In Mariejois, it's not the loud ones who run the world.
It's the ones who whisper.
The Celestial Dragons play at divinity, but they're nothing more than theater kids with too much money and no director.
I intended to rewrite the script.
Winter's power had stabilized. She could now control her lightning with finesse—coiling it into thin wires, cracking it like whips, sending pulses into the walls to listen through stone.
Her hearing was impeccable. Her senses? Terrifying.
She came to me one night in the study.
"There's a meeting happening four wings away. Sealed room. Four nobles. Two agents. One cipher-pol."
"Topic?"
"'The upstart Celestial who walks without a bubble.'"
I smiled. "Me?"
She nodded.
"They're afraid."
Good.
Let them be.
The first real test came three days later.
An 'accidental' meeting at a tea garden.
Saint Charloss. The bloated prince of piggish idiocy. Surrounded by six bodyguards and a chain of slaves like jewelry.
He blocked my path with a grin.
"Figarland. Walking again? How quaint."
I didn't respond. Winter stood a step behind me, veiled, calm, still.
Charloss pointed at her.
"That one. She yours?"
"Yes."
"She's pretty. Too pretty for a mutt. Trade you. I'll give you three."
"No."
He blinked.
"No?"
I leaned closer. "If you touch her, you'll be the one in chains next."
He laughed.
Too loudly.
Until Winter's eye twitched.
And the tip of her finger sparked.
Just once.
Charloss froze.
He felt it. Somewhere in the primitive, shriveled walnut he called a brain.
Danger.
He stepped back.
"Disrespectful," he muttered, waddling off.
Winter relaxed.
"You told me not to use it in public," she whispered.
"You didn't," I said.
"You only threatened to."
She smiled.
That night, I held a dinner.
Invitations to minor nobles. The quieter ones. The observant ones. The ones who always showed up in shadows and never asked for anything.
I fed them lies and truths in equal measure.
"The world is changing," I said.
"You've noticed it too. The seas grow louder. The pirates grow stronger. The Marines can't keep up. And the Elders? They rule by silence. But silence can be broken."
One old man—Saint Bruges, a relic from an older time—spoke softly.
"What are you proposing?"
I smiled.
"Insurance."
Over the next weeks, my influence deepened.
I opened a discreet academy under the guise of an orphan rehabilitation project. It was really a training facility. Winter was its patron saint. She selected the instructors. Mostly veterans. Ex-Revolutionaries. Pirates with no bounties. Ghosts of wars past.
No one suspected.
Because who would believe a Celestial Dragon would invest in orphans?
Saint Roswald visited once.
"You're building an army," he whispered.
"No," I replied. "I'm building survivors."
"Same thing."
Winter grew distant.
Not cold. Not unfaithful. Just... consumed.
She spent long nights staring at the sky from the rooftop garden.
"I can hear the world breathe," she murmured once.
I sat beside her.
"Too much power will eat you, Winter."
She nodded.
"I don't want to be a god."
"You're not."
She looked at me, quietly, intently.
"I only exist because of you."
"Don't worship me."
"But I will," she said. "Because you gave me the storm."
The final whisper came through one of my informants. A low-tier agent in Cipher Pol 8. Former drunk. Excellent handwriting.
A scribbled note:
"Imu knows."
Short. Dangerous.
The name nobody spoke. The ghost on the throne.
If he knew, then the game had reached its true beginning.
I burned the note.
And prepared for the next phase.
Because whispers in Mariejois don't echo.
They explode.