In the silent, vaulted audience chamber of Asheviliah, King Alaric was alone with his ghosts. The air, once filled with the scent of expensive incense and royal wax, now smelled only of iron and the lingering ozone of Sumi's water magic.
Alaric's hands shook so violently the glass vial rattled against his teeth. Heal that wound or you'll die from the poison. Leornars' voice echoed in his skull, a death knell draped in silk.
He could feel it now—the "poison." A creeping numbness seemed to radiate from the shallow puncture on his leg. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. Was his vision blurring? Was the air getting thinner? Every twitch of a muscle felt like the beginning of a final convulsion.
I can't die like this. Not yet. Not while they still hold the strings.
With a desperate, undignified gulp, he downed the "healing potion."
The effect was instantaneous. A surge of heat rushed through his veins. His heart rate, already elevated by terror, spiked to a frenetic rhythm. His senses sharpened to a painful degree; the flickering candlelight became as bright as the midday sun. The "numbness" vanished, replaced by a jittery, electric energy that made his skin itch.
"It... it worked," Alaric gasped, slumped against the cold stone of his throne. He didn't realize that the "healing" he felt was merely a massive dose of concentrated caffeine and stimulants Salene had brewed in a kitchen pot. To a man convinced he was dying of a neurotoxin, a caffeine rush felt like the breath of God.
He clutched his chest, his eyes darting toward the heavy tapestry behind him. The "White Plague" had saved him. The boy-king of Avangard had snatched him from the jaws of a coup. In Alaric's fractured mind, the choice was now clear: confess to the savior, or be consumed by the shadows behind the curtain.
He didn't know that the shadows were all working for the same man.
A few hundred yards away, beneath the sprawling roots of a Great Oak in the palace gardens, the "hero" of the hour stood with his back to the castle. The moonlight turned Leornars' fog-white hair into a ghostly halo, but his eyes—those crimson pools—remained fixed on the horizon.
A soft, squelching sound broke the silence. Salene stepped out from the darkness, swinging the glass jar containing the "assassin" with the casual grace of a girl carrying a lunch pail.
"You can stop the theatrics now, everyone," Leornars said, his voice devoid of the chilling edge he had used on Alaric. It was the voice of a director dismissing his actors after a long rehearsal.
From the jar, the green "slime" began to pour out, reshaping itself not into a man, but into a formless, ethereal mist. At the same time, the shadows beneath Leornars' feet stretched and pulsed.
Three figures rose from the ground: the "assassins" from the chamber. One by one, they knelt. Their movements were no longer the frantic lunges of killers, but the disciplined precision of the Undead.
"My apologies for the heel kick, Number 14," Leornars remarked, glancing at the Undead whose neck he had 'broken' minutes prior. "I had to make it look convincing for the King's peripheral vision."
The Undead didn't speak; it simply bowed its head, its neck snapping back into its proper alignment with a sickening crack. With a silent shimmer, the entities dissolved, sinking back into the "Versal Storage" of Leornars' shadow.
Salene let out a soft, melodic giggle, leaning against the oak tree as she pinned her blonde hair back into place. "Lord Leornars, you really are a cruel man. Did you see his face? He actually thought the water-tip dagger was a death sentence. I could see his soul leaving his body."
"Fear is a more effective catalyst than any truth, Salene," Leornars replied, taking a small sapphire from his pocket and turning it in his fingers. "Alaric is a puppet who has forgotten who holds his strings. To make him talk, I had to provide him with a 'threat' that was more immediate than his hidden masters."
"And the potion?" Salene asked, her cyan eyes sparkling with mischief. "I put enough stimulant in there to keep a horse awake for three days. He's going to be hallucinating 'loyalty' by midnight."
"Good. When the heart rate climbs and the mind fails to find a physical enemy, it turns inward. He'll convince himself that I am his only ally. By tomorrow morning, he won't just tell me who is pulling the strings in Asheviliah—he'll beg me to cut them."
"But Lord," Salene mused, tilting her head. "What if the 'Puppet Master' realizes the assassination was a sham? The coordination was... perhaps too perfect."
Leornars turned, a cold smirk playing on his lips. "That's the beauty of it. If they realize it was a fake, they have to move faster to regain control. If they don't, they lose their puppet. Either way, they have to step out of the shadows. And the moment they step into the light..."
"...they meet the Plague," Salene finished, her smile mirroring his.
Leornars began to walk toward the edge of the garden, his mind already drifting to the logistics of the Sunin Kingdom and the reports from the southern tavern.
"Althelia," he muttered internally.
"I'm here, Lord," the voice resonated in his mind, crisp and analytical. "The psychological profile of King Alaric suggests a 94% probability of a full confession within the next sixteen hours. However, I must note—your use of caffeine as a 'holy elixir' is technically a violation of trade honesty protocols. It's diabolical to say the least, sucks to be him. But not my problem or fault human affairs are as trivial as a moulden bread in a closed bakery"
"I'll write myself a fine later," Leornars thought dryly. "How is the trade flow? Did the merchant I humiliated earlier spread the word?"
"Effectively. The rumor that the 'White Plague' is in Asheviliah has already caused a 4% drop in the local luxury market. Fear-based deflation is proceeding ahead of schedule. People are hoarding gold instead of spending it on the Empires' taxed goods. You are successfully starving the nobility without firing a single arrow."
Leornars stopped. In the distance, he could see the silhouette of the Sunin outskirts, where he knew Yukino was currently carving a path of blood through the gutter-rats of the kingdom.
"Everyone plays their part," Leornars whispered to the wind. "Yukino handles the filth in the streets. I handle the filth in the thrones. And Salene..."
He glanced back at the scientist, who was currently humming a tune while dissecting a leaf with a glowing scalpel.
"...Salene handles the filth in the test tubes."
"Lord Leornars?" Salene called out, sensing his gaze. "When we finally find the person behind Alaric... can I keep them? I need a more 'durable' subject for the next phase of the serum. Humans are so... fragile. I need someone with a bit more political weight."
Leornars looked at the moon—he had so carefully studied.
"If he give us the information I need, he might get a quick end," Leornars stated, his voice returning to that flat, regal tone that commanded nations. "If he resist... He is yours to 'repurpose.' Avangard has no room for waste—be it economic or biological."
He walked away, his white hair gleaming. He was the savior who lowered the price of bread. He was the monster who staged a king's death. He was the architect of a world where peace was just a byproduct of absolute, terrifying control.
Back in the castle, Alaric sat wide awake, his heart racing from the caffeine, staring at the tapestry and preparing to betray every secret he had ever kept. He thought he was saving his life. He was merely signing the deed to his kingdom over to the man with the crimson