Morning in Elaria was a different kind of chaos.
Hovering merchant pods buzzed down the stone avenues, displaying bright illusions of fruits, charms, and gears. Street beasts — little mechanical animals with fur and metal limbs — darted between people's feet, delivering parcels and messages. An entire tower near the central square flashed as if alive, breathing magic in and out through its spire.
Lily kept to the alleys, eyes sharp beneath the hood she'd ripped from her old cloak. Her once-elegant robes were now torn and dust-stained, looking more like peasant garb. Her silver hair — unmistakably Seraphina's — she tied back and darkened with soot.
She looked no different than any vagrant.
Perfect.
Her stomach growled again, but she ignored it.
First, she needed data.
And to get data, she needed tech.
The lower districts, where the streetlights flickered and surveillance drones rarely passed, were littered with scrap. She found a heap behind an old enchantment shop — discarded spell orbs, cracked lensware, burned-out ether batteries. No one batted an eye as she rummaged.
After an hour, her fingers closed around a cracked info-slate.
Old, broken, but not useless.
She smiled.
"Hello, beautiful."
Lily lugged the slate back to the old clocktower she'd hidden in overnight — half-collapsed and forgotten, its ticking heart long rusted. Its stone walls shielded her from the noise and eyes of the city.
The floor creaked beneath her as she laid the slate down. Dust clouded around her, dancing in a shaft of golden light from a shattered stained-glass window.
She sat cross-legged and began cleaning the slate with a torn cloth.
It didn't take long. The inner workings weren't so different from tablets back home — just coded differently. Runes acted like subroutines. Mana flows replaced circuitry.
She rewired a copper filament and etched a bypass rune into its backside. Then, she slid in a crystal she'd snagged from the trash outside a guard post. It was small and corrupted, but held enough charge for a boot-up.
The slate flickered.
Then lit up.
Lines of Elarian script scrolled down the screen, and with them, a flood of system calls.
"Let's dance," Lily murmured, her fingers flying.
She bypassed the biometric lock by spoofing a servant-class signature. Within minutes, she was inside the city's public data archive. She didn't risk going deeper — not yet — but what she found was enough.
City schematics.
Census data.
Surveillance logs.
Daily newsfeeds.
And then… an alert.
A memorial.
Her face. Seraphina's.
Honored as a "lost royal martyr."
The date listed was nearly seven years ago.
Seven years. Her body had rested in that tomb for seven years.
She leaned back slowly. Her heart pounded. Her fingers trembled.
Anera. The one who should've protected Seraphina. Her most trusted friend. Now sitting on the throne.
Crown Empress Regent, beloved by the people, untouchable by scandal.
Lily's breath caught in her throat.
She remembered using proxies to take down corrupt politicians back on Earth — digging into data webs and exposing them with precision. But this? This wasn't just political corruption. This was betrayal coated in adoration. This was theft and murder painted gold.
"She buried me in lies," Lily whispered. "And wore my skin to the throne."
Her nails dug into her palm.
She accessed the archives again and opened a newsfeed.
Anera appeared in a projected holo — tall, radiant, with soft curls and a practiced smile. Flawless.
Lily saw right through it.
She noticed the pause in her smile, the half-second glance to her advisors before every answer. The same nervous tick Seraphina had mentioned in diary excerpts Lily had read years ago. Anera had always been the shadow behind the throne — always waiting.
Not anymore.
She pulled up floor plans for the outer palace.
Tomorrow, she would crack deeper — into surveillance, into the heart of the regime, maybe even into restricted zones.
But she needed an identity.
And gear.
And information on allies. Seraphina's allies. If any of them were still alive.
Tonight, she would build her foundation.
She scribbled down notes in a scavenged notebook — names, spell patterns, sigils she didn't recognize but wanted to decode. The slate glowed beside her like a dying ember.
The shadows in Elaria whispered of a ghost in the wires.
And Lily grinned.
Let them whisper louder.