"Sure, Your Grace." The elderly man turned around, already on the walk.
The caretaker shuffled along the narrow stone passage, his wooden walking-stick tapping rhythmically against the shimmering blue wall.
The inside was quite warm, as Aefia realized.
"I must admit, Your Grace," the old man began without turning around, his raspy voice echoing off the curved stone ceiling, "I do not recognize your face. Though... with hair as dark as midnight plum and a stance so heavy, you could only be from the direct branch. Are you new to His Majesty's council?"
Aefia didn't miss a beat. She kept her hands casually resting behind her back, her posture effortlessly imposing as her dark purple eyes scanned the cascading veins of magic pulsing through the cavern walls.
"You could say that," Aefia replied, her raspy young male voice carrying just the right blend of noble arrogance and mild annoyance. "His Majesty prefers to keep his most efficient assets out of the public eye until the administrative court proves itself thoroughly incompetent. Which, as you can guess, happens quite frequently."
The caretaker let out a soft, dry chuckle, nodding his head in weary agreement. "Ah, the capital. Ever a circus of ambitious fools. But to send someone of your status all the way to the mountain ridge on such short notice..." He paused, stopping before a massive, arched gateway carved from raw obsidian. "May I ask the nature of your sudden inspection?"
"I am not here for an inspection," Aefia stated flatly, stepping up beside him to glare at the heavy runic seal locking the obsidian door. "His Majesty has suffered a sudden, severe collapse of his magical pathways. I have been ordered to extract three high-grade power crystals directly from the main magic reserves to stabilize his condition. Urgently."
The old man froze, his faded eyes widening slightly in genuine surprise as he looked at her. "A collapse? His Majesty? But that is... most unusual. A guard had sent a messenger past here just yesterday, and by all accounts, the King was in peak physical health and soaring in strength."
Aefia's lips twitched upward into a quiet, cruel smirk that remained safely hidden within the deep shadow of her hood. Of course he was soaring, she thought with dark amusement. He was practically 'glowing' after stealing my blood.
"Of course he was," Aefia said smoothly, her tone shifting seamlessly into a dramatic, exaggerated sigh of sorrow that lacked even a single grain of genuine emotion. She raised a hand to her forehead, shaking her head with a heavy, theatrical solemnity. "It is truly heavy to digest the fact that nowadays, it takes no time at all for someone to fall ill so suddenly! One moment a man is standing at the pinnacle of strength, and the next—bam!—he is flat on his back, writhing in bed, coughing up black bile, and burning as if thrown straight into a dragon's forge!"
Puppet poked its plush nose out from her sleeve, squinting up at her in utter disbelief at the sheer, shameless Oscar-worthy performance she was putting on.
The caretaker, however, looked entirely horrified, his knuckles turning white around his wooden staff. "B-Black bile?! Burning fever?!"
"Alas, yes," Aefia continued loudly, her voice echoing dramatically through the dark corridor. "A tragic, unpredictable turn of events! Why, just this afternoon he was boasting about his divine invincibility, and now the royal healers are running around the central tower like headless chickens, weeping over his bed! Truly, life is as fragile as a morning dewdrop, is it not?"
"Goodness gracious..." the old man stammered, visibly shaken as he frantically pulled a heavy key ring from his robes. "I had no idea! If His Majesty is in such dire straits, we must not delay for even a second!"
He shoved the master key into the obsidian lock and twisted it with trembling hands.
The heavy doors groaned open, revealing a vast, blinding chamber filled with towering, crystalline spires that throbbed with raw, unfiltered magic energy—the absolute heart of the kingdom's defenses.
Aefia stepped into the brilliant glow, her dark purple eyes flashing with a predatory, triumphant light.
"Indeed," she whispered softly to herself, her dramatic sorrow instantly vanishing into a sharp, terrifying grin. "We shouldn't keep the King waiting."
But something caught her off-guard. She turned back around to face the old man with a face that held a bit of suspicion.
"If a message was sent just yesterday, then it could only mean that there will be reserved sent at morning. So which one is it?" She asked, her arms folded and an eyebrow twitching upward.
The old man gulped. "Forgive me your Grace," he bowed his head before looking back up at the young man staring down at him with an arrogant and irritated look.
"This chamber that I have lead you to, has the crystals that will be sent out tomorrow. Shall I lead you to the actual reserves? This chamber carries all sorts combined."
