could be of benefit to him anyway. He was looking for something to protect himself with, and this should be a good thing —he just has to ensure… caution and proper planning .

And he needs to make sure he doesn’t accidentally blow something up. It would be a disaster if he accidentally defenestrated Duke Alpheus out of irritation.

Wait. Is that why the princess fell asleep so fast back then? The record opens on its own accord, and the memory flashes by.

Princess Athanasia, perfectly energetic and awake.

Him, forcefully thinking he wanted to go home and that she should just sleep .

And Princess Athanasia, conveniently falling like a log.

Cale slaps a hand over his eyes and drags it down his face with a long groan. How the fuck is he supposed to control when it happens then? Perhaps more practice will reduce its sensitivity to respond to his intentions?

And how did it work without a proper spell?

Cale kicks off one of his shoes and takes off a sock. He holds it gingerly in the air with one hand, glaring at it.

I want this sock to burn , he thinks with certainty. I want this sock to be burned to cinders .

Nothing happens, except a small rush of embarrassment crawling through him.

He hates this entire situation. And he hates this stupid sock. Before he has a chance to angrily throw it somewhere, an orange circle whispers into being at his fingers, and suddenly he’s holding a sock on fire.

His mind blanks. His hand opens. The sock drops to the carpet.

And Cale Henituse, budding magician, watches as the ground slowly ignites.

When Cale leaves the library holding The Fundamentals of Magic I under his arm, it’s with such unflappable grace and air of calmness that no one would be able to tell he just set the carpet on fire. And indeed, no one would be able to tell that the kindling used to ignite it, is currently being used as a convenient bookmark. Unless they paid particular attention to his feet.

The only thing that would possibly point to that event being reality is the suspiciously wet, singed spot on the floor in the alcove, and should anyone ask, he will plead the fifth. What’re they going to do? Accuse him of using the candle sconces to destroy it? They’re nailed to the wall. Matchsticks? In the kitchen, safely stowed away. Magic? They might think he’s a literary genius, but who would think a three-year-old can use magic? Cale ambles down the corridor and thinks back on a brief passage from a book he read when he was with Ijekiel:

A magician’s awakening occurs during their first acts of magic. Although children from the royal line of Obelia tend to show rudimentary signs of spellcasting from age five, the typical magician displays them at ten or twelve. A notable exception is the Magician of the Tower, said to have awakened at three years of age, although there have been no surviving records confirming it.

Yes. Unless he manages to fuck this one up too, they will have no way of proving it was him.

It’s a very good thing he managed to read up on that. Children’s milestones elude him, but at least where magic is concerned he will not make the same mistake as he did with literature—if he does, Cale will set himself alight, dive off his terrace and extinguish his flaming carcass in the huge fountain in the courtyard. Something like that definitely wouldn’t be able to kill him, since he had the Vitality of the—

His steps slow to a stop. Or would it?

“Haha,” Cale says to nobody in particular —maybe great-great-grandfather Robaine, who gently smiles at him as he rubs his chilled arms from his portrait to the left. “I need to cut my hair.”

It is already assimilated knowledge by now, that the Vitality of the Heart slowly heals somatic wounds, internal or external, through the process of regeneration. However, Cale has a theory that the Vitality of the Heart works for different types of bodily regenerations, including hair growth —because how else did his hair manage to reach just above his elbow in the span of a couple of months back home? 

So. He’s going to cut a lock of hair, and observe how long it will take for it to regrow. If the Heart did actually tag along with him like Record, then it will likely only take about a day for it to go back to how it was —if he still has the Heart, but with restrictions, it will probably grow back in two days or a week at most (which will support his theory that the God of Death is actually the one blocking his goddamn powers). If he doesn’t have it at all, he will likely have a bunch of short strands at the back of his head for at least two months, and a sad feeling. 

That is a much more appealing option than purposely hurting himself. Cale Henituse, Kim Rok Soo, despises pain.

Plan made and finalised, Cale scouts for dangers and extraneous variables from where he’s hidden in a veil of shadow behind the door to his quarters.

His nanny is fixing the bed, puffing up the pillows and frowning with worry. Probably thinking about where he is. He saw some guards combing the gardens outside from the library windows, so she probably raised the alert and people think he’s missing. His conscience pricks, but anyway. Time to play the innocent child —he had enough practice as Naru, and if he managed to contain his contempt in the face of the White Star, nothing else posed an obstacle to his acting. 

Cale sneaks up behind her and grabs her skirt, watching as she startles and whips around. When she lowers her head, she is abruptly confronted by heart-achingly downcast brown eyes gazing back at her. Cale sees the exact moment her heart melts.

“Young master!” She exclaims with relief, immediately dropping to her knees, “what's wrong? Where were you? It’s nearly sundown!”

He packs his voice full of dejection. “In the library,” he mumbles, looking down at the floor and shuffling his feet. Then, Cale looks up at her through his lashes. 

“Nanny, can you cut my hair?”

That evening, when Duke Robaine and Cale sit in the dining area, he has the distinct displeasure of seeing his father do a double take at the sight of his hair.

“Raziel, you cut your hair, I see,” the Duke says, looking amazed. “You look handsome. That’s my boy.”

“Thank you, father!” Cale beams, and the Duke visibly boils over from joy. If there is anything that remains constant in any world, it’s the effectiveness of aegyo .

Maybe too effective , Cale thinks, fingering his newly cut bangs. Where before his hair was just straight, now the front had been cut to resemble his hair from his adult body more. That lady refused to cut it at the back and make the whole thing short, declaring such an action “a crime against humanity”, whatever that was supposed to mean. As if that wasn’t enough, she insisted on braiding two locks of hair from the side of his head, tying them at the back with a nondescript black ribbon, in an altogether too attention-catching hairstyle. Merely walking to the dining room proved to be like a banquet at Alberu’s palace, with people coming up to him praising his mere existence, commenting on his hair with (unwarranted, in his clinical opinion) jubilance.

All he had wanted was to cut off a couple of strands. Just how did he get here?

He sighs.

“What’s wrong, son?” Duke Robaine asks immediately, peering at him with concern. He even sets his cutlery down. The weight of his full attention settles over him, scanning him like a spectrometer.

Cale’s mind races for an excuse. “Just thinking about my tutor,” is the one he lands on, unfortunately.

“It’s very good of you to think about your education so seriously,” the Duke praises, lifting his fork to his mouth. Cale is getting tired of being treated like a child. “But no need to worry. I’ve already arranged for the best ones in the Empire to come to the estate every day except Sunday. Duke Alpheus also recommended a swordsmanship teacher, since Ijekiel told him you professed an interest in it. You will both be learning.”

Cale imagines himself swinging around a heavy sword in the blazing heat, listening to Ijekiel for hours on end whilst a beefy man in armour screams commands at them. He despairs. “Together?”

“No, the Alpheus mansion is too far away, and teleportation scrolls are too hard to make. You will only be together under the same instructor every Wednesday. Or at least, until Ijekiel goes to the Academy.”

Thank fuck. “Thank you, father.”

Duke Robaine nods at him with a genial grin reminiscent of Duke Deruth, lifting his glass of wine in acknowledgement. Cale watches him drink it with envy before downing his orange juice like a shot.

He swallows it, and with it his tears for his gruelling future.

Cale Henituse loves sleep, and sleep loves him. They’ve got a mutualism type of symbiotic relationship, since he likes to think that the more one sleeps, the less time they actually have to feel and think things.

And so, for someone so utterly head over heels with the idea of shutting his brain off for hours on end, the fact that he hasn’t been able to sleep properly for a year now is a travesty beyond comprehension. 

A part of him did expect it —even as Kim Rok Soo, there had been many days where he missed out on sleep, both out of necessity for survival but also because of the recollections playing inside his head at the slightest provocation. He would never forgive himself if he ever forgot them, so he just resigned himself to tiredly watching montages full of echoing memories that stabbed at him as much as they soothed, night after night.

As Cale Henituse, it had gotten a lot better, he will readily admit. The battlefield was still a place more familiar to him than his own bed, but the fighting wore him down enough to knock him out  immediately after spreading his skinny sack of bones over the sheets. Plus, he had the children. They are all light sleepers, so they’d know instantly if he was awake —and probably raise a ruckus about it. 

He wouldn’t put it past Eruhaben-nim to just magic him unconscious. Or Ron, to give him a concussion that would put him in a coma, out of commission, for at least a week.

In his baby body when he had been stranded in this stupid fucking dimension, his brain and worries had probably been incapable of overriding his body’s baser instincts and need for rest. And then he hit two years of age and his history of insomnia followed him back like a persistent dog nipping at his heels. Because, of course, he can’t have his Ancient Powers, but he can certainly have chronic apnoea, graciously granted for the low price of zero.

He loves freebies, but they can have this one back; it’s the one instance where he’s open to being robbed. 

Why doesn’t he go to the Duke to do something about it? Get medication? 

No. Cale doesn’t want to think about the combined maelstrom of panic and anxiousness that will sweep over the mansion if he tells them, “ oh, and by the way, I haven’t been able to sleep for two years now, hope you don’t mind my frequent daytime napping ”.

If his nanny gets as worked up about a fucking haircut as she did today, Cale dreads to see her response to that .

Or, even worse… Felix .

No, he just has to tolerate it. Maybe in the future he’ll find some sort of spell to cure his condition —but for now, he is under his blankets with a magic orb illuminating his singed sock where it sits atop the opened Fundamentals of Magic .

His eyes turn icy as he scans the page.

Recorder , echoes the Dragon Lord’s voice, rippling throughout his mind. He shakes his head to wave it off, a sharp cutting movement as if slashing the memory apart, and the orb glows brighter briefly in response before settling down again. 

Right now, he doesn’t need the past, but the present.

It is advantageous for magicians to consider magic as ingredients to a recipe. If written spells are the entire recipe, then reading them out loud to direct the magicians’ thoughts and concentration, directly to their magic and intention, is a more straightforward, easy way of spellcasting. That is why young magicians first learn to cast by reading written spells.

“Straightforward and easy” are quite possibly some of Cale’s favourite words of all time. What’s stopping him from just memorising spells to recite instead of going to the trouble of learning magic wordlessly?

However, at its core, magic is also arbitrary. Since not all of the recipes we’ve discovered work for every purpose, the mana then has to be shaped to fit a magician’s specific intentions under very specific conditions. For example, what if one wanted to simply set something on fire without burning it? 

Cale’s eyes briefly went to his sock.

The list of conditions would make the spell too long and inconvenient to recite. Predating the Magician of the Tower, his instructor (male, unnamed) hit that block early in his studies on magic, and discovered a set of methods of spellcasting that bypass this issue, known as the Lucacian Set . One of the most well-used methods in the Set is the shortcut method , wherein magicians shorten complex spells into a short, sharp phrase consisting only of the key words. If a magician wanted to ignite something without destroying it, as mentioned above, they would use the shortcut method to recite “nonnocebit ignis” which roughly translates to “harmless fire”.

If spells are the recipes helping direct the thoughts of the magicians to help them shape their mana according to their intention, then theoretically this can be done in any language. Why they force young magicians to learn Latin is beyond the scope of Cale’s understanding. Maybe the active process of translating words from their mother tongue to latin helps them be more focused on the spellcasting process? But even so, it seems like a useless way of overcomplicating a rather simple thing.

The shortcut method is recommended for people that are easily distracted or have trouble with regulating emotions, although other people use it because of its ease of use. Despite the low difficulty, however, it has proven to be a crutch for magicians, who often become dependent purely on this method due to ingrained practice habits. Ultimately, it can only be concluded that being introduced to and learning a wide variety of methods from the Set is the best approach for a young magician.

Because of course it isn’t that simple —learning a “wide variety of methods” will be such a massive pain in the ass.

Another method is the standard casting method of the Tower: using nothing other than intention. This method works for magicians who have advanced their abilities and are capable of using concentration and intent to guide the mana into their desired form —however, more complex spells have been known to malfunction using it. The Magician of the Tower and some of the de Alger Obelians somehow bypass this problem, and there has yet to be a documented instance of their wordless spells not working as intended.

This Magician of the Tower fellow seems to have a lot of magicians’ respect, including the authors of this book. Cale just hopes he’s still alive —he’s too valuable a resource to go unused. He’ll know a lot about dimension hopping. But if there’s anything else he notices, it’s that the royal line of Obelia seems to be chock-full of magical talent… because immense magical power and immense political power make such a great mix.

Cale, frustrated, shuts the stupid book.

He’ll have to practice the intention method —judging by the rest of the chapter, it’s the most difficult but versatile one available.

Just let me go home, he screams internally at the God of Death, slamming his face onto his blessedly cool pillow.

Chapter Text

Time crawls by, and spring arrives in a shock of colour and blooming flowers. The weather warms, and whenever Cale goes missing now everyone in the mansion knows to look for him lounging over sunbeams while hugging a pillow. He pities Duke Robaine for having such a shamelessly lazy son, but not so much to stop —it’s not like he’s actually leaving the mansion, anyway. He doesn’t even go to the gardens unless he has sword practice.

And that is because this blasted body has pollen allergies.

The flower gardens are in the south side of the mansion so whenever he has to walk through the corridors there and the windows are open, his nose starts running and itching and his face becomes a mess, eyes turning the same red as his hair. He probably looks considerably ugly, but that is not the only problem.

The problem is the constant sneezing.

As if luck hasn’t wrestled him to the ground and thrashed his sorry hide already, his sneezes select the most inconvenient moments imaginable to make themselves known.

Yesterday his instructor nearly lopped his head off by accident when Cale lowered his guard to sneeze at his face. Ijekiel laughed himself hoarse and nearly brained himself on the wooden sword he used to help his shaky legs stand. To add insult to injury, his instructor’s only response to the whole mess was a twitch of his handlebar moustache, too professional to cackle unrestrained, and yet too friendly to sternly command them to concentrate. Cale would’ve preferred one or the other, because Ijekiel had taken one look at the man, interpreted his expression as permission to continue wheezing pathetically on the floor, and proceeded to do just that.

For at least ten whole minutes.

The session had ended prematurely that day, and Cale would’ve been grateful for it, if Ijekiel hadn’t used the spare time to grill him about going to the Academy. Well, he’s too polite to “grill” him, per se —more like “gently insist”.

“I’m leaving for the Academy next year. Raziel, won’t you come, too?”

Cale wouldn’t give a shit about it if he screamed and cried to get him to come along, but gentle insistence is harder to ignore. Especially because looking at Ijekiel still reminds him of On, and he’s never denied her anything, nor wanted to. Even his quiet yet self-assured air is similar to hers.

So, squeezing out the words, “I’m sorry, Ijekiel, but I won’t be going”, took considerable trepidation and willpower —looking at the dejected expression on his face had been even worse.

“Then,” Ijekiel had said quietly, “can I write you letters? Will you respond?”

“...Yes.”

It’s a relief that’s over now. Cale has managed to put it out of his mind in pursuit of the perfect sunny spot in the estate. It has to be hidden, comfortably dim save for the beam of sunshine, preferably not dusty and dirty, and not frequented by the family or the staff. 

Which means that Cale ended up in the attic. The door was locked, but that’s nothing a bit of spell-casting couldn’t fix, and since no one would think to look in here for him, he gets hours of peace and quiet. After the third time he disappeared, his nanny just assumes he wants to play hide and seek so she leaves him alone until two hours have passed, then sends some knights out.

It’s a good thing no one uses the attic, because Cale has transformed it into a den of laziness and magic experiments. His burned sock lies on a wooden table just beneath the single window, and dozens of books on magic have been placed in the bookshelves next to the door. He managed to make copies of them so that nobody thinks a thief was in the library or something. He doubts it’s something most people can do, but Record makes it effortlessly easy to copy each and every page.

With every advanced spell he has no issue casting, his worry grows. He’d rather be mediocre and live in peace, than be some kind of genius magician. Somehow he gets embroiled in troublesome situations even when he doesn’t seek them out —he dreads to see how magic will wreak greater havoc in his life.

Apparently, he still has his Ancient Powers in his soul. However, they are blocked to an extent, and it’s either the God of Death’s fault, or the transmigration itself. His hair managed to grow back to the length it used to be in the span of a week, to his nanny’s annoyance. To avoid weekly hair-cutting appointments and to restrict interaction with the over-excitable woman, he’s managed to find a way to manipulate his hair length, so now he’s left to style his own damn hair and it only takes a thought.

Fine, yes, magic is convenient. He’d already known that. Maybe he doesn’t hate it as much as he pretends to, either.

The sun gets obscured by clouds, and suddenly the beam of warmth he’d been bathing in leaves him bereft. Sighing, he drags his spine into a standing position and stretches. His feet carry him to the table, where a bunch of bracelets sit in various stages of disrepair. 

He’s trying to imbue them with protection magic so that he can give one to the Princess and rest a little easier at night. If her father suddenly goes berserk and feels particularly urged to kill his own child for some deranged reason, at least the bracelet might buy her time to escape.

Preferably, it would teleport her to his attic, but teleportation sequences are tricky to execute with an object. It might get triggered by the wrong thing and land her somewhere unpredictable. Like a mountain. 

The last thing he wants is to have to go Princess Hunting around the continent.

If he anchors the sequence to her emotive state, then excessive fear would be the best trigger. However, the trouble then becomes how much fear is excessive. She’s probably already scared out of her wits just seeing the Emperor —at what point does it become true life-or-death fear?

Not to mention, the Robaine Estate has the typical wards against unauthorised teleportation. Somehow he’s going to have to either bend the wards around the attic, or make the Princess an exception.

This is why he needs a more experienced magician. He’s just going by intuition, trying to make up for the formal magic education he does not have with sheer foresight and imagination. It’s like computer coding with higher stakes, because if the codes are wrong they blow up violently.

How would he even test the bracelets? Wear one and get someone to terrify him? Ron and Beacrox aren’t here. He can’t think of anyone else who would be effective. Plus, he has a means to protect himself now, so it’ll be significantly harder since, given the choice, he prefers to destroy with overwhelming strength instead of running away.

Cale takes a new bracelet from a box and clasps it in two hands, his brows furrowed. Golden light spills from between his fingers, and he opens his hands slowly. 

The bracelet’s purple braided strap is hardly visible through the glare of the magic circle. Cale squints, trying to verify the symbol at the centre —a triangle. Good. Triangles are good for stability. The first time he tried, it had been a circle, and it had immediately collapsed the moment he tried to add more things to the magic. His eyebrows had nearly burnt off.

He breathes, feeling the magic in the bracelet through the magic circle, trying to calibrate it and give it a purpose —the Korean word for ‘trigger’. Terror, accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of wanting to escape . It blooms in the space around the edge of the circle, gradually filling it up. Korean for ‘teleport’. He sets the first coordinates as the bracelet’s location, the origin. The second, to the attic. There is no more room in the outer ring of the circle.

Cale grits his teeth as the circle, overloaded, begins to shake erratically and the symbols begin to deteriorate and blur. The triangle in the center pulses, then crumples into itself, magic disintegrating into shards until he’s holding a perfectly normal, perfectly useless bracelet yet again.

“Fuck.”

Frustrated, Cale picks up the book about imbuement, lying open on the other side of the table, and reads through it again. Nothing. He flips to the Authors’ Afterword in desperation.

It should be noted that this book is only a very simplified overview of the field of imbuement. The directions outlined here will only work for simple spell-casting, such as rudimentary shields or glow-in-the-dark properties. More complex spells would require the use of multiple extended, layered magic circles, since the overly detailed specifications will overload the one circle and make the magic unstable.

Cale wants to cry. Just why would they mention something so vital in an Authors’ Afterword that nobody tends to read?

The loud clanking of armour in the gardens rudely interrupts his pity party. His two hours of solitude are up.

He drags himself down the trapdoor, locking it behind him with a wave of his hand. Dropping onto plush, crimson carpet and into a significantly brighter corridor nearly blinds him.

Even worse, an all-too familiar itchiness crawls up his nose, ears and neck.

No .

His nose twitches.

A fucking window in the corridor is fucking open.

Cale sneezes.

“He’s just around the corner!” A faint voice yells immediately. “Find him!”

Cale wants to go home .

Felix is back. As usual, he’s playing chess with the Duke, occasionally throwing him proud glances where he’s sitting in the corner, pretending to be interested in a book on etiquette that he’d already read a week ago.

There’s a benefit to it —he’s free to eavesdrop on their “grown-up” conversation.

“How was the Emperor?” The Duke asks, as if he really wants to know. As if the answer will be different.

“He’s… well, the same as always.” Felix gives the customary response, but smirks as he takes the Duke’s horse. “I prevented a murder today at court,” he adds. His tone is distinctly proud and self-satisfied, and Cale feels an ocean of pity.

“Whose?”

“Lord Leopold.”

“Ah.”

Cale thinks back. The House of Leopold is part of the faction that is against the Emperor. Something about a revolution and how Claude’s name should’ve made him unqualified to inherit the throne. Personally, as someone who used to be a military commander and one letter away from being named after a vegetable, he doesn’t understand.

“I wonder why he never gives up. Does he think the outcome will be different?”

Felix turns his head, throwing a nervous glance in his direction.

Cale turns the page unflappably, eyes glued onto a diagrammatic guide of fan language.

“His Majesty broke his arm,” Felix whispers. Cale hides the glow of his eyes with the book as he strains to listen. “He said that if Leopold didn’t want to use his hand and sign the bill to approve the aristocratic tax, he has no further need of it.”

Scary .

“Lord Leopold had to stay in the meeting holding his broken limb?” The Duke whispers back disbelievingly.

Felix nods. “He couldn’t even scream.”

The Duke makes a grimace mildly impressive in its expression of discomfort. “Let’s stop talking about this with Raziel here. He might hear us.”

You have no idea, Duke.

“No, he didn’t,” Felix assures, “I was very quiet.”

Cale suppresses a smirk.

“Speaking of, don’t you think Raziel has been down lately?” The Duke mutters and Cale’s smirk teeters and falls off his face.

“Raziel,” Felix calls, and Cale quickly terminates the magic to lift his head and look at him questioningly. His brother’s eyes are full of concern. “Do you want to play with me? Father is no match for me and we already know who will end up the winner.”

The Duke mutters something not very flattering about his son under his breath, but stands up in defeat. He picks Cale up, gently taking the book from him, and deposits him in his vacated seat. “Do you know how to play, Raziel? I can teach you the basics.”

“I know how to play,” he mumbles. “But I want to read.”

“Come now, don’t be like that,” Felix chuckles, resetting the board. “Are you afraid you’ll lose?”

It’s an immature provocation, made to bait a child. Cale sighs, but doesn’t protest.

Felix hums happily. Are you that happy about this? “You can be the white side, my dear brother.”

The match starts in earnest.

And Felix gradually loses his smile.

“How? How is this possible?”

Felix’s king is utterly surrounded. Cale still has his queen, a bishop, and his towers. In fact, most of his pieces are still intact. He’s lost both of his horses and some pawns but that’s immaterial —in chess, it is impossible to go without losing something.

The Duke has lost all dignity. Loud cackles escape from his mouth and he looks like he’s about to fall off his chair.

Cale just sits there and tries not to fall asleep.

Apparently, participating in the chess match did not reassure his brother and father that he is perfectly well and happy. They asked his nanny if there was anything concerning, and she said something about “missing Ijekiel” (probably because his failure with the bracelets began on Wednesday after their lessons) so Felix got it into his head that he needs interaction with children around his age.

Shortly put, he’s smuggling him into the Ruby Palace again.

Cale thinks that he’s just using this convenient excuse to see Miss Lillian Yorke again, but he lets Felix think he’s got the upper hand. It’s pathetic in the same way watching an overturned bug struggle to flip itself over is pathetic.

Unfortunately, his well-meaning brother chooses a shortcut through the beautiful Palace gardens to get to the Princess faster, so Cale spends the entire walk nearly suffocating as he hides his face in Felix’s chest.

Fucking hay fever.

Felix thinks he’s just shy and is having a lovely time screaming over his cuteness or whatever the fuck —but Cale is fighting for his life here.

The moment they cross the threshold and duck through the door, his body unwinds in relief like some kind of caterpillar. Cale can’t believe he’s been reduced to this. Thankfully, it seems this time Felix actually informed Lady Yorke ahead of time, so she’s waiting for them in the corridor. Let’s get this over with, please .

“Good afternoon, Sir Robaine,” she says quietly, sinking into a graceful curtsey. When she rises, she stretches out a hand toward him. “Hello, Young Master Raziel.” Her tone is considerably more excited and warm when she says his name, and Cale would’ve shot his brother a pitying look if he wasn’t busy smiling at her, trying to mumble a hello through a congested nose. 

“I see you can talk now?” Miss Lillian smiles, looking amazed. “That’s impressive, Young Master.”

Ugh, young master this, young master that . She reminds him of Ron like that. “Raziel,” Cale corrects, ruffled. 

“That’s not proper, young master.”

Cale doesn’t budge. “ Raziel .”

She huffs a laugh at his trashy obstinacy. “Raziel, then. Do you want to see the Princess? I think she’s been asking for you.”

Of course she has. Is baba-boo-boo my name?

Apparently, Felix is equally sceptical. “She has?”

Lilly smiles. “She’s been trying to say your name, Sir Robaine. When I ask her if she means you, she shakes her head and gets frustrated.”

Felix chuckles. “Let’s give her a nice surprise, then.”

What am I, a birthday gift?

Apparently so, because the moment Felix steps away to reveal him standing there, the Princess immediately gets up in her crib and starts yelling. She’s holding some kind of rattle and is shaking it so quickly and with such force that Cale starts fearing she’s going to throw it at him.

He thinks the tone of her voice is bright and joyful, but the rattle is distinctly threatening. This results in some fascinating mixed signals that merely make him want to be back home.

Sighing, he approaches the crib and leaves the adults to their obnoxious come-hither-no-I-shan’t glance exchange. The Princess grins at him from beyond the bars.

“Hello, Princess Athanasia,” he says, the Korean flowing fluently out of his mouth. It’s a relief to speak it, actually —it’s been too long. “Have you learned to speak yet? We need to talk.”

“No!” She exclaims. 

“Is that the only word you know how to say?”

“No!”

Cale sighs, massaging his temples where a migraine is already beginning to pulse. “What about ‘yes’?”

“Yes!”

At least that’s something . “Have you met your father yet?”

A bit of the joy in her eyes evaporates, replaced by pure contempt; the effect is somewhat ruined by the giant pink bonnet on her head. “No.”

Cale raises his eyebrows. “You don’t like him?”

The next “no” is significantly firmer than any other she’s uttered. It has all the steely undertones of an army general being asked to accept defeat. This time, even the bonnet doesn’t diminish it.

Cale thinks about it. She has transmigrated, but she hasn’t met her father, and yet knows enough about him to still dislike him.

“Is it because he abandoned you here and hasn’t come to see you?”

She hesitates, but he can’t tell if it’s because she’s sentimental about it, or because there’s more to it. The more she thinks about it, though, the more she slumps depressingly.

Cale lays a careful hand on her bonnet. “Don’t force yourself. It’s not urgent at the moment.”

She looks like she’s strongly disagreeing. For the tenth time, a sigh gets released from the confines of his chest. “Enough. Just live as you want for now and grow up healthy.”

Athanasia’s eyes glisten ( fuck, not again, why ), but she presses her hands over them as if she’s angry at herself for it. 

Cale stares at her silently.

He walks to Miss Yorke and tugs at her skirt, interrupting her conversation with no regrets. “Lilly, Lilly.” 

She kneels down, her blue eyes unbearably gentle. “What is it, Raziel?”

“Can the Princess get down from there?”

“Of course she can.” Slowly, so slowly that he can reject the touch, she takes his hand and walks with him to the crib again. Cale stares at their hands. 

He had no issue shaking off his nanny’s physical affection back in the estate, but Miss Lillian gives him the same respect as an adult in terms of boundaries. He lets her hold it.

Soon, the Princess is placed on the ground. Immediately and over the sound of Miss Lillian’s panic, she tries standing up and, wobbling, runs directly to him like some vassal of horror. With a pink bonnet. Cale wants to sidestep her and never come here again, but he catches her instead, cursing his circumstances.

“What?” Cale mumbles. “Do you want to fall asleep on me again? Don’t.” He smoothly ignores the fact that last time it had been his fault. Trash will be trash.

“Yes, I will!” She insists, making herself comfortable again.

Ho, look at this brat ?

She glares a hole into his face. “Raz is tired!” She claims, then points at beneath his eyes. “Bags.”

Cale purses his lips, irked.

“Lilly, lullaby for Raz!”

Wow, two years old and already ordering people around. They grow up so fast , Cale thinks sarcastically.

But, this is still a good opportunity. Maybe he could get some sleep (their visit to the Palace intruded on his usual afternoon nap) and Felix could continue his clumsy, awkward attempts to court a girl he doesn’t even know he likes yet.

He snaps his fingers, and knocks himself out.

Later, once Miss Lillian has unstuck the toddler sleeping on his legs and Felix has picked him up, Cale awakens as his brother’s walking to the shady back entrance of the Palace.

“Ah, my goodness. You and the Princess will be the death of me. So cute.”

How many times are you going to say the same garbage?

“Still, it’s getting late,” Felix mutters, looking around worriedly. “Around this time, His Majesty’s meeting with the aristocrats is over.”

Cale freezes. You mean that horrid piece of shit is roaming around the Palace?

He looks around, paranoid. There’s nothing except for the palace’s decorated walls, the empty walking pavement they’re following and the immaculately trimmed bushes to the left. And then Felix stiffens.

Cale immediately spots the golden shine of the Emperor’s head over Felix’s shoulder. 

Felix, you dunce, Cale thinks as Felix does a one-eighty and immediately backs away. This rushed escape will just make you look more suspicious .

It should be impossible, because how would he even know , but Claude starts turning in their direction .

Their eyes meet, jewelled blue boring into reddish-brown, just as a gust of wind flows over the flower gardens. Another sneeze is itched out of Cale.

By the time he opens his eyes again, in a state of shock, Felix has already carried him away.

Chapter Text

Cale fixes his blank stare to a loose thread on his brother’s hooded cape. “Felix.” 

“Yeah, Raziel?” The reply comes out, softer than a feather. More of a breath than words. 

Cale takes the hint. “I saw the Emperor,” he mutters in his ear, trying his hardest not to end up with his nose inside it, the way his brother’s running and jostling him about.

He narrowly avoids running into a branch, but Cale isn’t so lucky and gets a faceful of leaves. As he sputters and tries not to swear, Felix finally deigns to respond. “Is that right? What did you think of him?”

“Felix,” Cale repeats after spitting them out, “the Emperor saw me, too.”

Felix’s steps falter, and Cale’s head drops like a stone and hits a hard shoulder. The impact worsens his budding headache, his itchy nose and neck and ears, and suddenly everything is too hot, the scents too overwhelming, the colours too messy and vibrant and impossible to find names for and his clothes are too free of cat hair for his liking.

“Stop. Felix, stop, now .”

Felix Robaine might not have spent a lot of time with his mother, but Raziel had spent even less. She only had enough time to give birth to him, to cradle him in her arms, to name him. Much like Diana, she had not been granted enough time to see him grow up —wasn’t there for the first steps, or the first words ( Jophiel Damper, age thirty-five — he still refuses to think about that one). Ironically, Emperor Claude was more her son than either of them in that regard.

He’s thought to himself sometimes —the greatest gift his mother had given him had not been his handkerchief, affection sewn into every stitch of the threaded outline of his name. It had been a tiny baby with a shock of burgundy hair, uncannily quiet but with the sharp eyes of a fox. He'd been adorable, yes. But there had been something else about him that drew you in, like the nexus of a summoning charm. You could sense how thoughts were darting like quicksilver in that small mind, and had the idea that it’d be better to listen when Raziel saw fit to give voice to them.

Felix would listen to his little brother either way, would turn whatever words Raziel gave him over and over in his mind to cherish forever, but this is different.

“Stop. Felix, stop, now .” 

Cold, utterly untouchable. Calm. Instinctively, Felix freezes. It’s like he’s young again, standing next to a newly enthroned Claude and awaiting orders.

Fallen leaves whisper across the cobbled path, the only noise for a beat— they’re already at the back of the palace now. He lifts his head, adjusting the hold around his brother to look at him squarely in the face.

Raziel has one hand up to his forehead, buried in his fringe. If Felix hadn’t been looking for it, he’d have missed the slight tremor. He’d have missed how the white ring around his brother’s iris flickered with light, like a hurriedly stifled flame.

Raziel closes his eyes, and as he opens them again his face is donned with a very typical disgruntled expression. So typical, in fact, that Felix can only see it as an exceptional, impressively near-perfect poker face.

“He already saw us,” his brother says. “It wouldn’t have been a big deal if you slowly backed away, but there’s no point in running. He’s probably had the gates closed already because you’ve made him curious.”

“Then, what do you think we should do, Raziel?” Felix asks. “I don’t want him to meet you. He’s not exactly, um—” how to put this delicately? “—father material.”

He watches with a rapt gaze as the child in his arms shrugs, yawns, and slumps back onto his chest. “ You can go back and explain. I will wait with Lilly and sleep. Goodnight and good luck.”

His jaw falls to the floor, but it’s too late. Once again, he’s holding an unresponsive toddler in the middle of the palace grounds. For a moment, he has a wild thought: what would anyone think if they walked in on this — that he’s in the process of kidnapping his own brother?

“It’s not even night!” He blurts out indignantly, good sense returning to him. “Raziel!”

What the heck. He’s never met anyone who likes to sleep so much, anywhere and at any time—  oh, wait . Felix is abruptly reminded of the Emperor’s resting area just behind the throne room.

A dangerous idea starts brewing in his mind.

“You know what, fine,” Felix huffs, some cheer returning life to his limbs as he turns back around. “Since you two have so much in common, you might actually like each other. Let’s get you to meet the Emperor, dearest brother—”

“—No!” 

Raziel immediately shoots upright, face ashen. He really seems to hate meeting new people; even when he met Ijekiel, he’d been reluctant. “Let’s not bother him,” Raziel blurts out. “Didn’t you say he’d wonder why you brought me along? Not to mention you ran away from him.”

Felix is undeterred. “I can just tell him I was sceptical about him meeting you,” he replies brightly, devising the entire plan as he walks and liking it better with every passing minute. “Surprisingly, I can be honest in implying his nurturing ability is sh—um, I mean, close to zero, as long as I’m not too insolent about it. He might grumble a little bit though.”

Raziel still looks put-out. It’s kind of funny. He scoffs at a record full of gruesome crimes, but seeing the Emperor, who he knows nothing about (he’s been very careful not to talk about Claude’s various… shortcomings… with Raziel within earshot) and he immediately seeks an escape.

Still… he hates seeing fear in his brother’s eyes, whether baseless or otherwise. “Raziel,” he calls gently, “you don’t honestly think he’ll hurt you, right? First off, he wouldn’t get the chance —  I wouldn’t let him.”

Those cinnamon eyes flick from a straying bee to his face, examining him with unnerving focus. Immediately, Felix feels like he’s being unwrapped, layer by layer, everything gritty and dark exposed under an omniscient gaze. 

“Then,” Raziel asks him, “why is the Princess in danger? Haven’t you been there to protect her from the start, since you were in the palace?”

Felix feels faint. It idly occurs to him, just then, that truth cuts deeper than vitriol ever could — in the same beat, he realises how much his brother’s truly understood. He’d been given the barest clues, yet guessed at the Ruby Palace massacre with alarming accuracy; it had been stupid to think he wouldn’t have merely based on his age. He and Father have known for a while now how… unrealistically shrewd Raziel can be.

He’s managed to get to the heart of what eats him up at night, when it’s as dark in the sky as it is in his mind. Felix hopes he’s never gotten on his brother’s bad side.

“Raz. When the Princess was just a baby, the Emperor was… not in his right mind.” He struggles to explain the full extent of his friend’s heartbreak and his breakdown. Sometimes even he is amazed at how different and happy he used to be, next to Diana — and at what Claude’s world has been reduced to now, mere dull grey scraps.  “He’d lost someone very important to him. Any interference, including my own, would have only led to more fighting.”

Raziel seems like he understands, even if his eyebrows and mouth are set in a distinctly irritated expression, reminiscent of a sulking cat. Felix wants to gush over this tiny child to the whole world —wants to scream that he’s the cleverest and most lovable person in it. He’s giving him a hard time right now with this line of questioning, but Felix loves that about him too. 

“I wonder who you got your taciturnity from,” Felix mutters, running a hand through his brother’s hair and clutching him against his chest more tightly. Precious. So precious, this body of flesh and bone. “Father and I talk quite a bit, you can’t have got it from us.” 

Raziel rolls his eyes. “Does it matter?” He crosses his arms, furrowing his nose cutely (it actually looks quite irritated, though it’s probably just the anger). 

“Now, let’s just go home — we’re done here, right?”

“No, we can’t,” Felix denies, giving him an apologetic smile. It is unfortunately met with an increasingly more vexed quirk of his lips, instead of the intended pacifying effect. “If we just leave like this, he’ll interrogate me tomorrow and ask me to bring you in. He’s more paranoid than Duke Alpheus during his Academy days.”

“Fine. Let’s get on with it, then.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Nothing is going Cale’s way today. If it were up to him, he’d still be napping in his attic, enjoying his off day. No swords, no books he has to pretend to read at a snail’s pace, and most importantly, no Emperor.

But there really is no getting around this — Cale knows he’d meet Claude face to face one way or the other, if he keeps hanging around his daughter. The only question had been when, where, and how hostile. Meeting him now isn’t too bad; he’s got a reliable shield in Felix, and he’s young enough that any mistakes and impropriety can be met with leniency, to an extent. The Emperor might be a son of a bitch, but even he would hesitate to hurt children. According to the Constitution of Obelia — which he read the same day his tutor handed it to him, in the span of ten minutes— he spearheaded near iron-clad legislation to prevent and punish child abuse, so he did care about children.

Except for his own daughter, apparently. According to his own damn law, Claude should be rotting in prison right now. Cale will never understand —treating any child, much less his own, like trash? Neglecting them? His entire family back home would cry for blood.

Choi Han would give him a sound beating, then generously hand him over to Beacrox, who’d string Claude’s innards up like a party garland.

The mental image is vicious enough to make him shiver, but for some reason his mouth curls up in a smile before he has the chance to quench it.

Felix rushes through resplendent corridors, his boots thudding on spotless white marble. The main palace seems bare, the walls lacking in portraits and floors in carpets. It’s a stark contrast to the Ruby Palace or the Robaine Estate.

Finally, they end up before a set of wide gold leaf doors towering over them, and Felix sets him down. 

“Wait here, I’ll go in first,” he whispers to him with a smile. “Try not to be loud.”

Cale fixes him with an incredulous look. When have I ever been loud in the two years you’ve known me? At least, Felix has the grace to apologetically clear his throat and shrug before he pushes open the doors and ducks inside; there’s a loud, resounding thud as they close behind him. 

Cale debates whether he could risk it. He’s gotten quite good at eavesdropping spells. The only problem is, the throne room certainly has wards against them, including mechanisms for the detection of their use.

The anti-eavesdropping spell can probably be bypassed. It only works for magic circles that have been recorded in it and could be recognised, so while they’re probably effective against every known language in this world, Cale uses Korean for his circles and they will slip straight through. The detection spell is trickier, because they are usually designed to sense the intent behind the spell rather than the magic itself.

He could use any unknown language, but if he casts something with the intent to eavesdrop, he’ll immediately be found out. Intent-based detection spells can’t really be overcome unless he manages to tweak their magic circles and cause a malfunction — something that’s only possible if he’s a stronger magician than the caster in everything, from magic capacity to energy efficiency.

How does he know all this? Well, Cale hopes nobody looks too closely at the warding of the spare study in the estate — it is a victim to his first investigative attempts.

Without looking at the magicians of the Tower and getting a sense of their abilities, Cale will not risk betting on being the stronger mage. He values his life, thank you.

So he sits quietly, and waits.

The door cracks open, and Felix pops his head out to nervously beckon him in.

Cale takes a private moment to release a sigh, then steps forward. Already, he feels his tongue’s long-practiced skill of kissing up to blond, blue-eyed royalty come back to life.

“Blessings and glory to Obelia’s Sun,” he says succinctly, bending at the waist. “I greet Your Majesty.”

He feels more than sees the icy eyes resting with razor-sharp intensity on the crown of his head, but sticks his expression of polite disinterest more firmly over his face.

“You may rise,” a disinterested yet dangerous drawl of a voice. Like a hungry tiger who’s trying to decide if his skinny sack of flesh would satiate him.

No, Emperor, it will not. Just let me go home and you can go back to terrorising maids and aristocrats, or whatever else you do in your spare time.

Withholding another sigh, Cale straightens and finally has the opportunity to look at the man properly. Unfortunately, he’s handsome —maybe on par with Eruhaben-nim, though it’s a near thing. He’s sprawled over that throne and wearing a… bathrobe? Ah, no. A toga. He looks like something out of an Ancient Egyptian or Ancient Greek sculpture. Are Emperors allowed to parade around half-naked?

