The advisor's chamber was silent save for the faint hum of the projection array that floated above the obsidian desk, casting cold blue light across walls of black glass. Aster sat motionless in the high-backed chair carved from a single piece of night stone, fingers steepled beneath his chin, golden eyes that had never once in twenty-seven years betrayed a single unnecessary emotion flicking across a dozen shifting maps and intercepted missives that hung in the air like ghosts summoned for judgment,
Another report slid into existence before him, this one written in the trembling hand of a spy who knew he would not live to see sunrise, and Aster read it without blinking, without breathing harder, without anything except the faintest tightening at the corner of his mouth that might, to someone who knew him very well, have looked almost like satisfaction.
"Shia… she should be wrapped around Kale's fingers by now," he murmured at last, voice low and precise, the way a surgeon names arteries before the first cut. The sound barely disturbing the cold air yet carrying all the weight of a verdict already passed.
Aster had 'foreseen' every step of that particular dance and had no reason to believe the fame-driven princess would do anything except play her predictable part.
"Predictable.... She should have never played with fire."
A second hologram flared into being beside the first, this one showing Kale's latest movements, the SSS physique's key, the women who moved at his side like extensions of his will, and Aster watched it all with the detached curiosity of a man studying insects under glass.
He noted the exact moment each kingdom's crown slipped from its pedestal and into the Voss collection without a single drop of blood spilled in the open, because Kale preferred his conquests quiet and polite and permanent.
Another map rotated slowly in the air, this one tracing Queen Sonna's most recent maneuvers, a fleet of crimson-sailed warships cutting south along the Sapphire Strait toward a kingdom that had, until very recently, believed itself safe behind distance and treaties.
Aster flicked two fingers and the projection froze, red lines tracing every ship's projected path. "We will work in the opposite direction," he whispered, almost fondly, the way a man might speak to the grave he has already dug for someone else.
"The Kingdom is not yet prepared to stand against the Voss...."
Then the final hologram blossomed—grainy scrying footage of a young man with black-white hair and golden-pink eyes, the man in this hologram was completely wrecking a Kingdom... the Velora Kingdom.
Yes, it was Ash... the moment he had left the Solace Kingdom in his fashion...
Aster already had scouts watching him.
Aster leaned forward, the only time his posture broke from perfect stillness. The footage looped: the crescent, the ash, the kneeling nations, the crowns drifting obediently into a spatial ring like iron filings to a god.
'From pathetic.... the trashiest of our blood yet... "
Aster exhaled once, slow and measured. "Ash...." he said, tasting the name the way a poisoner tastes wine. "My broken little brother, the joke, the one they all laughed at.... How does a worm become... this... in the span of few months? No bloodline awakening, no heavenly treasure, no ancient inheritance… unless... an aspect? "
The word hung in the air like a verdict, and the frown that had begun to crease his brow melted slowly into a smile that belonged to a man who had just found the last piece of a puzzle he had been assembling for years in the dark, the smile of someone who had finally remembered why he started walking in the first place.
He closed his eyes, and the world fell away.
Within his consciousness, an endless palace of black mirrors was orbiting a burning, lightless sun. He appeared inside of the palace, in the deepest halls, here he walked past eleven glass coffins. He drifted past the schemer, the warrior, the jester, the scholar, until he reached the one draped in royal black and starlight silver. The coffin opened at his touch. The personality within opened its eyes—ancient, calm, and heavy with the unbearable weight of wisdom.
When Aster opened his eyes again in the physical world, the cunning advisor was gone.
In his place stood a king.
He rose, robes settling around him like midnight given form, and walked out of the chamber without a sound. Courtiers and guards parted before him as though an invisible wind pressed them aside; none dared meet his gaze.
The throne room of Ebonreach was a cavern of black marble and star-iron, lit only by the pale glow of floating soul-lanterns that drifted like jellyfish. Upon the obsidian throne sat the puppet—King Eryndor, fat with self-importance, face flushed from too much wine and too little wisdom.
He straightened as Aster entered, puffed chest and practiced scowl already forming.
"Aster!" the puppet barked, voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. "You will explain why my fleets have been recalled without—"
Aster never broke stride.
His shadow peeled away from his feet like liquid night, stretching across the marble until it stood behind the throne, tall and silent and smiling with too many teeth.
Eryndor's words faltered. "I gave no such order—do you hear me? I am the king here—"
Aster stopped at the tall arched windows that looked out over Ebonreach's starlit spires and the endless black sea beyond. Moonlight spilled across his face, turning the wise king's profile into something carved from mourning and starlight.
"A man who wears too many faces," he said softly, speaking not to the puppet, not to the court, but to the night itself, "may eventually forget which one was his own. He becomes the mask, and the mask becomes the monster, and the monster forgets why it ever started walking."
His voice was calm, ancient, the voice of someone who had watched empires rise and fall often enough to find the pattern tedious.
"But the goal… ah, the goal is patient. The goal waits beneath every face, every name, every crown. It waits until the board is set, the pieces aligned, and the final player steps onto the field believing he is the one moving the pieces."
Behind him, the puppet was still shouting, red-faced and spittle-flecked. "—will have your head for this insolence! Guards! Seize him!"
No guard moved.
Aster's shadow rose up behind the throne like a wave of living darkness, tendrils curling affectionately around the puppet's throat.
"The goal never forgets," Aster whispered to the night. "And tonight, one small piece has served its purpose."
The shadow tightened.
There was a wet, muffled crack—barely louder than a finger snapping.
King Eryndor's body slumped sideways, eyes wide in permanent shock, crown tumbling from a suddenly lifeless head to roll across the marble and come to rest at Aster's feet.
The wise king never looked back.
He simply gazed out at the dark sky of Ebonreach, hands clasped behind him, starlight catching on the silver threads of his robes, and waited for the next move in a game only he could see.
[+15 EL]
[Current EL - Mid Rank A (10,115)]