"Nope. I shall identity the healing ones and take it from here, mind me. But I will be shutting the door and going through them from here on. When I am ready, I will personally come out to give you a few orders." She shot over her shoulder, before slipping inside and swinging the door shut.
The poor old caretaker gulped down a lump of guilt as he turned away and head towards the registry.
"Me and my brain." He whispered to himself as he walked away.
***
The heavy obsidian doors clicked shut with a muffled, absolute thud, cutting off the old caretaker's anxious muttering and locking Aefia inside the vast, cavernous vault.
Silence descended instantly, broken only by the low, hummed resonance of hundreds of magic crystals vibrating in unison. The air inside was dense, warm, and practically buzzing with static power, smelling faintly of ozone and crushed minerals.
"You really enjoy terrifying old men, don't you?" Puppet squeaked, popping its fluffy plush head out from inside her cloak sleeve and shaking itself like a wet dog. "Coughing up black bile? Dragon's forge? I almost felt bad for Kazimir. Almost."
Aefia dusted off her dark wool cloak, letting her illusion flicker slightly around her shoulders as she rolled her neck with a small, weary sigh. "If you don't paint a picture ugly enough, people ask too many questions. Fear is remarkably efficient at shutting down curiosity."
"And what if he checks the registry and realizes no official requisition order was filed?"
"By the time his frail legs shuffle back to the front registry desk, I will be long gone, and Kazimir will still be clutching his chest in bed," Aefia replied smoothly, stepping deeper into the glowing chamber. "Besides, he thinks I am a secret royal enforcer. Fearful people rarely double-check orders given by someone with George's face and a terrible attitude."
Puppet hovered up into the air, its tiny button eyes wide as it took in the breathtaking scale of the vault.
Before them sat dozens of sturdy wooden transport wagons, lined up in tight, orderly rows and stacked high with iron-bound crates. Each crate overflowed with raw, unrefined magic crystals—some the size of a dragon's egg—casting brilliant, prismatic refractions across the arched stone ceiling.
"Look at all of these," Puppet whispered, drifting closer to a large wooden crate on the nearest wagon. "The Mides kingdom really hoarded everything from the northern veins, didn't they?"
Aefia didn't waste time admiring the wealth. She hitched her dark trousers up slightly, grabbed the wooden edge of a heavy transport wagon, and swung herself up onto the flatbed.
"They didn't just hoard it," Aefia muttered, kneeling amidst the crates and using her sleeve to wipe away a thin layer of packing straw. "They classified it by blood-compatibility and offensive utility. Kazimir was planning a full-scale offensive long before he ever brought me to the cell."
She reached into the first crate, sifting through the heavy gems.
The vault was organized by distinct chromatic frequencies. Aefia bypassed a box of deep, fiery crimson stones—combustion reserves meant for heavy siege artillery—and paused beside a crate filled with dim, murky purple crystals.
The moment her fingers brushed the surface of the purple gems, a cold, repulsive chill shot straight up her forearm, making her teeth click together in visceral disgust.
"Tch," Aefia hissed, tearing her hand back as if she had touched a coiled viper. She clicked her tongue in sharp, unbridled annoyance, her brow furrowing deep.
"What are those?" Puppet asked, floating down to hover beside her shoulder, tilting its plush head. "They look... heavy. And kind of gross."
"Necromantic containment stones," Aefia spat out, her garnet eyes flashing under her dark illusion with pure hatred. "Dark magic reserves. Used to harvest soul remnants after killing people who carry the secrets of this Kingdom... and then bound into artificial constructs. The King used to, but Kazimir distributes these to orphanages under the guise of 'magical play-dolls' to monitor latent magic potential in peasant children nowadays."
Puppet recoiled in mid-air, its paws slapping over its mouth. "He... he gives soul-bound dead dolls to orphans?!"
"It keeps them quiet, keeps them dependent, and isolates the ones with high magical compatibility before they even reach ten years old," she said, her voice dropping into a deadly, frigid whisper. "A twisted little program dressed up as royal charity."
She glared at the murky purple stones for a long, agonizing second, her fists clenching so hard her knuckles turned stark white. A dark, dangerous urge to crush the entire crate into dust surged through her chest, but she forced a sharp, controlled breath through her nose, reining her anger back in.
Not yet, she reminded herself. Destroying them now alerts the whole mountain. First, fix the damage.