He has no time to ponder on the tyrant’s dressing choices, sadly. “Get over here and stand in front me,” Claude commands, interlocking his fingers together and letting them hang between his legs as he leans forward.

Cale casually approaches the dais. He can sense Felix’s concerned gaze making a hole at the back of his head, but there’s nothing he can do about this. It’s not like Claude has threatened to kill him.

Yet.

He stops five feet away from the royal on the throne, and pretends he doesn’t see and isn’t bothered by how Emperor Claude scans him from head to toe, as if he wants to find one flaw for him to pick apart and leave him crying.

“He’s got your stupid hair,” the Emperor finally says, looking down at Felix. “Why did you bring this brat to the palace?”

Felix averts his eyes. “He… um… I, well — I wanted to, you know, show him where I work and all…”

Claude quirks an eyebrow and smirks. Cale wants to smack that stupid brother of his. Protect me, my ass. You’re shaking more than I am.

“Your Majesty, I’m sorry,” he cuts in, and once he has his heavy attention he bows again. “I was curious to see where Felix goes when he’s not home. I won’t be back.”

Claude waves a dismissive hand, his gold-embroidered turquoise sleeve gently flowing through the air. It gives the impression of effortless elegance, which Cale would admire in anyone other than this guy. “Just leave. Felix, get back to the estate and take this brat with you. You know I hate children running around in my palace.”

“But, Your Majesty! Raziel is not just any child!”

Felix, shut the fuck up.

“He looks like one to me. Don’t overstep, Felix Robaine.”

Felix, to put it delicately, did not give a single flying fuck. “He’s two years old! He can speak and read perfectly! He’s the cleverest person I know. He has the looks of an angel. He beat me in chess!”

It’s one hit after the other on Cale’s fragile psyche. Please, make him stop, someone . 

When he assumed that Felix is the Emperor’s only close confidant and friend, he did not expect this kind of insolence. He just thought Felix would be something like Claude’s non-existent moral compass and self-control.

Apparently though, that last comment about chess warranted special attention, because interest sparked in Claude’s eyes at the mention of it.

“Did he?”

Felix brightens at the Emperor’s curiosity. “I bet he can beat you, too, Your Majesty.”

Cale gasped silently, horrified. “There’s no way I can!” He says, hurriedly performing damage control. “I’m not as good as my brother says.”

“I taught Felix how to play chess,” Claude enunciates, lazily gazing at both of them. “And he says you beat him?”

He wilts, stuck between an overly excitable rock and a frigid hard place. “Yes.”

“Then, let’s see how good you are.” He stands up and struts —that’s the only way Cale can describe his walk— to a side door next to the throne. “I was bored anyway. You, brat, come with me. There’s nothing else to do.”

Felix clears his throat. “Your Majesty, technically speaking there are some matters demanding your atten—” Claude levels him with a steady glare that takes the air out of his brother’s lungs, and whatever he had been about to say petered out. “—tion. Ha, ha. Nevermind.”

Cale fixes his brother with a look of disgust. Felix, you are pathetic. 

Considering the circumstances, it would be most beneficial to Cale to just throw the match. Play and feign a loss. Tha’d probably help him get home as soon as possible and get some shut-eye.

Unfortunately, Emperor Claude laid waste to that plan.

“I sincerely hope, for your sake, that you will not disappoint,” he’d said, pinning him down on his seat with a glare rivalling the White Star in its intensity. The comparison made it slightly easier for Cale to relax.

Worse comes to worst, he has magic. He can just tear apart all anti-transportation wards and run. Hopefully not before slapping the Emperor’s stupid face —and smacking Felix, who hesitantly took his own seat in the corner, looking like a guilty puppy.

He’ll just have to win as fast as possible and finally leave this infernal palace.

They start playing.

That faraway look of incessant boredom and arrogance soon makes way for reluctant interest and sharp concentration. 

“If you value your life,” the Emperor says as his eyes sweep over the battlefield. “You will tell me. Why are you really in the palace?”

Cale wants to raise an eyebrow. This was the reason for the chess match? An opportunity for interrogation? Claude makes a move on his horse with a bishop.

“I’m not lying,” he grins, adding a touch of extra fake patience as garnish. “I really was curious about Felix’s work in the palace.”

And no, he wasn’t lying indeed. He was simply omitting pertinent details, like how Felix’s work in the palace involves attempting to court a maid, and the maid in question being his daughter’s.

He takes Claude’s stupid bishop with a pawn, pretending not to see how he leans closer to the board, absorbed in the game.

“It seems I’m fated to only hear bullshit today,” is the Emperor’s only response at that. A sense of admiration, probably the first and last time he feels it toward this bastard, buds inside Cale at the crass language.

He’s reminded of Jopis, suddenly.

“I despise wasting time,” Claude says abruptly after a beat of silence. A shame you do, since that’s my favourite thing to do. “So I’m asking you directly, and you better answer with all the truthfulness I’m guessing you don’t have.”

He’d only met him for less than an hour and this man has already made some very astute observations about the perilous state of Cale’s adherence to the principle of honesty. To reward him for such impeccable judgement, he takes away his queen —and just to be extra petty, he does it with a pawn.

The killing intent wrapped around Claude very noticeably heightens, but Cale sits and smiles, the picture of innocence.

Besides the obvious, ever-present threat to his life, he finds himself having fun. Maybe he just likes pissing off royalty?

The Emperor narrows his eyes at him. “Did you visit the Ruby Palace?”

Cale ramps up the voltage of his smile a couple of megawatts. “Yes, we did.” It’s useless to lie. There’s guards crawling around everywhere, and the maids at the princess’ palace have already seen them. “I think Felix likes a maid there, so he’s been trying to befriend her. Not sure it’s working, though. Check, by the way.”

(They both ignore the sputtering coming from the corner of the room.)

Everything he’s saying is the truth. And just vague enough to only hint at the possibility of that maid being Lillian Yorke, known for being a pain in this Emperor’s ass.

He weathers Claude’s scrutinising gaze once more. It’s his move, now.

It’s becoming kind of painfully obvious how he’s thinking of Princess Athanasia, and yet stubbornly refuses to ask about her outright. Cale’s eyes curve into crescents. You will never find what you want, he thinks at Claude, unless you acknowledge her existence, you motherfucker .

“Ridiculous,” Emperor Claude snaps. “You lying brat—”

So he’s not going to mention her after all. Cale shrugs to himself.

“Checkmate, Your Majesty.”

The king falls.

Chapter Text

When Claude wakes up, it’s to the sight of his bedroom dipped in the muted blues and murky shadows of nighttime, and the bottles littered on the table glinting. His mind is groggy, trudging from one thought to another like a limping man.

Again. This happened again.

Claude scoffs, sitting up with a rustle of flowing Siodonna robes. The hand pushing his hair out of his face clenches unwittingly, and the sharp pull against his scalp is a welcome pain.

He doesn’t remember anything. A fragment of a voice might have whispered lies to him, inviting him in with empty promises, but it is of no consequence. The dead have no impact upon the living —and, indeed, he doesn’t make a habit of thinking of them at all.

His hand hovers. Slowly, tendrils of toxic purple slink through the air, and Claude directs them into the shape of a familiar magic circle, until it looks like he’s holding a glowing bouquet of chrysanthemums. Ready to be bestowed, as if upon a lover.

He keeps it there, staring at it, for a long while, feeling the phantom, desperate tug that urges him away from the spell; hating every minute of it. Vindication makes him cruel, perhaps self-destructive, but he waves in the malicious magic regardless, welcoming it with open arms.

Claude can feel it crawling through his mind, seeking out the place his memories have nestled in like a festering wound. And when it finally finds it, a sensation like a cooling blanket soothing his heart, he falls back on the couch.

In the stillness of the room, the lid of a liquor bottle topples over, rolling to the edge and tumbling down.

Dull.

“Henceforth, it is important that we find a way to accommodate Arlanta’s requests for assistance without provoking Teeluse—”

Dull, dull, dull, dull.

From the documents on the long conference table, to the nobles sitting at it —everything is tedious. 

“Enough,” he says, and the word flies out like a dagger, slicing apart the droning cacophony of arguing aristocrats. “Alpheus, facilitate the diplomatic proceedings when the event takes place. Teeluse will sit obediently and listen like a dog, or they will be put down like one. Any objections ?”

Apparently, there are a couple. It is none of his business if they are not voiced, and frankly he wouldn’t give a fuck even if they were.

He glares at them, a headache pulsing at his temples. “ Leave .”

They scatter.

He’s lost count of the days and the months, each one passing him by without true awareness. It must be summer, because the heat that settles over him as he steps outside stifles him even in his sheer clothing.

How troublesome.

A wave of his hand and he’s immediately surrounded by a cooling breeze. Another, and he ceases to painstakingly squint at the sun-bathed, vibrant green grass of the gardens. 

Perhaps it’s because he’s already handling magic, but his senses latch onto a different, unfamiliar presence.

It’s small and murky, as if its owner wants to remain hidden —and it sits in the middle of a bigger, decidedly more vexing one.

Felix Robaine.

Claude turns, ready to bark a rebuke about his tardiness. Where has he been the entire day —

His knight is running away, and peeking over his shoulder —a child.

For one crawling, dizzying second, he sees platinum blond hair and jewel-blue eyes, and his fingers twitch at his sides —to do what? To reach out, or to kill? Yes, to kill. To eradicate an eyesore, one last remaining kink in otherwise impenetrable armour.

Except, that hair is all wrong, crimson, like spilt, dried blood, and those widened eyes are the colour of clay. Magic sparks like cinders beneath the child’s skin, violently flinching away from his gaze as if afraid.

Raziel Robaine is in his palace. And his brother is trying to escape from him.

He doesn’t know what Felix is expecting to happen, because a simple wave of his hand and a sharp, cutting command is enough to get the guards scrambling to shut the gates, trapping his escapees indefinitely. He senses that smaller magic imprint jackrabbiting like a heartbeat, even from the opposite side of the palace, before going flat unnaturally quickly.

Raziel Robaine, it appears, has enough of a handle over his magic to be able to get in a magic trance, and the entire Robaine Duchy is none the wiser. 

Unless, perhaps, Felix’s intention in smuggling him into his palace is to take him to the Tower —something he doubts, as it is on the opposite side of the grounds.

An untrained fetus of a magician is running around without a leash. And one that, if he recalls correctly, is younger even than he was when he cast his first spell.

A veritable recipe for disaster.

“I should welcome my guest.”

Claude’s lips curl up imperceptibly, feeling the air around him freeze like icicles as he twists and strides toward his throne room.

Felix Robain shuffles in with all the guilt and discomfort of a sinner entering a confessional. 

Against his better judgement, Claude de Alger Obelia finds this very funny.

“Felix Robaine,” he drawls, the syllables flowing unhurriedly, like he’s savouring every bit of this situation —which he very much is.

His knight apparently finds the opulence of the decorated domed ceiling particularly interesting today. Claude’s eyes flick to the same spot rather tellingly, finding nothing except the eye-searingly coruscating chandelier, which has been there every day, for the past century. Felix clears his throat.

“Do you have pharyngitis?” Claude drawls, hiding his unending amusement under a thin veneer of impatience, watching detachedly as the unfortunate target of his judgement gulps. “I don’t want any paltry excuses. Bring him in. Now.”

Felix looks a bit like a kicked dog when he turns around and lays his hand upon the door handle. He opens it, and Claude spots a flash of dark-red hair and an unimpressed, borderline bored expression before Felix obstructs it. In fact, he imagines that is what he looks like when he attends court meetings. 

The boy should be aware by now that he and his brother are in trouble, unless he’s an idiot. If he’s not scared, then he either lacks awareness, or he possesses some very stupid courage.

The siblings enter, and already the differences between them are as clear as sun and moon. Felix is full of nervous energy, shuffling on his feet, biting his lip, adjusting his cape; Robaine Jr just looks straight ahead, distinctly still.

Felix’s oddly twitching hand betrays his desire to hold onto his brother’s —but the brother in question simply strides toward Claude, stopping a textbook-perfect distance from the throne.

“Blessings and glory to Obelia’s Sun,” he says succinctly, bending at the waist. “I greet Your Majesty.”

Claude moves his head to the side slowly, as if to consider the child in front of him from a different angle. He can find no fault in the greeting. Sycophants would have extended his royal title to kiss up to him and bowed a lot more deeply. His opposition would have bent down as if they had an iron rod instead of a spine. Roger Alpheus would have done everything perfectly, but then you’d look at the conspiring smile playing at his lips and you’d think ah, never mind .

In short, this is what Raziel Robaine’s greeting demonstrated:

I acknowledge you’re in the highest position of authority. Respectfully, I want to be asleep.

It was perfect. Annoyingly, he can’t find a single flaw to critique —but he tries very hard. He’s wearing shorts and suspenders over a simple white button-down, not a single wrinkle to be seen. His bow is on par with any aristocrat. He doesn’t avoid eye contact beyond what is strictly proper. Claude hates etiquette and social niceties to no end, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a useful thing to criticise in other people. He’s the Emperor; there is no such thing as a faux pas for him.

Fortunately, there is always going to be one thing he can use to insult this brat.  

“He’s got your stupid hair,” is the sentence he spits out in the end. Not one of his best barbs, but it will work. In the beat of silence that follows, he examines the child’s face for any reaction.

There is none. Not even his magic gives anything away, contained and drawn tight around his body like snakeskin.

How dull , he thinks, turning away dismissively. Bored, he places his elbow on the hand-rest, propping his head up on his fist. “Why did you bring this brat to the palace?”

Felix averts his eyes. “He… um… I, well — I wanted to, you know, show him where I work and all…”

A lie . Claude quirks an eyebrow, feeling his lips curl into a dark smirk. Either that, or that is not the whole story.

Which means that Felix Robaine, his knight and personal guard, had been doing something he shouldn’t. The thought is off-putting. Whenever he thought about people who would disobey him, Felix had never even crossed his mind.

A human error that should never recur. 

A childish voice melts the frosty atmosphere.

“Your Majesty, I’m sorry.” 

Claude turns his attention back to the boy, staring down at him, feeling his magic bite at that tiny body like the chill of winter air. Again, there is no response, except for a near-imperceptible tremor as he straightens from his bow and meets his gaze solidly. His eyes are calm.

I wonder what it will take to see them redden from tears, to see the light leave them as despair overspills.

“I was curious to see where Felix goes when he’s not home. I won’t be back.”

So infuriatingly calm and measured. Like a perfect, lying little heir.

The amusement he felt at the beginning of this whole debacle grows stale, and Claude waves a dismissive hand and turns his head away. “Just leave. Felix, get back to the estate and take this brat with you. You know I hate children running around in my palace.”

“But, Your Majesty!” Felix yells, affront written out in every part of his body. “Raziel is not just any child!”

Apparently, Claude’s slight against his brother’s virtues and valorous qualities has overwhelmed any common sense. Bothersome . “He looks like one to me. Don’t overstep, Felix Robaine.”

“He’s two years old! He can speak and read perfectly! He’s the cleverest person I know. He has the looks of an angel. He beat me in chess!”

Claude wants to say, if you look inside your empty head, you’ll be able to see how many fucks I give about your brother , but then he reconsiders. This might be a chance to figure out why they were in the palace in the first place. 

There’s a niggling suspicion worming its way inside his mind —after all, if not the Tower, there’s only one other thing in the palace complex that would be interesting to a child. The hand on his lap clenches into a fist, tight with anger. 

“Did he?” He intones slowly.

Felix brightens at his curiosity. “I bet he can beat you, too, Your Majesty.”

At this point, it seems, Raziel Robaine has had enough of sitting there mutedly.

“There’s no way I can!” He protests, looking at him beseechingly. Claude stares back flatly. “I’m not as good as my brother says.”

He takes a moment to survey the way the child’s magic moves in agitation, small spikes of nervousness jumping around him like flashes of lightning through a cloud. “I taught Felix how to play chess,” he intones. “And he says you beat him?”

The brat closes his eyes, predicting his inevitable defeat, as he should. “Yes.”

“Then, let’s see how good you are.” He stands up. “I was bored anyway. You, brat, come with me. There’s nothing else to do.”

Felix clears his throat. “Your Majesty, technically speaking there are some matters demanding your atten—” 

Claude levels him with a steady glare.

“—tion. Ha, ha. Nevermind.”

Claude has known Raziel Robaine for twenty minutes, and he already has a good handle on his personality.

His findings can be summarised thusly:

He is not a child.

At least, he doesn’t fit under his preconceived idea of one: annoying, talkative, energetic, naive. He has the attitude of a world-weary old man whose first thought upon waking is of his next nap, and maybe a plate of food. For that single reason, he can say he is slightly less annoying than the other aristocratic children he occasionally has to meet at banquets and celebrations.

However, his magic negates any positive inclinations Claude may have toward him. Magic is a tool that he can use as he likes, and that makes him unpredictable.

Claude de Alger Obelia hates unpredictability, and has learned to be wary of unforeseen variables.

Especially when they roam around his palace without permission.

(Especially when they roam around the Ruby Palace in particular.)

The room he leads them to is a short walk away from the throne room. The wards whoosh softly as he crosses the threshold, and an errant touch against the doorframe is all he needs to check them.

Spying, theft, intruder wards . A flicker of magic from the owner of the palace is all that’s needed to activate them to their fullest. No one can leave this room unless he manually deactivates them.

He scrutinises the child for any sign he may have sensed the change, but his face and magic reveal nothing. Perhaps he has not learned to perceive magic fields quite yet.

Felix has —a necessity in the battlefield— but he is truly trash at it, especially when it comes to wards. His magic was always inclined to combat-oriented skills, which is probably why he can’t see the signs of a rudimentary magician on his beloved brother. How remiss of him. Has he gotten lax since the war?

The room is one of the smaller offices in the palace, despite the amount of couches and the piano sitting near the windows. Heavy maroon drapes are tied to the side so sunlight spills across the mahogany desk in the centre, and the chess table on the side. Beyond the sound of their muted footfalls on the carpet and the birds from the gardens, it is silent. Claude takes his seat, and sets the pieces accordingly with a snap of his fingers. 

Each individual piece floats to their dedicated position as the boy sits down across from him — a strategic intimidation move for those knowledgeable enough to be worth intimidating. The movement of objects through nothing but intention is a notoriously difficult skill to master. Annoyingly, however, the child simply looks contemplative. 

Felix sits down quietly on a couch that gives him a free view of the game.

“I sincerely hope, for your sake,” Claude murmurs, icy eyes boring into the boy’s, “that you will not disappoint.”

They start playing.

“If you value your life,” he says as his eyes sweep over the battlefield, “you will tell me. Why are you really in the palace?”

He senses more than sees Felix shift, discomfited and probably panicked.

Robaine Jr brings the king's pawn forward two spaces, and the reasonableness of this move is offset dramatically by the nonsense that tumbles from his mouth.

“I’m not lying. I really was curious about Felix’s work in the palace.”

One of the many decisive factors in his conquest of the Empire, the battle for the throne, was the ability to say what’s on his mind without restraint as a reward. Even when young, he’d been astonished by his father’s absolute disregard for anything inconvenient —namely, Obelia’s infrastructure, diplomatic relations, Claude’s mother, the fact that citizens were a thing that existed beyond census statistics…

Unsavoury though his character was, at least he had been consistent and imparted some invaluable lessons to young, impressionable him.

Which is why he has no issue telling it like it is, even in front of a young, impressionable child like Raziel Robaine:

“It seems I’m fated to only hear bullshit today.”

You’re not leaving this room until you learn this, he thinks, surveying him over steepled fingers. It is a lesson more important than anything his tutors will teach him:

To never remind him of that screaming bundle of blankets he left upon the bloodstained marble, once upon a time.

The boy lifts his head, and their eyes meet like a spear of ice crashing onto a blank, impenetrable wall.

“I despise wasting time. So I’m asking you directly, and you better answer with all the truthfulness I’m guessing you don’t have. Did you visit the Ruby Palace?”

The child’s eyes curve into crescents as he grins, a wild edge to it that makes Claude’s anger turn to permafrost. “Yes, we did.”

A tiny hand grasps a knight piece. “I think Felix likes a maid there, so he’s been trying to befriend her. Not sure it’s working, though. Check, by the way.”

Likes a maid...? Claude gets a flash of a ballroom, of twirling satin skirts and the sound of a waltz, of a familiar woman with brown hair ducking behind Felix’s figure —until the next stampede of dancers shield them both from sight.

“Ridiculous,” he snaps. Claude furrows his brows, trying to remember, getting that corresponding ache in his chest the more he digs into his memories, desperate to confirm his theory. 

To give him reason to bathe the Ruby Palace in red once again.

A lance of magicked pain shoots through him and he stops trying, feeling sweat gather at the back of his neck. “You lying brat—”

“Checkmate, Your Majesty.”

The king falls, and the piece rolls away, toppling the queen and his remaining knight in one fell swoop.

Claude stares at the chessboard.

The white Tower looms over the fallen pieces —victoriously gleaming silver.

Chapter Text

Cale realised they’d been locked in the room the moment Claude had laid his hand upon the doorway.

The Emperor must be an idiot, to think neither of them would pick that up —Felix had noticed the moment he crossed the threshold, before even him. Cale had seen perfectly how his head jerked, ever so slightly, to the focal point of the wards: the portrait of some long-dead aristocrat hanging up on the wall facing the entrance, gazing out at them with an expression as proud and cold and bare as his gravestone no doubt was and remains to be.

It was only because of his brother’s guarded expression, as he sat on that velvet-covered sofa, that Cale made the decision to take the chess match seriously, regardless of the risk to his safety. Felix loves the Emperor deeply, a brother in all but blood —but despite that Cale knows that he’d drop everything for Raziel Robaine. If Claude ever tried to harm him, Felix wouldn’t hesitate.

Felix is easy to overlook; his demeanour is like that of Choi Han, persistently cheerful, energetic, positive, and possessing a deep hatred of confrontation or conflict toward people he sorely values. Most people see his gentle gray eyes and altogether miss the sharp hint of steel beneath —the truth is, however, that Felix Robaine is far cleverer than anyone gives him credit for.

And the fact that he likes it that way, never making an attempt for recognition,  makes him all the more dangerous. Under the watchful eye of such an excellent brother, it was so very easy for Cale to say anything he goddamn liked and to add a maddeningly bright smile.

“Checkmate, Your Majesty.”

Claude’s face, features locked to a freezing stand-still, satisfied Cale to an obscene degree.

“It seems,” the Emperor says, voice nearly nothing but a breath of cold wind, “I’ve been misled about the full extent of the youngest Robaine’s intelligence.”

Translation : You lied to me about your aptitude for chess and utterly humiliated me, you lying piece of shit. I don’t know what you are, but a child is not it.

Cale hides any faint suggestion of his snicker deep, deep inside him as he childishly replies, “Of course not, Your Majesty. It was simply luck.” Keenly, he watches the vein at the Emperor’s temple throb, cherishing the irate stiffness in his shoulders.

And when he thinks of a certain baby princess, living as if in exile in her own empire, her tiny back hunched in resignation and bitterness, Cale wants to rile this bastard up even more.

Claude’s lips curl into the faintest impression of a snarl. “You mean to say that luck is enough to win against me?” Felix shuffles a bit from the couch, and Cale feels magic coalescing at the Emperor’s palm, hidden beneath the table.

He sends out the tiniest, thinnest thread of his own, feeling it out, trying to gauge the purpose in the Emperor’s growing spell, nearly flinching when it brushes past a brewing, violent storm.

“Your Majesty, I’m three years old,” Cale points out, fidgeting with his hands in his lap. “Papa says I should listen to my elders, and Duke Alpheus is old and he says kids are lucky, so—”

“—That’s because Wise Elder Alpheus is full of shit,” the Emperor interrupts dismissively.

That, it seems, is a point they both agree on.

“Luck has a minimal role in a game of logic and skill. Nor does it explain why a snot-nosed brat still hanging off his nanny’s apron strings has enough raw magic to blow up a room.”

Cale very carefully controls his breathing. He cocks his head to the side. “I’m a magician?” He asks tentatively, throwing a puzzled glance at Felix, seeking reassurance and noting, absently, that his brother shows no sign of surprise or disbelief at this news.

“I just told you that, brat,” Claude snaps back waspishly, rubbing at his temples. “Don’t be obtuse, Raziel Robaine. It doesn’t suit you.”

Cale stays awkwardly silent, because how would the Emperor even know what suits him or not? And, Felix’s ass might have gone numb on that sofa, because he keeps adjusting himself on its velveted pillows, the sound of his rustling and clink of his sword against its sheath alone in the stillness and quiet. He wishes his brother would stop, because it makes everything a million times more awkward.

Just tell me to go home, Cale begs the Emperor . Tell me I’m annoying and a brat and an idiot child and send me away.

“Raziel Robaine,” Emperor Claude finally calls to him, waving his hand and unravelling the oppressive wards around the room.

“Come back for another match tomorrow.”

Cale blinks.

“What?”

“Phew,” Felix breathes out over his hair as he carries him out of the oppressive castle. “You did well, Raziel. It seems His Majesty likes you.” His tone is distinctly shocked, as if he’s not sure how such a miracle happened despite being witness to it. 

He doesn’t like me, Cale wants to say, irate, he doesn’t know what to do with me because I’m apparently a powerful magician, but I’m three years old and thus unusable.

“Ah, but of course he likes you,” Felix is saying, answering his own silent question and nodding now in quick acceptance and understanding. This idiot. “I’ve never met anyone who dislikes you. If they exist they must not be sane.”

I’ve met many of them, Cale thinks. Do you want the alphabetised list? 

Felix cheerfully jumps over a pile of leaves on the cobblestones, completely unnecessarily, and Cale’s hair comes undone, the ribbon flying away on an errant gust of wind and the braid hugging the crown of his head loosening. There’s a floatiness to his brother’s movements now that they’ve escaped the danger zone, and he’s glad he’s feeling more relaxed, truly he is, but if he would at least adjust the way he holds him so that the wind doesn’t blow his hair into his eyes and mouth, Cale would be much obliged.

He lays his forehead on Felix’s shoulder again to avoid eating his own hair or succumbing to another bout of irritating sneezing. The dappled sunlight pulls him into a comfortable, warm doze, like he’s at the terrace at Super Rock’s mansion and all is right in the world.

“Oh, by the way Raziel, since when have you been a magician?”

He flinches and knocks his nose against a very hard, muscular shoulder. Pain hammers through his skull, eyes watering. He vaguely hears Felix’s yell of horrified surprise, the pitch nowhere to go but up, up, up into worried hysteria.

“Motherfucker,” slips out in Common Western as a long, angry hiss, and Cale wishes he could curse way more, but alas. “I’m fine,” he wrests out from between clenched teeth. His hands clutch at his head as if to reach inside and take the reverberating pain out of it. 

“I’m fine,” he repeats, suddenly thinking and hating how small his hands are and how they’re supposed to be bigger, patting a scaly head or soft fur. His mouth opens without his input, rational mind running on autopilot and spirit lost in a terrible feeling of loss that makes his body into something foreign and uninhabitable. “I set my sock on fire last week” —technically true— “but I got scared and threw it in the kitchen scrap bin. I didn’t want to tell Papa in case I got in trouble.”

The ‘papa’ feels like it gets stuck in his throat and he has to cough it out, but somehow it works. And, in fact, Cale saw one of the younger maids-in-training attempt to patch up a hole in a sock and throw it with desperation in the bin when it was ruined beyond logicality only last week. The head cook was up in arms about it for days, and no doubt the butler already let the Duke know of the commotion, which in turn means that Felix knows as well, since those two like their gossip so much. The culprit had not been found, as far as Cale was aware. It’s your lucky day, unknown Miss, he thinks stoically, I will be your scapegoat and shoulder the burden of your underwhelming sewing skills.

“Raziel,” he hears his brother’s voice, unbearably soft. A hand makes its way through his hair, until Cale’s entire head is cupped in it like he’s something fragile and precious. “How silly. We wouldn’t be mad at you for something like that. You should have told us, having magic is something to be proud of. I’ll have to see whether we can arrange for another tutor.”

Cale’s first instinct is rejection. But…

“Alright,” he murmurs, “Will the tutor know a lot about” — teleportation — “zipping?”

“Know a lot about what?”

“Zipping. Whoosh,” Cale says, gesturing dramatically, feeling a part of his dignity perish. “Would they know about how to get to places that are far away?”

The spark of comprehension lights up Felix’s eyes, and he gives a short laugh. “Ah, teleportation. Yes, you can do that if you’re a magician, so your tutor would know about it. Why, Raziel? Where do you want to go? Your big brother will take you wherever you want.”

I want to go home. “No, you can’t.”

“Why not?” Felix says, smiling. He thinks it’s a joke. Thinks it’s a child’s stubborn idea that nobody can help them and that they have to do it themselves. 

“Can you take me home?” Cale asks, despite knowing the answer.

“Of course I can,” Felix Robaine responds obligingly. “We’re heading there now, aren’t we?”

Cale gives a jerky nod, and falls silent.

“Raziel, I’m going to say goodbye to Miss Lillian,” Felix tells him when they’re back in front of the Ruby Palace, depositing him under a maple tree, on soft grass littered with snow-like daisies. “Stay there for just a second, I will be right back.”

You rascal. Don’t try to trick me, you just want alone time with Lillian Yorke.

Cale is tired . They’ve been at the palace for what seems like the entire day, and the sun is starting to slowly descend, aegean bleeding across baby blue sky. He babysat a baby, defused a bomb, won a chess match against said bomb, was outed as a magician, and now he’s left outside to wait like yesterday’s rubbish. 

“Absolute bullshit,” he mutters in Common Western, standing up and off the ground and trying in vain to wipe the grass stains on his shorts. “You crazy God.” He throws the accusation up in the clouds along with a searing glare. “You think you can just do whatever you want? Keep fucking watching, then. I’m going to tear you down from there and watch Choi Han and the kids slug you like the world’s ugliest pinata.”

He hears the sound of lighting, and it takes a while to notice it’s coming from the twin magic circles spewing thunder at his hands. As another chain of expletives unravels from his mouth, he shakes them off, the glow of magic fading into nothingness. 

A cold breeze blows, leaving a trail of gooseflesh in its wake, and there’s something else in the air, a vibrating, charged crackle of energy, that raises all the hairs in his body.

Well. That’s certainly not him.

Cale pauses, ears pricked for anything beyond the sound of rustling leaves, grass, and the occasional clanking of armour as patrolling guards move about, further off into the distance. A listening augmentation spell improves matters immensely, and he purposely puts more power into it.

There. The faintest, barest sound of breathing —the breathing of someone in deep sleep, and a slow, serene heart beat to match it. And beyond that, beyond the realm of sound, magic buzzes around inside the woods, like a swarming beehive with the queen at the centre, sending off tiny ripples like alarm bells.

Whatever’s sleeping in the woods was in a magic-induced coma, and it’s preparing to wake up.

Cale sighs, debating it.

“Fuck it, let’s go.”

Perhaps under normal circumstances he’d never have accepted the risk. But a tiny part of him, desperate to go back, kicking and screaming for it, asks itself… if he dies, won’t he wake up back home?

There’s a man sleeping in a translucent tomb in the middle of the woods.

Cale, as he stands over him, can do nothing except stare. To be very honest, the stranger has a face that deserves to be stared at a bit. Claude de Alger Obelia might have been on par with Eruhaben, but this guy’s hair has beat the Emperor and had managed to score way higher.

“Hey,” he calls loudly, kicking the tomb with his foot. Wet grass clings to the pristine shimmering surface, and by all that he believes in, Cale cannot find it in himself to feel bad about it. “Wake up.”

Nothing much happens, except for a few fireflies making their way over as if to see what’s up. Nothing’s much, you see, Cale thinks. Just a three-year-old desecrating someone’s resting place.

Cale kicks the tomb again. “Oi.”

The man’s fingers twitch.

Cale wordlessly begins to smear all the grass and soil stuck at the bottom of his shoe onto the tomb. There’s script and symbols chiselled into the imaginary stone —something about a Tower, something about centuries ago.

If that wasn’t a dead give-away, the massive wave of magic that rears up, like a tsunami that has yet to collapse, sure is. The tomb grows more transparent. 

“What in the flying fuck are you doing to my tomb?” A hoarse voice cracks out.

“You’re up,” Cale blinks, pausing in his vandalism to turn his eyes to the guy that sits up with a groan. “Why the fuck are you camping in the forest of the concubines’ palace, Master Magician of the Tower?”

Chapter Text

If Cale were a poet or someone who cared, the way he could describe his appearance would be very lyrical and admiring without a doubt.

Unfortunately, Cale is neither a poet nor someone who cares.

So when the Magician sits up, strands of inky hair falling over his robed shoulders, Cale’s only thought is:

This man has been asleep for centuries. That must be some crusty-ass hair.

But when his eyes open to reveal glowing crimson eyes, a primal fear stirs up in Cale’s stomach, sending goose-bumps along his arm and setting his own irises aglow as protective wisps of magic rise up from his hands to caress his skin. He takes a step back, watching like a hawk as the Magician pulls a leg over his tomb to step out of it, somehow managing to make the entire movement appear like a carefully construed threat.

“Haa,” the Magician sighs, scratching his head and messing up his hair, the lazy slouch of his back all the more apparent when he stretches years and years worth of immovability out of his ancient spine. “How long has it even been? I feel like I’ve overslept.”

Overslept? Cale thinks to himself privately, still watching the groaning magician with caution. This isn’t oversleeping, this is fossilising.

“Oi, brat. What’s the date?”

Cale realises, very abruptly, that he has not learned the calendar system of this world yet.

“I have no idea,” he says frankly. “I’ve only been here three years, and I spent the first sleeping, eating and shitting.” Pausing, he thinks of how to give this guy an indication of just how much time has passed as the Magician tilts his head to regard him with rising interest. “The current Emperor’s name is Claude de Alger Obelia, if it helps any.”

His lips slowly curl up in a smile, and then a full-blown, full-bellied laugh. “What’s this? Did I sleep through a revolution?” He asks, wiping away a tear. Cale doesn’t think it’s that funny, but maybe he should expect some degree of insanity from a several-centuries-old being that just woke up from a coma.

Generous as he is, he should bring him up to scratch.

“As far as I’m aware,” Cale informs him calmly, “the current Emperor dethroned his father, murdered his brother who was Crown Prince, killed off some nobles while he was at it, waged a war against dark magic, then spent a couple of years in drunk and lustful depravity.”

“If that’s all that I missed, whatever,” the Master Magician says, flapping a dismissive arm and yawning. “He’s a royal, they do that all the time.”

Cale thinks back on the royalty he’s met so far. Alberu’s family has some violence and back-stabbing involved. Jopis’ entire story is one of betrayal and massacres. Adin’s family shouldn’t even be mentioned.

Yeah, royals do do that all the time.

“Who are you, brat?”

Cale wants to sigh. He’s heard the word ‘brat’ so often in the past few hours that by now it translates to just white noise.

“The name I’ve been given,” he answers tiredly, “is Raziel Robaine.”

He weathers an intent, scrutinising look.

“You,” the Magician says gleefully, striding toward him at an alarming speed, “you’re interesting.”

Cale leans back slightly, but doesn’t break eye contact as the other grabs his chin to raise his head. Crimson stares into reddish-brown, and Cale feels like a paper shoved in a photocopier, like someone tore his skin open and scanned his soul at their leisure. A shudder crawls through his body.

“You’ve lived at least three lifetimes. How could you be in that younger body?”

“Magic,” Cale deadpans, heedless to the pain as the magician suddenly tightens his grip on his chin, so much that his cheeks squish like a stress ball. “A God brought me here.”

The hand on his face relaxes as the magician’s face undergoes a series of interesting changes. “A God?”

“The God of Death, to be exact,” Cale clarifies, wondering idly if they have one of those here. How do Gods even work? Do they have multi-universal reach? Death would, since where life abounds, death follows after.

“Argh, that son of a bitch,” the Magician complains, and there is a twist at his lips and a furrow at his nose that screams disgust.

Suddenly, Cale finds he likes this stranger a lot more. “Yes,” he says, the prospect of shit-talking that nutsack energising him immensely. “He is a son of a bitch. Motherfucker of motherfuckers.”

The Magician looks delighted. “I like you,” he declares, as if Cale gives a shit. “I’ve never met a messenger of God this honest. What’d he send you here for?”

Cale’s mood sours immediately. “I don’t know.”

The happy smile freezes on his face. “Eh?” Cale is in a foul enough mood to tell even the Master Magician of the Tower that he looks like a gormless fool, but by some miracle, the vestiges of his self-preservation instincts control the urge.

“I said I don’t know,” he says instead, a scowl on his face.

The magician leans back, looking deep in thought. “That’s a problem,” he says finally. “Ah, seriously, how troublesome. I just woke up and people are already telling me to solve things.”

The man turns his back, snapping his fingers. The tomb dissolves into a spattering of glitter, and suddenly they’re pulled into the bluish dark of the night.

Cale squints around and irately spells a light orb to float behind him. He found the spell for it in the Robaine library —something about light of the soul— and it worked the best out of all the others he tried. Also, it looks nicer. It’s like those photos of Jupiter he saw as Kim Rok Soo, red, blue, green, and brown streaks of light circling around a gold sphere.

He blinks through the irritating feeling of his eyes adjusting to the intense glow, only to see the Magician gaping at him.

“What?” He demands.

“That’s a meridian’ima,” the Magician says slowly, in a tone that suggests Cale is an idiot.

Cale recognises the name as the spell written in the book. “Yes, and?”

“Are you stupid? That’s your soul. Why are you whipping out in front of me?!”

He’s acting as if Cale’s suddenly dropped his pants down.

“I thought it was just a light orb?” Cale asks, bewilderingly staring at his —soul, apparently.

“No,” the Magician practically hisses. Red sparks dance at his fingertips from his agitation. “You only show it to those you trust, you dimwit, and even then with great caution.”

Cale studies it with clinical interest. It floats in the air, gently moving up and down, millions of flecks and strokes of light wrapped around it like a miniature sun. “If you destroy it, will it kill me?”

“Yes, so put it away,” the Magician says, averting his eyes. “Now.”

Cale complies. When it’s gone, the Magician seems extremely relieved, tense frame relaxing. “Why so desperate?”

“I just woke up,” the Magician mutters, “some asshole stole most of my mana and I need to find more. A meridian’ima looks like the most delicious snack right now.”

There’s a lot to unpack, there. Cale doesn’t even want to broach the subject of the mana thief, feeling like he’s going to get into a new puddle of trouble to try and crawl out of.

“What stopped you from eating it?” Cale asks after a beat of internal conflict, feeling extremely strange to talk about his soul like it’s a fucking scone.

“If a God sent you,” the Magician glowers, “then your soul is probably protected. I can’t eat it.” He looks very put-out by this.

Cale suffers through the confusing, conflicting urges of sending a prayer of gratitude, or cursing the God of Death for putting him in this situation in the first place. The dichotomy of man, he muses philosophically.

“So is mana a part of the soul, Master Magician of the Tower?”

A baleful glare is tossed in his direction before walking off into the forest. Cale, following at his tail, dodges it very gracefully by deploying the effective tactic look away in faux ignorance.

“Of course it is, moron. That’s why everyone has mana. And call me Lucas, that title makes me feel old." He mutters something about a 'teacher' and how he's 'still haunting him'.

Cale recalls a passage from The Fundamentals of Magic, one of the first books he ever read after his unfortunate discovery of his magician status:

Magic, at its core, is a force like any other. People are its conduits, like storage spaces, if you will, and whether one can harness it or not depends on the quality and effectiveness of that storage space. People who are good conduits and can be host to a large amount of mana at a time, are called ‘magicians’.

“So, that means that everyone’s souls have mana in them that you can eat, right?” He asks.

Lucas furrows his nose. “Ew, that’s disgusting. Why would I eat any random filth’s mana? I don’t know where it’s been.”

“You don’t know where mine’s been either,” Cale points out, out of breath trying to keep up with his much longer strides.

“Your meridian’ima showed me.” His walking pace slows slightly, and Cale sighs in relief as he catches up until he’s walking next to him. “Oi, why are you following me?”

“I have something to ask,” Cale says, thinking of Felix and how he’s probably roaming the palace in panic, searching for him. Good, he had it coming.

“Out with it then,” Lucas gripes. Despite of the grouchy attitude, Cale gets the sense that he is secretly getting an ego boost from being asked things.

“You’re the Master of the Magic Tower, right?” Lucas looks smug, for some reason. He must like getting complimented.

“That’s right.”

“Theoretically speaking, what types of forces and how much of each would have to be exerted to create a portal to a different universe?”

Lucas’ grin disappearing is the single most satisfying thing Cale has had the pleasure of witnessing in this world.

“What do you mean?”

“I said what I said. Do you need it repeated?”

Lucas scowls but his distant gaze is off to the side, as if he’s trying to solve a complex mathematical equation. “What do you mean by ‘what types of forces’? It’s going to have to be mana. What other force is there?”

