"Cross Fire Tornado!"
A burning cross flared to life, then another, then a storm of them—over a hundred searing sigils spun into a funnel that screamed downrange. The straw targets vanished in a rush of heat, reduced to drifting ash.
"Magnificent, Lord Marl!"
"Search the whole continent and you won't find a finer master of the art than the young prince!"
The onlookers showered praise. Marl Laguna, second son of the House of Laguna, accepted it with an easy, satisfied smile.
"The new spell performs well," he said.
"As expected of a former child prodigy," one sycophant said. "Surely you've surpassed your elder brother."
"Hah. Don't say reckless things," Marl replied lightly. "If he hears you, you'll be the one who burns."
He kept smiling all the same.
They stood on the family's private training grounds, a discreet yard behind the main estate where magi tested circuits against straw dummies and stone pylons.
"I'd like to test it on a person," Marl mused. "But that worthless cousin Shin is gone. Isn't there anyone sturdy enough to survive, even if I overdo it?"
By the patriarch's order, Shin had been banished from the estate. Marl had thought there were uses for a convenient, disposable relative; but no one contradicted Grandfather. Even retired, the old man remained the strongest magician of the age.
"Well, the brat will probably drop dead in a few years anyway," Marl muttered.
"Pardon, my lord?"
"…Nothing. Shut up."
"S-so sorry!"
They flinched, heads lowered, careful not to draw his gaze. Marl commanded a rare gift: Four-Element Sorcery, the control to wield fire, water, earth, and wind with precise manipulation. They praised him not only because he was extraordinary—but because they feared what that extraordinary power might do if turned their way.
To Marl, they were interchangeable. Flies in fine clothes.
"Enough. Clean this up."
His thoughts slid, as they often did, to the obstacles at home: not Grandfather, but his brothers.
His elder brother, Julis, the "Prince of Flame," was not only powerful, but shrewd in business, with several ventures thriving under his hand.
His younger brother, Ingvar, at only seventeen, had already cut down bandit gangs and won the court's eye. Some whispered he was the most gifted of the three.
"Annoying," Marl said under his breath. "All of them."
First, pull Julis down. They cooperated now, but Marl was committed to outmaneuvering him.
Then, take the succession. That was the goal.
"My business is going well," he thought, "but I still need more money."
He meant to bind imperial nobles with coin—enough to make loyalty feel like profit.
"…Lord Marl! Is Lord Marl here?"
An out-of-breath subordinate stumbled into the yard.
"What is this racket?" Marl asked, voice cool.
"My apologies, my lord. An urgent report."
This was one of the men entrusted with Marl's "off-the-books" affairs.
"Well?"
"It's… the—" He swallowed. "The temporary employment agency…"
Marl's expression chilled.
"Choose your words carefully," he said softly.
Selling slaves was forbidden. If discovered, the scandal would be explosive. Even a Laguna prince would need vast sums and favors to smother it—and Marl had kept that business hidden from both father and grandfather. Imagining their faces if it came to light made his skin crawl.
"You should have said that from the start," he snapped. "What about my station?"
"Y-yes… The dispatch station near Aarburg is… empty."
Marl's smile thinned. Mana leaked into the air, and the temperature seemed to drop.
"Empty?"
"No one there. Not the staff, not the girls, not the—ah—the thing we left as a… deterrent. Nothing."
"Don't toy with me."
He hit the man hard enough to stagger him. Talent had earned the fool responsibility. Failure had earned him pain.
"You came to deliver that?" Marl hissed. "I should kill you."
"I-I'm sorry! Please—my life—"
"My client is waiting already. Will you repay me for a broken deal? Will you?"
Reputation was currency. A bounced transaction stained both.
The man only stammered apologies. Useless.
Marl considered making him a test subject for the next spell—and set the thought aside, barely.
"Who did this?" he said. "Who smeared mud on my face?"
"In the last scheduled contact, they said they had taken one boy. They intended to move ten elf girls and one boy—eleven total."
"A boy… Shin?" Marl's eyes narrowed.
"When I reached the site, there were traces, my lord. Of magic."
Marl raised a finger. The man fell silent.
Magic. They had stabled a monster there—a Black Lion—to ensure obedience and to tear apart inconvenient witnesses. What kind of magician defeated that?
Only Julis or Ingvar came to mind.
"Were the traces flame?" Marl asked.
"N-no. It looked like… lightning, or earth. Not flame."
Not Julis, then. Ingvar favored steel and storm on the battlefield, not this. And if a famous mage had moved openly in his sphere, Marl would have heard.
"Fallen adventurers?" he muttered. "Or some rat from a rival house…"
"Your orders, my lord?" the man asked, trembling.
"They won't have gotten far," Marl snapped. "Sweep the region. Bring me the one who did this. Alive."
"Understood!"
"And if he culled the monster, he might claim the bounty. Put eyes on the guild. If he comes, you follow. Failure is unacceptable."
"R-right away!"
Given back his life, the man fled at a run.
Marl's pride was barbed and brittle. He loathed a tarnished name more than wounds. Stay near him too long and you risked being caught in the backlash.
"Damn it," he said. "Disgusting."
He snatched up his coat.
"My lord, where are you going?" a retainer asked.
"To check the fields," Marl said. "You're coming. We're hosting tonight. I'm in a mood to celebrate."
"Yes, my lord!"
The main estate suffocated him. While Grandfather lived, neither Father nor his sons would truly be free. And now this—the whisper of a ruined "dispatch station" gnawed at the edges of restraint.
"I don't care who you are," Marl thought as he strode out. "I will find you. I will break you. I will make you beg and lick the dust from my boots."
They seized nonhuman children from the frontier and sold them to the hidden market. Because it was forbidden, buyers paid dearly. A "temporary staffing agency" that generated such profit could not be allowed to vanish.
"I'll execute the one responsible myself," he promised the empty air.
Anger burned, quiet and black.
He did not know that the one who had undone his work—the one he called worthless, incapable of magic—was none other than Shin.