Aefia turned away from the dark magic crates, crawling further along the wagon until her eyes locked onto a small, reinforced iron chest tucked beneath a stack of burlap sacks.
Even through the iron casing, a soft, soothing azure light leaked out from the seams, casting a gentle, rhythmic glow across her pale face.
Cyan crystals. High-tier, pure restorative magic energy.
Though there were many healers walking around in this planet, there was one thing about them that made them more humans then one might think them godly.
If they ran out of magic, then they will have to consume another power stone. Which would then turn the healing stone into scarce. So they would firstly consume these healing crystals to quench themselves to the fullest before applying use of it to the others or the patients.
"Found them," Aefia whispered.
She flipped the heavy iron latches open with a sharp clack. Inside lay five large, pristine, flawless cyan crystals, pulsing with a deep, liquid-like luminescence. They smelled of clear water and fresh mountain rain—the absolute antithesis to the foul, stagnant stench of the dark magic stones beside them.
Without a second's hesitation, Aefia reached down and scooped up the largest cyan crystal in her bare hand.
The moment her skin touched the smooth, faceted surface, the deep, agonizing ache in her chest—left behind by her forced spell surge against Kazimir—flared up in protest.
Her body was exhausted, her internal magic reserves severely drained, and her blood pathways felt as though they had been scraped raw with glass.
"Aefia, wait—that's raw, unrefined energy!" Puppet warned, its ears drooping in panic. "If you absorb it directly without a limited amount of the healing power inside you—"
"I don't have time for that," Aefia interrupted flatly.
She closed her fingers tightly around the heavy stone. With a sharp, sudden flex of her grip, she channeled a microscopic point of pressurized magic directly into the crystal's fault line.
CRACK!
The cyan crystal shattered within her fist, bursting into a brilliant, blinding cloud of liquid-light dust that instantly enveloped her hand and forearms.
Aefia gasped, her head snapping back as the raw, concentrated restorative energy rushed straight into her palm, surging down her arms and flooding her internal pathways like a freezing tidal wave.
The ghostly pallor on her cheeks vanished, replaced instantly by a flush of healthy color. The dull, agonizing throb behind her eyes receded into nothingness, and the microscopic tears in her blood vessels sealed themselves in a matter of seconds.
Her breathing, which had been shallow and strained since her jump from the tower window, broadened into a deep, effortless rhythm.
She opened her eyes. The dark purple illusion of George's face remained firmly in place, but beneath it, her gaze was sharp, brilliant, and utterly restored to full strength.
Aefia let the fine, empty glass dust slip through her fingers, falling back into the crate like harmless sand. She looked down at her hands, flexing her fingers as a subtle, terrifying spark of garnet magic danced lazily across her nails.
"Much better," she whispered, a quiet smile spreading across her lips.
Puppet let out a huge sigh of relief, slumping down to rest on her shoulder. "Okay... you look less like a walking corpse now. So what's the plan for the rest of these wagons?"
Aefia slowly stood up on the flatbed of the wagon, her dark cloak fluttering as she looked out over the endless sea of magic crates filling the vault.
"Kazimir is quite smart if you actually ask me," she said, her voice echoing softly against the vault ceiling. "He knows he thinks he can use even limited resources to conquer the border, crush the Archduchy, and force the Imperial Palace to its knees."
She reached down, picking up two more cyan crystals and slipping them into her inner cloak pockets alongside her ancestral map.
"Let's see how far he thinks his army can get when the entire mountain goes completely dark."
She turned her gaze back at the crimson stones, her pupils narrowing down to slits as she lifted the lids fully off them.
Simple explosives, that were partially laced with her magic.
"Hm hm... He really is a weird fellow." She whispered, picking one up and hurling it to the far corner of the room.
It collided with the wall with a hard, echoing thud, before blowing up.
Shatters of it fell uselessly across the floor and she didn't even bother to look back. The explosion was suspiciously silent.
"Damn! It's a grenade!" Puppet squeaked, picking out and over her shoulders to stare at the remains of the explosion. "It's a freaking silent grenade!"
Aefia didn't even listen in. She only took one look at all the other crystals, and reached out to one corner where there rested a knife.
"Puppet."
"Hm?" It turned around. It saw blade... But at the last moment.
Blood splattered across the wagon in a disturbing manner.