Another voice laughed, a familiar, wheezing sound. Lord Valerius. The broken man from his throne room a week ago. So the dog had found a new master. Or perhaps, this was his master all along.
"He is a fool," Valerius sneered, his voice filled with venom. "His newfound power has made him blind. He thinks he outsmarted me with his Ministry. Let him play with his new toy."
"He suspects nothing of our true plan?" Valerius asked.
"Nothing," Seraphina confirmed. "He thinks it's a simple trap to kill him. He doesn't realize we want him alive. Lord Reynolds wants the secrets of his power. His 'Eternal Throne'."
Valerius laughed again. "He will come. The lure of First Age magic is too great for any mage to resist. He will walk into our arms. And when he does, we will take everything."
Aaron let the connection fade, the voices disappearing into silence. He opened his eyes, a slow smile spreading across his face. It was not a smile of amusement. It was the cold, thin smile of a hunter who had just learned the exact location of his quarry's den.
They were so beautifully, suicidally confident. They thought he would come to their ruin. They thought they were setting the trap.
How little they understood. The real trap was already closing around them.
He pushed himself away from his desk. The ruin could wait. They expected him to prepare for a journey. To gather his strength for their little ambush. He would do the opposite. He would go about his day. He would hold court.
Aaron walked through the silent halls of the palace. His footsteps echoed on the polished marble. He entered the throne room, a vast chamber that drank the light. His regent's seat sat beside the grand Imperial Throne, a statement of power in itself. And beside his seat stood the Empress Isabella.
She was a perfect statue carved from ivory and gold. Her silver gown shimmered, her posture immaculate. Her face was a mask of serene beauty, but her eyes were empty. They held no life, no thought, only a dull reflection of the room. She was his finest creation. His puppet queen. A beautiful, silent testament to his will. He found her stillness deeply pleasing.
The attack came with no warning. It was not a grand spell, but a subtle tear in reality. One moment the air was still, the next, three figures stood in the center of the room. They wore the silver cloaks of the Silver Circle. Reynolds's assassins. Fast. Professional. Deadly.
So, the ruin was a lie. Or rather, a second option. This was the real opening move. A direct strike at the heart of his power.
A bolt of black energy, a necrotic curse, shot toward him. It was incredibly fast. Aaron didn't move from his throne. The bolt slammed into an invisible wall a foot in front of his face and dissolved into harmless black smoke. His wards. He had layered the throne room with dozens of them after taking power.
"Poor form," Aaron said, his voice calm. A cold smile touched his lips. "You should have sent more."
One of the assassins hissed and gestured. The marble floor around Aaron's throne suddenly glowed with silver light. A containment rune. It was meant to disrupt his connection to the room's wards.
Clever. But not clever enough.
Before the rune could fully activate, Aaron gestured with one hand. The floor did not erupt in chains of dark energy as he first considered. That was too flashy. Instead, a simple shadow detached from the base of his throne. It flowed across the floor like spilled ink, silent and swift.
The shadow touched the boot of the nearest assassin. The man screamed. It was not a loud shout, but a choked, gurgling cry. His body convulsed as his life force was drained away. He collapsed, his skin gray and sunken, aging a century in a single second. The Silver Circle cloak now covered little more than a pile of bones and dust.
The other two assassins froze, their confidence shattered. They had been briefed on a politician. A ruthless, power-hungry regent. They had not been prepared for a monster who wielded death as a simple tool.
"He's a shadowmancer!" one of them yelled, his voice tight with panic. He began a frantic chant, raising a hand that glowed with holy light. A borrowed spell. A desperate defense against the dark.
Aaron was already moving. He was a blur, a streak of darkness that flowed from the throne. He didn't need flashy spells. He had forbidden magic, ancient and terrible.
He appeared before the second assassin, his hand reaching out. The man's holy light sputtered and died against the sheer oppressive aura of Aaron's power. Aaron's fingers brushed the man's forehead.
"A wasted life," Aaron whispered. He unleashed the Soul Withering curse. The assassin's eyes went wide with a unique kind of terror. He didn't scream. He simply fell, his body turning into a withered, dry husk before it even hit the ground. His very soul had been unmade.
The final assassin saw it all. He didn't try to fight. He made the smart choice. He tried to flee. He crushed a crystal in his hand, and the air around him began to warp for a teleportation spell.
But as he vanished, he threw a small, glowing orb onto the floor. It didn't explode. It pulsed once, with a brilliant flash of white light, releasing a wave of energy that swept through the room. It was an information flare. A spell designed to record and broadcast the magical signatures of every spell just cast. It was a probe.
Reynolds didn't just want to kill him. He wanted to know exactly what kind of monster he was dealing with.
"No," Aaron said, his voice flat. He pointed a single finger at the space where the assassin had been. The space itself twisted violently. There was a wet, crushing sound, and a fine red mist, mixed with fragments of silver cloth and bone, appeared for a second before vanishing. The teleportation had been turned into a grinder.
Silence returned to the throne room. It was over in seconds.
Aaron stood in the center of the room, looking at the two desiccated corpses and the faint stain on the air. The information flare had been contained by his primary wards, but the attempt itself was telling. This wasn't a failure for them. It was a data-gathering mission disguised as an assassination. They had learned something vital: he used soul magic. A crime in any civilized kingdom.
He felt a surge of cold fury. Reynolds was more cunning than he had given him credit for. This changed the game.
He turned his gaze to the Empress. Her expression was utterly unchanged. Her empty eyes reflected the carnage without a flicker of emotion. A perfect, beautiful, unfeeling witness.
Then, something impossible happened. Her head tilted, just a fraction of an inch. Her vacant eyes moved from the spot where the last assassin died, to the husk of the second, and finally, to him. For one single, terrifying heartbeat, her eyes were not empty. They held a spark. A flicker of cold, calculating awareness.
Then it was gone. She was a statue again. A perfect doll. But he had seen it.
Aaron felt a chill that had nothing to do with the magic he had just used. The puppet had a string he didn't know about. Or worse, she was learning to pull her own.
He did not feel triumph. He felt a cold, sharp anger. His enemies had underestimated him. An amateur mistake. A fatal one.
But he had also underestimated them. And he had underestimated his own beautiful, broken queen. He had seen her as a prize, a symbol. He now saw a potential knife at his own back.