“How would that work? If we’re trying to transcend time and space, we’ll have to create a wormhole. Can a special configuration of matter and energy, manipulated by mana, form a tunnel to a different place?” Lucas stares at Cale. He’s got an interesting expression on his face.

“Forget it,” Cale says, kissing his teeth.

Roan and Obelia not having any notable progressions in fields of natural science is inconvenient, in every sense of the word. If he wants to form a wormhole to get from one universe to another, then he would need one massive object here and one massive object there, for gravitational attraction to pull them toward each other and form a portal. He can’t do shit without a line of communication to the other side, to tell them what to do.

In other words, he’s completely stranded.

“I’m leaving,” Cale says. “If you need to find me, I’ll be at Robaine Estate.”

“Wait, already? I haven’t answered your question yet!”

Cale pauses. It’s true that Lucas would be an invaluable resource; his expertise in magic would no doubt help him solve this problem, because although he might not have an immediate solution, his skills would help him work towards one.

“It’s obvious you can’t,” Cale says, baiting, watching the minute changes to Lucas’ expression in the moonlight, cataloguing every sign of rising, narcissistic anger with satisfaction. “Plus, I have a bedtime, now.” His voice adopts an undercurrent of frustrated derision, obvious to him only. “Children need their sleep.”

Cale turns around and walks back toward the Ruby Palace, leaving the Master Magician of the Tower standing in the dark.

The next morning, the first thing he sees when he wakes up in his bed back at the Estate, is this:

A raven-haired, red-eyed toddler, looking through his smuggled book collection at his desk and eating a cookie.

They lock eyes for one, two, three beats.

Cale makes the conscious decision to close his groggy eyes and go back to sleep.

Chapter Text

The sheer curtains hanging from the canopy of his bed had not been tied to the posts yet, sparing him from the glare of the sunlight glaring through the large windows.

Unfortunately, they did not spare him from the sight of the Master Magician of the Tower sitting on an ottoman by the window, leaving crumbs on the carpet from the biscuit he’s chewing. He’s made himself perfectly at home, draping a lazy arm over the windowsill, his back slouched, a book on imbuement floating at eye level.

Cale, lying there under the covers with his groggy eyes half open, takes a private moment to plan his reaction. The decision is one of the easiest ones he’s ever made.

He shuts his eyes again, immovable, hoping against hope that prior eye contact was something his half-awake self had imagined.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

Motherfucker.

“Why are you here?” Cale asks tiredly, a wave of bone-deep exhaustion passing over him.

“Well, you helpfully told me where to find you if I need to.” Crunch, crunch.

“…I didn’t mean the next day,” Cale groans, sitting up and shoving the covers off himself.

“You didn’t clarify,” is the only response, chock-full of smug amusement.

Cale pulls the curtain aside and climbs out of bed, moving to tie it to the post, attempting to calm himself down with the routine of it. He’s never allowed any stranger to enter his bedroom before —he’d been lulled into a false sense of security at home, members of his family being the only ones allowed to step foot in it unannounced. As Raziel, it had been Felix, Duke Robaine, and his nanny, all of whom, he was sure, would rather die than harm him in any way.

To have that sense of safety torn apart so abruptly is an unwelcome shock.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

“What did you need me for?” Cale asks, feeling the silken fabric fluidly slipping through his fingers.

“If I didn’t know any better,” Lucas snickers, “I’d think you weren’t glad to see me, the Master Magician of the Tower.”

“Apparently, you don’t know any better.”

An indignant huff. Cale can’t see his expression, having resolutely turned his back to tie the bow. “Hoh, look at this brat. Do you know who you’re talking to here, huh?”

A sigh escapes him as Cale turns his head. Brownish-red stares into crimson.

“Why are you really here?”

Lucas’ expression deadens, eyes sliding off to the side. “We need to figure out why that God sent you here.”

“Why is that important to you?”

“The World Tree usually tries to tell me about disasters, plagues, wars, irritating shit like that so I can go solve them,” Lucas says, clucking his tongue in irritation. “I obviously don’t follow its orders like a loyal barking dog. But when the situation is especially bad, it contacts the Divine Race.”

Cale finishes off the bow, twists around on his heels. He clasps his hands at his back and turns contemplating eyes to the floor. He’s not surprised Lucas doesn’t follow those orders. No matter how powerful you are, it is reasonable to be tired of solving other people’s problems, to not want to fix someone else’s mess. Selfishness is an inherent part of being human.

What concerns him more is how something is going to go so horribly wrong that the World Tree had to make the God of Death intervene.

If it was something that was more urgent than even the White Star, to the point where he had to be brought here, then Cale did not fancy his chances of confronting it alone, without any of his family members.

“If you don’t want to get involved, why do you want to find out why I was sent?” Cale points out.

Lucas scowls. “Because if a Messenger of God is needed it means it will affect me, too.”

Quite suddenly, a piece falls into place. “…Hasn’t it technically already affected you?”

“What?”

“Your mana was stolen,” Cale reminds him, staring into red eyes where shocked realisation blooms into fury. “Whoever can steal your mana from a highly protected tomb you warded yourself, is probably a threat.”

“Nonsense,” the Magician of the Tower snorts, waving a dismissive hand. The book floating next to him flies out of the way desperately to avoid getting slapped. “Nobody is more powerful than me.”

Cale silently thinks about Eruhaben and all the other dragons —even Choi Han— as he examines the person in front of him. Lucas, in his current three-year-old body, does not exactly exude infinite power and wisdom. In fact, his form complements his bratty personality.

“Hey,” Lucas snaps, “did you know that you have an extremely disrespectful gaze right now, you punk?”

Cale averts his eyes and cleanly diverts the topic. Clearly, the other man’s ego is an insurmountable obstacle to proper cooperation. “Do the maids know you’re in here?”

“No,” Lucas grumbles, picking up yet another biscuit. “But I’m gonna be staying until I recuperate and have enough mana to go to the World Tree.”

Cale perks up at the mention of it. “What for?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business, O’ Wise Messenger, but since you insist…” The magician preens. “I’m going to get my full mana reserves back.”

If I could talk to the World Tree at home, then…

“Take me with you. You need me there too, to figure out how I can help this world, right?”

…I could talk to the World Tree here as well.

A ray of hope suddenly beams over his heart, like spring sunlight over frost-covered ground.

Lucas stops chewing out of shock. “No.”

The small smile developing at the corner of his mouth dissolves instantly. “Why?”

“Most people can’t make the journey. You have to sever your soul from your body—”

He sees the exact moment he realises that Cale can do just that. After all, what else is a meridian’ima if not a soul?

The smile that had been brewing bravely makes a return whilst Lucas’ face contorts in a sour scowl.

I can go home, Cale thinks. A rush of fierce joy courses through him like an energy shot, and there’s stinging at the back of his eyes that he refuses to ackowledge. I can go home—

“Fine. It would have been better if I had slept a bit more because the tomb would have slowly rejuvenated my reserves but some brat,” —and here he glares at Cale, who simply responds with a flat stare— “came along and smeared grass all over it. I don’t have enough mana, so you’ll still have to wait at least three years. Consider it karmic retribution.”

Cale wants to punch something. He’s close to giving into the urge, but then there’s a loud clack and the main door to his chambers is pushed open, and footsteps thud their way towards the bedroom. He hears a muttered damn! from the magician sitting by the window, and then feels a weird tingling over his eyes.

He blinks, and in the next second Lucas’ figure seems to ripple and fade out of view. Cale frowns, his eyes on a tiny crumb that falls down, lands on seemingly open air where the magician had been, and bounces off toward the floor again. He aims a smirk at the window, even as his nanny bustles in the room and immediately disappears off into his wardrobe, chatting up a storm about how it’s Wednesday and your best friend is coming and you must be so excited!

Cale, used to this procedure by now, follows in after her with trudging footsteps.

“Nanny Ophelia,” he calls, and instantly she drops down to his level and waits for his words with the utmost attention, eyes sparkling. How burdensome. “I just need some shorts and a plain top. I will get dirty sparring.”

Something breezes past him, and Cale knows what it is even without being able to see it. Sure enough, Lucas rematerializes next to him with a smug look on his face, and Nanny Ophelia doesn’t bat an eye; as if the Master Magician of the Tower, supposedly dead for over a hundred years, is simply not there at all.

“What does a magician need with swords?” Lucas snorts derisively. “One spell can do more damage than some stupid sword.”

Lee Soo Hyuk would have a field day with this bastard, Cale thinks, thinking back to how even when his abilities were underdeveloped, his Slash was enough to cut the scales of the Electric Eel. Some stupid sword, indeed.

He doesn’t bother turning his head to even ackowledge Lucas, looking squarely at Ophelia as she nods in agreement.

“You’re right, Young Master,” she says, then mutters to herself, nearly ineligibly, “he looks adorable in anything he wears anyway, yes, of course, how could I be so stupid, dumb, dumb Ophelia—”

“What an adorable Messenger of God,” Lucas mocks, cackling.

“This is your supposed best friend?”

Ijekiel is in the courtyard stretching when Cale walks in with his invisible magician parasite in tow. Somehow he’s doing splits, and he arches his back to touch the foot stretched out behind him like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Cale remembers Sir Jerome, their instructor, likening him to an octopus, on account of this freakish flexibility. Sometimes, when watching him stretch, Cale has to wonder if he has a spine at all.

It’s gotten to the point where Cale has gotten used to calling him octopus in Korean inside his head, first out of a joke, and now cannot bring himself to say his actual name.

“Mun-eo,” he calls, and it truly says a lot about how often this happens that Ijekiel immediately understands that this is referring to him and turns his head. Upon spotting him, his face splits apart in blinding beam. Cale’s eyes narrow, as if someone aimed a flashlight at him.

“Raziel!”

A white-haired missile catapults itself in his direction, and Cale has to quench the urge to turn around and make a run for it —locking his knees and digging his heels in to prevent his self-preservation instincts from taking over. The menace next to him starts laughing again, no doubt recognising the look of deep fear rooted inside his eyes.

Cale is given all of one second to prepare, and then he’s trapped in a tight bear hug.

“I missed you,” Ijekiel says quietly, and the only bit of him Cale can see —his nape— is blushing red. Cale, for the life of him, cannot understand what he’s so shy and excited for. It’s only been four days, not even a week.

“Hello, Mu—Ijekiel,” Cale says awkwardly, “have you been well?” Pat, pat.

Lucas moves from where he was floating next to him to the front so Cale can have a clearer view of him miming intense retching. Cale makes a promise to himself: if he doesn’t punch this man at least once before he leaves this god-forsaken universe, he will let that bastard Clopeh write one of his banquet speeches.

“Actually, Raziel,” Ijekiel says hesitantly, slowly leaning back a healthier distance, “Well…”

Cale raises an eyebrow. Ijekiel drops his head down and averts his eyes. Now that’s worrisome. Despite being shy, Ijekiel is almost never unsure. He’s got a self-assurance and confidence that is encouraged by excellent, loving parenting.

“…we have some time before Sir Jerome comes, right?”

Cale nods. “What is it?”

“What do I do if I don’t want to play dolls?”

“Huh?”

Lucas has ceased laughing. Instead, he looks equally stupefied, frozen stiff in a half-bow, mid-laughter.

“Father brought a girl to the manor,” Ijekiel explains quietly, “and she likes to play with dolls. She,” —here, he looks down at his shoes guiltily— “has a weak constitution, and I feel bad telling her no.”

What kind of third world problem is this?

“How should I know?” Cale asks, wondering how he got to the point in his long life where he has to give basic life advice to a toddler. “I don’t have a sister. Just do whatever you want to do.”

“…Whatever I want to do?” Ijekiel repeats hesitantly.

“What else can you do?”

At his words, Ijekiel’s expression clears, as if he has just been blessed with enlightenment, or had some sort of ground-breaking epiphany, and he smiles. “You’re right, Raziel. I had a feeling you would know what to do. Thank you!”

No, wait, but I didn’t even do anything?

“I’m going to tell her that I don’t want to and instead we can read a book together! Or I can tell Father to bring her here! She’s cute, you will like her for sure—”

No wait. Cale feels like this has gotten out of hand.

“—Wait, hold on, Ijekiel. Why are you bringing her here all of a sudden?”

What am I supposed to do with a toddler? Play patty-cake with her?

Ijekiel stops talking immediately, falling into deep contemplation with furrowed brows. “No, you’re right,” he declares, muttering, “She can have Father or the servants if she wants to but Raziel is my friend.”

Cale examines Ijekiel’s wooden training sword, abandoned on the floor where he was stretching, for any signs of blood that may indicate Ijekiel is suffering from a traumatic brain injury.

Lucas seems to have the same idea. “Is he dumb?”

And did Ijekiel just say he has no problem giving up his own father to her?

Cale clears his throat. “Anyway, Ijekiel,” he says, masterfully executing his conversation evading techniques, “why don’t we start stretching? I’m pretty sure Sir Jerome is going to be here at any minute.”

“Ah, you’re right!”

Crisis averted.

“I can see why you look so tired all the time,” Lucas says cheerfully. He only ever seems to look happy when he is having a hard time, Cale is realising.

Well, he’s about to be the happiest man alive, because when Sir Jerome slams the doors open with painful enthusiasm, Cale has to pick up his training sword, and three of the worst hours of his week commence.

Lucas is still happily humming long after the swordsmanship session ends and Ijekiel has to go home. Cale might have been able to stand it, if he hadn’t had the audacity to sit on his fucking bed eating biscuits.

“Hey,” Cale calls, irritated, from where he’s seated at his desk, “will you continue being invisible to the others for the three years you’ll stick around me like a fly?”

A glowing, red-eyed glare is tossed his way. “Do you know who you’re talking to right now?”

“Master Magician of the Tower, will you continue being an invisible parasite consuming the estate’s supply of confectionaries for three years?” Cale drawls, knowing full well Lucas can’t do a single thing to hurt him. The God of Death is useful in times like this.

“You’re the only one who’s talked to me like this in my entire life,” Lucas grumbles, swiping a macaron from the plate floating over the bedspread like a puck. “But, yes, I will. It’s fun.”

Cale’s quill tears the parchment, and ink spreads across the writing mat beneath. “And will you just live in my bed the entire time?”

“Yep.”

Cale takes a deep, calming breath, then stands up decisively. “Follow me, will you?”

“Where to?” Lucas asks, but gets up anyway. The plate follows behind him as he trudges to stand next to him expectantly.

“I’ll show you where you can stay,” Cale says, smiling thinly, “after all, it’d be remiss of me not to make sure the Master Magician is comfortable during his stay, right?”

Lucas nods with a self-satisfied look on his face. “Of course it would.”

Cale beams.

Anything to get him out of my god-forsaken chambers.

Cale takes a moment to put on socks to muffle his footsteps. The Estate is dark, and the only lights on at the moment are the ones down in the kitchen and the ones in the servants’ quarters —Duke Alpheus and Felix have the word DISCIPLINE stamped across their ass, so they will undoubtedly be asleep now too. It’s one in the morning.

Lucas has some sort of glowing orb as a light source, and Cale has a feeling it’s only visible to them, because the knights stationed outside at each end of the corridor have shown no sign of alarm, even when they pass by the windows.

With quick steps, he turns the corner and finds himself a familiar corridor, and he stands beneath the trapdoor on the ceiling.

“An attic, really?” Lucas scoffs. “Your audacity knows no bounds.”

Cale takes his forefinger and draws a quick circle in the air, like he’s drawing a magic circle. There’s a click, and the trapdoor turns into spiral stairs.

“Hoh?” Lucas hums, interested against his desire to be the unimpressed, better-than-you-mortals Master Magician. “Well isn’t this interesting?”

And it should be, because Cale did not spend a year renovating the disgusting place for it to look uninteresting. Cale Henituse is and has always been partial to wealth, luxury and comfort.

The attic rather resembles his room back in the Super Rock’s mansion, now. There is the familiar dresser, the walk-in closet with the large mirror, the ornately decorated wallpaper, plush carpets and huge bed —a blue, marble-like orb that looks like a communication device next to the bedside table, a piggy bank atop the dresser…

Bookcases line the walls, full of illegally pirated magic tomes from the Estate Library, and there is a massive round table in the middle, holding up everything from potion-making equipment (gleaming and clean, since Cale has not found the time to delve into that side of magic, yet), to his failed bracelet experiments.

“Oh, yes, this will work nicely,” Lucas mutters, approaching the table. He pokes at a bracelet and smirks widely at the violent sparks that bite at his fingers. “Now this is much better.”

“Whatever,” Cale says, suddenly feeling unexplainable fatigue settle in his stomach like a heavy stone, “just don’t touch anything on the dresser. Everything else,” he says quietly, “you can do what you like. Goodnight.”

He turns his back, and drops down the way he entered. Waving his hand, he waits until there’s another quiet click.

The walk back is silent without Lucas to spout irritating sarcastic quips.

Time passes, and Cale has already unwillingly spent six years in this universe.

Nothing significant enough has happened to warrant special mentioning. If Cale had to make an autobiography as Raziel Robaine, it’d be chapter after chapter of this form:

Ijekiel Alpheus, heir to the Alpheus Duchy, has decided that he would trade his father for me if asked. Lucas, the Master Magician of the Tower that has been declared dead for a hundred years, is eating biscuits in my attic. Bloodthirsty Tyrant Emperor Claude of the Obelian Empire has me come over for tea and chess once a week. Apparently, no one knows how to make a decent cup of lemon tea in this god-forsaken place. Princess Athanasia, next in line for the throne, has declared possession of my lap for napping purposes.

Cale finds new reasons for his higher blood pressure daily.

“Are you stupid?” says Reason Number One, “just go bam-shoom-pam! And then boom. How do you not get it? Are you stupid?”

“I’m sorry, Master Magician,” Cale says, smiling brightly, “unfortunately, common plebeians such as myself have to hear proper explanations instead of onomatopoeia in order to understand a concept.”

“Bah, you’re useless,” Lucas exclaims, flapping a dismissive hand and flicking his ponytail back over his shoulder.

Cale’s already incensed face contorts in an expression that screams frustration as he shoos away the brilliantly red fox dozing away in his favourite chair. The devilish piece of shit scaled him like a tree as he was walking through the gardens to get to the attic and refused to unstick from his body, instead perching on his shoulder. Now, apparently they have a fucking fox living in the attic, in addition to an ancient magician.

“I don’t know what this thing is even doing,” he kisses his teeth, wondering if pushing it off the seat would injure it. “I’ve been seeing it in the Estate since I was three. This isn’t normal fox behaviour.”

Lucas stops chewing. A sign, Cale has learned, of true shock on his part. “…You don’t know this thing?”

Cale frowns at him. “No, why would I?”

“That,” Lucas says, looking at him like he’s truly stupid, the hand holding his cream puff lowering slightly, “is your magic beast.”

“Huh?”

“When you have too much mana and your immature body cannot store it, one of these things pops out.”

“So a clump of my mana has been walking around the Estate for three years?”

“Yep. A clump of mana that is a reflection of you. It likes what you like, dislikes what you dislike.”

Cale stares at the fox in distaste. Judging by the baleful stare the fox gives him, it returns the sentiment. As if glaring is too much of an effort, the fox tiredly, tremulously closes its eyes again, fuzzy tail wrapping more tightly around itself. It looks pretty pathetic, sitting there like that, suffering from some unknown ailment. It is the picture of health, with its shimmering crimson fur and strong body, and yet its eyes drip with pain.

It’s only when he gets up to check on the potion that Cale sees Lucas staring at the fox with an unreadable look on his face.

“Be honest,” Lucas says, averting his eyes in carefully designed indifference, “you’re not okay, are you?”

Cale stops walking and stares at him like he just informed him that Duke Alpheus decided to become a ballet dancer. “I’m perfectly fine,” he says slowly, mentally taking stock of his body and finding nothing of concern. In fact, he’s more healthy here than he ever was back at home, the swordsmanship lessons having elevated his strength from a twig to that of a mid-sized branch. He still flinches in shock every time he looks at a mirror and spots that healthy glow on his skin.

Lucas scoffs at him, but glares at the plate of biscuits he’s dragged next to him like it holds the secrets of the universe. He looks vaguely uncomfortable, and he’s got that faint frown that he usually has when he’s worried about something.

“Ugh. Take one,” he says quickly after a deep, decisive sigh, throwing an apple tart in Cale’s direction with unfair aggression.

Cale catches it out of reflex, staring at the dessert incredulously. “Did you eat something strange?” He accuses, squinting at him. No way would the magician give up his curated collection of desserts out of free will. “Or did you poison this?”

“I did no such thing,” Lucas snaps, glaring at the ceiling. “If you don’t want it, give it back.”

He seems irrationally irritated about the whole situation; Cale wonders if it would be too dangerous an idea to buy some books on meditation and anger management and give them to him as a gift.

Nevertheless, he picks up the stupid fox and sets it down on the floor, replacing its previous seat with himself. He takes a bite out of the tart, feeling the sweetness bloom in his mouth, and attempts to reach a state of calmness.

The fox slinks off toward Lucas instead, who instantly casts a protective barrier over his plate. Except, the fox doesn’t give a single shit about the plate, it seems, because it sits at his feet, gazing at him. The magician gets this weird look trepidation over his face.

“W-what?”

Cale freezes where he was about to take another bite. Lucas, stuttering?

“What is this thing doing?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“You’re the owner!”

Cale only shrugs, and leans back in his chair a bit more to watch, entertained. The fox jumps and lands in the middle of Lucas’ crossed legs before curling up again and dozing off.

“What the heck,” Lucas complains, “this thing is as disrespectful as you are.”

Cale squints at him. He’s got a faint smile playing on his lips that gives him away.

Maybe he just likes foxes.

Chapter Text

“Raziel.”

Six years ago Cale wouldn’t have even blinked at the sound of that name. Now, his eyes snap up from the carpeted detailing he’d been idly admiring to meet Lucas’ irate glare. With his reawakening mental faculties comes the sudden remembrance of the cookie he’d been holding between his fingers for the past hour —without any progress made to actually eat it. Cale glances down at it, pleasantly surprised to see it hasn’t gone stale or rotted while he wasn’t looking.

He takes a bite and leans back in his armchair, the tufted upholstery digging achingly onto his back. Where’s his pillow? Ah. Cale finds it on the magician’s lap where he’s sitting on the four-poster. Atop Cale’s pillow is that fox, probably enjoying the petting it’s getting, lounging there like a guest of honour.

Lucas spoils the thing rotten. According to the magician himself, a magic beast is nothing but mere animated mana, so maybe he’s taken a professional interest in its cultivation to reap the benefits later on; like a stock-breeder feeding his cow until it gets fat enough for the final slaughter, he must be taking good care of his highest quality piece of mana-steak. Out of pity for the beast, Cale leaves his pillow where it is. It only takes a second and a flash of his eyes for Lucas’ own pillow to fly over to him from the other armchair anyway —the indignant squawk that follows is something easily ignored.

“I hate you,” Lucas informs him, displaying his excellent ability to think of the obvious. So early in conversation, too. Cale is impressed. “It’s rude to ignore people, brat.”

Cale feels his sigh in his very bones, and it makes him sink further into the armchair like he wants to disappear entirely. “What do you want?”

“Raziel.”

“What?”

Lucas kisses his teeth, annoyed. “I mean, the name ‘Raziel’. It’s not your real name, is it?”

Cale yawns, thinking about the logistics of taking a nap. “What makes you think so?” He mumbles. Lucas’ pillow is better than his. The bastard must’ve cast something on it.

“Sometimes when you sign that name on your assignments your face gets really ugly,” Lucas says, then pointedly looks at the fox in his lap. “And this thing won’t respond to any name I try to call it. There’s too much of a disconnect between the name Raziel and your soul. Mana never lies.”

Cale snickers, his eyes becoming half-lidded as he gets more drowsy. “You want to see what name I’ll really respond to?”

Lucas squints at him, suspicious of his glee but too curious to say no. Torn between the two, he just sits there opening and closing his mouth. Given that it will most likely not end well, Cale wisely refrains from telling him he looks like a fish.

“Weak human,” he calls, and the fox raises its head, ears twitching, before Lucas’ incredulous eyes.

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Mana never lies,” Cale parrots, deadpan.

“I refuse to use that. Where the hell did you pick up such a stupid nickname?”

“I didn’t pick it up, it was thrown at me,” Cale mutters, thinking of a trio of children averaging six years of age. He wonders what they’d say if they ever saw him in a body as old as they are, and vanquishes the thought. No point thinking of it —after all, he hasn’t made any headway into getting back home.

He won’t be seeing any of them for a long, long time.

Behind closed eyelids picture-perfect memories start playing like a film. Soggy apple pies, a sword, a golden plaque, a flawlessly gleaming cup of lemon tea marred by traces of hard battle: dirt and soot and dried blood.

“Just tell me what your name is,” Lucas is rambling somewhere over yonder.

Cale’s lips start to shape his name, but then he stops. Indeed, which name is he supposed to give? He was once Kim Rok Soo. Now he’s Cale Henituse, but is he really? His years in Roan were all but two. He‘s been Raziel Robaine for six, and never has it stopped feeling wrong. Impersonal. Like calling ‘hey you!’ to a stranger in the street — they look up at the sound of it and nothing else.

“What is my name?” He asks idly, his voice a bit far away.

Lucas gawps at him. “You’re asking me?”

A whine from the fox distracts him, and the magician drops his eyes to where the beast curls up tighter around itself, shivering slightly. A look of alarm clears his frown for one second and the next he’s already beside Cale, poking at his forehead until he drags his eyes open again.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lucas says, and Cale knows him well enough by now that he sees past the frustration in his voice to the way he fiddles with the hem of his shorts. After a beat of nervous silence—

“Want a cannoli?” He asks, agitated, and the plate of cannolis flies over to rest on the table next to Cale’s chair immediately.

Cale raises his eyebrows. What’s he so worried about? The fox? The thing’s fine —it must only be shaking because it’s cold or something. He tries to say so, but his tongue feels like lead in his mouth.

His non-responsiveness seems to be of particular concern, because Lucas’ fidgeting gets more frantic and his poking more violent.

“Did you forget your name or something?” Poke. “What were you thinking about?” Poke, poke. Damn, it feels more like a stab now. “Don’t think about useless shit or you won’t get anything done.” Stab, stab, stab.

“Stop,” he tells him, tsking with irritation and batting the offending appendage away from his cheek. He’s sure there’s a red imprint there, and combined with his ruddy nose (allergies again, spring is approaching) and his eyebags he probably doesn’t paint a very pretty picture. The pleasant sleepiness dispels entirely, replaced by an irritation that makes Cale sit up with a deep sigh. He gives up on that nap. “I’m fine. I’m not even hurt anywhere so why are you getting so worked up?”

Lucas leans back and the skin around his mouth loosens, giving a faint impression of relief; apparently, what he had been worried about is no longer an issue. Cale has given up hope of ever understanding this punk.

“You’re an idiot,” the magician informs him, teleporting back to the bed.

He sullenly picks up the fox from the pillow with the fearless ease of someone who’s done it a hundred times before and pulls it close to his chest, watching as it stretches, claws catching on his shirt, and resettles easily against the new source of warmth. If it had been anything or anyone else, Cale was sure, Lucas would’ve killed them for the audacity of damaging his perfectly conjured clothing.

The attic had been unusually quiet today and Cale had considered it a blessing. They’d finished the bracelet for the Princess, so any further magic experimentation was postponed for later. The lack of the typical horrisonant concerto of explosions and threatening swooping sound of objects flying all over the place lulled him into a false sense of dozing security, but he’d forgotten that there’s nothing predictable when it comes to the Master Magician of the Tower. One moment he’s lounging on the bed eating cannoli after cannoli and the next he’s suddenly drilling holes in your face.

“All I wanted was to know what I’m supposed to call you and you have a freak-out,” Lucas grumbles, and his ever-present plate of goodies floats around the bed as he sinks back onto the mattress once more.

Cale listlessly stares at him. He could tell him, he knows. If there was anybody he could say it to, it’s this guy.

But… he’d read a story once, about a human wandering inside a forest and meeting a faerie.

‘My name is Olphean, traveller. May I have your name?’ The creature had said.

And because people in fairy-tales tend to a distinct brand of stupid, the man replied, ‘Sure, my name is Jack.’

Hitherto, the man remembered nothing else —neither the way back, nor his homeland, nor his family.

Cale would think it nonsense, but then he’d thought the same about transmigration and that’s already happened twice now —three times if the Sealed God’s test is thrown in as well— so he doesn’t want to take any chances.

“Are you a faerie, by any chance?”

Lucas stares at him, mouth falling open slightly with shock. “Do I look like a faerie, you bastard?”

“Well no need to get emotional,” Cale drawls, leaning forward and frowning contemplatively. He narrows his eyes. “But that was not a no.”

Lucas makes an affronted noise.

Faeries, according to earthen mythology, have a way of twisting words to circumvent their incapability to lie. Lucas never directly stated that he is not one, so the Faerie Lucas theory gains a bit more credence—

“Why would you even think I’m a damn faerie?” Lucas snaps, and he’s got a look on his face that belies his shock at ever having to say anything like this in his ancient life. “I’m nothing like those weaklings.”

That, Cale realises, is still not an answer, but before he can cleverly word his question in a way that will get him a more certain response, there’s a thundering noise that sounds remarkably like a battalion of knights in heavy armour clunking their way down the corridor below the attic. Cale and Lucas both turn toward the trapdoor at the same time as the army approaches, the cacophony of metal grating against their ears, waiting in silence until it recedes off into the distance.

Cale has a sinking feeling he knows what’s so urgent that Duke Robaine sent out the entire force in the Estate to look for him.

Ijekiel can’t be here because he’s in the middle of a school term. (Cale hopes he stays in Arlanta, even if deciding what to put in his letters is almost-but-not-quite as exhausting as talking to him face to face.) Felix can’t be here because he’d been called to the palace the day before yesterday and he’s yet to return.

If neither of those people are in the Estate, there’s only one other reason why Cale would be so frantically sought after.

Cale moves his rook four tiles forward. “Your Majesty,” he says brightly, hiding his gritted teeth behind a closed-mouth smile. “This loyal subject can’t help but think he is not worthy enough to keep you company so often.”

Translation —please stop sending summons whenever you want to laze around playing chess. I, too, am busy napping everyday.

Claude, that bastard, ignores the not-so-polite accusation hidden in the subtext of that sentence. “Loyal subjects don’t think, they follow orders quietly,” he drawls, and his silken sleeve rustles as he takes a hold of his bishop and moves him diagonally to take the life of Cale’s rook. “So you’ll stay where you are and keep playing.”

Today finds them in one of the main palace’s more private pavilions, thankfully surrounded by grass, fountains, and non-flowering trees instead of gardens, sparing his allergic orifices from further torture. Claude had shooed Felix away after he invited himself in their conversation one time too many, but if Cale leans in his chair a bit to the right, he’s sure he’ll see him moping next to the fountain of the white-marble cherub.

“I see,” Cale says cheerily. “Does that rhetoric also apply to children?”

Claude’s gaze lifts from the board to spear him with a look. “Especially to children.”

“Felix!” Cale calls, “do children have to do what they’re told?”

Felix brightens at the chance to come closer, the brief reprieve from his time-out corner. He skips forward and stands next to Cale’s chair, leaning down. “They do, I think. If it comes from someone they respect.”

“Perfect,” Cale says, having had enough of this charade. He stands up and promptly abandons the match, smoothly turning toward his brother and hiding inside his cape, before peeking out from the side at the man lounging on the chair opposite. “I apologise, Your Majesty, but may I be excused now?”

He does not give a single shit anymore. Felix would rather stage a coup than watch him die, and Claude has yet to follow through with any of his death threats. A year or so ago Cale might have already been a smear of blood and pile of innards on the pristine stone floor for his audacity—but it seems his royal majesty has gotten used to Cale’s casual disrespect.

If only he could extend that very same grace to his actual daughter, Cale would not only be obliged, but also able to sleep better at night. Fortunately for him, the finished protection bracelet, runed to high heaven, currently lies in his pocket, ready to be given to the princess on the way back home. He’ll quickly wrap things up here and then leave already.

A low baritone, reminiscent of a bored drawl, cuts through his wishful thinking. “Raziel Robaine, are you saying you don’t respect your Emperor?”

Cale ramps up the brightness of his smile to maximal luminescence. Quite obviously, he doesn’t move out of the shade of Felix’s protective cloak. “I could never dare to do such a thing, Your Majesty.”

To his own credit, he’s being truthful. He’d never do it —merely imply.

“The more you grow up the more insolent you get,” Claude grumbles, leaning back in his chair and regarding him. The whole Merciless Tyrant Emperor act would be a lot more persuasive if he made an effort to hide the tone of satisfaction in his voice.

In Cale’s opinion, the Emperor is one of those people that hate propriety. He must like cheerful, blatantly affectionate people like Felix, while hating old two-faced codgers like Duke Alpheus and Lord Leopold. Though, he’s a bit stumped as to why Claude seems to put up with Raziel Robaine so much, given that he is neither cheerful nor affectionate, and has done nothing to try to appeal to the bastard, simply dozing off in the middle of chess matches with no concern. On his last visit at Claude’s office he spent the entire time going around touching books and knick-knacks and whatever seemed valuable to annoy the Emperor into shooing him away, and Claude somehow seemed to find it amusing instead, letting him wander around, offering no rebuke. He just smirked nastily at the sleepy figure of a child stumbling around his office touching shit he shouldn’t.

It was befuddling, but Cale thinks he’s got it figured out. It’s not a matter of being affectionate and obnoxiously happy-go-lucky, but of authenticity. Raziel Robaine had never put up a front or bothered with etiquette beyond the strict necessities, so unwittingly Cale was in Claude’s good books.

The problem is, Claude’s good books is the last place he wants to be in, judging by the subsequent frequency of the Emperor’s “invitations” to come to the Palace. They are called invitations in the same way “purgatory” is a pretence, a Lite version of hell —frankly, they are a summons. A come here immediately and entertain me imperial decree.

In short, Cale currently fills many qualifications, roles and responsibilities of a court jester, minus any benefits.

“In my boundless generosity, I’ll give you two choices,” Claude tells him, propping his head up on his hand. “Either help me with paperwork or continue the match.”

You get two choices, Cale translates in his mind. Either be my jester or my secretary.

The thing is, Cale knows exactly what the Emperor is trying to do. He’s probably heard of the rumours, of how Raziel Robaine has been reading since he was three, how he’s excelling in his studies, how he’s a self-taught magician of great skill yada yada yada. He’s just trying to figure out how useful he’s going to be to him—and, if the answer is zero, all these summons give him an easy way to put him to rest. Permanently.

“Do my paperwork”, for example, means: are you skillful enough to become my personal aide and work until the day you die in deplorable conditions?

Similarly, “play chess” means: are you skillful enough in terms of strategy to become a tactician and work until the day you die in deplorable conditions?

It’s only to the Emperor’s benefit if Cale grows more frustrated and lashes out at him with magic. He can already imagine it:

“Cast something for me now”, meaning: are you skillful enough in magic to become an Imperial Magician and work until the day you die in deplorable conditions?

Whichever way it goes, it probably ends with Cale retiring at 150 years of age after a long, gruelling career embroiled in the power plays and convoluted mess of imperial politics. He shudders, and sees Felix shift ever so slightly to cover him with his body.

“Your Majesty,” Felix says cautiously, a nervous finger scratching at his cheek, “it’s been two hours, and children get tired quite easily. Surely Raziel can come back another day?”

Felix, I take back all the shit I said about how useless you are. Cale’s mouth twitches up into a faint smirk of victory, the delighted glint in his eyes hidden by his fringe. Until he chances a look at Claude and sees him staring straight at him, evaluating every twitch of muscle, every change in expression, a maliciously gleeful spark in his eyes.

Cale can almost hear it in his mind, that lethal, horrid ‘caught you’.

“He does not appear very tired to me,” Claude says, elegantly crossing one leg over the other and shifting forward in his seat in his usual off-putting, ominous manner. “And it’s not like he’s doing anything strenuous. All he has to do is sit down and use his brain —though, I can see how that may be… difficult for him.”

Cale wants to take his posh, purple, gold-embroidered tunica palmata and suffocate him with it. His fingers twitch the urge, like they have a life of their own. All your problems will be solved like this, they whisper, the temptation travelling from every nerve and nestling in his brain like a cavity. No more chess. No more fraught conversations full of tension and carefully planned responses. No more teatime —all they drink is Lippe tea, and the taste pisses him off. It feels like someone shoved a seed in his tongue that blooms more with every sip, and by the time he gets to the end of the damn cup, it’s as if he’s trying to swallow past a phantom rose in full bloom that’s lodged inside his mouth.

He can’t believe he’s thinking this himself, but he misses Ron’s cursed lemon tea. He’s sunk this low.

“Your Majesty,” Cale pipes up, moving out of the cloak, into sunlight, and smiling tightly. “Can we make a bet?”

Claude quirks an eyebrow. The motherfucker.

“That’s what Papa does with Duke Alpheus sometimes, right? If I win the match,” he says, his words imbued with contractual magic, “please grant me pardon if I ever request it. And if you win…” The heavy weight of the emperor’s anticipation falls on him like floe, but Cale soldiers on. After all, what else has he been doing all his life?

“I’ll do whatever you tell me for an agreed period of time, as long as it is something in my power now.”

“Raziel—” Felix starts, a warning broiling beneath his worry. No doubt he’s already detected the use of mana, already realised what it’s for.

“—Quiet, Felix Robaine,” Claude orders. His eyes don’t move from Cale, eternally probing as ever. “I think you already know—”

“—That it’s not good enough for you, Your Majesty,” Cale nods, throwing him an explosive, Ijekiel-inspired beam. “But what can we do? Unfortunately, it’s all I can give.”

Now then, you royal pain in the ass, the die has been cast. The magic hangs suspended in the air like a faint chain of glittering particles, straining to tie the two together by agreement. Beneath it, the marble chess pieces gleam in a battlefield trapped in time.

Claude can always insist that the value of an Emperor’s pardon is greater than anything Raziel Robaine could give him. But he is also an arrogant piece of shit, and these last few years Cale’s laziness has helped him rack up a truly impressively long losing streak. Perhaps the Emperor thinks the odd victories here and there are simply hoaxes.

How possible is it really for a child to be a Grandmaster? It’d be weirder if you kept deluding yourself that a child is anything other than a child. An exceptionally bright one with bigger vocabulary than most, perhaps, but a child nonetheless.

Then there’s the reward for Claude’s “certain” victory: the offer of complete obedience, regardless of how temporary it will be, should be quite appealing. There’s a lot Claude can do with such a thing. After all, nowhere in his terms did Cale mention that he can’t hold off ordering him to do something for later. Theoretically, he could wait until he is older and more useful, to maximise his use. Theoretically.

“Very well,” Claude says, and the mana solidifies into one thick chain in a flash of binding light. Cale feels the vow crawling inside his core, a brief constricting sensation that cuts his breath away.

Cale takes a step forward, and it feels like it’s the most progress he’s managed to make in the past six years. He pulls out the chair, climbing up and settling in.

The Emperor takes a hold of his queen —and the game starts anew.

Chapter Text

There is a unique sense of joy and accomplishment in disassembling a bastard's arrogance into little bits. One of Kim Rok Soo's favourite pastimes, later Cale Henituse's daily habit-turned-hobby —and even now with his name changed he can think of nothing else he'd rather be doing.

Except, perhaps, being asleep at home.

His Supreme Majesty quickly began regretting his agreement to that vow about half an hour into the game, when it became clear that Cale somehow set up his side of the board predicting his moves three turns in advance. Or at least, that's how it looked.

The reality was that Kim Rok Soo was forced into countless chess matches with his two hyungs, wherein the penalties were designed with maximal embarrassment in mind. Between telling a colleague they "smell like chrysanthemums" and memorising hundreds of videos of Grandmaster matches on YouTube, there had been no competition. He did what he had to do.

Cale grabs his bishop and sets him near the opposing king, making sure it's looking, smugly, straight at him. Claude silently grits his teeth—and he can tell because his jaw is tensed so tight he can see a vein throb along the line of his jaw. 

"Check, Cale says, voice free of any inflection lest he give away the ocean of glee crashing onto the cliff of his self-control, wearing it thinner and thinner. 

Claude's king escapes by desperately leaping one tile to the left. The sorry sight of him alone near the board's corner, with dozens of black pieces converging on his position like a flock of starving pigeons with a crumb, is enough to make a grown man cry. Felix is already doing that, though wisely he retreated back to his corner of shame just behind the cherub fountain, having been waging a losing war against his wheezing ever since Claude’s queen became a casualty. 

Cale leans forward to grasp his rook, wobbling slightly. The garden chairs are too low on the ground and the board too high, so he’d been standing on the cushioned seat from the beginning of the match. If it were up to him he’d simply float bonelessly at eye level and move the pieces with magic, but he’d rather choke on a lemon than give Claude more reasons to be interested in his magical capabilities.

