The Fool's Gilded Dream act 1
The air in the Iron-Spine foothills was thick with the scent of wet earth and ancient, undisturbed secrets. Deep within a cavern that hadn't seen the sun in millennia, Lord Barrett stood trembling.
In front of him, the rock didn't just contain gold; it seemed to be made of it. The vein pulsed with a light so intense it felt like liquid sunlight bleeding through the stone.
"Unbelievable..." Barrett whispered, his eyes bulging. "It's... it's beautiful."
"My Lord," his lead foreman stammered, holding a flickering torch. "We've never seen anything like this. The density—it defies every law of geology. This shouldn't exist."
Barrett ignored him, stepping forward to brush his fingers against the glowing metal. "Three hundred million gold marks? No, that's a peasant's estimate. With this, I could buy the Northern Empire. I could buy the soul of a God and have change left over for his wings."
The foreman swallowed hard. "If the Auditor finds out, the Crown will seize this within the hour. We need to report—"
Barrett turned, his face twisting into a mask of frantic greed. "Report? Are you a fool? Leornars doesn't need another mountain of gold. He already owns the sky. This is mine."
The Silent Collapse
To fund an operation of this scale in total secrecy, Barrett had to move fast and move quiet. He began a "controlled collapse" of his public life.
"Close the Oakhaven textile mills," Barrett commanded his clerk a few days later. "Fire everyone. Liquidate the grain monopoly in the South. Now."
The clerk's jaw dropped. "But My Lord, the mills are at peak production! They are your lifeline. Why would you cut your own throat?"
"Do as I say!" Barrett roared. "I'm simplifying my portfolio. If anyone asks, tell them the market is volatile and I've lost my nerve."
He smirked to himself. The grain monopoly he was dumping accounted for a mere 0.0001\% of the national GDP. In the vast, churning ocean of Leornars's economy, it was a microscopic ripple. Barrett was sure it would go unnoticed.
The High Spire of Avangard
In the sterile, cold heights of the capital, the Auditor Leornars did not look at the ocean. He looked at the atoms.
Leornars paused his silver pen mid-sentence. He didn't look up, but his eyes fixed on a holographic projection flickering across his desk. A single line graph, representing the micro-flux of the Southern districts, had dipped by a fraction of a millimeter.
"Stacian," Leornars murmured, his voice like cracking ice.
His chief aide stepped forward from the shadows of the library. "Yes, My Lord?"
"Lord Barrett has just declared bankruptcy on his Oakhaven mills," Leornars said, tapping the graph. "Explain the logic to me."
Stacian shrugged elegantly. "Perhaps the man has finally grown tired of the hustle? He is getting older. Maybe he wishes to retire to a quiet estate."
Leornars finally looked up, his gaze piercing. "Greed is a chronic disease, Stacian. It does not go into remission; it only metastasizes. A man like Barrett does not 'retire' from a 12\% quarterly growth rate unless he has found something he deems infinitely more valuable."
"It is a tiny dip, My Lord," Stacian pointed out. "Hardly worth the ink to record it."
"He thinks he has found a variable I haven't accounted for," Leornars replied, his eyes turning cold. "He is trying to build a 'zero'—a hole in my ledger where his new wealth can hide."
Leornars turned his head slightly toward a dark, empty corner of the room. "Zhyelena."
The shadows stirred. A woman's silhouette, thin and jagged like a dying candle flame, flickered into existence.
"Follow the scent of his desperation," Leornars commanded. "Do not engage. Do not interfere. I want to see the exact shape of the dream he is chasing before I wake him up."
"By your will, Lord Leornars," Zhyelena whispered. Her form blurred and vanished, leaving only the faint smell of ozone behind.
Leornars returned his pen to the paper. "Let us see how much a fool's dream is worth on the open market."