The destruction of the Glass Cathedral was the scandal of the season. The official story, meticulously planted by a terrified Professor Alaric who had pieced together enough to be useful, was a catastrophic mana resonance experiment conducted by a since-vanished, rogue elementologist. The public bought it. The nobility clucked their tongues about the dangers of unchecked magical research. The academy increased security.
But in the quiet, shadowed places, the truth had a different weight.
I was back to mopping the East Wing, the familiar scent of soap and ozone a comfort. The rhythmic swish-thud of the mop was a meditation, a way to smooth over the wrinkles I had created in the world. But the silence I returned to was different. It was a watchful silence.
Professor Alaric no longer avoided me. Now, he studied me with the grim fascination of a man observing a sleeping dragon. He never spoke of the cathedral, but his eyes asked the questions his voice dared not. He had become the reluctant keeper of a truth so vast it threatened to swallow him whole.
Princess Seraphina found me polishing the banister of the grand staircase. She didn't speak immediately, instead running a gloved finger along the wood, checking for dust. Finding none, she nodded, a gesture of professional respect from one perfectionist to another.
"The Scorpion has retreated," she said, her voice low. "But not gone. Your performance at the cathedral... it made you more dangerous in their eyes, not less. They will not try to collar you again. The next attempt will be to break you."
"I'm difficult to break," I replied, not looking up from my work.
"They've sent a new kind of Seeker," she continued. "Not a warrior. An auditor. Her name is Lyra. She arrives tomorrow under the pretext of reviewing the academy's magical expenditure and safety protocols. Her real talent is listening."
I finally glanced up. "Listening?"
"To lies," Seraphina clarified, her amethyst eyes serious. "She hears the dissonance in a person's voice when they speak an untruth. It's a rare auditory magic. She won't be looking for temporal fractures. She'll be looking for the cracks in our stories."
A lie detector. Charming. My usual arsenal of minor time-stops and reversals was useless against something so... intimate.
The next day, Lyra arrived. She was a small, neat woman with mousy brown hair and oversized, shell-like ears that seemed to twitch at every sound. She carried no obvious weapons, only a ledger and a quill that floated beside her, taking notes. She moved through the academy like a ghost, her presence causing a subtle, anxious tension. Professors straightened their robes. Students rehearsed their answers before speaking to her.
She interviewed everyone. Magus Theron, who blustered about academy security. Kael, who proudly repeated his heroic tale, his voice ringing with a conviction that, to her, probably sounded like perfect, ignorant truth. She even interviewed a trembling Finn, who stuttered his way through an account of the Anomaly attack.
I knew my turn was coming. I prepared by doing nothing. I couldn't plan a lie. I had to become the lie. I had to be Leo the Janitor so completely that even my vocal cords believed it.
She cornered me in the library annex, the same place she had interviewed Alaric. I was reshelving books, a menial task that required no magic, only patience.
"You are Leo," she stated, her voice a soft, melodic hum. It was a voice designed to lull you into comfort. Her large, sensitive ears seemed to pivot toward me like satellite dishes.
"Yes, ma'am," I said, keeping my tone even, respectful, and slightly dull.
"You were present during the Anomaly attack in the East Wing courtyard."
"I was hiding behind a pillar, ma'am. Scared out of my wits." True. I had been mildly concerned.
"You did not see what specifically caused the Anomalies to vanish?"
"No, ma'am. It was all a blur. One minute they were there, the next... poof." True. From a certain point of view.
Her quill scribbled in the air. She was listening, her head tilted, her eyes half-closed in concentration. I could feel her magic, a subtle pressure in the air, like a tuning fork pressed against my throat.
"And the night of the Royal Gala. You were serving champagne."
"Yes, ma'am."
"There was an... incident with Prince Kael and the Crown Prince's shoes."
I allowed a flicker of remembered fear into my voice. "A terrible accident, ma'am. My hand slipped. I was certain I would be dismissed." True. I had been momentarily worried about the paperwork.
She was silent for a long moment, just listening to the echo of my words in the air. I kept my mind blank, my persona solid. I was a simple boy, lucky to have a job, terrified of authority. I was a closed book with very few, very simple words inside.
"You have no magical affinity," she said, not a question, but a statement to gauge my reaction.
"The orbs said so, ma'am," I replied, injecting a well-practiced note of sad resignation into my voice. "I'm a null."
Her quill stopped writing. She opened her eyes fully and looked at me. Not through me, like most people did, but at me. Her gaze was unnervingly direct.
"Silence can be a lie too, Leo," she said softly. "And your silence... it's the most perfect one I have ever heard. It has no cracks. It has no echo. It's as if your truth has been... edited."
My blood ran cold. She couldn't hear a lie because I wasn't telling any. But she could hear the absolute, unnatural consistency of my story. My lack of emotional fluctuation, the seamless blend of half-truths and omissions—it was too perfect. It was a performance without a single missed cue, and that in itself was a anomaly.
She didn't accuse me. She just nodded, made a final note in her ledger, and left.
I stood alone in the annex, the weight of her words settling on me. I had passed her test by not playing the game at all. But in doing so, I had revealed a different truth: I was not just good at hiding. I was flawless at it. And to a seeker of truth, flawless hiding is the biggest red flag of all.
Lyra hadn't found a crack in my story. She had discovered that there was no story at all. Just a void. And she was now determined to find out what was hidden inside it.
The game was no longer about concealing power. It was about concealing perfection. And that, I realized, was a much more difficult task.