“Check,” Cale intones again, carefully withdrawing his hand to provide Claude with the best view of his destruction.

The King is now starting to sweat. The left has been closed off, the centre is marked by the Queen, a lonesome but irritating pawn sits right behind, and Cale’s bishop, who’d been run ragged this match, is an ever-present threat to the right, like a piece of glue he can’t unstick. Cale’s own king is near the centre of the board, more a figurehead sipping tea and watching a play than a leader of a battleforce.

Two moves left.

Cale consciously releases all tension in his muscles, and he feels himself unwinding, leaning relaxedly on the chair’s back. Idly, he glances at Claude’s face.

A maelstrom rages there. Their surroundings grow dim as clouds obstruct the sun, and in the shade his eyes are like chips of ice, glowing unnaturally. The wind chills his skin through Cale’s sleeves, and he shakes off the malicious magic scratching at him like an ill-behaved cat. I mean really, this immature asshole — and they call him an Emperor . 

Claude reminds him of that bastard Adin.

“It’s your turn, Your Majesty,” Cale says, smiling sunnily to punctuate the lack of any actual sun.

He did not intend his words to have a calming effect —in fact, quite the opposite— but he feels as if the incandescent rage of a booming thunderclap was a bit dramatic. Even Lucas never tried intimidation. He just handed out death threats with all the tonedeaf regularity of a cultist flyering in metropolitan Seoul.

Claude moves his King away, again. Cale’s bishop doggedly places itself in his diagonal path once more. “Check.”

Cale smoothly avoids obliteration from Claude’s murderous glare by idly staring at the leaves dancing with a tireless ferocity across the yard and over the fence. The wind has picked up quite a bit. He debates using a warming spell, but discards the thought immediately on account of the nosy Emperor in front of him. Hypothermia is temporary —work exploitation is forever. A shiver crawls from the top of his neck down to his feet, but Cale centres his focus back on his opponent —who hasn’t made his last move yet. Perhaps he’s finally beginning to go through the five stages of grief.

But it’s hopeless for him now. Cale can already feel the unfulfilled vow shaking tautly like a wound music box straining to metamorphose built-up stress into a completed melody. He himself doesn’t feel anything, being the current probable winner, but Claude probably feels as if somebody wrapped string around his heart valves and started trying to tug it free. The feeling no doubt worsens the more this unstable state continues.

Footsteps rustle through grass, and Cale’s eyes swivel to meet steel-grey. His brother takes off his heavy cape and drapes it over his small shoulders, immediately enveloping Cale with warmth. With careful hands, Felix clasps the two open ends together to make sure no cold seeps through and gently pats the top of his head before taking his place next to the Emperor.

“Your Majesty,” Felix says, his eyebrows set lower over his eyes, “please finish it off. Raziel knows not to go overboard with the vow. He won’t abuse it.”

Cale fixes his eye on the line of Claude’s defeated soldiers and tries to look innocent. It is significantly easier to do so when he looks like nothing but a head of wine-red hair atop a cloak. Eventually, the wind dies down, though a noticeable chill still permeates the air.

Felix has proved his importance in court once again today. After all, if he were to leave his post, who knows what this tyrant Emperor is going to do? You turn your head one second and the next he’s made a deadly vow with a six-year-old. You blink and he’s probably defenestrated Duke Alpheus from the second floor.

If something happened to Felix, the empire will probably be in shambles in a matter of days. 

Case in point: Claude admirably surpasses the stage of denial, speedruns through anger, skips bargaining, and finally arrives at acceptance. He moves his King to his death —and the vow vibrates in recognition of the victory as Cale pushes the marble piece down with his bishop.

“Checkmate.”

“Raziel Robaine.” Seemingly unbothered, Claude sets his chin over steepled fingers. Even the sun makes a hesitant return, the shade turning dappled from the maple’s foliage overhead.

Cale suddenly gets that feeling. That tingly, unpleasantly incessant sense of something going rapidly wrong in the next thirty seconds. It happened when Witira first told him about the mermaids, when Raon told him Crown Prince Alberu dyes his hair the staple Imperial gold, when the Elf Chief told them to meet the ‘sociable’ and ‘wise’ ancient Golden Dragon-nim… 

Cale’s eyes flick frantically about, searching for an escape —briefly, he considers jumping into the cherub fountain.

“Enter the palace as an Apprentice Magician.”

He is not quite quick enough to hide his reflexive grimace, and he doesn’t need Claude’s self-satisfied smirk to tell him that. However, before he has time to respond to such a generous offer, Felix beats him to it. 

“Your Majesty—! Please reconsider. Raziel is too young!”

“Age is irrelevant,” Claude dismisses, leaning back in his chair and glaring up at his knight. “The youngest apprentice magician right now is only three years older, but he was accepted the moment he awakened. Your brother has enough magic.”

“He’s never formally studied even the basi—”

“ —That is why they are called apprentices —”

Cale lets the sound of their back-and-forth wash over him like water off a seal’s back, sinking into his thoughts. Claude probably wanted to give him a government position instead of a position in the Magic Tower. As Emperor, regardless of his powerful authority, he’s always on the lookout for nobles in court positions that he can recruit to his side. The Robaine Duchy might be more autonomous than a vassal of the Imperial Family would be, but their contributions in Claude’s rise to the throne and the Dark War probably makes them no less than kingmakers . On paper, a Robaine is more trustworthy than other people by miles. 

Such is the influence of the family.

Cale could’ve coasted by in such a household if he pretended to be mediocre, but he has no space for pretence. There was never any deadline on his time here, but subtle signs of things getting twisted are everywhere if you know where to look:

The adopted lady of the Alpheus Duchy, for example, who Izekiel confided has eyes of bejewelled azure. The man who showed up out of nowhere at the boy’s mansion, with no history, papers or identification, yet who was somehow permitted to stay. Felix’s occasional grumbling about the more irritating members of the court being more quiet as of late. The occasional blips in the financial records of the Treasury that Duke Robaine sometimes tuts over.

Cale, in a body that wasn’t supposed to exist, is at the ideal position in society. His status is bourgeois enough to have access to connections that keep him up to date, and his family is powerful enough to avoid getting pushed around and being implicated in most power struggles. Ah, all of it. It really is too perfect. 

Much like the chess board still sitting in front of him. There’s three stages in a chess match —the opening, middlegame and endgame . Cale can see it now, with crystal clear clarity, as if through a magnifying glass. This is the Opening, and he’s just another piece sitting on the board. King, Queen, Heir, God’s Messenger.

Raziel Robaine, the name that became his shackles. Indeed, Raziel realises it now.

He can’t go back to being Cale Henituse until his role here is over.

And isn’t this a flawless set-up like no other? Claude would find most use for him if he were in a government position —a secretary or assistant to Duke Robaine— and yet he suggests magical apprenticeship instead? And, coincidentally, this body can be host to magic?

Impeccable, really . 

“ —Last week Lord Leopold introduced you to his awakened nephew and you said he wasn’t sui—!”

“ I can do what I like. I didn’t like him—”

“ —Your Majesty.”

Silence falls as they both turn to look at him. Raziel sees the world as if through a grainy screen, and their faces blur for a second until he blinks to clear it. The concern on his brother’s expression and Claude’s own confusion are both transparent.

“I’ll do it,” Raziel says dully. “I want to do it.”

Felix frowns, his countenance tense. “Raziel, are you alright?” He asks, coming closer to stroke his bangs out of his face and place a palm against his forehead.

Raziel barely feels a thing. 

“I’m fine, Felix,” he says. Fumbling with the clasp, he takes the heavy cloak off his shoulders, and it topples off the chair to the ground. 

He jumps off the seat, leaving the cloak where it fell, and sinks into a bow. “Your Majesty, please send me a letter with the specifics tomorrow. Pardon me, but I will take my leave for now.”

Raziel waits until the Emperor gives him a shallow, hesitant nod before walking away from the chess table to the Ruby Palace, his fingers running over the bracelet bangle in his pocket. Felix already knows where he’s going; he’ll follow after him soon enough.

“Lilly,” Raziel says, “can I take Athanasia outside?”

The maid sits on her heels, her eyes roaming over his face like she’s trying to decrypt him. He doesn’t know what she sees there, but it’s enough to make her hesitate a split second.

“We’ll be by the lady fountain,” Raziel reassures her. “We won’t go anywhere else.”

“...Alright,” Lilly sighs, standing back up. “Wait until she wakes up first, she’s taking a nap.” He can feel her eyes on him even as he turns around and grabs the door to the Princess’ chambers. “Raziel,” she calls.  “Tell me if you’re worried about anything. A child like you shouldn’t face everything alone.”

“...Thank you.” 

Click ! The door opens, and Raziel slips in. Lilly doesn’t follow him in —at some point when he was four years old, she started trusting him enough to leave him be.

“ Athanasia ,” he whispers, walking to the massive bed in the centre.

The bedroom is a haven against the blinding afternoon sunlight. The heavy curtains cover the windows, leaving tiny cracks in-between that save the room from complete darkness.

Raziel approaches the bed. The Korean words spill over his mouth effortlessly. “ Athanasia, I have something you have to—”

He freezes, then swears. Colourfully.

The Princess is not in bed. He runs to the nearest terrace door, tripping over the carpet in his haste, and tries the handle. Unlocked. Fuck .

“Lilly!”

Chapter Text

Athanasia’s chambers, like most in the palace complex, are split into four sections —the reception room, the wardrobe, the bathing area and the sleeping chamber itself. It’s much like a luxurious penthouse, without the peasant-like kitchen to sully the eyes of the aristocracy.

However, lavishness aside, the size of such a “bedroom” is highly inconvenient for times when you are yelling for assistance and your saviour has to sprint a marathon and do parkour around the ostentatious furniture in order to finally get to you. At which point, should you be suffering from a time-sensitive, life-threatening crisis, they would certainly cease to be your potential saviour and instead become your death witness.

Or so Raziel was thinking as he stood impatiently next to the terrace door, waiting for the sound of frantic footsteps to turn into that of the double doors slamming open. When they finally did, revealing Lillian all flushed and sweaty and panting and terrified, he spared no time to explain in full.

“Athanasia wasn’t in bed,” he says bluntly, his hand already wrapped around the doorframe and the outside breeze whipping his hair this way and that. “I’m going to use a spell to try to find her, so don’t worry about me.”

And then he leaves with nary a glance back, the drapes whooshing back into place behind him. Lillian is level-headed when needed —he trusts she will know what to do and try to find him with the help of trustworthy maids instead of yelling at everyone that the Empire’s only heir has disappeared.

Outside, the sunshine showering the terrace mocks him with its cheerful glare. A gust of wind blows through his hair and eyelashes, and Cale squints through it as he takes off in a run, loosening the cravat at his neck and leaping over the low marble balusters. Athanasia was probably small enough to squeeze in between the gaps, damn it all. The grass rustles beneath his feet when he lands, but he doesn’t even stop to take his bearings, simply mouthing a quick 찾아보다 —find. His magic responds immediately, anchoring itself to Athanasia’s necklace and pulling him in her direction.

It was a good idea to give her the thing, he now knows. Athanasia has a concerning habit of wandering around everywhere, having decided to abuse her newfound ability to walk, and Raziel would’ve had to use flight and concealment spells together to find her from the air.

A bad idea for several reasons, including the way he’s sneezing and tearing up now as he sprints through flat lawn, then bushes of jasmines, then hedges of smaller flowers.

But wait, Raziel thinks, his forehead a mess of wrinkles, trying not to breathe in too much. He puts a supportive hand on the leafy wall of the arch, feelings small legs twinge.

His surroundings looked familiar. A cobbled path with an overhead arch of clematis, a ten minute walk to a private terrace in the Emperor’s sector of the palace —a place, he knows, that is enclosed by high, trimmed, plain hedges, and beautified by twisting, inter-connected canals of water and cupid fountains.

This is the exact path he took on his way back from the chess match with Claude.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice drawls from the sky. Raziel snaps his head up.

Relief floods into his body, falling just short of appearing on his stoic face. Because it’s Lucas he sees sitting on the edge of the arch above, his legs carelessly dangling over the side and a restless, shivering fox fidgeting around in his lap, pushing against the comforting touch of the magician’s hands.

“What happened to make you look so ugly, dumbass?”

What is she doing here?

Athanasia numbly, shakily accepts the teacup offered to her by a maid that bolts as soon as she appears, her departing footsteps slightly quicker than strictly proper and her skirts billowing behind her.

She dearly wishes she could follow, but a keen glare and slowly blossoming bloodlust shackles her body on her seat and renders her muscles useless.

Hysterically, she wonders what will happen to her spilt bags of pilfered treasures. She can still see them near the group of golden statues through the window behind the scary Emperor’s shoulder, glowing in the sun as if ablaze.

Ugh, my no. 7 and 8! Athanasia despairs. It took three weeks to gather those, and they were the best jewels she could find so far.

“I didn’t know you couldn’t speak,” Claude says, his voice whisper-soft, like the gentle caress of a blade against the throat.

Athanasia hiccups, hiding her shaking hands beneath the bunched up skirts on her lap after putting the teacup down as silently and discreetly as possible. Her lungs want to fight for air, but Athanasia ruthlessly controls them, trying to emulate the breathing of a person not scared out of their wits. Someone who, regardless of the threat, would radiate the charisma needed to escape with their life intact. Someone like Jennette.

“Well, this is boring... Not much of a talker?”

Athanasia stiffens further, if that’s even possible. Does that mean he’ll kill me because I’m not entertaining?

“Athy can talk,” she exclaims, tilting her head and beaming for all she’s worth.

Claude stares at her unwaveringly. “Finally, I get to hear your voice. Why did you stay silent until now?”

Athanasia opens her mouth to answer, but the words won’t come out. There’s a part of her paralysed at the thought of saying something wrong, something that will trip some kind of trap, and then she’ll be dead and her blood will be cooling on the white marble on the floor. Desperately, she looks to Felix, who stands next to the Emperor like a guard dog.

Felix chucks her a look of pity. I don’t need it! Get me out of here instead! “Pardon me, Your Majesty,” he says nervously, “but little girls around the princess’ age are known to be very shy.”

“Is that so?”

Athanasia’s urge to scowl is truly terrible in its intensity, but her self-preservation instincts are all too developed and she keeps it in check, her lips instead rising into another bright, cheery grin.

Claude leans in, his handsome features contorted in a slight snarl. Athanasia shrinks back, her back hitting the pillows.

“Felix,” her deadbeat father says, “leave us.”

Dread plants itself in her mind, blossoming into hysteria. No! Do not!

But Felix throws her one last concerned glance before leaving, no doubt taking his place outside the door. Athanasia feels the burn of tears at her eyes, and she stares unblinkingly somewhere over the Emperor’s shoulder until they dissipate and she can look at the him in the face again.

“Athy, is it? It must be a pet name.” His eyes flutter closed, the sunlight streaming from the window making his lashes look like burnished gold. “Athanasia,” he murmurs, her name like a blessing in his mouth.

“What a name.”

Athanasia lowers her gaze to the ground. She hated this conversation from the very beginning, had been trying to avoid it ever since she arrived in this world, but the direction he’s taking it to now is... much more dangerous.

In Obelia, countless idioms and poems are dedicated to names:

Name and fate are one and the same, was the quote put in the cover of every history book in the Imperial Library. Call my name and watch me come alive, as if my breath was never cut, was a part of one of the most renowned poems in the Empire.

Before Claude took over, Obelia had been founded and led by many generations of fair-haired, jewel-eyed Emperors with names befitting the splendour of their Empire and the mightiness of their magic. Kyilum, Adnan, Aeturnus. Eternal, immortal.

And Athanasia’s grandfather had looked at his son and bestowed him a curse. If the saying that name dictates path of life has any sliver of truth in it, then it can be said that Claude did indeed ‘limp’ his way through his childhood because of the cruelties of High Society. And even with his present self sitting in front of her, Athanasia can’t help but think that no one this cold and merciless is gliding effortlessly and free-spiritedly through life. Perhaps he still limps, even now, like the way old wounds sometimes ache with latent pain when it rains.

Athanasia thinks it’s been raining in this man’s life for a long, long time—

“To dare give her own child such a name, and a girl at that. She would’ve had her limbs ripped off if she survived the labour.”

—But that’s none of her business. Athanasia is not so benevolent so as to ignore threats to her own wellbeing in a fruitless attempt to understand a person who won’t ever return the favour.

She takes advantage of the wet sheen of her desperate, terrified tears to blink innocently at him, as if she doesn’t understand.

I’m harmless. I have zero interest in the throne. I may have a fancy name but I’m nothing more than a five-year-old glutton. Please let me go!

Claude gazes back at her. “Why are you just sitting there? Go ahead and eat.”

The ensuing silence has an air of expectation as he waits for her to move. Athanasia tries. She wills her arms to move, to pick up the fondue, or the pudding, or the white-icing cake, anything, and all they do is twitch, like a glitching phone connection.

She knows that for every second she remains frozen, his eyes glow more dangerously, coldly, mercilessly. She doesn’t just know it. She sees it —feels it too, like prickling knives on her legs.

“...I ordered them to bring something kids would like. If you don’t eat I will have no choice but to punish the cook—”

“—Mmm, yummy!”

The cake sits on her tongue like a rock, but she manages to chew. Mechanically, as if she’s relearning the motion, for the sake of the cook, and the innocent kitchen staff.

“Thank you for the food!”

Athanasia feels a stomach-ache coming on. If she leaves any leftovers, will he go on a killing spree? Quickly, she glances up at him.

He stares back, his features slack, his brows pulled low over his face. The glare he has fixed on her shows no sign of ever receding.

I don’t know how he’ll react!

“Yummy!” Athanasia exclaims shakily, trying to hide the paleness of her face with a smile.

Was it just her impression, or did the tension around his eyes dissipate, imperceptibly so? Either way, she wants to go home.

Felix is dead to her. Did he just leave hoping everything was going to be OK? What use is his optimism and faith in humanity if humanity has assholes like Claude in it? Ah, I miss Lilly... and Raziel. She can’t imagine him ever bending over backwards to please this bastard of a man lounging nonchalantly opposite her. He has a protective streak contradictory of his sleepy and lazy demeanour. If it were Raziel, he’d get her out of here instantly.

The deep baritone of the aforementioned asshole pulls her out of her fervent wishes for Raziel to appear. “Who taught you manners?”

“...Lilly taught me,” Athanasia says, fearing she’s just condemned her for simply uttering her name in his presence.

“I see. You are talking about Lillian York.” How does he know her full name? “Five years ago, she stepped in front of me requesting that she be allowed to take care of you. That lady must still be with you.”

Huh? Lily? She did such a thing? Stepped in front of this monstrous guy for my sake?!

“She also took charge of the Ruby Palace.”

Oh, Lilly...! I’m so moved—!

“How dare she.”

Athanasia pulls up short. She doesn’t peel her eyes away from the carpet. Instinctively, she knows. Don’t meet his eyes now.

“The only two people who survived after getting in my way were your mother and that wench.”

The cake dissolves in her mouth and she mindlessly gnaws on the fork to appear busy instead of swallowing it. Her mouth feels dry. Athanasia is sure that if she tries to swallow, she’ll launch into a coughing fit.

Oh my god, what if she coughs up a random crumb and it lands on him? No!

“As you sit there, are you aware of who I am?”

She doesn’t even have time to realise what she did wrong, if anything. One moment he’s relaxed, like a lazy tiger, and the next his hackles are up and the pervasive iciness of his magic pulls the air from the room.

The fork lands on the table with a violent clatter.

Athanasia whips her head up. Something tells her to meet his gaze and hold it.

Don’t take your eyes off him.

She had thought it strange —why bring her here? It was probably on a whim, an opportunity given as a prize for drawing his attention.

This is a test to decide whether to let me live longer...

Or to have me killed.

‘Are you aware of who I am?’

Who is he? A tyrant. A father who does not deserve to be referred to as such. The giver of her life and the source of her terror.

Claude de Alger Obelia, the man who was cruel to his daughter until the bitter end —yet endlessly doting to...

Athanasia gulps down the cake, and with it her inhibitions. “...Papa?”

Claude’s face is as hard to decipher as an ancient code, but Athanasia picks up on micro-expressions. Like little breadcrumbs left behind —should she lose track, she’ll be lost. The frigid press of mana on her lungs eases back, and his expression twists from malicious to pondering. He regards her thoughtfully, and she finds she hates the ease with which he makes decisions over her death.

What would have happened if she was herself? If she never acted cute? If she didn’t meet his expectations?

How easy it would have been, for him to snuff her life out then?

But Athanasia grits her teeth, as always, and persists, sending him a beam as bright as a raining constellation. “Papa!”

Claude stares at her for a long, long while, something in his eyes warming. “Ridiculous,” he scowls, leaning forward to grab his own teacup and take a sip, for the first time since they sat down.

The fragrance wafts over to her, flowery and strong, like nothing she’s ever smelled before. Athanasia breathes, and thinks what she’s feeling is something like hope.

“Felix will take you back,” Claude says. “Now, get out of my—”

Bang!

Athanasia flinches, her head jerking to the side in time to see Raziel Robaine push past his protesting brother and breeze his way through the doorway, hair an artful mess on his shoulders and chest heaving from exertion. Something knotted in her chest comes loose at the sight of him, but—

“What is this?” Claude asks, his voice like an executioner’s.

Raziel’s eyes restlessly roam the room, landing on Claude first before audaciously sliding over him as if he’s wallpaper covering the walls. The air becomes colder, all of a sudden, and Athanasia shivers. She doesn’t think she could bear watching Raziel be punished by this bastard. She sends him a wordless plea —apologise, please!

Finally, his eyes find her. He inspects her from head to toe, frowning slightly at her shaking hands and pale face, before letting himself relax.

“I apologise for my disrespectful entrance, Your Majesty,” Raziel says, turning to Claude and sinking on bended knee. “I was visiting the Princess when Lady York told me she wasn’t anywhere in the Ruby Palace. She was very stressed.”

She thought she’d been relieved when she dodged the most urgent bullet before—Athanasia had not realised the latent tension in her body until it melted at the sight of someone truly trustworthy. Yes, this is how to handle this. Raziel knows what to do and how to do it.

Athanasia stares as Claude raises a brow, oddly tolerant. “And what gives you the right to interrupt our conversation, Raziel Robaine?”

What the hell? Isn’t he supposed to insult him and threaten dismemberment?

“Nothing, Your Majesty,” Raziel says immediately. From her side she can see the hand folded solemnly behind his back contort into a rather obscene gesture, and she purses her lips to stifle a loud cackle. “I hope you find it in you to forgive my impudence. Although not an excuse, please understand it came from a place of worry.”

Wow. If Athanasia had been feeding Claude samples of bullshit, Raziel was serving him the whole damn buffet.

Surprisingly, Claude does not cut his tongue off for the insolence. “I’ll forgive your rudeness,” he drawls, a downright playful glint in his eye, “if you accept my offer to become an Apprentice Magician.”

What? Athanasia wants to pull his hair out. What’s with this difference in treatment? He is not even your own child!

Raziel’s backhanded gestures become more extreme and violent, their intensity contrasting with the radiance of his polite thin-lipped smile.

“Very well, Your Majesty,” he says, bowing his head in acceptance. When his long locks cover his face from Claude, Athanasia sees him grit his teeth like he’s gnashing on a rock. “Who am I to disobey an Imperial order?”

Claude has the faintest smirk on his face as he relaxes back onto the sofa pillows, one hand casually holding his tea. For a second, there’s only silence as Raziel and Claude smile daggers at each other, Felix stands frozen at the door and Athanasia gawps at it all.

Her useless father likes him, she can tell. What a bastard. Why does he go around favouring other people’s children?

“Raziel Robaine,” the useless father in question calls. “You never mentioned you visited the Ruby Palace that often.”

Something strange happens, then. Something Athanasia had never seen before in her life. The corners of Raziel’s lips twist up into a cheery, sunshine grin, and for a moment it’s as if a phantom halo appears behind his head. His blood-red hair almost seems a holy, silvery white, and Athanasia squints, blinded. When she glances to the side to protect her eyes, she sees Felix standing there with his eyes bugging out of his skull. I know, right? I didn’t even know his eyes could open that wide. Raziel tended to permanently look like someone woke him up in the middle of a comfortable nap —if not that, then simply annoyed.

“Your Majesty, I have never once lied to you,” he says passionately, a fervent hand at his breast, and Athanasia almost believes it too, until she remembers that Raziel Robaine is the fattest liar she’s ever had the pleasure of meeting. Everything she has learned, he has role-modelled. “Whenever you asked, I always told you where Felix took me. Please never doubt my loyalty!”

Way to throw Felix in the mouth of the tiger, Raziel! Athanasia screeches internally, blinking nervously from Claude to Raziel to Felix as if trying to send the poor man an apology in Morse code. Then, she remembers how Felix simply left her alone in that tiger’s den, and her sympathy evaporates. I take it back. Have fun defusing this bomb, you traitor!

Felix falters a step back, his hands raised as if the poor things have any hope of shielding against Claude’s increasingly flinty glare. “I—I... well...”

Raziel, kind soul that he is, interjects, his voice overflowing with passion:

“—But, I do not blame him! Imar Lentor says that love makes people act unlike themselves.”

Claude’s eyebrow journeys higher up his forehead, on a quest to decrypt Raziel’s maze of bullshit. Lentor, as in, the minstrel that wept for seven nights and seven days because of unrequited love? That Imar Lentor? Athanasia quickly muffles her giggle in her sleeve, shrugging the motion off as delicately covering a sneeze.

For a second, she thinks that Claude will have Raziel dragged away and strung up like a garland for his audacity, but...

“Your father should keep an eye on your reading material,” he says idly, readjusting the folds of his tunic.

...she keeps underestimating just how much Raziel Robaine is not her. Damn, first Jennette, now her brother-cum-lifeline. Who else next? Is the only prerequisite for getting in Claude’s good books acting cute? Is that how Felix got himself the personal aide position?

Jennette and Felix may act cute but Raziel’s not even—!

Ah. The electrical signal of eureka strikes her. Athanasia understands now.

Raziel doesn’t even need to do anything —all he needs to do is sit there with his thousand-yard stare and be commemorated as a work of art. And even though at first he appears like a stone-cold bitch, he tends to grow on you like some type of fungus.

Meanwhile, the boy himself is blissfully ignorant of the miracle of Claude de Alger Obelia liking someone. Having successfully appeased the elephant in the room, he pivots to bow before her.

“Princess Athanasia,” he says, looking straight at her, “can I escort you back?”

Athanasia holds her breath. His expression is the same as usual —when it comes to Raziel Robaine, whose facial muscles are deficient in emoting, his eyes are the only real way to figure him out. They are serious —perfectly clear. If Claude’s are crystals of arctic blue, Raziel’s are like warm copper.

It says something, the fact that he did not direct that question to the person with the greatest authority here.

‘Do whatever you want. I’ll make sure you can do whatever you want.’

He’d said this to her before, countless times. He meant it every time.

Athanasia looks at her reflection in his eyes and nods, jumping off the couch, bouncing up to him and placing her hand in his proffered one, unhesitant. “Let’s go!”

Raziel’s hand closes on hers as he straightens up and inclines his head to the Emperor, who does nothing but regard them thoughtfully. “Your Majesty, we will take our leave. Thank you for your boundless grace in accepting my apology.”

And, without further ado, he rudely turns to leave. Hurriedly before getting pulled along, Athanasia calls out a Bye, Papa! over her shoulder, pretending she doesn’t see Raziel’s confused frown at her cutesy voice of self-preservation. Instead, she focuses on the way Claude’s eyes soften around the edges, like when an iceberg sparkles brilliantly when faced by the sun.

“Princess,” Raziel sighs, “you’re driving me crazy.”

Athanasia opens her mouth to answer, then closes it slowly, having no excuse. He’s got his forehead leaning against the door, and the sight of his hunched back makes guilt bubble inside her. She can’t see his face, and maybe that’s a good thing right now.

“아이씨. Just why did you come here?”

He’s really annoyed right now. Athanasia clears her throat, drawing shapes on the ground with the tip of her foot. She follows his lead, slipping into Korean, not questioning the reason for it. “I wanted to hide my bag of riches.”

He turns his head so he can glance at her from the corner of his eyes. “What?”

“Ah, I’ll show you,” Athanasia says, walking just around the corner. They haven’t exactly gone far from the room of that disastrous tea party. As a matter of fact, they’re just outside. Felix is still with Claude trying to explain himself, and she can see them some tens of meters away through the window —Claude looks like he’s having the time of his life, the bastard. At least one person had a good time after that horrific event.

Athanasia measures the distance between the cluster of gold statues she’d dropped her bags near and the large windows of the sitting room, weighing the stakes. The space seems insurmountable all of a sudden, and fears grips her heart.

What if Claude notices me picking them up and decides to kill me here and now?

Footsteps and a put-upon sigh break her away from her thoughts, and she turns to see Raziel approaching, his hand messing his hair. Suddenly her back straightens out, her breaths come easier.

She points at the jewels glinting in the sun, and Raziel tsks. “Why bother with such troublesome things? Just ask me for money. I’m rich.”

Athanasia stares. He’s acting like a chaebol. She tells him so, and he snorts.

“I might as well be. The Robaine Duchy is the richest after the Imperial family.”

“Wow!” Athanasia exclaims.

She’s not being sarcastic at all. The image of Raziel showering in an endless rain of gold coins is very impressive. Extremely impressive. So much so that it makes her feel... stupid... for struggling so much on her own.

“Well, just tell me if you need anything,” Raziel says. His characteristic calm air is back, and it is unspeakably reassuring. “I’ll get it for you. People are supposed to help each other.”

Athanasia smiles. This one comes easy.

“Then, should I get those back for now?”

Raziel shrugs, uncaring, and she knows what he’ll say even before he opens his mouth.

“Do what you want,” she choruses along with him, grinning when he glances at her flatly.

Abruptly, he takes her hand and drops something on it. Bemused, she looks down to see —a braided bracelet of gold.

“It’s pretty,” she offers. Raziel rolls his eyes.

“Keep that on you,” he says, “it took me ages to carve protective runes on it.”

Athanasia looks at it with greater interest. “Really? What can it do?”

“Advanced protection against malicious spells, nullification of most poisons, and,” Raziel pauses, “an emergency teleportation function. If you ever find yourself fearing for your life it will take you to my family estate, in a warded room. Duke Robaine doesn’t know about it. If that place is compromised it will let you pick a location. You will keep it on you, right?”

Athanasia answers him with a tight hug. “Thank you,” she says, and it’s as if the switch to Korean pulls the earnestness straight from her heart. She wants to laugh at the awkward hands that move to envelop her in turn.

What a stroke of luck it was, meeting Raziel Robaine. And here she had been about to give up hope of reliable adults existing out in the wild.

Athanasia lets Raziel go, and turns her gaze to the coins, those jewels she’d painstakingly amassed.

“I don’t think I need those anymore,” she decides, resolutely turning her back. “Let’s go back to Lilly.”

“Oh?” An unfamiliar voice drawls, “and here I thought I was being generous, kindly picking up after your mess.”

Athanasia whips her head in the direction of the voice, and her jaw clatters to the floor.

Pretty. A super pretty guy leans against the palace wall. On his hand is her discrete brown bag, and floating in the air around his face are her pilfered treasures. The sun catches on their lustre, reflecting light into his eyes —a deep, brilliant shade of scarlet, like the rubies he’s taken to flying this way and that.

“Lucas,” Raziel calls, sounding more exasperated than usual. “I told you I’d be fine. What are you doing here?”

The boy —Lucas— ignores him with an ease that speaks of years of familiarity. Instead, he zeroes in on her, the only unknown, his attention like a heavy weight.

“So you're the Athanasia this idiot's been on and on about.”

Chapter Text

Lucas twirls a gold necklace inlaid with tiny rubies around a finger, lazily casting his eyes at the rest of the precious gems floating around him. He’s not looking, but he knows the expression on Raziel’s face down to the glaze of fatigue in his eyes. He’s been around this stupid idiot for three years —it’s enough time to realise the fool has trouble sleeping, and enough time to… forcefully remedy that with a spell or two. When he could. Unfortunately, it is dangerous to forcefully induce sleep on someone with magic —they tend to adapt to the spell and then more power needs to be put in for it to work. This is partly why Lucas could not fully replenish his magic even in three years. Without him, this bastard would have keeled over from chronic fatigue long ago.

The insomnia had been unsurprising. Souls are not supposed to be chucked in random bodies and different worlds, so when they do there’s always side-effects. Exhaustion, lack of appetite, inability to sleep, restlessness, reckless risk-taking… Lucas has not seen many people like Raziel but he imagines the fool exemplifies everything that goes wrong when a soul is displaced one too many times.

This is why he hates those deities. Meddling in everything, shoving their noses where they don’t belong.

But there’s more important things to worry about, now.

Lucas pushes himself off the palace wall, walking to stand in front of the girl. She flinches, standing straighter (as if it will make any significant difference on her height) and he senses Raziel next to her twitch in alarm. It’s odd. Almost instinctual. He knows Lucas wouldn’t hurt this girl, since he was the one to tell him about her possible involvement in the God of Death’s plan.

If he instinctually aims to protect her, it does make the theory that it involves her more likely. He should tell him about it later.

For now, he narrows his eyes, grabbing her chin to tilt her head up. “So you’re the Athanasia this idiot’s been going on and on about.”

Just what is so special about this slip of a girl?

Red stares into blue. “What makes you so significant for everyone to want to protect you?” His fingers tighten.

The World Tree that pestered him to high hell exactly five years ago, on the day of her birth. When he refused to heed the calls, the stupid plant tipped off the God of Death, who practically kidnapped Raziel. The price for that would not have been small —and all for her?

There must be something. He takes a deep breath, parting his lips to let a whisper of mana escape that roils over her face like a puff of smoke. There’s a glint of flashing, ominous crimson reflected in her eyes.

A hand roughly grabs his shoulder. “Hey,” Raziel warns.

Lucas is unmoved. “Quiet, Raziel.”

His eyes are intent on the princess —or, rather, her soul. Souls tend to grow with lifetime. A person aged sixty would have their core and then sixty rings surrounding it like a ball of yarn, and when they up and die it’s the rings that explode and set off the energy needed to kick the core back in the cycle of life. It’s why Raziel, who had his soul grabbed and shoved into his current vessel, has around forty rings in his merdian’ima instead of six.

It does not, however, explain why the princess, whose existence is accounted for in this world, has around twenty rings already, as well as a capacity and potency of mana he’s never seen before.

Said princess, apparently, is fed up with his manhandling, violently turning her head to dislodge his fingers and glaring at him.

Lucas straightens up, crossing his arms. “You’re interesting,” he tells her, smiling, “I’ve never seen someone like you.”

She opens her mouth, probably to cuss him out, but—

“You creepy paedophile,” Raziel says, scrunching his nose in disgust.

—immediately closes it, turning to blink dumbfoundedly at Raziel as he pats Lucas on the shoulder in unwelcome commiseration.

“Old man, you’re obviously out of your mind from exhaustion. I understand your brain isn’t what it used to be so take your meds and trudge on home.”

Lucas has to wonder where he pulls this much bullshit out of. Does it come pre-prepped? Does he think of it while staring off into space? Or is he simply this much of a natural at being fucking annoying?

He shoves the offending appendage off his shoulder. “Ungrateful bastard. Is this your unique way of saying thank you for all I’ve done for you?”

People these days are so rude. Lucas laments the begone times when he’d walk by and hordes of people bowed aside to make way for his greatness.

Now, all he gets is a contemptuous frown. “All you did was tell me the teleportation initiation runes.”

Lucas’ eyes bug out at the injustice. The initiation runes? Initiation runes?! What about how he rushed here to help his sorry ass in the first place?

“The only reason why I’m even here is because of your freak-out!” He bursts, pointing an accusing finger at Raziel’s maddeningly stoic face. “You should be apologising for interrupting me.”

Raziel’s eyebrows furrow as if he’s never heard anything more ridiculous. “Interrupted you from what?” ‘Eating blueberry cheesecake?’ — Lucas hears the unsaid question perfectly.

It pisses him off even more because that is exactly what he’d been doing before Raziel’s stupid fox started acting like a snivelling mess. He doesn’t even know why he came so quickly, really, but the moment he saw it shivering in his lap he thought of this bastard being hurt and the idea had been uncomfortable enough to get him springing out of his chair. Ah, it feels stuffy recalling it. Lucas rubs at his chest as if to make the latent ache go away.

How displeasing. He’d been doing just fine before this guy came along, slumbering along in blessed oblivion inside his tomb. Now he’s going around saving princesses and letting foxes sit on his lap and feeling things. Disgusting.

A contemplative hum interrupts their scowl fest. Lucas returns the heavy weight of his attention to the royal midget standing before him.

“You two seem to know each other well,” she says, smiling at Raziel, who barely even blinks in acknowledgement.

“I wish I didn’t,” Lucas sighs, pulling all the jewels and coins from the air into the tiny pouch and floating it over to the princess. The bag shakes pointedly in front of her nose until she snatches it up with a scowl.

The jewels are not even precious enough for him to pick them up personally; he could magic up a small mountain of them in the same time it takes for him to sneeze. Even so, they were fantastic props for his grandiose entrance. No doubt the princess’ impression of him is stellar now. Didn’t the rubies make his eyes stand out more in the sunlight?

She stares down at the bag in her hands, looking equal parts despondent and irritated. “It’s because of these that I had to deal with this crap today.”

Lucas and Raziel look at her silently. Isn’t it just because you were frolicking in your father’s backyard?

“No, it’s because you decided to hide them at the Main Palace,” Raziel points out, giving voice to Lucas’ own thoughts.

The princess gives a nervous laugh, looking at him with trepidation. “Are you still angry, Raziel?” Her eyes become impossibly big and glistening.

Lucas could have told her that the cute act doesn’t work on the bastard —he’d tried it himself. Even the most beautiful person in the world hasn’t managed to move him.

And anyway, he doubts he’s angry. Rather than angered, Raziel’s the type to be irritated more easily. Lucas himself can’t remember an instance in the past three years where he hasn’t been irritated or tense—if he were to wager, he doubts the Robaine Duchy ever saw him in a state of relaxation the years prior to that. When he’s not terrorised by his sword instructor on Wednesdays, sleeping fitfully, eating meagre amounts of food (enough to stave off concerned comments from Felix Robaine) or staring blankly at nothing, Raziel is always found in the library, copying book and after book to put in his personal shelves with the speed of a manic man.

They’d run out of room a long time ago. Now, a myriad tomes on transversion of space sit in messy stacks next to the bookcase, makeshift bookmarks of torn out parchment notes and broken quill feathers peeking out from the sides. Lucas’ own research on the subject have a place of honour on the desk, wrinkled after countless times of leafing through the pages and annotated with hastily scrawled words and symbols at the margins —a language that he cannot read. Raziel knows how to use Common Obelian; whatever he’s been writing, he just doesn’t want Lucas to know of it.

Frustrating man. He’s like a secret wrapped in mystery and smoke, fading into wisps when you try to grab it. Where did he come from? Why is he so desperate to return? Who is the ‘White Star’ that Lucas has heard him mutter in his sleep? A nickname for a lover, perhaps? He’s lived long enough to know that’s the kind of drivel people spout when they’re lost in the rosy, foolish haze of romance, whatever that may be. Who else would someone call a star?

A puzzled voice brings him back to the conversation. “Why would I be angry?” Raziel blinks dumbly, shifting his weight onto a foot and crossing his arms. There’s a gleeful shine to his eyes when he adds, “If anything, Ms Lillian will be more mad than I ever can,” and it grows brighter at the sight of the Princess paling instantly.

“We should go back,” Princess Athanasia stammers, urgently looking around as if this Lillian woman will crawl out of the cranberry bushes behind her with a machete in hand.

Raziel’s face breaks out in a sunny smile as he wraps an arm around Lucas’ shoulders, the very picture of close best friends, heedless of the glare he receives from him. Lucas tries to shimmy out of the steely sham of an embrace, hissing at the tightening warning grip. “Oh, no, Princess,” he says, looking sadly at the sky and shaking his head, and Lucas is so very close to burning his hand off with a well-aimed ignitio, when— “Seeing as His Majesty himself was so gracious as to bestow upon me the position of Apprentice Magician, I should be going to the Tower to acquaint myself with my future instructors. Lucas here will be coming with me. Please wait for Felix and make your way back with him.”

Athanasia groans in abject misery while Lucas freezes, turning slowly to gawp at him.

What did he say?

Apprentice what?

“You didn’t tell me that,” he hisses, wrenching himself out of his grip. Raziel massages his hand, frowning at him, but Lucas is too annoyed to notice.

Three years he’s been putting up with this fool’s secretive ways —the man’s mouth is a steel-trap with double locks. Even after those three years, does this jerk not trust him enough to tell him what’s happening? Angry lighting sparks at his fingertips, and Princess Athanasia’s lilac skirt shifts as she shuffles away from him.

“That’s because he gave me the position today,” Raziel says in a defeated, tired voice, and Lucas pulls up short, the zap of magic disappearing. “He wanted to punish me for interrupting his discussion with Athanasia.”

Lucas relaxes his posture and rolls his eyes. “Don’t go trying to act upset about it. Be honest, you thought it works out well.”

It’s impossible that this punk wouldn’t have thought of the benefits already.

“…After all, don’t you want to distance yourself from the Duchy?”

“What?” Athanasia demands, frowning. “Raziel, what does he mean?”

He doesn’t look at her. Lucas follows his line of sight to a twig somewhere over the princess’ shoulder. Ah, yes, what a riveting sight.

“If I don’t move out of the Robaine Estate,” he tells her, face carefully expressionless, “They won’t let me leave.”

“Leave?” The Princess asks in a voice several octaves higher than her usual. “Leave and go where? Korea?”

Lucas chews over that word in his mind, digesting it. Korea. Is that where her previous body was? It must’ve been the same world as Raziel’s, then, for her to mention it.

“No, not Korea,” Raziel denies, shaking his head. “Somewhere else.” Sighing, he finally decides to turn to Athanasia, only to regret it when he comes face to face with panicked eyes swimming in worry.

“Athanasia,” he says, and his gaze as it meets hers is heavy with exhaustion. “I don’t belong here. I still have things to do back home.”

At this, the fight goes out of her, shoulders curving inwards like a withered flower.

Lucas clears his throat, uncomfortable with the charged atmosphere. “Well, the dorms in the Tower are luxurious enough, so you’ll be comfortable. But my quarters are the best of them all, obviously.” Because of course he’ll be moving back in the Tower, if the idiot’s going to live there too.

“And I’ll be closer to Athanasia, as well,” Raziel says, glancing first at the Princess, then pointedly at him.

Lucas reads his eyes easily and completes the sentence: I’ll be in a better position to fulfil the God of Death’s terms regarding her protection.

“…When are you planning on leaving?” Athanasia asks, her head hung low. The assurance that he’ll be closer to her seems to have assuaged her panic slightly.

Raziel runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it out of frustration. It’s a terrible habit that he’s had ever since Lucas met him. It leaves his hair horribly messy because it’s curly, like his brother’s, but he doesn’t seem to care. In fact, even his clothes are always loose and slipshod; lacings on shirt untied, cravats casually hanging from around the neck like a shawl, if not abandoned somewhere. Things around his neck don’t seem to stay in place no matter what. Lucas himself can’t stand it if his appearance isn’t neat, so some days he can’t even bear to look at this human disaster.

“I don’t know.”

The Princess is surprised enough at that to lift her head up, revealing wide eyes full of incredulity. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“A god brought me here, and I can’t leave until I figure out why.”

Lucas doesn’t need the fox around to pick up on the note of frustration edging around the words, or to know how much this has been niggling at him. So when the Princess opens her mouth to ask for more details, he shakes his head subtly and widens his eyes in warning. She freezes, glancing at him before closing her mouth and patting Raziel’s arm consolingly.

Raziel, idiot that he is, stares at it in visible confusion before deciding to let her do whatever she wants and moving on. “You still need to go talk to Ms Lillian,” he prods her, and she sighs.

“Can you at least wait for Felix with me?”

“Fine.”

Just go away already, little girl, we have things to do. Lucas snaps his fingers, his mana shooting through the walls toward Raziel’s brother and sinking into his mind. Enough to plant a suggestion, nothing more; a sense of urgency.

For a silent second, they all stand around waiting. Raziel squints at the sun, so Lucas glances up to see it’s early evening. The sun will go down soon, and if they want the chance of seeing his future “instructors” at the Tower today, Felix should hurry the fuck up.

“I don’t even know why you need a magic instructor,” he grumbles. “You have me.”

Raziel’s eyebrow quirks up. “Yesterday I asked you the incantation for a wide-range explosion and you said I don’t need an incantation and I can just go boom! and bang!” Lucas did not need the supporting hand gestures or the creative sound effects to recall that particular conversation.

“You’re the dumbass for not getting it,” he complains.

“‘You never really know something until you teach it to someone else,’” Raziel says with the air of someone who just imparted great wisdom. Quoting someone, maybe —though Lucas has never heard of this particular phrase.

“John Maxwell?” Athanasia pipes up, tilting her head and breaking out into a grin when Raziel nods.

Lucas scowls, kicking some errant pebble away. “Maxwell or whatever, who cares...”

The little princess smirks at him. Smirks! “Literature is an important part of human civilisation, stranger that I don’t know,” she tells him, her voice dripping with grandiosity.

“I’m hundreds of years older than you.”

The response is instant. “I don’t believe you.”

“I suppose I do look quite youthful,” Lucas brags, raising a hand to touch his cheek. Indeed, who’s more handsome than him? Can there ever be a person like that in the world?

The Princess gives him the stinky eye. “No, it’s because you act like a child,” she says, turning her nose up at him and grabbing onto Raziel. “Raziel is prettier than you.”

Lucas’ jaw drops, and a short, angry laugh escapes him. “The only reason he looks halfway tolerable is because I’ve been helping him sleep.”

She stiffens, a strange expression washing over her face that Lucas instantly decides he dislikes. “Ah, is that so…,” she hums, inspecting him top to bottom, “so Raziel has that type of taste…” Princess Athanasia chucks a shell-shocked Raziel a look of deep pity and pats him consolingly. “I’m not judging you. I’m sure you can’t help it. He looks decent enough, so I understand.”

What the fuck?

“I’ve been helping him sleep,” Lucas kindly informs her through gritted teeth, “with magic.”

“Yes,” she says, nodding solemnly, “I bet it was magical indeed. Love is like that.”

This kid—! He takes a deep breath, his old teacher’s voice echoing in his ears. I know you think you’re flawless but your temper’s going to get the best of you someday. Breathe in, breathe out. Manslaughter is illegal in Obelia.

If he kills the Empire’s only heir, he’ll be involved in politics to fix the mess for decades.

“Listen to me very carefully, Your Highness,” Lucas says, smiling thinly, “I am not romantically involved with Raziel Robaine.”

There’s a shuddering gasp. Everyone whips their head around to the source, and see Felix Robaine frozen a bit further away, having just turned the corner.

A calm breeze ambles by, rustling leaves and grass.

Raziel sneezes, then closes his eyes, his shoulders slumping in resignation. He doesn’t say anything, looking like he doesn’t care about what will happen anymore.

“…Raziel,” Felix starts, looking between him and Lucas nervously. “What—”

Raziel turns his back on his brother and smiles a thin-lipped smile at him, a shadow falling across his face. “Lucas. Take me to the Tower.”

Tsk. Am I a horse? Rude bastard.

“Wait a minute, who is—” Felix shouts, lounging forward to desperately grab onto his brother.

His panicked face is all they see as Lucas and Raziel vanish with a whoosh.

A massive tower looms overhead, ending in a pointy spiral with a roof that looks almost transparent. Across its length, countless windows and some balconies are placed with careful, ordered precision. He doesn’t know how, but even though he can see the spire at the top, there’s some kind of illusion magic that makes him think the Tower is much, much higher than it’s made out to be.

Still, Raziel had been expecting more excitement —some explosions, maybe, or tremors from experiments.

He senses Lucas shift slightly next to him, hears his quiet mutter. “It’s been years since I’ve been here.”

He flicks his eyes to him without even bothering to turn his head, noting the troubled set of his brows as Lucas scowls at the Tower he’s supposed to be the Master of.

“Why’d you leave in the first place?”

“I got sick and tired of work,” Lucas says lazily, rubbing the back of his neck.

Kim Rok Soo— Cale Henituse — can understand that, at least.

“Being a rich slacker is the best,” he says resolutely, apropos of nothing. “For every year you work, just spend ten more eating and sleeping. Even better, just don’t work at all if you don’t want to.”

Lucas huffs out a laugh. “How simple-minded.”

“Why can’t it be that simple?” Raziel asks.

The question seems to shock the man, eyes widening like plates. Has it never occurred to him before?

Suddenly, Raziel recalls one of his first magic books, how it said that the Master Magician awakened at a very young age. Then, according to Obelian customs, he would’ve been inducted into the Tower straightaway under his own instructor, so from around the age of three, he would’ve been learning spell after spell after spell. And who knows, it might’ve been enjoyable at the beginning, given a child’s natural affinity for learning and Lucas’ own ravenously curious mind for magic… but people were never designed to conform to routine and monotony. Rather, if Kim Rok Soo knows anything, it’s how adaptable humans can be. They thrive under challenge while self-destructing under pressure.

During childhood, kids are told to eat, sleep and play. The same principles apply for adulthood also. Why ever would anyone think otherwise? What difference does it make if you’re even a hundred years old? At the same time, you’re sixty, thirty, two years old —you’re every age you’ve ever lived.

“Do the years you’ve lived erase the need for rest?” He grumbles. “What nonsense.”

Huffing, he walks past him, leaving him standing there in thought.

“Let’s go see this instructor.”

The instructor in question turned out to be an old man with an salt-and-pepper beard braided down to his knees in a single plait, wearing a potion-stained halter-neck top that revealed bulging muscles and sprawling runic tattoos. At his waist, a pouch belt held together a baggy pair of trousers that had undoubtedly seen much better days.

“Welcome to the Tower,” he’d said sternly when he saw Raziel, shaking his hand with the steadfast firmness of a veteran. “I’ve been expecting you. I’m Asrar Bontafe.”

Raziel had just stood there with cold sweat at the back of his neck, looking up at what must’ve been six feet of pure muscle mass. What did it matter if his face was wrinkled, when his eyes shined with such crazy zest for life? His entire body practically vibrated with energy, his hands never letting go of anything, always fiddling with a test tube, some kind of metal sample, tweezers. One by one they were unearthed and then back they went in the belt pouches in a never-ending, habitual dance.

Raziel felt three times as old as this guy as he stood in front of him, sapped of all energy. Old people were scary. Eruhaben, the Whale King, Ron… now Bontafe has been added to the line-up. Lucas, invisible at his side, seems to have fallen into some kind of existential crisis.

“Nice to meet you, Sir Bontafe,” Raziel had said tonelessly, giving a short but sharp bow, “my name is Raziel Robaine. Please look after me in the future.”

The man throws his head back and cackles, patting his back so hard that Raziel sways on his feet like an insect fighting to escape from a flyswatter. “No need for that formal nonsense. Just call me Asrar.”

“Yes, sir,” Raziel says, his pupils shaking, throwing furtive, panicked glances at Lucas.

“Don’t be so nervous,” Asrar booms, walking to his workspace and looking at some kind of bubbling substance through his monocular goggles. He flicks one lens up and another one down, rotating it this way and that. Adjusting the magnification and focus, Raziel thinks, fascinated despite himself, like a modern microscope. “His Majesty told me you’d probably come over today. I admit, the way he talked about you, I thought you were some disrespectful cretin with no sense of shame.” He chuckles, his entire body vibrating from the force of it. “I was prepared to teach you a thing or two.”

Raziel and Lucas glance at each other pointedly.

Raziel widens his. What should I do about this?

Lucas frowns, outraged. How am I supposed to know?

Fuck. Raziel turns back to his new instructor. He’d just now noticed, since Asrar turned back around, but the runes written down his arms are not simply there for decoration: he’d wondered what the constant tick-tick-ticking had been when he’d first walked in the room, and it turns out to have been the clock inked at the back of the man’s left hand, the seconds’ hand actually moving on his skin. Looking closer, the runes at the arms are like a code for the clock mechanism.

“Ah, what am I doing fiddling around with my mana samples when my young student is right in front of me,” Asrar suddenly mutters, smacking himself on the forehead. No, no. Please continue what you were doing. It’ll be my pleasure if you let me melt through the floors of the Tower down to the ground and left me to decompose. “Come, come, I’ll show you to your lodgings. They’re right next to mine.” He beams at him invitingly, as if hoping Raziel will break out into an ecstatic grin. Maybe hoping they’ll entwine hands and skip merrily all the way to their quarters, dancing a little jig as they go.

What has he gotten himself into?

“I have a question,” Raziel asks weakly next week bright and early, moving his pawn to E4.

For all the rest of his face is abysmal at expressing human emotion, Claude’s eyebrows work hard to compensate. The rest of his facial muscles seem to be paralysed, but the man, shockingly, is still able to harness the scruples of emotion still left in his frigid heart to lift a single surprised brow.

Then he open his mouth to respond, “You’ve even managed a question? You’ve outdone yourself today,” and Raziel is reminded how no matter what bullshit his stupid eyebrows express, there will never be a greater quantity as that which comes out of his mouth.

“Your new instructor is overjoyed to have such a clever student to teach,” Claude continues with a smirk, suffering from a deficiency in both social skills and overabundance of audacity. “You must be rewarded in some way for your stellar academic performance. Barely a week in and the Magicians are already falling at your feet, you must’ve worked hard. Tell me if you wish for anything, I’ll make it happen immediately.”

For you to trip in your bathroom and crack your skull open on the marble. Alternatively, drowning is also not a bad option.

“Our Majesty is truly as mature as the sun itself,” Raziel responds.

Claude’s mocking expression deadens to a scowl as he lowers his eyes to the board and moves his rook.

My, my, the eyebrows are working overtime today.

“Ask your question, Raziel Robaine.”

“Asrar said that artefacts and wards that are able to store mana need a lot of it to fulfil their function over a long period of time,” Raziel tells him, thinking back to the eccentric old man. “It seems inefficient for magicians to manually insert mana in every single artefact, so how are most of them powered?”

Claude tsks. “You couldn’t have asked Bontafe this instead of bothering me about it?”

The ‘me’ carried the heavy implication that Raziel is an brazen little shit for making his Emperor his improvised magic instructor. Which, while true, is also extremely unfair —it’s not like he has any other choice.

“I didn’t have a lot of time to do so. A second after he said it he remembered that his experiment on genetic magic samples needed amplification before twelve o’clock and he ran off.” Not to mention, Lucas, who was his first choice for magic theory, was away sucking mana out of old artefacts like some kind of vampire. Apparently, even after three years, his mana reserves were not full because ‘the natural mana of the world has gone to shit’ and ‘the amount of mana pollution around here is a disgrace’. Serves him right, after all those muttered threats of him just eating Raziel’s meridian’ima and being done with it.

Claude settles his chin atop a fist, his eyes going half-lidded from abject boredom. “Most formulae on artefacts and ward stones have the ansuz rune followed by ferta.”

Ansuz-ferta?

Raziel tries to translate. He’s memorised the lexicon of runes, but he still needs a second to retrieve that particular record from his memory.

Finally, he ends up with something like, “Magic... feeding?”

The slightest nod is generously bestowed upon him for his correct answer. “Artefacts feed from naturally existing mana at low amounts and gain more enduring power over time.”

Like photosynthesising plants...? Or maybe like parasites? What Lucas has been complaining about for the past three years suddenly makes a lot more sense.

“If artefacts and ward stones feed from the natural mana supply, then land with a lot of them would be poor in natural mana.”

“Indeed.” His eyebrow quirks, giving off a distinctly impressed air. Raziel wants to ask him just how dumb this bastard thinks he is. “That was the case years ago. All wards and artefacts now need the isa rune inhibitor, which activates when wals detects that mana availability is low. By law, the wals-isa dyad is a requirement.”

So, artefacts and wards in mana-poor environments sleep until mana is replenished again.

“But the Imperial Palace artefacts never sleep, even though they consume mana quickly,” Raziel points out.

“The Palace is built on a ley line,” Claude answers, bored.

Ah. Well, that ought to do it. A magic free-for-all. No wonder all noble estates and Magic Towers tend to line up in a very particular way. Duke Alpheus paid an astronomical amount to build his own estate on one of the thickest ley lines —the few times he’s been at Ijekiel’s house, he’d been shocked by how many wards there are protecting the mansion. It’s practically a stronghold, as if the Alpheus Duchy is expecting a siege at some point.

“You truly are as knowledgeable and generous as the majestic sun, Your Majesty,” Raziel praises, beaming ever more vigorously in response to the deadpan look he gets in turn. His queen casually kills off Claude’s bishop.

He doesn’t even understand why they keep playing this anymore. Surely the outcome is clear to the fool after dozens of consecutive losses? Ever since the Vow of Death, Raziel had scrapped the plan of intentional losses. Chess was not something you could win with purely luck, and after the first win that plan already blew up into smithereens.

Raziel sighs, surveying the board and glancing at his equally silent opponent, and for a moment, there is a beat of blissful silence. Raziel feels Claude’s eyes on him, scanning him intently, but he acts otherwise, pretending to zone out while staring mindlessly at the sofa across the room. Admittedly, it’s been attracting him to it since his sleep-deprived corpse first walked in. The pillows looked awfully inviting.

“You seem to be settling in well,” Claude says, and his fingers flex hesitantly on the table. There’s an odd tension about his mouth, and the way he’s not resorted to glaring the life out of him is… out of character. An asshole pretending not to be an asshole?

Everything about it screams awkwardness. What’s up with this sudden concern? Raziel is getting chills.

Claude stares at the board in faux concentration, but his gaze looks far away. “When I first saw you, you were an ill-behaved brat who barely reached my hip.”

Raziel blinks, mind whirring with possibilities. Is the Emperor going to die soon? Did he contract some sort of deadly disease? Or is he just trying to tell him he has always been inferior and extendable in a roundabout way?

There is another possibility that infuriates him more than any of the above, of course, regardless of how unlikely it may be: that Claude de Alger Obelia genuinely cares about him. It’s enough to take his breath away… from the sheer audacity. You bastard of unparalleled shamelessness. What about your daughter? Did you think of her at all when you first met another child?

“You met the Princess soon after, Your Majesty,” Raziel reminds this worthless sack of mud, a scowl fighting his fragile smile for space on his face, “and you thought she was an ill-behaved child as well.”

Claude waves him aside carelessly, rolling his eyes. “You’re both hellions. There’s no distinction.”

Wow. What the fuck is this then? Raziel’s not his son. Is he some kind of honorary nephew?

“I’m just an Apprentice Magician, Your Majesty. How could there be no distinction between my humble self and your one and only daughter, our Crown Princess?”

Claude’s eyebrows furrow. This time, Raziel picks up confusion from his expression. “Hasn’t Felix told you?”

…How forebodingly ominous.

Raziel gets the sense that he’s about to hear something that will complicate his life immensely, but he can see no possible way to escape, short of punching a hole through all the palace wards and transporting back to the attic at the Robaine Estate. he can’t even go back to his quarters at the Tower, since Claude can easily walk there in minutes. His eyes slip closed.

“What hasn’t he told me?”

Claude doesn’t comment on his resigned tone. “He came to me crying from joy like a fool when you were born, asking me to be your godfather.”

Cale Henituse wakes up with a horrified gasp and his own heartbeat beating a cacophony in his ears. The chair he’d been sitting on has transformed into a bed. He feels nothing but deep gratitude for waking up from the shackles of that ghastly nightmare.

He’d have sworn he dreamt that some tyrannic motherfucker called Claude from the empire of ‘Obelia’, told him he’s his godfather.

At least, that’s what Raziel hoped he would have experienced in the resounding silence left behind after such a declaration —alas, the tyrannical motherfucker in question is still sitting across from him after telling him he’s his godfather.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Raziel insists with utmost confidence.

Because it does not. Claude has a small soft spot for Felix, who’s stayed his loyal friend for many decades, through his coup, the Dark Ages, his lover’s passing —everything. If that good grace extended to Felix’s family, Raziel would not have had to fight for his life in that chess match three years ago when he first met this piece of shit.

And there had been an animosity in his behaviour that could not be explained by how unfamiliar he was with his so-called godchild at the time.

Claude de Alger Obelia, who tended to harbour his affections close to his heart as if he would die otherwise, and yet loved recklessly deeply —enough to massacre an entire Palace after the death of his lover— acting like he doesn’t care for his “godson”… or, worse, his one and only daughter?

Yes. It was weird in the first place. It was not something that could be explained by a simple hatred for children.

Perhaps…?

His hand goes to his cravat, absently losing it the way one would unbutton the collar of their shirt.

“보이다 meridian’ima,” he whispers, ignoring the odd look Claude gives him in his rising suspicion of something being eerily wrong.

Expose.

Raziel’s eyes shine bronze, ever so faintly, giving the bastard’s soul a thorough once-over.

He can’t really say it’s anything too impressive. It’s all just an ever-shifting mass of ice crystals coalescing into the shape of a sphere; it feels icy, which is just what he’d expect from the soul of such a jerk, but it’s nothing awe-striking. As the sphere continues its slow, gentle rotation… he sees it then. Even to his own untrained eyes it’s horrid: his meridian’ima has a gash at the central core and disgusting purple feeler-like things ooze from it like a parasitic entity. Even as he looks, it crawls further inside the sphere —or rather, it tries. There’s some unknown rosy force stopping it in its tracks, until, at a standstill, the feelers retreat in defeat and the pink flickers weakly enough to feel seconds away from disappearing.

Raziel has seen and recorded a lot of disgusting things in his memory. Kim Rok Soo had lived through an apocalypse, and witnessed the most heinous sides of humanity borne of desperation. The White Star and his allies were inhuman fuckers themselves, sacrificing thousands to create dead mana for power.

But now he knows why Lucas seemed so outraged when he cast this spell. The spell renders people’s mental defenses useless and takes a peek at all that they are, without their knowing. As someone who keeps his own past tightly contained, everything about it fills him with a crawling sense of wrongness and revolt.

The parasite rotting this man’s soul from the inside specially included.

Raziel doesn’t know what the fuck this man has done to himself, but he has a feeling this is a reason behind Claude’s erratic emotions and the foul temper that always seems to hang at the precipice of every conversation, even with people towards whom he should hold no hostility. Duke Robaine, for example. Raziel when they first met years ago. Even Felix, sometimes, for all that he’s been beside him the most. But most of all—Athanasia.

His mind flashes to his bookcase back in his study.

This needs investigating. Now. With or without Lucas, it’s urgent.

“Although I am away that you require a year to process this fully with your intellect,” Claude glares, “it would behove you to listen when I’m talking. Felix made me your g—… that is, he made me go through the godp— well, the ceremony.”

Raziel compartmentalises his thoughts, returning his focus to the way the bastard’s fingers twitch in discomfort. Poor man must be allergic to all terms implying a level of filial responsibility, to avoid the word ‘godfather’ to this degree. Is it the ‘father’ part that stops him? What, is this man feeling guilty or something? Gross.

“You’re looking at me with some extremely disrespectful eyes right now, Raziel Robaine.”

Oh, damn. Some of the contempt must have leaked through. “That could not be, Your Majesty. Perish the thought.”

“Perhaps, if your impropriety perishes first. Who taught you manners?”

“My—”

“No matter who tried, it must have been a futile endeavour,” Claude remarks idly.

Ah, I wish I could hit him. I really wish I could hit him.

One day, Raziel promises himself. One day, as consolation for these long years of suffering, impatience and grief, he will do something heinous to this man.

For now, he swallows his bitter feelings and musters another grin. “Your Majesty, you are the one who taught me. You are my role model. Ever since I met you I thought you were the person whose perfection we all had to strive to emulate,” he raves, his eyes alight with passion. “It seems the fruits of my labour have paid off, and I can rest easy now that I know I have come one step closer to the Sun of our Empire.”

Parry that, you fucking asshole.

Claude looks like somebody put lemon juice up his nose. “Raziel Robaine. Loyal subject that you are, swallow your tongue this once and take your leave. I tire of you and, I tire of chess for the day.”

All at once, Raziel is rejuvenated. His skin is revitalised, his eyes regain that sparkle of life. Finally. He’s been waiting to hear those words for years. This is everything he could ever hope for and more.

No more chess, and permission to leave? Fuck, the universe is finally smiling upon him.

“As you wish,” he beams, unable to hold the joyous relief back. Raziel springs out of his chair in seconds, afraid that the bastard will take his words back, and can’t leave fast enough, practically running to the door.

His parting call of “Enjoy the rest of your day, Your Majesty!” is left in the large room, along with Claude, who remains in his chair, staring down at the incomplete game with a complex gaze.

Silently, he takes a hold of the child’s queen, moving it to a different tile. The game resumes, but the chair opposite is empty.

Felix, who’d usually offer to take Raziel’s place, is at the training grounds talking to the Captain of the guards. There’s no one else to think of.

Chapter Text

The magic of this world has terraformed a greater diversity of highly sensitive incantations and spells in addition to a plethora of largely hidden magical species. Where his original world’s magic was simply another type of power you could wield, alongside divine power like curses and blessings, this world’s society and environment was so closely interlinked with mana that it would be easier to find what it couldn’t affect. Here, names alone seem to have symbolic significance that made them act like prophecies; an environment rich in natural mana made every attempted spellcasting that much more sensitive and powerful. And if someone dies with a lot of regrets and malice, miasma follows the person of their resentment like a bad itch.

Even the customary greeting to the Emperor — blessings and glory to the Sun of Obelia — was a routine ritual of sorts that upheld and boosted Claude’s authority, pretentious as it is; the phrase in his introductory magic book, there’s magic in everything, stands true.

It’s also why he’s not surprised to see how much of a son of a bitch the Emperor is, seeing as his authority allows him to operate on a whole different set of laws. Common mortals like his citizens could be driven mad from collected malice if they commit too many wrongs, but Claude, with a longer list of grudges and enemies than nearly all of them combined, gets away with it thanks to his powerful magic and his more-or-less benevolent, bloodless rule. His workaholism and effective efforts to improve the Empire acts as a sort of neutraliser of his karma —after all, many are satisfied with him as an Emperor and he has earned himself positive public sentiment.

Raziel has not done anything to earn him resentment or goodwill from others in this world. Yet.

But what if he were to go I’m not Raziel Robaine, I’m actually Cale Henituse, someone that possessed an infant body that doesn’t belong to me. I’ve been lying to you for six years and I have failed to become attached to any of you enough, so I will actually go back to my world and leave this empty corpse behind for you to take care of. Sorry and thank you.

Fuck no. His mind is literally the only thing of his that has actually stayed with him no matter what or where. If he loses that too as a result of the Robaines’ resentment he will have nothing.

That is why he needs to gain the authority or status to counterbalance any malice he may collect. His reasons for accepting Claude’s suspicious offer to become an Apprentice Magician were many and varied, and this was just one among them.

As an Apprentice Magician, he is in a position to help the Tower, and by extension the Empire, and get a good reputation. He can protect Athanasia in the meantime, keep an eye on key political players, increase his knowledge of this realm’s magical workings, investigate the conditions of his return set by the God of Death, and estrange himself from the Robaine Duchy to minimise any future damages —all at the same time. It was a very auspicious offer for Raziel, so to say he regrets accepting it would be inaccurate.

Raziel’s quick retreat granted him two hours worth of precious tranquillity and isolation. He did not spend this period of time relaxing, knowing it a fruitless endeavour, but rather looking into whatever that parasitic piece of shit wedged in the Emperor’s soul actually was, where it came from, and what it did.

When he’d pushed the Door of the Tower open, oddly enough there had been no one at the foyer. Bontafe usually bustled his way from one corner of the room to the other when he wasn’t in his lab, having duties of both Raziel’s mentor and Recordskeeper —and his life is basically confined to this shitty Tower. There is no such thing as a work-life balance here. Raziel personally thinks that the fact that lodgings are available is a tactic to blur the distinction between work and leisure to the point where they basically merge into one.

Luckily, however, that did mean that the latest, most advanced research and valuable books were at most one staircase away from his living quarters. Even some books that are not available to the common public, or even most aristocrats.

Jinxes, Hexes and Curses, Volume II, lays open on his work table, Raziel breezing through its pages with a stasis spell counteracting his increasing fever. Ever since he’d figured out how he could use this particular gem alongside his Records he’d never gone back. The next on his list is a spell targeting the sense of weakness, fatigue and headache he gets as a side-effect —he theorises that spell chaining the stasis with a spell for invigoration and recovery would more or less enable him to use his ability nonstop, which is fantastic because he’s currently planning on breaking and entering the Emperor’s personal library and accidentally fainting while trying to make a getaway would have horrific consequences.

Even if he is the man’s godson, somehow he can’t imagine getting away scot-free. The man’s affection seems awfully conditional and unreliable —Athanasia should not have had to act cute to avoid filicide, for fuck’s sake. She’s his daughter .

Volume I outlined jinxes, and they were more like pranks than macabre parasitic magics praying on soul cores. Jinxes, Hexes and Curses, Volume II , describes the concept of hexes in excruciatingly boring and asinine detail and lists many of them from a scale of ‘be unable to eat anything other than flan for a week’ to ‘you feel like you’re eating cockroaches every time you eat’. There was, ultimately, nothing to be found about the more malicious dark magic at play inside the Emperor’s frigid soul core, but on the plus side Raziel’s personal favourite was excernere aurum , which basically makes the victim shit solid gold. 

Volume III would logically be for curses, which sounded more promising, but unfortunately could not be found anywhere in this Tower. Raziel would know —he used a tracking spell, the Korean variety that bypasses wards, and the corresponding tug he felt pulled him to the northern wing of the Palace, the Emperor’s personal quarters. That particular discovery had him sitting down and staring into empty space for quite some time. It had been hard enough to get the first two volumes, having been stowed away at the top floor in an utterly demolished lab. Wading through a pile of broken potions glassware and stepping around their ominously bubbling contents spilled across the floor had not been an experience he’d particularly liked. Why the top floor was in such a state of disrepair was beyond him, but he did pick up traces of a fading magical signature that made his hair stand on end, so he is now convinced he doesn't want to ever know.

He wouldn’t have to resort to the drastic measure of trespassing if Lucas were here to tell him about this shit, being ancient enough to have seen every strange spell, charm, jinx, hex and curse under the sun, but he’d told him before he left that he won’t be back for a week. Relics, wardstones and magical artefacts were hard to find, given that their location may have changed in the last decades, and Lucas has to make stops along the way, limited as he is by his current magic supply.

By the time he finds them, removes the magic inside and incorporates it into his own reserves, it might be too late for the Emperor’s soul. That odd rosy smoke that’s trying to protect against it, Raziel knows, is quite close to fading already.

That means two things — one, he will have to break in tomorrow.

And two, he probably needs Athanasia’s help.

The following morning sees Raziel stepping out of the Tower’s Gate, the guard giving him a smile and a nod, as usual, and his beloved father, His Excellency Duke Robaine waiting right outside to ambush him, as usual.

“Why would you leave?” He bemoans, hot at his heels as Raziel quickly heads for Ruby Palace. “Is it because I’ve been busier with work recently and not spent much time with you? Father’s sorry, Raziel!”

Raziel stops. He turns to face Duke Robaine, his Apprentice robes swishing majestically behind him. The smile he gives him is a wide, superficial thing that makes him go slightly squinty-eyed., and shamelessly, he tries to avoid justifying himself by using the Emperor. “His Majesty offered me the position, Father. What was I supposed to do?”

Duke Robaine sets his hands on his shoulders, giving him a small shake while looking at him beseechingly. “You should have waited! The family motto is loyal and steadfast, not loyal and obedient! Even Robaines have limits in front of the Emperor.”

 With unnecessary pomp and drama, his face contorts into an expression of rueful misery. You’d think somebody died if you looked at him. “Oh!” The desperation suddenly bleeds out of his eyes, replaced by reluctant hope and garnished with a dash of hysteria. “Does that mean you only agreed because of the Emperor, my son?” 

“Not really,” Raziel says mercilessly, watching those embers of hope sputter and die with some satisfaction. “I like magic. I’m really interested in it.”

A lie. He couldn’t give less of a shit. Magic is nothing other than the vehicle that will carry him back home — and if it was magic education he was after, he’d had the Master Magician stashed away in his attic for years.

The Duke searches for solutions to this quandary, his eyes flitting madly right and left. “We can get you a tutor! At home .”

Raziel looks at him quietly. Both of the Robaines had the same reaction. He was under the impression that an invitation to study at the Tower carried with it a sense of privilege, high status and a guaranteed, shining future. Children of aristocrats who are offered the opportunity are celebrated and encouraged to go —judging by the precedents— despite their age.

Something wasn’t quite right about the lengths they’re both going to stop him. 

“Father,” he says, stopping the Duke’s tirade short. “What’s wrong with the Palace?”

Duke Robaine stiffens and stares at him with wide eyes. “Did you see or hear something, Raziel? Tell Father everything,” he urges, the words coming out as fast as they do quiet. 

So there is something up. Something children aren’t meant to know.

Which means it’s likely the something the God of Death wants him to meddle in. Maybe even a mess of his Raziel is supposed to fix.

Raziel considers the Duke.

“I’ve heard whispers,” he murmurs, leaning in. “And some people are acting very strangely. I saw Lord Penache and Lord Lorrentio arguing in front of the Screaming Lady the other day.”

Raziel Robaine hadn’t actually heard whispers or seen those aforementioned Lords in front of that statue. 

In fact, he hadn’t heard or seen shit. 

Conveniently, all he knows is that Lord Penache and Lorrentio are permanent fixtures in all of Felix’s rants about Imperial meetings, which means that they are solidly part of the faction that would bring popcorn and champagne to see the Emperor’s dethronement and subsequent painful death.

As such, when the Duke pales like what he said is entirely within his fearful expectations, Raziel becomes even more certain about the state of unrest in the Empire. Usually, when stupid fuckers are seen banding together to form an equally stupid but more threatening force, it means that someone smarter is playing the game behind the scenes. Kim Rok Soo had seen too much of this tactic as Team Leader, and Cale Henituse had been dealing with Arm and the White Star’s goonies for years.

If Gods recruited transmigrators to solve their inter-dimensional issues and there was an application process, no doubt Cale’s resume was the most robust, perfect one of the lot, nevermind that he hadn’t actually fucking applied. Cale hadn’t even known he was a candidate.

“Raziel, listen to me, son,” the Duke beseeches, and gives him another shake. Fuck, not even salt shakers experience this much manhandling. “You need to leave this place. It’s not safe. Let’s go back home, hm?”

“But why is it not safe?” Raziel says, a note of impatient frustration injected in his voice. “You and Felix keep saying this but won’t tell me the reason, so how do you expect me to understand?”

“You’re a smart boy, son. You’ll understand eventually—”

“ —You’re deflecting,” Raziel accuses, bearing down on the Duke mercilessly. “Tell me about how you’ve been busy with the money leak for the Palace’s disaster relief budget, instead.”

The Duke looks horrified. “How do you know that?”

“Strange aristocrats I had never seen before coming in and out of your office, accounting and economics books missing from the library, and you losing your mind triple-checking the family vault every day. Father, I’m not stupid.”

“We’ve always had visitors,” the Duke debunks desperately, looking frazzled, “and I always check the family vault after curfew regardless! And how do you know what books are missing from the library?!”

“I’ve read all of them, of course,” Raziel tells him, looking at him like he’s truly stupid. Inwardly, Cale feels a bit sorry. However, his commitment to his rebellious prepubescent boy role must remain strong.

The Duke’s next words are a high-pitched screech that nobody would believe came out of the mouth of a well-respected member of the upper aristocracy.

“All of them?!”

A flock of birds fly out of a nearby tree, cawing in terror, adding charming background noise to this useless conversation.

“There’s hundreds of books in there!” Duke Robaine gapes. “How do you remember each one?!”

“Magic?” Raziel shrugs.

“There’s no such spell!”

Another shrug. The Duke’s eyes are about to pop out of his skull.

“Raziel. You know you can tell me anything ,” he says solemnly, hooking a hand on his shoulder to stop him from walking away. “I’m your father. Tell me the truth. Did we do something wrong? Are you mad about something?”

The Duke considers him a smart child that loves naps, food, and not being bothered. However, it’s not so bad to shift his perception and trick him into believing Raziel’s more driven by curiosity than he thought.

“You and Felix weren’t telling me anything,” he says, crossing his arms. “So I thought the best way to understand what’s going on is to be at the source. I don’t like feeling ignorant and powerless.”

The Duke puts his head in his hands and quietly screams. When he resurfaces, he looks ten years older. “I apologise, Raziel. I did not intend for you to have a hard time. You’re just so very young, I don’t want you to involve yourself in adult problems yet. And,” Raziel watches his throat move as he swallows nervously, “this is a particularly dangerous one.”

“So—”

“Please,” the Duke interrupts, “please don’t meddle in this anymore, Raziel. You can stay in the Palace if you want, but promise me you won’t try to involve yourself in something suspicious.”

Well, fuck. If he’s reached the point where he’s willing to compromise and let him live at the Tower, things must be bad indeed. Raziel would have been tempted to just promise and let that be the end of it, but his word is valuable. If people cannot trust his words, they can never trust him at all.

Kim Rok Soo, Cale, Raziel… he keeps his promises.

“I can’t make any promises… but I won’t seek out danger. I’ll be cautious. I nap ten hours a day, anyway,” Raziel shrugs.

Duke Robaine sighs, his shoulders drooping, the lining of his silhouette spelling out weary resignation. “Alright. That will have to do for now.” He raises his head, his sharp grey eyes boring into Raziel’s. “No matter what happens, what you see or hear, feel free to come to your family for help, son. We are here to support you with anything. Always.”

Raziel nods, finding himself mute all of a sudden. The Duke weaves his fingers through his curls wistfully, giving him a pat before taking his leave.

Cale stares after him and is tired, so tired of having to leave family behind. He knows that ‘the Duke’ will never be ‘Father’, and it gives him an ache inside his ribcage.

He knows perfectly well: he will never take him up on his offer for support.

“ So, let me get this straight, ” Athanasia sighs, twisting around in her seat at her desk so that her forearm rested on its back. The look of disbelief on her face was more suited to Felix than a Princess, and her posture was like that of a thug. Raziel said nothing of this. He valued his life. “You want to break into my father’s study and rob him.”

“More or less.” 

Raziel’s face was as placid as an undisturbed lake, immune to any earthly concerns or vices. Not even robbing an Emperor seemed to worry him. Not for the first time, Athanasia wonders what kind of life he led before he came here, to think the way he does now. Nobody sane and nobody who’d lived a normal life would resort to breaking and entering to get something they wanted.

“What do you need from there?” 

Raziel’s eyes glaze over. Athanasia shoots him a look. “Stop thinking of the merits in lying to me. You’re asking me for help.”

Delicately, he clears his throat and carefully looks somewhere to the side. “You’re not going to like it.”

Athanasia rolls her eyes so hard she feels them make a full revolution in her eye sockets, and thankfully he gets the memo before she could do something more drastic, like pull him by the suspenders and shake him.

“There’s a spell to manifest your soul in visible form,” he starts slowly, choosing the words. He’s sitting on her bed, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees and fingers intertwined between his legs. His strategizing pose, as she’s dubbed it. “ I casted it on the Emperor yesterday and I saw something eating at his core.”

For a second, she fears that her ears are going bad or something.

“ Why ,” she asks, a hint of hysteria in her voice, “ did you cast it in the first place?”

“Don’t you find it strange, that every time he sees you he feels like killing you? The man makes up his mind to let you live during your tea parties, sleeps off his realisation that he wants you breathing, and wakes up feeling stabby again.”

Athanasia resolutely twists around again, picking up her quill. When she puts it down on paper, her penmanship is less steady than usual. “Not really. He’s just that type of character.”

“Character, huh?” 

Shit. Athanasia flicks her eyes to the side, only for Raziel’s sharp gaze to cut into her. The man’s like a hound on a trail, sometimes. She can never let her guard down. She has yet to tell him this world is nothing but a book she read, but she lets little things like this slip sometimes, like breadcrumbs. Raziel collects every single one meticulously, and she’s not even sure if he’s managed to reach his own conclusions. His mind is terrifying.

“I disagree,” he tells her, shifting his gaze to a bird on the terrace. A beam of sunlight from the window falls over his head, setting his crimson hair aflame. His reddish brown eyes lighten into an amber colour, as if they absorb the light itself, and Athanasia absently looks at him and thinks that jewel-blue eyes are really quite overrated. 

“ I think Claude’s the type of person to love very deeply, sometimes to his own detriment, given that he’s a fucking dick.”

Yep, that woke her up from her stupor. “Whatever. So what did you see on his soul that was so concerning?” She asks, rapidly getting uncomfortable about the other line of discussion. Humanising Claude is a slippery slide to death for her. She’d much rather consider him a mysterious cryptid —it’s easier to cut him off that way.

Raziel throws her a knowing look that she pretends she doesn’t see. That’s the problem with friends, she’s rapidly realising; they are there for you always, which is a good thing, but there’s also the fact that they’re also always on you about shit like this.

“The thing that was feeding on his soul —I tried looking up what type of magic can do that, and it turned out to be a curse of some kind. I couldn’t find a book that gives more detail than that… the only one around is in the Emperor’s study.”

Athanasia slowly turns to face Raziel. “Why is there a book on dark magic in his personal study? I thought they were all banned.”

To that, he merely nods. “That makes it even more suspicious. Either he knows the dark magic is there and is trying to treat it himself, or he used it personally, and that’s the cause of all this.”

Which means that the Emperor of Obelia, who was the head of the Wars against Dark Magic and the most vocal advocate for its continued ban and persecution, actually used it himself. This could endanger the people’s faith in the emperorship, if anyone else knew.

“ Well ,” Athanasia sighs. “ Fuck. And do you have an idea of what it does?”

Raziel stands to lean against her desk, looking at her solemnly. “I can’t be sure until I read the book, but I do know wounds on the soul cannot be healed. According to Lucas’ notes, souls are linked to cognitive functions like memory, personality traits, and, more spiritually, the reincarnation cycle.”

Athanasia can only imagine what will happen if such a thing is damaged.

“And Lucas still hasn’t returned?”

A nod.

“Well, fuck,” she repeats again, more emphatically, her head pillowed in her hands. Then, she exhales sharply, and her back straightens out once more, unyielding.

“So what’s the plan?”

“It’s simple, really,” Raziel mutters under his breath in rapid-fire Korean, holding her by the hand as they walk quickly through the garden, the grass nipping at their ankles. Lucas has long since casted a spell on him to prevent his allergies from inconveniencing him, which he sends his thanks for… but if the Magician ever runs out of usable mana, the spell will dissolve.

The fact that he’s not sneezing everywhere, at least, is a testament that he is doing well. Not that he cares.

“Athanasia, you will run interference. You will keep the Emperor and Felix occupied while I break in. I can’t give you any object to signal you with because they could pick up its magical signature, but when I’m finished I will come over and join you.”

“What do you think I should tell them to keep them busy then?”

“Don’t do one of your regular tea parties —it will be too short, and he’ll be relaxed enough to pick up on even the faintest disturbance in the wards. Say you want to go on a boat ride in the lake or something.”

Athanasia’s eyes flit this way and that, her mind whirring with possible ideas. Raziel is comfortable leaving it up to her; she’s smart, and all too cautious about her own wellbeing to make a plan doomed to fail. If anything, he should be more worried about himself. Korean spellcasting or not, stealth has never been his strong suit the way it was for Ron or Beacrox. Flashy, overpowered force is much more to his tastes.

Him hiding like a rat from monsters back on Earth was nothing but human preservation instincts, not skill.

They turn the corner, and find themselves in the entrance of the main palace, where the throne room, main ballroom and conference rooms were. The large, opulent double doors seem insurmountable and distinctly threatening. Beyond these doors exist the Emperor and his second-in-command. And just beyond that, the next wing over, is the study.

“You’re insane,” Athanasia groans, no doubt the danger of it finally hitting her, “why did I agree to this.”

Raziel did not reply. He whirled back around, inspecting her from head to toe. Her hair is gathered in a high ponytail, held together by a black ribbon tied in a neat bow. There’s not even a wrinkle on her red dress. Ms. Lillian no doubt made sure her appearance was impeccable, knowing she was bound to see the Emperor for their customary daily visit.

He fusses over her necklace for a bit and brushes off invisible lint from her shoulders. Athanasia bears it all with great dignity, if not with a slight, fond smile, until their eyes meet and they nod. “Be careful.”

He glances pointedly at the bracelet coiled around her wrist, and Athanasia relaxes even more at the reminder of an escape. With Raziel planning this, it is bound to succeed.

Her smile is bright and confident as she says, “I’ll see you soon, Raziel.”

Raziel waves a hand, prompting the double doors to open silently, and watches Athanasia’s back until they close behind her.

Now then.

Athanasia is hauled on the boat like a sack of potatoes with the help of her esteemed father, and she can’t help but feel a frisson of certain, debilitating danger. At least on land, she has the privilege to delude herself into believing she could run if things go south. On a boat with a beast, there’s nowhere to go but overboard. She hasn’t even learned how to swim!

But if this helps Raziel she will do it, dammit. No matter what. He’s facing considerably more danger right now. If he’s caught, Athanasia has no doubt his hands will be cut off, only spared from death by his young age, the fact that he is the Emperor’s godson, and the son of his most loyal vassal family. This Empire is not kind to criminals of any kind, especially with Claude at its helm.

The man himself sprawls across from her in an open robe that would make priests blush, his hair shining gold beneath the dappled light. His eyes are like cerulean waters, similar in colour to those she saw in tourist adverts for Greek beaches back on Earth. The sound of the wind and the splitting of the water by the boat become mere background noise as she stares at him.

Idly, she wonders if her eyes look the same as his.

“What are you thinking?” He asks, voice imposing in the silence. 

“Your hair is sparkly and pretty, Papa! I like sparkly things,” she chatters with a giggle. Her aegyo is enough to make her feel sick, and inwardly she half-hopes she does end up drowning, if only to save herself from this humiliation. 

However, it’s not untrue. She does like sparkly things. Like gold. And jewels. Maybe because she was so poor in her previous life. She wonders whether Raziel was rich back in his own world, too, but thinking of him is enough to cloud her mind with worry, so she tries to focus instead on Claude’s blinding smile.

Hatefully handsome bastard. No wonder he had droves of women before Diana came along —her mother must have had to beat them all back with a stick.

Frustrated, Athanasia’s eyes flit to the lotus leaves on the lake. 

Or were they actually something else? She stands over at the railing, frowning at them. What is that?

A blue lotus?

No, it’s clear. It’s because the lake is blue.

She doesn’t know what goes over her, then. All she knows is that suddenly her grip on the railing goes slack, and her mind buzzes with one overpowering thought alone.

I want one.

Athanasia leans forward, all pesky thoughts of Raziel and her father forgotten.

The guards have grown complacent in this period of peace, but the ones in the Emperor’s personal wing are perfectly alert, tuned in to every sound. They recognise servants and paper pushers by name.

The corridor is long and oppressively silent, besides the hurried steps of staff. It’s so wide that it is illogical to feel trapped, especially with the windows lining up the walls, but there’s a sense of trepidation nonetheless. Illusions and invisibility spells are hard to do even in darker lighting, but in full daylight, and with the window grilles making lines of shadows across the floors and walls opposite, they become nigh impossible. 

It takes up most of his concentration to keep up his invisibility spells, feeding a constant supply of magic to them to help him camouflage with the shadows and the dappled light from the trees right outside the windows. The small but constant leak of mana from his reserves is an unwelcome reminder of just how easy it will be to let go of the patchwork of stealth spells the minute his focus is broken.

The study is at the end, and he feels the powerful beat of the wardstone in the room, its boundary the door itself, making the wood crackle mildly with untapped energy. The guards’ backs are touching the door.

Sensitive to mana, then, and no doubt with combat experience against magicians, but not magicians themselves. If they were, Raziel doubts they’d be able to lean against that volatile magic so casually –it would hurt . This does make it easier. He doesn’t have to worry about them sensing his casting.

He positions himself between the guards, directly in front of the door, and breathes out slowly, bracing for impact as his hand nears the doorknob.

This is the most crucial part. He needs to find the locus of the ward and inject his mana into it —to trick the wardstone into thinking his magical signature is permitted inside, instead of judging it foreign and non-self. 

The problem is that the window of time between finding the locus and the wardstone mounting a defence is shorter than a second, and Raziel has only really bypassed his family’s wards before, which were probably far more forgiving.

If Lucas was here this would be so much simpler, he thinks with annoyance. Fuck it all.

One, two —in the interim, his magic dives in.

The world goes awash with pain.

A little more.

Her fingers inch closer.

Just a little more , and they brush against a single beautiful, translucent petal.

It’s like she’s in fragments inside her own mind, her consciousness trapped behind a wall. That part of her is screaming. That part of her is aware of what Raziel must be doing in the Palace right now, the danger he’s in. That part of her registers the bubbles on the surface of the water, as if something is about to break it, and is slamming fists against the wall, over and over again.

The rest of her is fixated on that flower, admiring its elegance, enchanted by its beauty.

With a deafening splash and the feeling of frigid water on her skin, Athanasia falls in.

The spell breaks. Panic roils in, and she can’t breathe, she needs to breathe . Her legs kick out against the sinking burden of her wet dress and shoes. Her head breaks the surface and she gulps down blessed oxygen frantically before she goes under again, under the force of an incoming wave, and something at her wrist is burning her skin, her nerves shrieking in agony, but she still can’t breathe . The silhouette of her father is blurry on the boat. He’s leaning over the edge, watching her with clinical interest.

Athanasia is going to drown, because he will not help her.

Something slimy, disgusting, strong wraps around her leg, and Princess Athanasia screams a silent, bubbling scream as she’s dragged into the dark depths of the lake, beneath the detached eyes of her father.

Motherfucker . Raziel stutters out a rasping gasp, sweat dripping from his temples and neck.

His mana swirls inside the locus, successfully implanted, and it takes most of the strength he has left to confound the guards and open the doors, falling to the ground in a sweaty heap, heartbeat loud in his ears and nerves still raw from latent pain.

This is almost as bad as that time he had to reconstruct his plate, but he doesn’t have time to recollect himself. Heaving, Raziel shakily stands on his feet and stumbles to the bookcase, stroking the spines with the pads of his fingers, his magic perusing them, stripping them of any disguises or traps. When foreign magic nips at him, Raziel knows that’s what he’s looking for. His arm aches as he picks out the tome, and lays it open in his lap.

Jinxes, Hexes and Curses, Volume III.

His magic is too exhausted to even muster up a stasis spell, so he unbuttons his shirt and thumbs through the pages, feeling that stifling, all-encompassing heat settle just behind his forehead, spreading to the rest of his body mercilessly. A replication spell is out of the question, too, so he’ll have some explaining to do to Athanasia about how he got the information he needed.

When he’s done, he slots the book back in its place, opens the door, retrieves the magic residing in the locus to recast stealth spells and pulls the guards back into normal waking consciousness, watching alarm flit through their eyes with a detached sense of rising panic.

Before he can stop them, or even wonder what went wrong, the guards roar “ INTRUDER!” Raziel swears vehemently as he runs down the corridor, dodging yelling maids and servants and holding his throbbing arm close to his chest.

Chapter Text

Her dress is heavy with lakewater, weighing her down, down, down, and the chills running along her very bones leave her hands trembling as she sets them down on the floor to try and pull herself up. Her eyes have gone blurry from the water, and disoriented as she was from her desperation to take a saving breath of air, Athanasia only realises that she’s laying on a puddle on the ground when she kicks out her feet and feels no watery resistance. She’s not in the lake anymore.

Cursing, she shakily pulls herself up with her elbows, batting aside at the curls in front of her eyes, and finally raises her head. She has to blink and rub the tears out of her eyes until she can catch sight of what she can already feel —wood beneath her palms, her fingers.

Her first thought is that this is not the Palace —or at least, nowhere in it that she’s ever visited. She doubts any room at the Palace complex would have mahogany floorboards, even if these ones seem to be particularly well-maintained and shiny-clean. Royals seem to have some incessant attraction to marble tiling; Athanasia has a theory it’s because the gits like looking at their reflection.

The only light comes from the roof window, streaming across the strewn stacks of papers and notes on the desk beneath it. On its surface, there’s an ink bottle left unsealed, still housing what looks like an expensive black pen —the ink probably dried up by now. Despite the shine of the floorboards and the suspicious lack of dust on everything, including the dresser and what looks like a large, out-of-place four-poster, this room has a musty smell and a stillness, like it’s been abandoned.

And right now, to Athanasia, this room smells like salvation. Emperors don’t wander in abandoned rooms, nor do they go looking for unwanted daughters there. She’s safe. The weight of that icy glare no longer oppressed her; the lake plant was gone with it, leaving only red marks around her ankle and bruising on her ribs where she thrashed against that slimy appendage to get free.

Fruitlessly. In the end, it hadn’t been her father saving her, and neither had it been her own strength. The bracelet Raziel had given her, the one he’d made with Lucas, lay on the wet floor next to her arm, cleanly broken and slightly smoking.

Raziel. When her thoughts catch up to her, a sob wrests its way out of her chest as she scrambles upright, stumbling and catching herself on the bed-post. Gods, what had even happened to him? She’s out of danger, but Raziel must still be at that place.

Right outside the windowsill sit pots of cheerfully blooming red geraniums, the exact colour of his curls. And blood. But she can’t bear to think of blood right now, so she tears her eyes away and tries to control her breaths. Five seconds, in . Eight seconds, out . Again, and again, until the panicky haze blurring her vision subsides, and she can think clearly again.

Once, after a tea party with Claude, when she was still cautiously probing, carefully learning what to say and what to avoid, Raziel had caught her having a panic attack exactly like this one, sequestered away behind the window drapes next to her bed. Out of sight, out of mind, she’d thought. Until he’d pulled her fabric shield aside and those same old, tired eyes from years ago bored into her own. 

She’d been a horrible sight, she’s sure. An ugly, puffy face, the snot dribbling down the nose, the swollen eyes. Raziel Robaine had just looked back at her like this was another Tuesday, like he saw people at their weakest frequently enough for it to feel tedious. 

What had he said then? “Nod if you want me to stay.” Just that. 

She hadn’t at the time. Mortified that another living being with independent thoughts, feelings, and capacity for judgement had witnessed her like that, she’d waited until he left the room to cry out the rest of her body’s water supply. And when Athanasia re-emerged, she’d found him in her sitting room, munching on cookies and staring at nothing. Nevermind that the sun was setting and Bontafe was bound to be expecting him back at the Tower.

So what was Raziel Robaine to Athanasia de Alger Obelia, hated daughter of the Emperor?

The fear filling her up again like a casket of beer, getting her drunk on foreboding and misery, answered that question instantly. Fear not for herself, but for another; something she’d thought she was incapable of experiencing. She hadn’t had the luxury, back in Korea. Who would she worry for? Her apartment when she returned was always as bereft as she left it.

Raziel Robaine was irreplaceable, and to lose him, unacceptable. Raziel Robaine had managed to finagle himself a position in her tight circle, to carve himself a place at the table reserved for family only, with Lilly and that dumbass, Lucas, the only other seatmates.

She paces the room, uncaring of the water dripping from the ruffles hemming her dress, chewing at her nail. She has nothing. No magic, no money, no authority, no knowledge of where she even is, much less of how to get back and help him.

One at a time, she forces herself to think, pausing in her efforts to thoroughly drench every corner of the floor with lakewater. Where are you?

The bracelet teleported her here, so this must be a place Raziel trusts to hold her safely, somewhere discreet and beyond most people’s knowledge. Somewhere he’s been before, but that clue means nothing to her; Raziel never tells her things like where he goes. But for sure, this is an attic. And the only place Raziel likely knows well enough to know is safe for her is his family’s estate —on the outskirts of the capital, miles away from the Palace. She groans.

The Robaine Estate is very well guarded, equipped with the best weaponry and ward systems that money can afford. Stepping foot outside of this room without a member of the household to accompany her and without having been recorded in their ward locus would be suicide. She’s trapped here.

Athanasia sighs, running fingers through her sopping hair. She can’t do anything. She’s not a magician like Raziel and Lucas, knows nothing of teleportation. Leaving this room will probably cause more trouble than it’s worth.

And by the gods, what about that skiv, Claude? His daughter just disappeared from his sight, from the entire Palace, spirited away by who knows what.

Wait. Fuck. It’s not just his daughter that disappeared, it’s the Crown Princess. The only heir to the throne. There will be mayhem . Has Raziel’s bracelet just caused an international incident? Somewhere inside her, her hysteria is a wick, and there’s a flinty rage that overtakes it, igniting and burning it to vicious, ashy blackness. After all, why should Raziel be blamed for saving her life? She would have died in that lake, and she likes to think that her death would be more politically destructive than a temporary disappearance. Yes, that’s right. The Empire will be just fine. 

She still can’t help punching the bedpost she’s leaning against, however. “ 씨발새끼,” Athanasia spits out, imagining Claude’s flawless visage in front of her and wishing she could spit on it for real. Even back in Korea, where she’d dealt with so many fuckers of all shapes, sizes, status and sheer audacity both at school and at work, she’d never met anyone on her father’s level. At least in Korea no body would be actively murdering her; people typically left that to society at large, which carried out the job much more effectively and at a larger scale. A bloodthirsty emperor versus an oppressive capitalist system and work culture?

Certainly… both of them were a poison, but one significantly quicker than the other. Athanasia considers this interesting thought from all angles. Would she rather deal with Claude after nearly drowning and disappearing, or a franchise store manager after they realise she’s been putting two extra nuggets in every box since her first day?

In the future, she and Raziel will have to make a drinking game, and they must set rules so that no-one is admitted to a clinic for liver failure.

“What on Earth am I even thinking,” she groans, hiding her face behind her hands and sitting on her heels. Hysterically, she thinks that she must look like she’s praying or repenting —a whole-ass Princess of a mighty empire, wallowing on the floor like a drenched rat. 

She’s never been religious but fuck it all, Athanasia will pray if she has to. She’ll even sing the Shurangama mantra from start to finish as long as Raziel gets back safe and sound.

Perhaps it’s because she’d already been using her mind’s eye to desecrate Claude’s stupid face, but Raziel’s body, injured or worse, is all she can imagine for an overwhelming second. Her eyes start sweating, and she turns skyward so the tears can go back into her tear ducts. The only thing this accomplishes is her having to look out the roof window and at those flowers again. 

Athanasia sobs from the injustice of it all. “I’m not even Buddhist. I don’t even know the Shurangama mantra.”

Whine. 

That had not been her. Athanasia’s bawling dies a miserable, abrupt death at her throat. 

The sound of a rustle and a distinct noise that sounds like —a whimper? She freezes, her heart beating a staccato at her breast. It had come from the bed. She hadn’t checked it before because the sheer bed drapes had been hiding it from view, but now she rushes to her feet and swallows tightly before grabbing the fabric to shove it aside, fear making her reckless.

Athanasia stares, her tears stopping from her stupefaction.

There’s a tiny red fox in Raziel’s attic. A trembling slip of a thing in what seemed to be a great amount of pain, scratching at the bed coverings. 

Everything hurt.

He’s already re-absorbed the mana he’s forcefully injected in the locus of the office ward, and now his reserves were in slightly better state. At least, if someone attacked him, he’d have enough in him for a teleport to the Tower, or even for a small explosion.

“Where are they? Split up!”

The problem is, he’s not proficient enough to cast either of those spells while on the run from those tinheads, and he hasn’t passed even a single alcove or unlocked room that Raziel can escape to for even the briefest time. But then, he’d already known that. He would have never gone ahead with the plan without scouting the area ahead of time. The office he’d just broken into was none other than the one Claude invited him to for their chess matches, before he found a better source of entertainment in his daughter. As such, Raziel knew the place well.

His talent for staring off into space and doing nothing but staying still is redeeming him.

But Raziel still wants to curse himself. He’d been too exhausted, and his mana had been in dire straits, yet he’d still tried to undo the spell he’d put the guards under in his perilous state. No wonder they knew something was wrong. He needs to find Athanasia and get back to the Tower now .

His shoes skid on the marble, and Raziel feels himself stumble and tip forward.

The space in time between him remaining upright and falling in an undignified dollop on the floor stretches out, and Raziel stares blankly at the guards rushing in his direction from the other end of the corridor, maids and paper pushers screaming bloody murder and diving out of the way, documents flying everywhere. Chaos. This is why His Highness always says that everywhere he goes things blow up fantastically. He feels the stream of mana he’s extending to his invisibility spell falter, and he realises when it catches and his figure ripples momentarily back in view when the guards’ eyes widen like plates behind their helmets and the front line stutters to an astonished halt. Having been fortunate enough to not have seen a child with very distinctive Robaine-red curls sitting on the floor, their comrades from behind collide into them with admirable violence and incredible gusto, leading to what can only be described as sheer destruction .

The well-respected Guards of the Emperor’s Palace are now a screaming, swearing scrap heap of metal. There’s so much confusion and disarray and Raziel cannot believe his dumb fucking luck.

“Nobody move!” Roars what must be the Captain of the Guards. He’s turned a concerning shade of puce and a throbbing vein is stark against his neck as he clanks and clatters his way up, roughly shoving his men aside. “Somebody tell me what we saw so that I know I’m not going senile. NOW!”

The scrap metal heap scrambles to get up after their superior, and if you take the time to squint the entire ensemble looks like Beacrox’s premium non-stick cooking set back home when the wolf tribe kids were learning how to cook.

Raziel does not take the time to squint. He hauls ass up and sprints, silencing his footsteps with a quick magic circle, and activates another to find Athanasia in the Palace. Behind him, the gravelly voice of the Captain barks out a name.

“JERKINS.”

“Y-Yes, sir—”

“What did you see?”

“I… I-I could be wrong sir, but wasn’t that the R-Robaine… that is, I think it was Y-Young Master Robaine?”

Fuck.

“I was told His Majesty was with Sir Robaine at the lake. What kind of petty trick is this?”

Oh.

Oh.

Raziel Robaine has not had a formal debut in society yet. New boys that are part of the nobility will be introduced in a beautillion ball, right after the girls’ debutante on the Crown Princess’ birthday. Athanasia herself won’t be part of the festivities until she comes of age at sixteen, but Raziel is two years older.

His beautillion ball is ten years away. These people have no idea who the fuck Raziel Robaine even is —the only ones who see his face and associate it with him by name are higher-ranked families that have closer relations with the Robaine dukedom, and the Emperor himself. He briefly sends his thanks for the pretentiousness and overprotectiveness of Obelian aristocracy. Blessed be this anonymity. Thanks to that, the split-second sight of him had not doomed him to an early watery grave at the Palace lake. That captain probably only had enough time to see his hair. 

That aside, the man did say His Majesty, that motherfucker, was at the lake. That’s where Athanasia would have been then.

Still stumbling to gain the right footing as his lungs fight for air and his insides roil from nausea, Raziel leaves this godforsaken Palace wing and heads for his quarters, a bracing arm curled around his midriff. He’d sent a signal to Athanasia the minute he left the study, and they’d agreed to meet at the Tower but… 

Something doesn’t feel right about this. The search spell drew blank —something that can only happen if she is not in the area he can search with his current mana limitation. There was at least enough magic in that spell to search the entire Palace complex.

“고구마 백개 먹은것 같아,” Raziel groans. There’s a ticklish feeling in his throat. Very, very familiar.

He tries to cough into his hand, staring balefully when it comes away bloody. He’s out of mana.

The fox is coughing blood, and Athanasia de Alger Obelia is hyperventilating.

Is this the Robaines’ family pet? What will happen if it dies in front of her? Gods, if this is his adopted animal or something, Raziel might never forgive her. What is she supposed to even do to fix this?

“Um,” Athanasia says. The fox is looking at her with… terribly familiar eyes, now that she looks closer. 

A colour like red currants, burnt sienna, rich red wine and fallen autumn leaves. Steadier and more earthy than the fucking traffic lights Lucas calls eyes. There’s something about them and its red coat that is distinctly Raziel , and she does not like what this implies about him, seeing as it’s coughing blood. Violent sparks crackle around it, like a full battery that’s lost connection to the power plug. Then —it starts glowing , and flickering . As if it’s on the cusp of disappearing entirely.

The hysterical giggle that escapes her says too much about her mental state.

She bites her lip. “Lucas, this would be a really great time for you to come back, you great big idiot .” 

Raziel is sitting duck in the middle of the Emperor’s side of the Palace, his safety net of invisibility long dead. If his mental map and memories are correct, then he is just one corner away from the main conference room. 

Cautiously, he inches his head around the corner and flinches behind the safety of the wall again when he spots the nobles walking through the double doors and out of the room. Record got enough of a clear picture for him to know that Duke Robaine, Duke Alpheus, Lord Penache, Lord Lorrentio, Lord Leopold and some other extras had been present in the meeting. 

A meeting without the Emperor... must be about the budget leak. 

The Palace system operates by a tiered court system, and minor issues must always be resolved, where possible, by the corresponding lower court of authority, before the Emperor is ever made to step in unnecessarily. Issues of higher importance are tackled by the higher aristocracy —the ducal houses would only step in for big economic, security, corruption and justice-related problems. It seems the leakage of public funds has grown. Whoever’s behind it is certainly toeing the line of destruction; will they escalate it to the point of involving Claude, or cover their tracks by giving the court a false trail to speed up the resolution process?

Regardless, Raziel is now very fucked. What are the chances of a noble walking away towards his area of the corridor?

Apparently very high, seeing as Duke Alpheus purposely turns the corner, looks at Raziel plastered against the wall, sweaty, hair a disaster, clothes ruffled, and stutters a step, tripping over his shiny oxfords. Instinctively Raziel grabs his arm to steady the man. 

And then there’s a moment of very loud silence.

“Good afternoon,” says Raziel, still holding him by the arm.

“Good afternoon,” responds Duke Alpheus on reflex. There’s a beat of uncomfortable silence. Awkwardly, he then adds, “May I have the pleasure of knowing why the Young Master Robaine is,” — skulking around restricted areas of the Palace — “here, and not in the safety of the Tower?”

“No,” Raziel replies politely.

“Oh.” Duke Alpheus looks quite lost. Apparently, he’d placed all his bets on Raziel following a conventional script of some kind; answering with honesty and offering an appropriate excuse. He had not foreseen Raziel’s allergies to honesty and explaining himself in any capacity.

But hitherto lies a big problem. It was only yesterday that Raziel had told Duke Robaine that he wouldn’t ‘seek out dangerous situations’ and yet here he is now. And his father is, at most, ten strides away. All it would take is Duke Alpheus being a bit louder than he currently is, or catching his attention, and Raziel would be pulled out of his apprenticeship and the Palace immediately, without hesitation.

“Duke Alpheus,” Raziel says to the man he’s clamped his hand on and entrapped, “would you be so kind as to lend me a moment of your time?”

“Um. Certainly…?”

“Fabulous.” He tugs his arm toward him, and the Duke stumbles in his direction until he’s behind the wall next to Raziel, out of sight from the rest of his sycophantic brethren and, more importantly, Duke Robaine.

His hostage straightens up and smooths out his clothes, disgruntled. Raziel can pinpoint the exact moment that the Duke notices the blood at the corner of his mouth when he makes a disgraceful sort of gurgling noise. 

“Is– is that blood ?”

“No,” lies Raziel. “Anyway, I had some questions to ask you, Duke. Do you—”

“I am very sure that it is blood, actually.” He sounds on the verge of hysterics, the poor man. He would take pity on him if he wasn’t housing Raziel’s primary suspect in his comfy estate. “Should I call a healer? A magician—?”

“Please focus, Duke Alpheus. As I was saying—”

“What happened to you, child?”

Raziel snaps his mouth shut, frustrated. This wasn’t working. “It’s fine, Your Excellence. This just happens sometimes.”

Everybody gets nosebleeds from time to time, surely? Sinus infections. Blowing it too much. Allergies. Dry air. Humans are so fragile that even a slight change in humidity is enough to cripple their system. A nosebleed isn’t that far fetched or uncommon.

What Raziel failed to consider, unfortunately, is that humans in this world are unaffected by such things, since mana supplements their energy and boosts bodily functions. 

He should have known something went wrong when worry ebbs from Duke Alpheus’ face, pity replacing it. 

“At such a young age…” the Duke murmurs ruefully, and, to Raziel’s shock, gently runs his fingers through his curls. He looks wistful.

He’s acting so unlike the reserved, self-serving aristocrat Raziel has characterised him as that it’s downright disturbing. Gross. His arm erupts in goosebumps. What the fuck is happening right now?

Lost, he decides to baseline back to his initial plan. “Your Excellence, when is Ijekiel going to be back?”

Duke Alpheus blinks, then smiles a smile so revoltingly gentle and soft that it’s all Raziel can do to keep his expression from spasming in a grimace. “Next month, for the start of the summer holidays, Raziel. Right, I’m sure you miss him.”

Ew. What happened to ‘ young master’ ? Or ‘ young Robaine’ ? Or even ‘child’ ?

Cale Henituse, hiding behind the farcical identity of Raziel Robaine, pulls up another mask for convenience and peace of mind. When he blinks next, Naru Von Ejellan smiles shyly at the Duke. This is infinitely harder than doing it in front of the White Star. Back then his deception got him cookies and a sense of superior smugness —now he just feels irritation. Not to mention the decisive lack of Raon by his side.

“I do miss him,” Naru sighs, “so I was wondering if it would be too much of a bother if I could come to your estate on the day he arrives? To surprise him?”

“Of course,” he replies quickly, his golden eyes solemn, like he’s making the biggest oath of his life. “You will always be welcome. You are Ijekiel’s closest friend, after all.”

Always welcome? Raziel wonders if that sentiment is extended to his current primary suspect for financial fraud and likely to be Claude’s political adversary, who Duke Alpheus is probably housing at the very estate he mentioned prior.

“Thank you, Duke,” Naru says, the tearful gratitude thick in his voice.

“Don’t mention it. You didn’t have to sneak all the way here to ask me that, Raziel. This is a restricted area. You could get in serious trouble.” He levels him a stern look that washes straight off Raziel’s back like water. “Now, let me escort you back to the Tower, since the sun is setting. The guards rang a false alarm,” —Raziel develops a newfound fascination with his nails, suddenly— “but it’s better to be safe than sorry. ”

“Very wise of you, Your Lordship,” says Raziel, for whom personal safety had never been even on the first page of his priorities.

As if to exemplify this lack of self-preservation, Raziel takes the dregs of his mana and agonisingly pushes it all into one last spell to track the last known location of the bracelet. He pretends he doesn’t see the Duke turn away in abject sorrow when he coughs into his sleeve, staining it with yet more blood. Everything is spinning, and he stumbles along after Duke Alpheus, vision blurring.

It is hour three point five of getting stranded in Raziel’s attic with his spiritual animal or pet or whatever the fuck this thing is, and Athanasia is quite ready to leave. 

“Does he take constructive feedback on this thing?” She mutters, pinching the charred bracelet up with two fingers. “On the next one, I want a take-me-home function.” 

She’s sitting on the four-poster in the room, legs spread out before her and crossed at the ankles, the fox a warm, flickering ball in her lap.  Although the flickering hasn’t stopped ever since it started, the ominous, violent sparks had long since dissipated, and it had stopped coughing blood. She chose to interpret this as Raziel getting out of whatever pickle he’d been in, for her own sanity.

“Stupid Raziel. Stupid fox.”

It stares back at her balefully for a while before standing up and decisively hopping off her to lay on the other side of the bed. Athanasia feels terrible. 

“I’m sorry, I take it back. You’re not stupid. Please come back, I’m very sorry.” Nothing. “너무 미안해요,” she tries out of desperation.

Then, one of its ears flick in her direction, and Athanasia comes to the shocking revelation that this fox somehow knows Korean.

She’s about to fully abuse that realisation by releasing a litany of random Korean words to see what it will do, when suddenly the fox lets out one long, keening sound, sparks suddenly flying out and zapping her, even three feet away.

“What the fu—” Athanasia scrambles off the bed, jumping from foot to foot to get rid of the electrifying tingling. “That was not very nice, you know—”

Whatever she’d been about to say dies a sudden death on her tongue as she watches the tiny fox tremble, releasing a pained whine before dissolving in a cloud of shimmering embers. For a couple of seconds, it’s as if they’re looking for something —or some one — arduously making their frantic way around the room.

The sun is setting, now, and beyond the window the sun dips below the horizon and dyes the sky impossibly red. The shadows in the room grow as if chasing the remaining light away. Those glowing embers sink on the floor, their search fruitless. Dissipating, like they never existed.

In the oppressive silence that follows, Athanasia lays her head in her hands and breathes. In, out. In, out. Slowly.

When the first tears begin to drip, unbidden, there's a loud crack like a thunderclap, and a painfully familiar voice. 

“Where is he?”

She whips her head up, startled, the tears staining miserable tracks along her face.

Lucas stands in the middle of the room, a wrinkle between his brows and the tense set of his mouth. Worry. Panic. Anger. His ruby-red eyes are narrowed into slits, roaming the room. Looking for something -someone. For any sign of that distinctive red. They zero in on the blood upon the bedcovers, and then they fasten upon her, unerringly. A heady, cloying amount of mana exudes from his body, some tendrils thrashing like leashed hellhounds ready for blood. There’s more magic than the last time she saw him. A lot more.

He stalks towards her, gripping her by the shoulders, hauling her up. Athanasia stares into his eyes, frozen. When he speaks, his voice is terrible and harsh and cold and ruthless all at once.

“Where is Raziel? ”

Chapter Text

The world was swimming before his eyes, and he felt empty, wretchedly empty. There was a pit yawning open inside of him, and where it had been teeming with power, now there was nothing. Remember , he told himself. Remember . Before the magic, there had been something else down here. Another type of power had been nestled in the folds of his soul, stitched tightly on the fabric, before he ever took a breath of air here. A power that wasn’t his own, but a gift from others.

No —not a power.  A patchwork of powers , interlinked. 

Pain lanced through his head.

They’d been weak before. The magic had been a crutch for him to use, he realised. Until the others were ready.

But the magic is gone now. It had been borrowed, it was never his to begin with, but it hurt . A wave of nausea crashed into him, and he swayed on his feet, cold sweat on his back, on his brow. A curious feeling, hot and cold at once, invaded his limbs. Where was he? What direction was he walking in? Who was he with? As a wave of fresh pain throbs through him, he finds himself discarding these thoughts. Questions, and contemplation of their answers, was a luxury. His head ached terribly. Hot. It was so hot.

The world went off-kilter, his legs giving out on him —but suddenly there was warmth on his skin. His hand, he realised dazedly. Someone was holding him by the hand, trying to help him up, but he flinched away from the scalding touch. Hot, hot. Too much heat. It was as if his blood was on fire.

In that empty place inside of him, the other powers, the ones that had been biding their time, were pouring in like hot metal during welding. It felt like liquid fire filling up his core, his head. They cooled, heated, and re-cooled. Settled in every crevice —or rather resettled, each filling the grooves in his soul so familiarly it was as if the magic had been the foreign invader, and they the true dwellers. 

He suffered through every single agonising second of the shift, wanting to crawl out of his skin, to maul it off. Every blade of grass beneath him prickled him like a bed of needles.

A voice floated in unwelcome, adding to the assault on his senses. “Raziel? Child, open your eyes—” 

Who the fuck was that? That was not his name. He knew it wasn’t. It rankled. It was like a stiff shirt that he’d been forced to wear for years, excruciatingly itching away at him. His name was —his name is…

His arms trembled and shook, damn them, as he tried to pull his torso up off the ground; he felt the impact reverberating painfully throughout his body when they gave out beneath him. He couldn’t get up, so he gave up, shivering on the ground. He coughed, and something wet dripped from his lips. Someone, somewhere above him, barked a rushed command for help. A chorus of panicked voices followed. They grated on his ears like nails on a blackboard —he didn’t care about the headache they amplified anymore. Damn and blast, what was his name? He needed to remember …

After what felt like an age, he heard another voice —steely with authority. Hadn’t he known a voice like that before ? But it was oilier, warmer, friendlier, dripping with faux civility. This one was cold and unforgiving. What was it saying? Some instinct told him this was important.

“Move him to my chambers, Felix,” it ordered. “The rest of you useless trash, go back to the Lake and look again. If you come back empty-handed, your lives will be forfeit.” Whoever it was, they meant the threat. Their voice had been deadly soft, like the whisper of a dagger coming out of its sheath, and he thinks that blood will spill today. Then the aches, the heat, the frost, the nausea —they all come back, and he doesn’t think much else at all. He can do little other than brace and weather the storm.

Claude de Alger Obelia had sunk back into that cold, impenetrable place in his mind —a killing calm. A storm he carried with him that made threats and curses roll off his tongue like water, that made death his companion.

When that girl’s bright presence had disappeared from the water, he’d slid right into that place of permafrost. For one blessed, euphoric moment, everything in his mind was silent. 

She was gone. That blight on his life, cleansed.

The panic that had gripped him instantly after —the panic that had him gasping for air, that had his magic combing every rock and crevice and weed in that lake with mad desperation — came as such a surprise that he stumbled on that boat from the force of it.

He’d been close. He’d watched while she drowned. One moment she was across from him, a tiny, vulnerable body in red and frills, and the next she was down, and the Emperor found himself pondering. Should I, or should I not?

Claude had pondered too long. Her eyes, the darker and deeper mirror to his own, were still gazing at him with a chilling, terrible understanding beneath the water, when light flashed, and she was gone. 

She’d known —her father wasn’t coming to save her. Athanasia de Alger Obelia had still fought to save herself, legs kicking and arms punching in a frenzy, water splashing everywhere. A few drops had found their way onto his tunic, the impeccable white staining all too easily.

Claude had learned that people should rely only on themselves. That nobody should expect help or kindness from anyone. When people are born in this wretched world, they are entitled to nothing. 

In a lake where —should life have been kinder to her, should that woman have never met him— where her first life lesson might have been how to swim… on this bright, sunny afternoon, Claude had taught his daughter all he knew.

There was an ocean raging inside of him. It rose further on the night of his brother’s betrayal, of that woman’s death. So he did nothing to save himself when the waterline rose once more, submerging first his mouth, then his nose, then his eyes, stealing his senses one by one and blanketing them, until only indifference and numbness remained.

That child, that ember, gone as he’d wished.

He thought he might have seen Felix’s pale face as he walked out of the boat. He thought it might have been his voice that ordered the guards to search the Lake for any life signs.

Then—

“Someone help! The Young Master Robaine, he—”

Felix was the first to move, his red cloak a blur, his shoulder knocking into him as he ran. Fast, faster than Claude had ever seen him run. His features were panic-stricken. Some removed part of him wondered if that was how someone else would have – should have— reacted back at that Lake.

There was so much noise, so how could there be so much silence?

Claude didn’t know how, but he was moving before he realised it. Ways away, a small body was prone on the ground. There was blood near his mouth on the grass —on his chin, some  speckles on his shirt. There was so much blood. 

Felix didn’t stop to watch, or to ponder. He didn’t even wait for his Emperor’s commands to run, to ease his younger brother into his arms, scooping him up and holding him to his chest tightly, pressing a kiss to his forehead. Babbling nonsense. Hold on. I’m here. Useless sentiments.

But if they were indeed useless… then how was it that Claude now has his godson lying on his personal bed, shivering under the heavy quilt? Why was it that Claude has decided to pull up another chair by the bedside, maintaining a silent vigil next to his guard?

How was it that he kept thinking of that moment at the Lake —the exact moment the terror in her eyes had shifted into dismal realisation, then acceptance? Why could he not cast it from his mind?

He doesn’t know. Claude doesn’t know, but he demeans and threatens and gives two commands to these useless bastards under his authority, spoken from every remaining piece of his shrivelled heart: keep searching the Lake , and find a magician .

Some part of him thinks that if that girl is never found, it’d be good. Better if she escaped this hellhole. This court of political bullshit and intrigue and idiots parading in aristocratic suits and dresses, thinking themselves important.

Another part of him thinks of the way she kicked out her feet, thrashing inelegantly to find air, to survive — a tiny slip of a girl with the fighting spirit of a lion — and wonders if she would have risen to the occasion anyway. She did not get that from him. 

It’s with that same detachment that he orders one guard to fetch the Chief Magician Bontafe and two guards to take their post outside, ready to intercept any others that seek an audience to save his godson. No doubt the unworthy trash will come in droves, ready to claim honour and riches in return for their meagre talents. Claude would do everything himself if he were able —if the mighty, near-unending well of his magic were to lend itself to healing. Thanks to his childhood, his temperament, and the War, however, those gifts are inaccessible to him. And to Felix.

It must tear him up inside to be unable to help his brother, even with all his considerable skills. They’ve always been much better at ending lives, the two of them. Claude looks over at his personal guard, finding him with his elbows on his knees, clasped hands concealing the lower part of his face. Only his eyes were visible, strained and red.

He opens his mouth, and his voice comes out bleak. “Raziel has always been like this, ever since he was born.” 

It’s a good sign that he’s talking. Claude has only ever seen Felix at loss for words one time: when news of his mother’s death reached him. Perhaps it’s because Raziel looks, deceptively, better than when they found him. The black blood around Raziel’s mouth had been wiped clean already, but some speckles dried on his shirt, stark against the white of the fabric. All Claude had been able to do for the boy was put him to sleep. His breaths, however, were shallow and came fast, sweat still gathering at his temples, on his wan face.

It’s an obvious truth to both of them that he’s still in pain. Neither of them acknowledge it.

Felix goes on, even when Claude says nothing. For years, he’s filled his Emperor’s silences. “He was born underweight, with weak immunity. The healers attending to Mother detected foetal magic output, so they expected a healthy, strong child.” He smiles, grimly. “But he caught ill too easily, so then they assumed he was a weak magician. Obviously that was not the case either.”

Claude remembers the Robaines’ refusals when he made Raziel an Apprentice. Looks like they didn’t only stem from protectiveness, but also confusion.

“I don’t know what is going on with my brother,” Felix murmurs, releasing a shaky breath, “but I can’t say I’m surprised. The circumstances of his birth have always been strange. Mother insisted he be named ‘Raziel’, a name we’ve never even heard before then. We tried researching it, but it is not translatable from any known language in the world.”

Claude considers this, and has to agree. He may not be a scholar, but he is quite well-read and educated himself. Even with the languages he knows —and he knows a good number, to a level of professional proficiency— his godson’s name is odd. Much like Raziel himself. For a child, he’s remarkably quiet and sharp, in much the same way he used to be.

But that’s a ridiculous comparison. Claude grew up an outcast, a blight on the family tree and the eyes of his father and the Empress. He grew up hiding bruises and sticking to that bastard Anastacius like an unwanted rash. Raziel Robaine grew up in the safety of the Robaine Estate under the loving care of his father and brother. 

Nevermind that sometimes, during their chess matches, Claude would see something haunted and cold in the way he looked at pieces that was every inch a war strategist and the least reminiscent of a six year old brat. Even he had not been like that. Athanasia, too, seems sharper than most her age, but her eyes don’t hide a predator.

(A predator would not have nearly drowned in that Lake, would not have fallen prey to that parasitic plant, would not have held the slightest hope that Claude would save her.)

“Father suggested we name him ‘Roger’ for a while.” Felix glances at him, and purses his lips to block out a sharp laugh at whatever he finds on his face. “I reminded him it would sound like Duke Alpheus and he looked just as disgusted with himself.”

“I would have refused to be his godfather if you named him Roger ,” Claude sneers, spitting out the name like an expletive, and refuses to acknowledge the hint of relief he distantly feels when Felix erupts in quiet chuckles.

Then there’s a knock on the door, and they both turn.

“Enter.”

The guard pushes open the double door and bows deeply. As if sensing the terse impatience in the air, he forgoes the blessings and glory spiel.

“Your Majesty, Chief Magician Bontafe has answered your summons.”

“Show him in.”

He bows in compliance, and exits silently, presumably to wave the magician inside and take his leave.

Or rather he would have, if Bontafe hadn’t stomped through the doors without so much as a by-your-leave, knocking the man aside like he was a particularly tall, armoured bit of decoration. “My apprentice!” He yelled with theatrical devastation, heedless of how the room drops several degrees in temperature. “Where is my apprentice!”

Claude wishes he could sack the man, but he’s the best he can find, and he’s as efficient with his paperwork and magic research as he is maddeningly airheaded. He still sneers as Bontafe kneels before him, blessings and glory upon the Sun of Obelia spilling from his lips hurriedly before he’s up again, breezing past the sofa standing by Raziel’s bedside, next to Felix.

Claude barely restrains his temper as the man lowers his face closer to his godson’s. His eyes are aglow, and the murmurs that fall from his lips sound like prayer rather than spellcasting.

He recognises some diagnostic spells, and that’s the only reason why he doesn’t nod at Felix when he spots his hand threateningly falling on the pommel of his sword, ready to spring into an attack. He’d been wrong when he thought Felix was coping well. The speed and severity of his reaction had him realising how on edge he was. Leftover habits from the war.

It’s only because he’s scanning him like a hawk that Claude catches the split-second glance Asrar Bontafe throws his left hand, where his tattooed clock is still tick-tick-ticking in the silence. As if he’s double checking something. He can’t help but notice that the numbers around the clock have changed since he last saw them. He could have sworn they were bigger. A countdown of some sort?

Suspicious. The man’s been serving him for six years, but Claude can’t help but think so —he’s survived so far because his instincts have served him better.

“You have five seconds to tell us what the problem is, Asrar Bontafe,” he says quietly. He holds eye contact when the old man straightens up hurriedly —holds it and sees his throat work as he swallows nervously. “You lose a finger for every second you go over that.”

“Your Majesty… I cannot sense any magic from the boy.”

Claude was expecting mention of some illness or mana overuse or mana malfunction. His expectations had not even remotely included him not having any mana at all.

“ How .” 

“I-I don’t know, Your Majesty.”

Magic did not disappear. Magicians lived and breathed mana until the day they died. Even the ordinary person possessed that little bit of mana for healthy bodily function. It was impossible, inconceivable, to not have any magic at all —not while your body still draws breath in its lungs, or your heart stays beating. In this world, mana was universal, mana was everything.

Unless…

Claude orders Bontafe to take his leave, hardly seeing him retreat as he levels his gaze to Felix. He knows the suspicion painted on the tense set of his expression, because he feels it on his own features. Feels the dawning realisation in the room, because his magic is a physical manifestation of it, chilling and frigid as if in the middle of winter.

They put everything together in moments —the “fake” intruder alert from his guards outside his personal study, where he kept Jinxes, Hexes and Curses, Volume III. The girl’s —his daughter’s… disappearance. (Don’t think about it.) His godson’s tremendous stores of magic, gone.

Only dark magic could sap someone of their magic completely.

“Impossible,” Felix breathes out, rising to his feet slowly. “Dark magicians are gone.”

They’d made sure of it, in the Dark Wars. They’d made sure of it afterward, too, and had legislation so strict that every practitioner was immediately sentenced to death.

“A visit to the Royal Mausoleum appears to be in order,” Claude whispers, eyes cold, cold, cold, permafrost spreading along the ground from his feet. “It’s time I paid my dearest brother a visit.”

Felix says nothing. He only gently runs his hand through his brother’s curls in farewell, before returning it to his sword in a practised, all-too-familiar grip.

They’re about to turn to the door and leave, when there’s another knock, and a different guard enters. One of the ones he’d posted outside, to talk to any magicians who may be able to treat Raziel.

“Your Majesty,” the guard says, bowing reverently. There’s a hesitation in her voice that has Claude narrowing his eyes.

“Out with it.”

“There’s a magician seeking an audience with you, sire,” she says hurriedly, averting her eyes to the floor. “He’s… well, quite a bit younger than we—”

“Damn his age,” he snaps. “Is he competent, or is he like every other useless, block-headed fool we’ve had to suffer today?”

“Bontafe said you’ll understand when you look at him, Your Majesty.”

“Then bring him in and cease wasting time.”

With a last bow, the guard turns and opens the door, standing to the side so that the waiting magician can enter.

A child —around Raziel’s age— shyly steps over the doorway. Black hair, unusual red eyes, teary from his nerves. Tiny, humble as he drops to his knees and looks up at his Emperor hopefully.

The complete opposite of what Claude’s magic screams he is:

A behemoth of raw magical power.

Chapter Text

The journey would have been difficult —impossible, even— for anyone other than Lucas.

Before he even started, he’d burrowed deep inside his reserves, pulling out half of that mighty magic slumbering inside of him like a prowling beast, just to send it out in an enormous wave across the world.

Lucas pulled out a piece of paper and a quill and drew a rudimentary map, sketching out those areas of resonance. The snagging on his magic that he’d sensed, he discarded; those were not artefacts or natural ground-mana reserves. Those marked the mana that had made its home in other organisms; faeries and elves from the Seelie and Unseelie courts, living on a higher plane of existence in this world, neighbours to the World Tree. The dragons and wyverns living on the cliffside of Mount Kosoori here on the surface. Creatures like the aqrabuamelu , the man-scorpion hybrids residing in the Black Desert in the southwest, burrowed deep in its glittering, black dunes. All manner of creatures he’d had the time to become acquainted with in his long lifetime.

Each and every one of them with sentience must have felt the ripple for what it was —a net, cast wide. If they had any sense, they’d recognise the magic signature, the power, and realise he was back, would put down their weapons and halt their calls for war. If they had any sense, they’d consult their clairvoyants and oracles and remember how very pointless it would be to try to obstruct him from taking anything he wished. He hoped their Elders hadn’t forgotten his mercy a century ago. Reminding them every half a millennium was a chore in and of itself, and one he was tired of performing.

Lucas tsked, rubbing the back of his head before setting his hands on his waist and surveying the map floating before him.

The closest one to him was deep in the Arlantian Marshes, in the country where Raziel’s supposed “best friend” was studying in boarding school. What had been his name again? Ijek? Izak? Izke?

He scowled. Lucas was a way better name, anyway. Irritated, and more so for not understanding why, he rolled up his map and tucked it away in the folds of his magic. A brow twitched at the pinch of mana that spell removed from his reserves; in the height of his glory, Lucas had been unable to even feel the impact of such inane spellcasting. Now, even the single other passive spell in action —the one that kept Raziel’s persistent hay fever at bay— was a steady, but sure trickle of mana away from him. He briefly considered cutting it off, but the fool causes himself enough suffering as it is.

Clucking his tongue, he raised his leg to step forward, eyes seeing the stone walls of the Master Magician’s floor at the Tower —which shifted into the stormy grey sky of the Marshes the moment his booted feet sank into waterlogged soil.

A grimace immediately rose to his face. “Utterly disgusting,” he muttered, trying not to look too hard at his boots.

Unfortunately, he’d have to teleport at least six more times to get to all the stupid artefacts, so cleaning his boots is out of the question.

Sighing, he consulted his map. It had zoomed into the Marshes at a tap, and a glowing red dot showed his location, the target blue rhombus overlapping with it. Lucas frowned, lowering the map to look around his immediate vicinity. The wind forced the tall grass around him to bow, and even though he was upland, he could still spot some way away where the marsh began, the murky water rippling around the stalks of the plants. The magic here, thick and ancient, tricked mortal senses; when you looked up, what you saw was not the sky. The veil was an afternoon blue one minute, and the next the night’s darkest blue, hiding the true light of the day. An inconsistent, ever-changing nightmare of a biome to human biological clocks. Sometimes humans camped out here for days at a time, and the lack of diurnal light threw their sleep cycles out of whack. The slightest onset of fatigue was enough to leave them susceptible to malignant magic attacks which induced hallucinations. Another week, and psychosis would set in, well and proper. A slow, certain, maddening death after unrelentingly sapping your strength and whittling away at your mental defences. 

There was no one around for miles and miles —the capital city of Arlanta was five days away by horse. What an utterly miserable place.

Not to mention, no matter how much he looked around, there was no sign of any artefact. The blades of grass around him were nothing out of the ordinary. His teleportation was flawless, so he knows for a fact that he and the artefact are in close proximity. The map didn’t make any sense.

Unless…

Lucas slowly lowered his eyes to the ground.

He cursed, colourfully.

He was still cursing when he finished digging and finally fished a rusty locket out of the moist, slimy soil. The dirt was under his nails, and clung between his fingers as they pinched the chain to lift and place it on a handkerchief. As if all this miserable manual labour wasn’t bad enough, somewhere in the middle of his digging, he seemed to have attracted an audience. 

A host of will-o’-the wisps floated around his hunched figure, probably attracted towards the artefact and his own magical presence. Each was around the size of a fist, and entirely benign. To Lucas, at least.

One of them floated closer to the handkerchief, warmly curious. 

“If I find whoever put this down there, I will eviscerate them and throw their innards in the marsh,” Lucas told it, breathing heavily from the exertion. The wisp’s eternal blue flame shuddered and flinched away from him. He glared at it, unrepentant. “No, I’m not taking that back.” 

Blue flame flickered as if scandalised, the wisp flying over to the relative safety of its brethren.  Lucas threw them a vulgar gesture that would have had Athanasia slapping him upside the head. Ignoring the frightened sparks they threw in his direction, he stood and examined the stained mess of his arms.

Fuck, he hadn’t dug anything with his own two hands in millenia. He had not missed it.

Soon , he placated himself. Soon he won’t need to lift a goddamn finger to do anything. 

With a sigh, he summoned his magic and forced the locket open. It warmed on his kerchief like a pebble on a hot day, spitting out a writhing cloud of mana that he stuck his face in and promptly inhaled. His eyes fluttering closed, Lucas felt it settle inside of him, steadying.

Good. It was a start.

He threw a last glance over it, rolling his eyes at the painting in its lid. Some nondescript woman, smiling. She looked utterly ordinary, her neck and ears unadorned. Stupid sentimentality everywhere. Snorting, he threw the empty shell over his shoulder, uncaring of where it landed. When he heard a splash, he spared an idle, indifferent second to think of how the painting would get damaged in the water.

But the Master Magician only shrugged, snapping his fingers, his magic carrying him to his next destination.

He found the sixth in Siodonna, the birthplace of Athanasia’s mother.

Karna’s Kavach , as they called it, was breastplate armour that glowed a bright, true gold. The matching earrings —the kundala — were with it, both atop a velvety cushion on an ornately sculpted coffin lid. Everywhere you looked in this ancient mandir, you saw gold. The walls, the columns, the domed ceiling, the floor, the sconces on the wall. A staggering display of wealth, ancient craftsmanship and architecture.

Regardless of all that, Lucas would have had absolutely no issue swiping Karna’s artefacts like a robber and leaving. He’d travelled everywhere on this godforsaken continent. It turns out the scorpion assholes over at the Black Desert were less enthused to hand over the treasure under their “divine protection”. Seeing as they were using it to bewitch stranded mortals —leaving them to drink what they thought was water but was actually sand until they choked on it, throats raw and bleeding— Lucas did the rest of their species a favour and decided to kill off the clan. Their blood had been a disgustingly runny olive-green that left his clothes a mess, but had disappeared entirely on the glittering obsidian sand of the Desert. Luckily, his magic had been steadily gaining strength with each artefact he…well, ate , and so the massacre had not put a damper on his magic.

That did not mean he was not tired. So he absolutely had no patience for this . He told him so.

“Nonsense, Lucas,” said the Yaksha, sitting on a low (again — golden ) chair at the centre of the temple. “You must always have patience for some chai with old friends.”

The golden tassels on his proud headpiece danced when he leaned slightly over the square table, making a sweeping, welcoming gesture at the seat across from him. His very skin was the same gold as the rest of the temple, fooling you into thinking he was a particularly hulking sculpture until he shifted, and his massive muscles tensed with every motion. At his waist, tied onto a sesh that kept his waistcloth in place, was a sheathed tulwar, curved in the typical fashion of a Siodonnan sabre. All in all, one glance at him was enough to set most mortals running for the exit.

“I would hardly call us old friends, Yaksha,” Lucas drawled, coldly flicking his eyes to the chair. “Considering your piss-poor attempt to lure me to your bed a hundred years ago.”

He stayed where he was, near the door, and tried to consider a different path to the artefacts on the other end of the temple —one that didn’t entail horrifically maiming their guardian, the generally benign but maddeningly capricious pain in his ass.

“Psh!” The spirit gave a wave of his hand, the action so dismissive that Lucas felt his temper fray. “Who can deny themselves carnal pleasures when the mood sees fit to come and the circumstances align?”

“And what circumstances are those?” So I know how to avoid them.

“The sight of a pretty face, of course,” the Yaksha said with a wise mien that made Lucas want to throttle him with his sash. “Why, with you here once more…” He sighed, the sound so soft and wanton that Lucas hastily backed up a step. “Yes, the mood is promptly forthcoming.”

Fuck. If he didn’t hurry up and tell the perverted bastard what he’s here for, the events from a hundred years ago will repeat themselves. Last time, he’d left the guardian looking like one giant bruise after he’d rushed toward Lucas with that sickening, hungry gleam in his eye and… and his waistcloth —or rather, hidden by that fabric, between his legs… well. The less said about it, the better.

“I need the mana from Karna’s effects,” Lucas said quickly.

A slow blink is all he received. Eventually, the Yaksha straightened up in his seat, levelling his narrowed gaze on him. Any trace of hunger in his eyes had disappeared, as if it had been a mask carefully constructed to make Lucas drop his guard. A guardian —an immortal, revered caretaker of a demigod’s treasure and tomb stared back at Lucas.

“That is sacrilege.” His voice had gone deathly quiet. It echoed in the mandir.

Lucas shrugged, irreverent. “They will replenish in time.” Godly artefacts, artefacts known and respected by many people, typically did. Thanks to magic, nothing of symbolic importance ever truly dies.

Silence. The Yaksha gracefully clasped his cup between his hands, raising it to take a long sip. He took his time, savouring it, no doubt letting him stew in the gravity of his request. Lucas, in typical Lucas fashion, did no such thing; instead, he idly sniffed, recognising the tea’s scent as Lippe. Athanasia’s favourite drink.

“And what will you offer in exchange?”

Exchange , not return . Very intentional wording. Whatever Lucas gave must be of equal value; it must follow and honour the principle of equivalent exchange.

He knew better than to ask something as foolish as what do you desire from me? “Desire” is such an ambiguous term. Desire contains wants, material and lustful, and using the word boldly implied that Lucas could fulfil both. 

The Yaksha invited him to play the game, so he’d better play.

“Gold and jewels pale in comparison to divine artefacts,” Lucas remarked, clasping his hands behind his back and casually wandering closer. The Yaksha’s black-eyed gaze tracked him unerringly, and on the wall, the lights flickered, despite there being no current here.

Lucas smiled. “I cannot barter in life-years, either, since I possess them infinitely.” One step, another step. Closer, closer. Close enough to see the Yaksha’s dilated pupils, his flared nostrils. So close that the spirit could scent him at last. 

Unlike a hundred years ago, Lucas let him. Watched with smugness as he shuddered at what he found.

“You smell like power,” the Yaksha said hoarsely. “You were born in the heart of the ley-lines, nurtured and fed by magic itself, like the World Tree.”

The spirit got his answer.

“I cannot give gold or jewels, nor barter in life-years,” Lucas summarised with a smirk, “so the only currency I trade in is secrets. Money and life force, I can replenish, but secrets can’t be unlearnt.” A shrug. “Sorry. No returns or refunds for change of mind accepted.”

“I let myself hope you would grant me something else,” the Yaksha sighed, that infuriating smarmy grin back on his face. “The offer is always open, if you are willing.”

Lucas scowled. “Cheers, but no.”

“Heartless.”

“ Uninterested ,” he corrected, finally sitting down and reaching for the steeped Lippe leaves. It’d been an age since he had tried them. Athanasia talked about this godforsaken tea so damn much that it somehow seemed more special than the last time he’d had it.

When the Yaksha failed to fill the silence as he was wont to do, Lucas looked up, catching a contemplative stare. “What?”

“It is naught,” the Yaksha said after a beat. “Whereupon do you venture next?”

“Obelia,” Lucas answered, blowing on his tea, “lest they somehow burn the Empire down without me.”

A quirk of an eyebrow. “ They?”

Lucas merely gave him a maddening little smirk, and said nothing. Undoubtedly he’d be intrigued about the two demons if he told him, but the thought of the Yaksha with Athanasia de Alger Obelia and Raziel Robaine having tea together made his skin crawl.

He was about to finally take a sip when he felt it.

A thread in the magic tapestry of the world, twisting and fraying. One of two threads he kept a constant eye on.

What the fuck was Raziel up to?

“Your visage is filled bottom to brim with worry. What is the matter?”

“None of your business,” Lucas snapped, putting down his tea with more force than strictly necessary. His finger tapped a staccato against the table.

The Yaksha feigned self-pity and offence. “I am merely concerned about you.”

“Shut your mouth—and give me that,” Lucas snatched the teapot from the spirit’s hands, careful to avoid direct skin contact, and grabbed the bowl with the biscuits at the centre of the table with the other hand.

Without even blinking, he threw the goods inside the bowl on the ground and poured the contents of the kettle inside. The Yaksha let out a disgruntled, undignified sort of gurgle that was distinctly un-guardian-like, falling to his knees in shock. Lucas ignored the bastard. He had more important things to worry about than a couple of biscuits on the fucking floor.

Impatiently, Lucas waved a hand over the bowl and stared intently at the water. When the magic took on, pictures started forming inside.

What the fuck. Raziel’s fox back at the Robaine Estate, spewing blood. Raziel himself, untraceable, somewhere in the Palace under stricter wards. Athanasia, drowning in a lake. 

What the actual fuck. “I was gone for two days,” Lucas snarled at his reflection in the bowl, his expression downright animalistic. “Two days.”

“Might you be generous enough to impart on me the reason for such disgraceful waste of—”

“I will pull your tongue out myself if don't hold it.”

The Yaksha huffed, imperiously sitting back down and glaring at some other corner of the temple.

“I’m leaving,” Lucas said with a mighty scowl. He was up and briskly walking towards Karna’s artefacts within a blink, urgency apparent in every motion. 

“You’ve hardly even drunk your chai,” the Yaksha whined —actually whined, the stupid loaf.

Lucas sped up his pace. Karna’s Kavach briefly glowed brighter at his approach, but he had no time for the ceremonial greeting and respectful prayers that it was accustomed to. He laid his palm on it and simply sucked out its power.

The mana rushed inside of him, exploring its new vessel, curling up and purring like an enormous, lethal, satisfied tiger.when it deemed him worthy of its power. His reserves were restored —now, he could make the trip to the World Tree with Raziel in tow. 

He was about to do the same to the kundala —but hesitated.

“ Karna’s Kundala ,” the Yaksha said solemnly from the table, his voice loud in the silence. “When he possessed them along the Kavach , Karna had been immortal and invincible. You already know this. Why are you dithering?”

Should I, or should I not? But such deliberation was useless.

Athanasia was undying by virtue of her name and magic heritage. Lucas was immortal from birth. Raziel…was currently coughing blood. That thread he’d been sensing for the past two and a half minutes was about to snap.

Lucas sighed. Instead of laying his hand on the earrings, he folded them in a pocket of his magic for safekeeping, and turned to look at the Yaksha over his shoulder. The guardian was looking between Lucas and the place where the artefacts had vanished, any smile wiped from his face.

“I’m taking the earrings.”

“That,” the Yaksha said, slowly rising from his seat, “was not part of the bargain.”

“Do I look like I give a shit?” Lucas replied, smiling winningly.

One of those muscled, veiny hands landed on the pommel of his tulwar. “You are making an enormous mistake. I quite like you, but not this much.” 

“Then why don’t you go fuck yourself? I hope you don’t mind but I won’t be staying to watch. Something tells me you would enjoy yourself more that way.”

The Yaksha growled, his features contorting like an enraged lion. A heartbeat later and he unsheathed his tulwar, a curved blade sharp enough to cut bone. Lucas stared at it, distinctly unimpressed.

“Do you honestly think you stand a chance?” He heard the arrogance in his own voice, and revelled in it, in the truth it spoke. No one was stronger than him in this world. No one has been stronger than him for a very, very long time.

“Regardless, I have no choice,” the Yaksha said tightly, and there it was —that seed of fear in his eyes as he sensed Lucas’ magic roiling like a tsunami given human form. “I have been named the Guardian of this Golden Mandir. I have a duty to protect this place to the death, if need be.”

“Yes, yes, I see. Then, I’ll let you choose: concussion, grievous injury, or death? And make it quick, I am needed elsewhere,” Lucas added, half a mind still on that deep, bejewelled azure mana. The Princess.

Athanasia.

The bracelet must have been activated. He still remembered the condition for the teleportation function —sensation of deep, life-threatening, paralysing fear. Waves of thick, cloying magic flowed out from his body unbidden, writhing restlessly. What did that imperial fucker do this time? 

It was rage, Lucas realised, that roared inside of him. Rage. An emotion he hadn’t felt for aeons, having locked his heart away, now set his blood boiling. He resolved to kill them. Athanasia’s father, the damned Emperor… and the fool that left Raziel in such a state. The thought of those two in fear and pain was simply unacceptable.

That thread frayed more. More, and more. It shook and blackened, like soot. Lucas’ magic flinched in agitation.

The Yaksha opened his mouth to answer —and was struck from behind by a phantom magic blow. His tulwar clanged cacophonously, lips kissing the tiles. Blood pooled from his head to the ground and stained that golden headpiece. 

Lucas’ snide comment was loud in the ensuing darkness. “Shame. Your answer was not fast enough. Now sleep tight and forget I ever came here.”

The flames on the sconces immediately fizzled out when the Guardian’s eyes fluttered closed, fast asleep. By the time he woke once more, looking around in confusion, Karna’s effects were nowhere to be seen, and Lucas was long gone.

Athanasia is alive and well, if not a bit shaken, but the next time Lucas sees Claude de Alger Obelia face to face, he is certain he will be committing first-degree murder. The bastard has to pay for the tears she shed; there needs to be restitution for how she shook and trembled from terror and from the cold, as she stood there in her sopping wet clothes and tried to explain what happened. 

By her account, Raziel’s magic beast dissolved into nothing after spewing blood all over the bed covers. Somewhere in the Palace, Raziel must be in the exact same state, or worse, after attempting to break into the Emperor’s personal study. Lucas doesn’t even know where to begin with that plan —he’s holding onto it for when he sees Raziel again. He’s going to give the man such an earful that his words will be branded inside his brain forever. 

What Lucas fails to understand is why the fox simply disappeared into nothing. It’s true that it’s unnatural for magic beast and owner to be physically separated to that degree, and while this distance may have led to Raziel running out of mana quicker, it does not make sense for the magic to fade out of existence. Where did Raziel’s leftover mana, stored inside the beast, disappear to? 

It’s impossible to know the answers, unless he examines Raziel himself. He doesn’t think about it too hard when he snaps his fingers and changes her clothing into something blessedly dry. Nor does he where he drops Athanasia with a hurried whispered spell, though he gives her some lee-way about her destination: as long as it’s safe and not the attic, whatever pops into her head is free game. Lucas leaves a tendril of his magic with her. Just in case.

Because for some reason, the thought of her lost and alone makes him want to break someone’s face in. 

It is a true test of willpower and dedication to wrestle his bloodlust into submission at the sight of the Emperor’s motherfucking face. The sight of Raziel on the bed, sweaty, tossing and curling, his expression contorted in silent pain, helps to tame it, to bring it to a low, dangerous simmer instead of a boil. Lucas sings his own praises louder as he bats his eyelashes at the two men towering over him, eyelashes wet from nervous tears. Who else is better than him? Such control, finesse, refinement. Lucas wants to crow with superiority.

“F-Forgive me for… for m-my… my insolence, Your Majesty,” Lucas stammers, “but-but I… I-I believe m-myself able to heal any m-magical —uh… every magical a-ailment.”

He lays it on so thickly he kind of makes himself sick, but the stammer is intentional. Typically, the men who hear it get so overcome with irritation and impatience that they forgo suspicion to get him to finally shut up. It seems to be working splendidly where the Emperor is concerned; Lucas raises his gaze (with the reverent hesitance of a believer to their god) and tries not to preen at the visible irritation and cold dismissal on the man’s face. Everything is going according to plan.

Idly, he notes that there’s nothing of him in Athanasia’s own face. Where Athanasia comes sparking alive in her anger, her every move and expression crackling and demanding attention, Claude de Alger Obelia goes cold and bereft, like it’s nothing but a clutch for him to fall back on. His daughter wears anger far better, like a crown.

“Silence your blathering,” Claude hisses, and Lucas makes himself flinch away, clutching his cloak closer around himself defensively. “And if you believe yourself above my Chief Magician, if you can fix him, do so. Now.”

I will extricate your entrails out with a spoon like a parfait, Lucas thinks savagely as he lets his eyes water. Fearfully, he blurts, “Y-yes! Your Majesty!” 

Raziel’s figure becomes larger in his eyes as he shuffles towards him, giving the Emperor a wide berth—

Only to come face to face with Felix Robaine.

Lucas freezes, his act briefly falling into shambles.

Felix Robaine knows. He’s seen Lucas before, when Raziel had gone to rescue Athanasia from her first meeting with the psychopath over yonder.

The memory replays in his mind like a horror montage, his fingers twitching and his magic murmuring restlessly beneath his skin at his agitation.

“Listen to me very carefully, Your Highness,” Lucas says, smiling thinly, “I am not romantically involved with Raziel Robaine.”

There’s a shuddering gasp. Everyone whips their head around to the source, just to see Felix Robaine frozen a bit further away, having just turned the corner.

A calm breeze ambles by, rustling leaves and grass.

“…Raziel,” Felix starts, looking between him and Lucas nervously. “What—”

Raziel turns his back on his brother and smiles a thin-lipped smile at him, a shadow falling across his face. “Lucas. Take me to the Tower.”

“Wait a minute, who is—” Felix shouts, lounging forward to desperately grab onto his brother. His panicked face is all they see as Lucas and Raziel vanish with a whoosh.

Hellgates . Lucas lets out such a violent string of expletives in the ringing silence of his mind that for a second he forgets all other vocabularies. How had he not sensed the man? What trick does he use to slip past his magic’s omniscient senses? This is the second time, now, that he slipped past Lucas’ guard.

Never, in all his life, has he met a human so like a shadow. His magic whips warningly, sensing his shock and seeking to assist, and it’s the only thing that snaps him back into reality as his and Felix Robaine’s eyes meet, and hold .

He reads the recognition there, the disbelief —then Robaine blinks, and it’s as if the shutters have been pulled down immediately, concealing all thought and emotion other than conventional concern. He blinks, and suddenly he’s nothing but a hand-wringing older brother, desperate in his pleas for aid. This one needs watching.

“Please,” Robaine beseeches, his voice quiet, but heavy, “please save him.” 

Lucas snaps from his razor-sharp reverie only when a quiet groan of pain comes from the direction of the bed. He doesn’t know why Robaine decided to stand aside without a word, why he’s covering for Lucas, but there’s more pressing matters for now.

Without wasting a second more, he approaches Raziel and holds a palm over his abdomen, a magic circle blooming into being in the air beneath it. The spell is a familiar one to both Raziel and himself — ostendo meridian’ima. To expose one’s soul.

He’d looked away when Raziel had cast its visualisation counterpart when they first met, had done so quickly enough that he’d only glimpsed at it. The spell itself is a sensitive one, and as he’d told Raziel, it was typically only shown to lovers and friends of the soul. 

So nothing quite prepared him for its brilliance and perplexity when he beheld it at his leisure.

Brilliance, for it was blazing  with different coloured threads of wispy light, pulsing like different heartbeats. One felt like life, another smelled of wind. Another of fire destructive enough to envelop all of Obelia and burn it to cinders. There was an essence of wood and two of earth —one exuding safety and protection, the other such a potent, stinking sense of bloodthirst that gooseflesh raced down Lucas’ arms. A darker coloured aura of domination ran like a prominent vein around the lot. When he peered closer between the sliver of space between the tightly corded powers, he found others nestled right at Raziel’s core, closer than any of the rest. They felt older —and more well-adjusted— than the elemental ones.

Brilliant, yes. But perplexing as well, because none of these behaved like the mana slumbering away in all magicians’ souls. Perplexing, because where before Lucas could have sworn there had been a faint shimmer of mana, just like any other magician of this world, now there was nothing of the like.

He loosens a breath, brows absently furrowing in befuddlement. It is not feigned, this time.

“What?” The Emperor snaps, voice merely a foot away from his ear. Lucas hears rather than senses Robaine near the foot of the four-poster when he shifts nervously. “Out with it.”

How the fuck is he supposed to cover this?

It is apparent that Raziel is getting his previous powers back. Whatever those were, they were not of this world —and the mana he’d been granted use of, it seemed, had been temporary while they gained their strength. He needs information. What does the Emperor know?

Robaine clears his throat, and Lucas whips his head towards him. “The Chief Magician said that his mana has disappeared. Is that true?”

An undercurrent of understanding passes between them as they lock eyes, and Lucas gives an imperceptible, acknowledging nod. Allies. For now. Undoubtedly, however, Robaine would seek him out later so they could talk privately. Only the World Tree knows how the fuck Lucas will deal with him at that point.

“That is not true,” he says meekly, glancing at the Emperor’s stony face before quickly lowering his head. “H-his magic is still there, but it has been… permanently damaged.”

Robaine sags where he stands, despair pulling his shoulders down, bending his spine under its weight.

The Emperor merely glares. “Explain.” A terse command.

His magic snarls, nearly lunging to bite and attack. It is not used to restraint, or to insults from others. Mana is not sentient, but it is shaped by the wielder’s will and emotions. Lucas, by his very nature, is unused to humility and obedience. Abhors it, down to his soul. 

But he can summon the last vestiges of his patience, for Raziel. True companionship is exceptionally difficult to come by, and harder still with Lucas’ lifespan. See what I do for you, you son of a bitch? Lucas thinks, shooting a subtle glare at the body prone on the bed.

“He will most likely not be able to use certain spells,” he then explains, shuffling on his feet. He loses the stutter, sensing the Emperor one irritation away from a death threat, even to the child he now presented himself as. “Most of the ones available to him are the elemental branches.”

“He cannot cast the basics?” The Emperor asked, running a sharp, assessing eye over his godson. “Why, then, are more advanced spells of that nature still open to him?”

Lucas braces himself for the amount of bullshit he’s about to unload on these unsuspecting people. “His affinity for those branches must have been quite high at birth.” And way before that, whatever hellhole this devil crawled out of. “As for the cause, I suspect that he had been blessed with so much mana that he’d created a magic beast to store the surplus. Magic beasts typically take after their owners in terms of appearance and mannerisms. Have you seen anything of that description around?”

A spark of realisation comes to life in Robaine’s eyes. “The fox at the Estate,” he breathes. “It always left cookies in my rooms...”

Lucas recalls that Raziel had been seeing the fox at the Estate for years, starting from his second year here. And no doubt the beast loitered around him constantly. Would an attentive brother like Felix Robaine not have noticed such a thing? 

His guess had been correct. Though he was not expecting that introverted fox to interact with Robaine at all, especially when it seemed to always be content to sleep its days away on Lucas’ lap. Somehow, that was quite irritating to think about. Looks like Raziel is not quite as detached and unaffected towards his new family as he appeared. But then again, the fact that his magic beast had not followed him to the Tower when he relocated should have been a dead giveaway. Regardless of how Raziel felt about this realm, it seems the place he called ‘home’ was still back at his family estate. How vexing. 

The only thing that slipped below Lucas’ notice was the pertinent fact that the fox’s favourite abode had not necessarily been the Estate. After all, it had been the attic that it stayed in, even when Lucas and Raziel had left —and more specifically, its favourite perch had been the dresser, next to a fat piggy bank that was still sitting there, even now.

“And what of it?” The Emperor demands, waving an impatient hand. “So what if he had such a beast? Is it not more of a protection against mana malfunction or overuse?”

“T-Typically yes, Your Majesty.” He forces a tremor to wrack through his body under the man’s glacier-like stare. Dickhead. “But in some rare cases, especially when the beast has been separated from its owner for too long, the magic it is formed by begins to dissolve. Leading to…well, this.” Lucas makes a sweeping gesture that encompasses the entire bed.

Which was bullshit, of course, sprinkled with truths. As far as he can tell, even though the distance did put strain on Raziel’s magic, its disappearance would have been inevitable. Raziel’s soul was simply not meant to host mana. It’s unthinkable— for anyone other than a transmigrator.

However, with the resurgence of his previous powers, it is likely that the burden of his hasty transmigration here will be lessened and his identity will become more stable. Looks like Lucas will finally be able to forgo casting that sleeping spell on the bastard every night. Hopefully with his old powers back, and Raziel feeling more himself , they can make faster headway into his divine quest and then the jerk can finally leave and cease bothering Lucas into oblivion and making him feel emotions he does not want to feel. 

He takes the twinge he feels in his shrivelled heart at the thought and promptly suplex-wrestles it into the metaphorical ground, beating it dead. 

For a moment, there’s nothing but terse silence as Robaine and his Emperor contemplate the ramifications of such news. No doubt they’re thinking Raziel is magically crippled or some shit. The sorrow in his brother’s face especially is so pronounced that Lucas would honestly feel slightly bad if he didn’t know better.

“Will he be alright?” Robaine asks, moving closer to his brother and looking down at him with a pathetic amount of worry.

Lucas very nearly breaks character just to roll his eyes at this melodrama. Raziel’s fucking fine. Arguably, it’s Lucas who needs the concern more right now —even with his longevity, Athanasia and this bastard lying like an embalmed corpse on the bed have psychologically aged him more in half a day than he has in a decade.

“He will wake with no other problems besides the damage to his magic,” he repeats dutifully, if a bit dully.

“You have done well,” the Emperor says finally. Despite the words of praise, which would inject warmth into any other person, Claude’s stone of a face remains frigid. What a fucking dick. “I appoint you my godson’s playmate and instate you as Court Magician of the Tower.”

Huh? “Excuse me?”

“You’re excused. Quite literally,” the Emperor says drily, pointing to the door. Lucas’ jaw drops. “Your first assignment is to look for my wayward daughter. If you cannot even locate her, you have no business at my court.”

Not if you have no court to speak of, Lucas snarls in the comfort of his mind, even as he pastes the fakest, shallowest expression of fearful compliance on his face and takes his leave.

Raziel owes him a year’s worth of desserts for this. No—two years’. Two decades, even. 

Now where the fuck is Athanasia? He snaps his fingers, and his senses snag on that tendril he’d left with her, travelling down to the very tip, until he finally finds her.

Lucas stills.

How the fuck did she end up in Arlanta Academy? With that fucker Izke or Ijiel or whatever the fuck?

Distantly, he registers the sound of a nearby suit of armour getting blown apart by his magic before he savagely chokes it down. 

These fucking pains in the ass. Once he deals with one, the other somehow gets back into trouble. Hissing, he snaps his fingers again, calling her back here.

Where she actually belonged.

“...An angel?” Ijekiel whispered, golden eyes wide and reflecting the image of startled, crystalline blue.

Chapter Text

Athanasia screams a scream she’d never thought herself capable of before as the wind whips at her face and blows the white skirts of her dress this way and that. Some of the decorative feathers bid her adieu and disappear, but she couldn’t give less of a shit about her clothes right now. The most pressing matter is the sight of the ground rapidly approaching, spelling her doom.

She clenches her eyes tightly shut and braces for the impact, praying to all religious figures known to her. Surely one of them’s free? Please? Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Elohim, Bhagavan, Zeus, anybody…!

When she falls, she plops on something distinctly bony.

“Oww,” she whimpers, her face planted on what seems like grass? Wincing, she shuffles, her hand holding the side of her disoriented head.

“Ugh,” says a soft voice that’s not hers from beneath her.

“Gah! I’m sorry—” Athanasia scrambles to sit up, her hands resting on someone’s chest—

Her breath catches. Gold eyes. A youthful, handsome face.

She knows who this is.

Ijekiel Alpheus peers up at her with naked disbelief. “An angel?”

Athanasia looks at his silver hair and the colour of his eyes and tries not to gape at his misunderstanding. Dude, aren’t you the angel here? Why are you so good-looking?

He blinks quickly like he’s re-adjusting his worldview, but his voice comes out firmer the next time he speaks. “Not an angel,” he says crossly, as if she betrayed him somehow.

Sorry I’m not an angel, I guess, Athanasia thinks nervously.

“How did you fall from…”

“Ijekiel! We have geopolitics now!”

The shout comes from beyond the hedges hiding them from view, the voice sounding young —probably the male lead’s friend. Athanasia raises her head to the sight of a magnificent sprawl of buildings looming over the hedge. The closest one has an inscription in Common Pascal on the wall: “learning only dies at time of death” she translates with a growing sense of hysteria.

Wait a moment. Ijekiel Alpheus. Geopolitics.

No way…! Did that idiot Lucas send her to Arlanta Academy?

“좆됐어,” Athanasia spits breathlessly, stumbling off Ijekiel and ducking behind the hedge just in time to slip detection from the boy.

He cranes his head around the hedge to find Ijekiel lying on the grass. “What are you doing?” He asks, puzzled but somewhat amused. “You’re gonna be late, you know?”

“Cabel,” Ijekiel says after a second, his gaze trailing away from Athanasia to his friend. Gracefully, he stands up, brushing grass blades from his immaculate uniform. “I’ll be there in a second. You can go ahead first.”

“Fine. You’re Professor Jontera’s favourite anyway, I doubt you’d get in trouble. See you there!”

She hears his footfalls receding in the distance, releasing a relieved breath. Before it even fully escapes, it catches at her throat when she opens her eyes, meeting Ijekiel’s immediately.

“...I’m sorry I’m lacking and couldn’t catch you properly,” he says. His voice is soft-spoken, but assertive, like he’s weighed every word thrice before letting them touch his lips. “Are you hurt, my La—”

“A-Angels don’t get hurt by things like this!” She blurts out in a hurry. Instantly, she wishes for swift death.

“...An angel?”

Goddamn it, the disbelieving tone magnifies her humiliation tenfold. But she can’t very well tell him she’s a princess, can she? That’s going to lead to a host of other questions. What are you doing here? Why did you fall on me? How did you fall from the sky?

Athanasia only has the answer to one of them. That bastard Lucas will pay, she promises herself, her hands curling into tight fists.

“Yes, so keep your distance,” she grits out, feeling her face heat up from sheer shame. This ridiculous lie…! Ugh.

He didn’t see my eyes, did he?

“I see, so you’re an angel.” His voice is shaking the way people’s do when they desperately try to keep from laughing. Of course he doesn’t believe me.

Athanasia hates Lucas a bit more, but she sticks to her guns. “I thought you knew? You just called me an angel yourself.”

“That’s…” Ijekiel turns slightly pink, and he shyly rubs the back of his neck. “Y…You’re right.”

Oh my gosh, he’s so cute! What the hell? He really is a child. What a breath of fresh air after interacting with that decrepit dolt Lucas, her sour father and Raziel.

Instantly, she feels a bit contrite, sending a telepathic apology to her brother. I’m sorry, Raz! I just miss company that doesn’t communicate in ten syllables or less!

“I’ll stay over here since you seem to prefer that I don’t come too close,” Ijekiel stammers, fiddling with his hands.

Ijekiel! You gentleman, you! If it were Lucas he’d just intrude on her personal space regardless. Though to be fair he doesn’t initiate physical contact very often, she admits reluctantly. He’s sparing with affection —she suspects it’s because he was never really given any himself. She is very careful about who she hugs as well, and even then she’s always monitoring their reactions in case she’s being annoying. Lucas is insufferable and an idiot, but she understands him very well.

“How did you end up here, Lady Angel?”

Lady Angel. Fuck me, this is embarrassing as hell.

“That’s a secret,” she squeezes out through a full-body reaction of cringe.

“I see.”

A breeze flits through the garden, sending leaves rustling.

“Err… shouldn’t you be going to class? What were you doing all the way in the gardens anyway?”

“I was sending some letters.”

Athanasia looks around in confusion, and Ijekiel chuckles quietly.

“I have a falcon who sends them,” he explains with a faint smile.

Her eyebrow quirks up. “Isn’t that pretty old-fashioned?”

“Maybe. But Jenne— the recipient insists on the falcon.”

Jennette’s awfully picky with her means of correspondence, huh. How cute. At least they seem to be getting along nicely.

“Where is it anyway?”

Ijekiel smiles at her and lets out a sharp whistle. Soon enough, a falcon with gloriously pepper-white plumage descends with a piercing shriek, landing on his arm. It sets its beady eyes on the stranger in their company immediately.

Athanasia loses it just a bit. “That’s so cool,” she breathes, stars in her eyes as she looks at the majestic bird.

She forgets all about her anger and her anxiety about the male lead for a minute. She’s never had the opportunity to see a falcon before, especially not this close. The bird’s neck straightens, as if preening at the attention, and Ijekiel runs an affectionate finger from its head down its back, smiling with quiet pride.

“What’s its name?”

“His name’s Aziel,” Ijekiel replies shyly, and Athanasia’s eyebrows shoot up her forehead. “He was a birthday gift from my best friend.”

“You mean that boy, Cabel?” Or maybe…?

Ijekiel shakes his head. I knew it! It’s you! You’re Raziel’s Mun-eo! The Octopus! For a moment, she’s tempted to ask if he really is flexible enough to walk on a bar using his hands alone, and if Lucas really is correct and Raziel puts the barest amount of energy into every practice bout. Athanasia never even saw him hold a sword, nevermind fight with it.

“Huhuhu,” Athanasia chuckles nefariously under her breath. When Ijekiel sends her a slight frown, she beams at him instead, making him blush and look downward. “What kind of person is your best friend, then?”

“He’s kind,” —Athanasia nods agreeably— “confident” —nod— “knowledgeable,” —nod— “and always knows what to say to make you feel better.”

“Yes, I agree,” Athanasia affirms, crossing her arms. She could give the falcon a run for its money, the way she’s preening.

“...You do?”

Fuck. “Um, well, you seem like a good judge of character,” she jabbers out, “so your best friend would certainly have those qualities.”

She could have sworn Ijekiel muttered something like “...Are you sure you’re five?” just then, but that can’t be. He’d sound like he recognised her and knew her age.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

For a while, Athanasia wishes she was back at the Palace already. She’d rather drown at the lake again than drown in this awkward silence.

“Pri… Lady Angel, how do you think you stop people from crying?”

What a completely random question. For sure it has absolutely nothing to do with Jennette de Alger Obelia, no sir!

“How should I know?”

“Ah, was that too difficult of a question—”

“I don’t cry,” she says, matter-of-fact. “Do you know how old I am?”

Silence. Then— “Is that so?” in that same godforsaken, trembling voice.

He’s laughing! “What, what are you laughing at?” She says in outrage.

“I beg your pardon. It’s just that you’re so cute, Lady Angel.”

Huh? What am I hearing, coming from this child? What am I doing right now?

“You’re going to miss your geopolitics class at this rate,” Athanasia points out desperately. “Why don’t you go learn about the influence of the Black Desert on the Quadruple Alliance or whatever you have to study?”

“...Pr–Lady Angel, you know about the Quadruple Alliance?” Ijekiel gapes, his golden eyes wide.

“Yes,” Athanasia groans, “so why don’t you go back to that now?”

“It was a good guess,” Ijekiel says, still looking amazed, “but we’re actually studying Emmanuel Opal’s far-spreading influence in governance using a model of foreign land investment.”

Huh? Who? What the fuck is that?

“Hey,” she says, her voice like steel, “how much Syncansian can you speak? God said ‘Thou art born from my blood toned milk thou shalt never escape thy corrupted paradise—’”

“‘But when time has passed thee like grains of sand at the beach, I shalt save thee, so until thy faithful day of destruction, raise thy glass of blood for all,’' Ijekiel recites smoothly. Zero hesitation, no pauses. He looks at her with an impressed gleam in his eyes. “Goodness, you’ve already memorised up to Chapter 12 Verse 41 of the Sycansian bible? People typically learn that at fifteen. You’re incredible.”

I’m not! I’m really not! I’m mentally of age, damn you, you’re the abnormal one, Athanasia seethes. It can’t be —an eight year old, more well-read than her!

So this is the male lead.

Unacceptable. She needs to go back and start picking up the slack. No more resting and fooling around. She shifts, cursing Lucas again and wishing she could go home already.

“Lucas, you little—”

Snap! Purple mist engulfs her, and suddenly the hedge at her back is gone, replaced with her mattress back at the Ruby Palace, and Ijekiel is nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Lucas looms over her, looking pissed. “Have a nice trip?” He asks with a thin-lipped smile, his ruby-red eyes squinted. “You must have been having fun, seeing it took you this long to call me—”

Wham! The noise of her fist hitting his face is the most musically satisfying thing she’s ever heard in both lifetimes.

“What took you so long, idiot?”

Lucas’ jaw drops open, and he snarls up at her as he rubs at his head. “You’re the first person to ever hit me. But why? I’m the idiot? You ended up there by yourself! That spell takes you to the first safe place you can think of!”

She freezes, her arms over her head like she’s about to swing at him again.

I thought of Ijekiel…? She casts her mind back, trying to remember —then her face colours, and her arms drop back down her sides. I did, she thinks, mortified.

“Why did you think of Arlanta Academy first?” Lucas asks moodily, crossing his arms.

“I…um. I don’t know.”

“Bullshit,” he mutters, but then he backs away toward the door. “Whatever. Just stay in your room. I’ll tell that nanny of yours and the Emperor you’re back. I’ll make up some bullshit about your mana fluctuating to save you, so remember that if your father asks. Bye.”

Athanasia opens her mouth to say something —what that is, she doesn’t know, but it doesn’t stop her feeling disappointed when Lucas leaves, the door banging closed behind him.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Ijekiel.

Lucas picks up another cookie with a tendril of his magic and dunks it in his teacup, watching it absorb the chocolate and slowly turn brown. It raises itself from the cup and bobs toward him, straight into his mouth. He closes his eyes, savouring it.

Sweet perfection. A treat he deserves for his kind, benevolent actions as of late.

But then a shuddering gasp fractures the tranquil silence from the bed in the corner of the room, and his chewing stops.

“So, you’re finally awake,” Lucas sighs, pointedly fixing his eyes on the wall opposite. “Who do you think you are, Sleeping Beauty?”

There’s a muttered curse as Raziel unravels himself from the blanket and settles his feet on the floorboards. Lucas doesn’t even need to see him do it, since Raziel’s every move is broadcasted in sound —violently getting up, discarding his sheets and setting the floorboards creaking when he tries to climb out of bed.

“I need to go home,” he hears him say between pants.

Lucas rolls his eyes to the vaulted ceiling. Not even a second after he awakens and the bastard already can’t keep still. “Your brother’s already gone home, so you’re not going anywhere. He subscribed you to my expert care.”

The expert care in question refers to Lucas gorging himself on desserts on the sofa and playing the deadbeat husband to Raziel’s ailing wife, but that’s not anybody’s business. He’s done enough work for another century.

“Not—home. My world,” Raziel wheezes out before dissolving in a bout of dry coughing that chafes Lucas’ throat just hearing it.

This is when Lucas knows something is wrong. Raziel never lets on he’s in pain. He’s seen the asshole burning up from third degree fever with a face stonier than an Ancient Obelian bust. One day he broke his arm in a swordsmanship lesson and Lucas had been the only one to even notice, even when he’d been jeering and mocking him from the sidelines while eating blueberry crumble. He’s by the bed by the next blink after blending into a glowing purple circle and through the folds of space, running an analytical eye over him, taking note of the sweat on his brow, the ghost-like complexion, and the fatigue limning his slumped figure.

He snaps his fingers. “You’re such a nuisance,” he grumbles as a set of white magic circles begin to oscillate around Raziel’s heaving chest, absorbing his pain for him.

His eyes are more exhausted than usual, following the magic drowsily like he’s half-drugged. The bags under his eyes are deep and dark enough to set Lucas’ teeth grinding. “Hey,” he grits out, “Do you enjoy pain? Huh? Do you like destroying your body like this? Are you incapable of sitting still?”

Raziel frowns like he’s offended. Faintly, he coughs out, “I’m the best at sitting still—”

“Bullshit!”

Lucas grabs his shoulders and shakes him like a maraca, but stops when Raziel turns slightly green. Furious, he looks around for something else to hit.

Lucas has been trying to control his blood pressure for the past day or so, so his temper’s like a vat of gunpowder ready to explode. I’m sorry Lucas, I’ll consult you next time, would have been like a cooling jet of water dampening the ticking bomb. ‘I’m the best at sitting still’ is like Raziel lighting up a match and dropping it nonchalantly over the top.

Raziel “I am a bad person” Robaine is the same idiot that told the family chef to always make Lucas’ favourite blueberry-flavoured desserts, feigning irritation when he saw him magicking them up to the attic to eat. Raziel “I want to be a slacker” Robaine is the same idiot that is actively improving the quality of life for everyone in his immediate vicinity —only to end up injured or worse, all for the sake of some dusty mortals that will end up dying in the next couple of decades anyway.

Hissing, Lucas strikes the magic circles away with such force that they go spinning like dinner plates into the wall, crashing into oblivion. They whine as they disappear, but he’s still seething, hands curling into fists at his side.

“What possessed you to break through an augmented specificity ward with a locked locus without me?” Raziel’s eyes widen, and in their reflection Luzas sees his own glowing with fuming rage. His magic whips around him like writhing snakes. “If you have a death wish, go die in some other world, not mine!”

Craaash! Raziel flinches, hands coming up to protect himself when he sees the window breaking above the bed’s headboard, but the shards hit an invisible shield of air before they can touch even a sliver of his skin. Lucas jerks his hand and the falling glass vanishes instantly. Slowly, Raziel lowers his arms and turns to look at him, but he stubbornly turns to the direction of the door.

For a tense second, there’s nothing but silence.

“I can be a bit stupid,” Raziel says. His tone is more sad and wistful than regretful, as if he’s said the same words before.

Lucas snorts with derision and steps back.

“Lucas.”

Lucas crosses his arms, fixating his gaze on the luminous stones worked into the wooden panelling of the room in glowing, swirling shapes and constellations. Should he transfigure the bastard into a crystal and put him in the wall? At least then he wouldn’t be running around stealing and doing other dangerous, fun things without him.

“I won’t get hurt anymore if I can help it.” A pause. Then— “I promise.”

It’s not a magic or divine oath, but the gravity with which he said it makes Lucas lower his hackles. “You better not, Raziel,” he mutters moodily. “If you die, I’ll drag you back from the circle of life myself.”

“Cale.”

Lucas quirks an eyebrow. “What? Are you hungry or something after all the trouble you caused me?” His magic snatches the cookie jar and floats it over to them, shaking it in his direction. “Have a cookie and shut up. I refuse to summon vegetables.”

He’s treated to an eyeroll that makes Lucas briefly reconsider letting him off the hook.

“No, not kale. Cale. That’s my name.”

An olive branch, sealing the promise with something more important than magic —trust. Lucas finally looks at him again, at the straightforward way he returns the stare, the awkward apology written in the dark amber hue of his eyes. He tries to find his anger again, but it’s lost to him.

He’s known this person for six years. Just like him, Lucas is not the type to apologise.

He sighs, plopping himself next to him on the bed. “I see. It suits you better than Raziel, anyway. What does ‘Raziel’ even mean?”

Raz—Cale frowns, turning to face him. “You don’t know?”

“How the hell would I know? No language in this world translates that.”

He stares at him in silence for a while. Long enough that Lucas defensively snaps at him. “What are you looking at?”

“It’s from a language in my original world,” Cale says flatly. “It means ‘God’s secret’.” Distaste is written all over his face.

Lucas gives a sharp laugh. “Isn’t that a bit too on the nose? That death god of yours lacks creativity as well as common sense.”

Cale’s lips twitch as if he might smile, but then he frowns. Lucas narrows his eyes at him. “No. No way,” he says gleefully.

Cale tenses, hoping Lucas didn’t pick anything up. Like hell. He may be hard to read but he’s been around this motherfucker for too long to be duped.

Relish bubbles inside of him like champagne, and then Lucas is laughing harder than he has in a while. “You’ve done it too. Who is it that carries the curse of your naming skills?”

Cale silently climbs back in bed and pulls the blanket over his head, as if it will block him out. Lucas grabs the blanket and tugs it away, having to grope around for purchase because he’s laughing hard enough that his entire body’s shaking. A gruelling game of tug-of-war ensues until the blanket finally comes free and falls to the ground in a heap, revealing the idiot laying facedown on his pillow. It’s hard to see through the ruddy mess of curls but he thinks he saw his ears turn a bright red. His stomach starts hurting from all the sniggering.

“Dr..g..n,” he hears him mumble through the pillow.

Lucas braces a hand against the mattresses and takes a moment to compose himself. “W-what was that?”

“A…gon.”

It takes a while for it to register into an actual word, but when it does Lucas is lost again, reduced to wheezing like Cale in peak pollen season. “A dragon? A fucking dragon?”

His head nods, just barely. At this point his lungs are put under so much stress that Lucas is actually half-panicking.

“You fucker, stop, I can’t fucking breathe.”

Despite his embarrassment, Cale uses his elbows to pull himself up and shoot him an irritated look. Lucas reads the outraged how is that my fault perfectly, but he finds himself slightly distracted by the sight of Cale’s curls tangled in a towering footlong structure on top of his head, and the pillow creases on the right side of his face. This is God’s mighty Messenger. This is the messiah sent to save Lucas’ world.

He doesn’t see the exasperation on Cale’s face because he starts howling, collapsing into loud guffaws and wheezes interspersed with curse words filthy enough to make the Emperor give him the side-eye. A solid minute after, he ends up on the ground, holding his stomach and feeling slightly sick. Cale mutters away from somewhere overhead, his tone distinctly waspish.

“It’s not like I’m the only one with something like that as my name. ‘Asrar’ Bontafe literally means secrets and mysteries.”

“No… it doesn’t…” Lucas pants, and a couple of chortles are still forcing themselves out of his aching ribcage. “That… spineless worm… his name doesn’t mean anything.”

Cale frowns. “What do you mean? It’s ‘secrets’ in A…” An interesting look crosses his face. “Arabic. Of course.”

“What’s that?” Lucas asks, heaving a great, steadying breath and sitting back down on the mattress next to Cale’s prone form.

“A language from a different world,” Cale answers absently, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. “I need to talk to him later…” Lucas wants to snap his fingers in front of his blank eyes. How irritating. The Master Magician from the legends is right before this fool and he zones out.

“Why does Bontafe have that name?” Cale murmurs.

He shrugs. “Either it’s happenstance or your god—”

“Not my god.”

Lucas rolls his eyes. “Or the god messed up somehow and sent someone to help you. They do that sometimes. Though if that old man is your damage control he’s doing a poor job of it. Forget that. How’s the pain? Did it go away with that spell?”

There’s a period of silence and Cale gets that distinctive glassy look in his eyes that tells Lucas he’s gone somewhere inside his mind and gotten lost there.

He ponders the value of smacking him, then—

“Shut up,” Cale says.

Lucas must have misheard. Maybe after the Yaksha’s remarks his hearing has become permanently damaged. He asks just in case, smiling a bit too widely, with too many teeth: “What?”

His eyes refocus on Lucas. “Not you,” he says, waving a dismissive hand. “The voices.”

“...What?”

Cale sighs and tiredly looks heavenward. “Nevermind.”

“Give me that,” Lucas says with a frown, snatching his hand where it limply laid next to him. “Razi—Cale, you fucking idiot. What voices? Did someone curse you?”

“No, I—”

He places three fingers on the inner side of his wrist, ignoring Cale’s protests. His mana sinks through skin and veins, coursing along like blood into the heart, frantically sensing for damage. Curses are metaphysical, but they anchor themselves to the physical body to cause harm —and usually the anchor is at the heart or the brain. It’s harder to remove that way. The most annoying bits of magic, given that nearly all ways to expel them are invasive. If Cale still had his magic to mindlessly defend him from any invader, Lucas would never be able to do this.

His heart is clean, though, and beating stronger than ever. Lucas’ mana follows the aorta and the carotid to inspect the brain. He pauses, one part of his senses still inside the bloodstream through that wisp of mana, and looks at him in warning.

“This,” he says grimly, “might sting a bit.”

Cale’s eyes widen. “What—”

The magic swoops in, encasing his brain and rushing through neural webs and structures, surveying every inch for malicious mana. Some faraway part of Lucas hears Cale’s speech cut off into a strangled wince. The majority of him, however, is still looking, examining, picking apart. Wherever his mana touches, fractured memories rise to the forefront like smoke, bringing with them faint impressions —screams of pain, monstrous roars, battlecries, childish peals of laughter, purrs, the clink of a teacup against ceramic. But Lucas doesn’t wander, doesn’t look too close. Trust is a fragile thing to possess. Even if Cale had not been aware of everything his mana did, like a wary guard standing at attention, Lucas would not have taken liberties.

But this was important. He only just saved the fool. If he perished because of some curse he’d set fire to the Palace and kill everyone in it.

It’s only when he’s fully certain there’s nothing there that he disengages, relaxing where he’s sat.

“Well?” Cale asks, staring at him flatly and massaging his temples.

“You’re fine,” Lucas says, sighing with relief— no, not relief. Irritation, that must be it. Frustration at how high-maintenance the Princess and this Messenger both are. Yes. “Unless the curse is powerful enough to worm its way into your soul instead, you’re fine.”

Somehow, though, Lucas is hesitant to ask Cale to cast meridian’ima. One’s soul is an incredibly private and vulnerable thing. Lucas himself hasn’t cast that spell since his teacher died. Cale has cast it in front of him carelessly, but it feels uncomfortable to request it of him.

“Anyway, you should be fine. Just stay in bed for once in your stupid life,” he says sharply, pushing him back into his pillows with a hand.

“I could have told you that myself.”

“And I wouldn’t have believed you.” His glare is harsh enough to cut diamonds. “You always say bullshit like ‘I’m fine’ and then I see you with a broken limb—”

“It was one time—”

“Shut up. And take this, you pillock. So that this doesn’t happen again.”

Something gold is thrown his way and Cale catches it and holds it up to his eye. Lucas releases a quiet breath. Good. His reflexes are alright, nothing like the tremors he had when he first woke up. He seems more settled in his own skin than Lucas has ever seen him.

Karna’s Kundal gleams between his fingers, more brightly than any normal full-carat gold should.

Lucas expected him to not know what it is, but it still ticks him off when he says, “Thanks,” quizzically. What an anticlimactic reaction. After all the trouble he went through to get it. The Yaksha will not welcome him back anytime soon, that’s for certain.

Though, that’s no skin off Lucas’ back. In fact, the further away from that guy, the better.

“That,” he explains through gritted teeth, trying to be patient, “is Karna’s Kundal, part of a demigod’s artefact pair.”

Cale’s eyes go curiously cold and robotic for a second, but then there’s a spark of comprehension. “A chestplate and earrings?”

Lucas nods, eyeing him with interest. “You know of the legend?”

“Hindu folklore and poetry,” Cale says, kindly explaining nothing. “For monster analysis.”

“No, you empty-brained ninny. It’s a Siodonnan legend.”

Unless…? Interesting. Even in other worlds… but who created the stories first —or rather…

“Where do they all stem from?” He mutters absently.

The Underworld is the realm of the demonic race, while the Heavens is the realm of the divine —there are bound to be gates at both. The myths and legends of the surface prove it, because they are ancient remnants of those beings’ influence. But what of the other races? The stronger existences, or those more spiritually tied to the fabric of worlds? The faerie, the nearly-extinct dragons, Lucas himself?

Cale named a dragon back in his world. There’s dragons there too. There must be a way for the divine race to talk to those of higher existence there, just as there is one here.

A medium —a gate.

And suddenly Lucas understands. He knows. A way for Cale to finally return like he wants to.

“Lucas.”

A way for him to leave.

He raises his head to the sight of Cale’s eyes probing him. Amber eyes. A shock of wine-red hair tangled beyond belief. Pillow creases on his stupid face. A personality so frustrating and sour he knows he’ll never find another person like him. Who else won’t bat an eye at his power, won’t baulk at his selfishness? Who else accepts it all?

A small part of him thinks of blue eyes and a quick temper.

No, not yet, Lucas decides, swallowing tightly and looking away. I won’t tell him yet. He still hasn’t fulfilled his mission. He might not fulfil it for years.

He runs a hand through his hair, sighing loudly. “By the Gates, this is giving me a headache. Just put the earrings on already.”

Cale does so even though he doesn’t take his eyes off of Lucas, as if he sensed something amiss. Sharp bastard.

But then his hands come away after securing the earrings, and no doubt he feels the new, foreign strength coursing through his body, reinforcing, supporting and —to Lucas’ relief— distracting him.

Karna’s earrings were studded at the lobe with a small precious stone of a slightly lighter colour than Cale’s eyes, set into gold. Secured to it was a circular frame from which lines protruded —creating an intricate suggestion of a sun below each lobe, honouring Karna’s godly heritage from Surya. The whole thing was yanked from the brink of extravagance by the thinness of the metal, though the craftsmanship of such a delicate design was a statement in and of itself.

Some centuries ago, Lucas used to wear dangling earrings in the shape of a circle, inlaid with a big, fat ruby that was bordered by engravings in the metal... those had been more ostentatious by far.

Cale frowns, raising his hands to touch them. “They’re heavy.”

“If you take them off, I will eviscerate you.”

His hands slowly lower to his lap and Lucas nods, satisfied.

“What about when I go to sleep?”

“They’re a divine artefact,” Lucas glares, “how the fuck do you think Karna slept with them on? They’ll be fine, so stop yapping.” A leaden stare is levelled at him. “I will know if you take them off.”

There’s a sigh, but he leaves them alone. “What do they do?”

“They should provide immunity against permanent curses with physical anchors. Also increase strength, agility and speed of healing… what, what is it? What’s with that look on your face?”

The bastard’s eyes are shining nearly as bright as the beam that rises across his face. “Master Lucas, where did you get these?”

Shameless…! “You greedy punk, do you have any idea what I went through to get these?”

Cale clears his throat like he’s about to present his arguments in crisp-clear persuasion formatting. “If you tell me where you got them, perhaps I can go with you next time to help,” he says brightly.

“I will never go there with you,” Lucas vows, because the thought of Cale meeting the Yaksha is simply too much. Either the Yaksha will flirt with a new “pretty face” or Cale will somehow manipulate the fucker into doing his bidding. Or both simultaneously. He never wants to find out.

Lucas hastily continues, “Regardless, it’s hard to know how strong its effects will be since you won’t have the chest guard. But it’s better than nothing.”

Cale nods in understanding. “You’re giving the chestplate to Athanasia?”

“Yes. The idiot took a dip in the lake while you were out playing robber. Did you know?”

Judging by the frown on his otherwise emotionless face, he did not. But even if his features gave nothing away, his legs were already swinging to the side, as if he was going to go straight to the Princess in his pathetic state.

Lucas rolls his eyes, sending a blanket of magic on top of him. He watches with no small amount of amusement as he flails around under its heavy weight before stiffening to a standstill like a log.

“Lucas—”

“Shut up. Do what I tell you for once and stay in bed. The Princess is fine.”

“...She was with the Emperor,” Cale says, and something in his eyes goes flat and cold. If he still had magic, they might’ve flashed. Lucas had no such restriction; at the mention of that bastard, he’d felt the mana boiling beneath his skin again, frothing at the mouth for something to bite.

“Yes,” he says venomously. “Fat lot of good he did for her.”

“He did nothing.” It isn’t a question, but Lucas nods anyway. “I’m going to kill him.”

“That’s what I told her, but she said no.”

Cale sits up straighter. “Can you teleport her here? I need a report of what happened.”

Their eyes meet. Lucas doesn’t ask why he didn’t just pester him for the details —he can read the answer on his face. This idiot hides behind excuses and commands all the time. Why can’t he just say he’s worried?

Tsk-ing in disapproval, Lucas snaps his fingers, and a purple, smokey gateway looms in the middle of the air. Soon after, the gate spits out a swearing, frilly, pink, polka-dot wad of fabric with blond hair and a voice that could out-shrill a banshee straight onto the bed.

Cale and Lucas watch silently as the Crown Princess of the Empire splutters, pulling strands of hair out of her face and trying to set her clothing to rights. A litany of what must’ve been curses fall from her mouth, though Lucas understands none of it, frustratingly enough.

Finally, after a while she manages to catch her breath and calm her shock a bit. “What the hell made you think that was a good idea, you fucking bastard? Stop doing that without warning all the time!” She snarls, her blue eyes piercing Lucas through a curtain of messy hair. “It’s at least one in the morning!”

Lucas shrugs, grinning at her. Somehow, he feels much better than before. His magic calms down to a satisfied murmur, an explorative tendril latching around her ankle, another still blanketing Cale’s body. He senses the warmth of their skin through his mana like it’s a part of him.

“He wanted to talk to you,” Lucas replies flippantly, his back falling back against the mattress to reveal Cale sitting behind him with his characteristically deadpan expression.

Instantly, her expression clears up. Blatant favouritism! The injustice astounds. It seems she just likes everyone except him, even that white-haired kid.

“Raz! So this was your dormitory!” Athanasia beams, batting away her hair and crawling closer to Cale and basically bulldozing Lucas as a result. Her knees dig into his thighs, and she in no way acknowledges his ensuing groan of pain. “Thank god you’re okay.”

“Why would I thank him?” Cale says, wrinkling his nose. Lucas would tease him about how he scrutinised her, checking for injuries and signs of distress where there’s none, if his legs weren’t cramping up from pain.

“By the way, you’re flattening Lucas.”

“Oh.” Athanasia looks down, meeting Lucas’ glare with an innocent, astonished look, as if she hasn’t realised her knees and palms were drilling holes on his legs. “Right. Oops.”

She doesn’t move. In fact, she makes a show of losing her balance just to dig her elbow into his stomach. Lucas oomphs, reflexively gesturing in the direction of the bottom-end of the bed. Ever compliant, the bit of magic around her leg tightens, tugging her off him, and Athanasia elicits a shocked, strangled scream that brings an embarrassed flush to her face.

“Good princesses apologise, you know,” Lucas says pompously. He winces as he pulls himself up, back resting against the wall and legs spread out before him, but soon enough a white circle with runes inscribed on the inner ring sinks onto his legs, and the pain is syphoned off like it never existed.“I can’t believe this disrespect.”

“Believing is optional,” Athanasia says, her tone insufferably smug. “You just have to accept it.”

“Oh, I’ll show you believing,” Lucas retorts with a venomous glare. “By the time I’m done you’ll invent a new deity to pray to.”

“Athanasia. The report?” Cale interjects drily, in a tone that very pointedly said I’m still here, you know.

In sync, they petulantly turn their backs to each other to look at him.

“Right,” Athanasia sighs, sitting back on her heels and smoothing out her nightgown. “Here’s what happened.”

And she explains. When she gets to the part where her useless father sat and watched as she drowned, Lucas is totally unaffected. He’s the Master Magician of the Tower, eternal and invincible.

“Lucas, I can’t breathe,” a heaving voice says, and Lucas snaps from his reverie to the sight of Cale smacking the invisible weight over his chest. Belatedly, he eases the pressure of his mana and pretends he meant to do that.

Cale casts him a knowing look that Lucas blatantly ignores. Then he asks, “Athanasia, what are you going to do about your father?”

She chews on her bottom lip, her brows furrowed.

“Why don’t you just kill him and be done with it?” Lucas pipes up. “I’ll do it, just tell me the method you prefer.”

“Two main reasons,” she mutters, counting them with her fingers. “For one, I don’t trust the nobility to govern fairly until the Regent is elected. I’m not of age, so I can’t take the position. For another, Obelia is not the most well-allied in continental politics. So far Father’s been keeping them in check with his… um.” She gestures vaguely.

“Well-known propensity to violence?” Lucas supplies.

“Yes, that. He’s quite good at scaring people away, not so good at keeping friendly relations.”

Lucas feels Cale’s gaze piercing the side of his face. “What?” He snaps.

His eyes slide away to rest back on Athanasia, feigning complete ignorance. “Nothing.”

“I hate you both,” Lucas mutters, slumping back on the wall ruefully.

Athanasia chuckles, that furrow between her brows easing out. “Anyway, that’s why. It’ll be a headache if he dies.”

Lucas peers up at her through his lashes, bored. “I’m surprised, you know. I thought you just didn’t want your father to die.”

“I’m not that desperate for his attention,” she replies, shifting on the bed and raising a hand to brush her hair behind her ear.

Lucas hums thoughtfully, shooting a quick glance to his right. Cale’s gaze is probing her, roaming over her face like he’s picking it apart.

He obviously doesn’t buy it.

As he thought, it’s not that easy for regular people like Athanasia to let go of familial ties. Even if the family in question is rotten to the core. His own parents were pathetic sobs who were unlucky enough to accidentally give birth to their son on the strongest ley line in the world. His mother died in the birth due to the difficulty of such a magically-intensive pregnancy, and it was a once-in-a-millennium miracle that he even survived in the first place.

Lucas was a difficult child to handle, especially since he didn’t always know how to control his magic. His father dumped him at the doorstep of the closest Magic Tower with a card placed on his blanket the first chance he got.

All it said was “I’m sorry. Please look after him. His name is Lucas.”

Family… at some point he’d thought that had been his instructor. But he’d found a partner and then had children, wasting away into nothing after they passed. Lucas had never been considered family by anyone.

Even so, he didn’t need such a thing. Lucas was born an anomaly.

“Blood doesn’t make a family, Athanasia.”

The words came from Cale, snapping them both out of their reverie. He should’ve looked ridiculous with his hurricane-blown hair, but somehow the weight of his stare outweighed anything else. Tired, but knowing, almost prophetic.

Lucas wonders, not for the first time, what Cale’s childhood was like.

“Claude is a right bastard,” he states, matter-of-fact. “Put blood ties out of your head. Think only about the type of people you want to keep in your life. Does Claude fit into that?”

She doesn’t answer for a long while, but neither Lucas nor Cale break the silence. The room is dimly lit by the warm yellow light of the winking crystals in the walls, a pocket of light and intimate stillness in an otherwise silent Tower. They watch the way the light casts soft shadows across the planes of her face, patient in the face of her hesitation.

“...I… suppose I’ve never thought about it,” Athanasia whispers. “I’ve never had to.”

“You didn’t have family in your previous world?” Lucas asks.

She shakes her head, muted.

“Well, I’ve never had one either,” Lucas says cheerfully, fracturing the despondent air in the room instantly. “We’ll survive, I’m sure.”

Athanasia smacks him in the arm, but not even her hair can hide the way her lips curl into a grateful smile despite herself. After a second, their eyes turn to Cale expectantly.

“What?” He sighs, already resigned.

“What about you?”

“I do have one.”

They wait.

And wait.

“That’s it?” Athanasia demands.

Cale shrugs unrepentantly.

“Is it the Robaines?”

He hesitates. “Yes.”

“That’s a no,” Lucas tells her, and she nods back in agreement. “And now that I think about it, he’s never called Felix ‘brother’ or the Duke ‘Father’.”

“Did that god separate you from them?” Athanasia asks hesitantly. “Is your family back in Korea?”

“There was nothing left for me in Korea.” Something terribly haunted darkens his eyes.

There’s a weighty pause. Then, realisation dawns on Athanasia’s face. “I asked you once if you were going to return there, but you said no —you’d said ‘somewhere else’.”

“...When I was on Earth,” Cale says, “I read a book. The god used it as a medium to pull me inside the world it depicted.”

“Shit, really? Me too!” Athanasia beams, lounging across to grab Cale’s hands excitedly. “It was this cheesy novel called ‘The Lonely Princess’. I liked to read it on my breaks.”

Lucas frowns. “...Transmigration through a medium? That doesn’t sound right for you, Princess. What were you called in your previous world?”

“Oddly enough, my name was the same,” she says brightly, completely missing the way he stiffened at her words, the way a dark expression settled on his face. “It’s what made me interested in the book in the first place. Well, anyway. So, Raziel, your family is in the world of the book?”

“Yes. It’s Cale, by the way.”

“Huh?”

“My name. It’s Cale.”

Lucas tries not to snigger as he watches her brain short-circuit.

“Oh,” she says dumbly, setting Lucas’ laughter off. She doesn’t even look as she shoves him lightly, blushing. “Shut up, Lucas. But, um, Cale, huh… that name fits better somehow, now that I think of it… Forget that, though. What is your family like, Cale?”

“Loud. Strong,” Cale states after some consideration.

“Wow, um. Your family sounds … intense.”

“Do you collect powerful people for fun, perhaps?” Lucas drawls.

Cale shrugs. “It just always turns out that way somehow.” He mutters something about a zoo under his breath and Lucas suddenly imagines him surrounded by a collection of deadly beasts in an enclosure, feeding them emotionlessly and calling them family.

He snorts, hastily feigning innocence when Cale shoots a quizzical look in his direction.

There’s a sigh. “Let’s stop talking about this.” Athanasia opens her mouth to speak, but she picks up something in his expression and falls silent instead. “I’m going to tell you the plan.”

“Apparently, this one actually involves me,” Lucas says sarcastically, not even batting an eye at the twin glares of exasperation aimed at him.

Cale’s jaw tenses, that familiar clinical and unfeeling glaze covering his eyes again. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, thrice is something else entirely. He must be using one of his abilities. Lucas aches to know what they all are —he’s a magician through and through, incessant curiosity included.

“In two days, I’m going to the Alpheus Estate to talk to Ijekiel about his father’s guest.”

Athanasia raises her hand silently, chewing on her bottom lip. When Cale nods at her, she asks, “Can I come with you?”

Lucas stiffens. Subconsciously, his magic lies poised over the room like a thunderstorm about to strike. “Why? Do you want to talk to that octopus again?”

“No,” she says defensively, but she doesn’t meet his eyes. The temperature falls a couple degrees, his mana sapping the warmth from the air without him meaning to, and her breath comes out misty in front of her face.

“L-Lucas,” she says through stuttering teeth, curling her body inward, “stop it.”

A firm hand falls on his shoulder, and Lucas follows it up to find Cale looking at him, features like granite, his other hand holding aloft a scorching, rose-gold fireball that flares threateningly.

“You’re acting like Claude. Get a grip.”

He says nothing else. Doesn’t even accuse him of anything. But Lucas flinches all the same, his magic recoiling at the very idea. The room’s warmth returns, and Athanasia shudders, relaxing, before shifting further away from him and closer to Cale. It brings a bitter, unpleasant taste to Lucas’ mouth.

“I’m… sorry,” he says, feeling more awkward than he ever remembers being in hundreds of years. “I didn’t realise. My mana is sensitive to my emotions, but it won’t happen again.”

“Whatever. You didn’t scare me anyway,” Athanasia snaps. “I was just cold. You think that was worse than drowning in that lake?”

“Princess,” Lucas starts, then stops. Fuck, how is he supposed to even handle this? He nearly turns to Cale for guidance before aborting the movement, knowing instinctively that it would make her even angrier. “Athanasia.” A scowling glance is thrown in his direction. “I swear my magic won’t hurt you. Ever.”

There’s a momentary blue glow coming from his ribcage, locking the oath to completion inside his heart, and the Princess stares at him in astonishment. Lucas knows no other way more effective for assuring her of her safety, but even still, he doesn’t regret making the oath. Especially when she finally shuffles back a bit closer to him. Instead, he sighs with relief. Relief! Gods be damned, what’s wrong with him these days?

“I’m really doomed,” he grouses. “You two are the banes of my existence.”

Cale’s fire winks out, and he retracts his hand from his shoulder. His eyes are bouncing from Athanasia to Lucas and back again, looking annoyingly sceptical.

“What I was going to say before Lucas freaked out was that I want to see the Duke’s ward,” Athanasia explains, stretching her arms over her head. “Jennette was the heroine in The Lovely Princess.”

Interest ignites in Cale’s eyes. “Explain.”

“Jennette de Alger Obelia was Claude’s beloved adopted daughter.” A finger taps at her chin as she combs through her memories of the novel. “Princess Athanasia was falsely accused of poisoning her, and that’s how she met her end in the book. She was executed shortly after begging Claude for mercy.”

Lucas’ magic begs him to let it loose on that bastard for the nth time in these two wretched days. Cale’s lips are starting to curl in that distinctively scammy smile of his, so he knows for a fact the same fury courses through both their veins.

They’ve both realised, then. Whatever Athanasia’s book was, it was nothing like the one Cale read in so-called “Korea”. Her soul didn’t get to this world through a medium, that’s for certain. Cale is a transmigrator —a loose thread waiting to fall off— whereas her existence is seamlessly weaved into the tapestry. Athanasia was referred to by name in the book, and it even mentioned her personal circumstances. That means only one thing.

All along she’d been reading about her past life.

“Should we just kill him?” Cale mutters.

“You have my vote,” Lucas says with venom.

Athanasia rolls her eyes. “It’s fiction, you know. Calm down.”

Lucas and Cale trade glances. “Is that why you collected jewels, Princess?”

A nod. “I knew it was a story, but I didn’t want to end up with the same fate as the body I possessed. My aim was to raise enough money to escape from the Palace without ever seeing Claude. I didn’t know what he was going to do, but...”

“...But he was hostile from the start,” Cale concludes. “So that made you certain that everything would be the same as the book. You tried to save yourself.”

Mutedly, Athanasia nods, her eyes downcast.

Lucas hated seeing her this way. Just as Cale looks better relaxed on his armchair shovelling grapes into his mouth, so does Athanasia look better smiling, unburdened.

He clears his throat loudly. “Listen up, Princess. You’re five, and with your mana, you’ll awaken one of these days. When you don’t need your magic beast anymore, I’ll make you stronger than your piece of shit father. Until then…” His arm disappears inside a purple pocket of mana for a second, only to resurface with something familiarly golden.

Casually, as if it’s a random piece of junk, he threw it on her lap.

“Keep that on you. Even when you’re sleeping. It should just transform into whatever you find more comfortable, as long as it sits on some part of your chest.”

Athanasia stares and stares and stares at the chest plate.

Lucas shifts, slightly worried despite himself. “It’s a divine artefact. It will protect you from most curses and magic attacks. Even the Emperor should have a hard time getting through that, but…”

He releases a long litany of layered spells, one after the other, watching the runes fill up the rings in the magic circles and the bright magic encircling Athanasia. A kaleidoscope of colours are reflected in her wide eyes, like the refracted light rays of a diamond.

When he finishes the casting, he smiles grimly. “Just in case. I’d love to see him try and get past those. Nobody gets past my shields.”

Athanasia looks at him with an expression like he’s pulled the stars from the night sky, and really it’s too much, but a small part of him kind of wants to see it again in the future.

“Thanks,” she tells him, and in return he generously pretends he doesn’t see her wipe her eyes with her sleeve.

Cale emotionlessly hands her a handkerchief from his bedside table. “May I continue, now?” He asks flatly.

“Oh, right. Yes. Go ahead.”

“Athanasia, your position in court is unstable,” he says firmly. “You can’t leave the Palace at a time like this to meet that girl. I’ll do the reconnaissance. Tomorrow, you’ll tell me everything you remember about the novel, and I’ll be the one to meet her when I visit Ijekiel.”

Athanasia looks like she wants to argue, but there’s no reason for her to refuse.

“I’ll stay here then,” Lucas sighs. “I’ll babysit this idiot,” —he expects the incoming smack, dodges it elegantly— “and keep her out of trouble.”

“I may not have magic right now,” she grumbles, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t become stronger in other ways.”

Cale smiles his shady smile. Duplicitous asshole. “I know.”

Her first plan when she came here was to steal gold and precious jewels under all these fuckers’ noses and escape on her own. It’d be stupid to think she’ll be satisfied under other people’s protection forever. Lucas would rather die than admit it out loud but…

It is rare that he meets souls with even half her hope and zest for life.