The morning after the miracle was not filled with celebration. It was filled with the smell of ozone and the heavy, rhythmic thud of a blacksmith's hammer.
Olivier stood in the courtyard of Ashbourne Castle, squinting against the pale, grey sunlight. The "Star in the North," as the townspeople were already calling it, had burned out three hours before dawn when the carbonized bamboo filament finally snapped. But the spark it had lit in the town was far more volatile.
"Your Highness, the masonry is cracked, the charcoal is damp, and the master smith says he will not forge 'devil's iron' for any price."
Gaston Moreau stood behind him, clutching a ledger that looked increasingly like a casualty list. The accountant's eyes were bloodshot. He had spent the night watching a glass jar glow, and it had seemingly broken something inside his bureaucratic soul.
"Then we don't buy his charcoal," Olivier said, not turning around. He was staring at the castle's water mill—a rotting, wooden skeleton that sat in the sluggish river at the base of the cliff. "And tell the smith that I don't need him to believe in the devil; I need him to believe in the weight of royal coin. If he refuses, I'll seize his forge under the Emergency Decree of the Borderlands."
"The Emergency Decree is for fending off invasions, sir!"
"Gaston," Olivier turned, his expression unnervingly calm. "We are being invaded. By stagnation. By darkness. Now, look at that wheel. What do you see?"
Gaston looked at the moss-covered waterwheel. "I see a pile of timber that should have been burned for firewood years ago."
"I see six hundred foot-pounds of torque being wasted every second," Olivier countered. "In my... in my dreams, we didn't just wait for lightning. We made the movement of the world work for us. If I can connect that wheel to a copper-wound rotor, I won't need Elara to bleed herself dry every time I want to read a book."
He began walking toward the river, his boots sinking into the thick, black mud.
"Your Highness! The Commander!" Gaston called out.
Olivier stopped. Hugo Llorente was standing by the barracks, surrounded by thirty men in boiled leather and steel. They weren't training. They were watching the Prince. The air between the royal and the military was no longer just cold; it was antagonistic.
Olivier pivoted and marched straight toward the Commander. The guards stiffened, hands hovering near hilt-guards.
"Commander Hugo," Olivier said, stopping inches from the man's chest plate. "I noticed the garrison's swords are looking a bit dull. A shame, really. Hard to defend a border with blunt butter knives."
Hugo's jaw tightened. "My men are ready for any tangible threat, Prince Olivier. But they are hesitant to bleed for a man who plays with glass and lightning while the Church prepares a decree of excommunication."
"The Church is two hundred miles away in the capital. The river is fifty yards away," Olivier said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "I'm going to build a generator. I need your men to haul the iron casing from the old mines. I need the copper wire from the bells in the abandoned chapel. And I need them to do it today."
"The bells?" Hugo's eyes widened. "That is sacrilege."
"That is recycling," Olivier corrected. "You have a choice, Hugo. You can be the man who helped me turn this swamp into the most powerful territory in Cinderfall, or you can be the man who stood in the way of the Fourth Prince. My brothers and sisters are already sharpening their knives. When they come for this land—and they will—do you want to fight them with torches and prayers, or do you want to see what I can do with a concentrated arc of ten thousand volts?"
Hugo looked at the Prince. He looked for the drunkard, the coward, the idle boy he had been sent to guard. He found none of them. He found a man with the eyes of a siege engineer and the tongue of a heretic.
"The men will haul the iron," Hugo said, his voice grating. "But if the sky falls on us for this, I'll ensure you're the first one it hits."
"Fair enough," Olivier smirked. "Gaston! Bring the schematics. We're building a dynamo."
While the soldiers grumbled and hauled, Olivier returned to the tower. He found Elara sitting by the window, staring out at the mist. She looked better—he had ordered she be fed actual protein instead of the watery gruel the prisoners usually received.
"They're afraid of me," she said without turning.
"They're afraid of everything," Olivier said, moving to a makeshift workbench. "Fear is just a reaction to an unknown variable. Once we define the variable, the fear becomes... utility."
"Is that what I am? A utility?"
Olivier paused, a piece of charcoal in his hand. He looked at her—the way her amber eyes seemed to hold a faint, residual flicker. In his old life, he'd seen everything as a component. People were just obstacles or assets in the pursuit of the 'Great Work.' He had died alone because of that philosophy.
"No," he said, and for the first time, his voice sounded less like a technician and more like a human. "You're the pilot. I'm just the guy building the ship. Without you, the energy is just chaos. You have the ability to sense the flow. I need you to tell me when the copper is getting too hot, or when the 'hum' feels like it's about to break. You're the only person in this world who speaks the same language I do."
Elara turned, a small, hesitant smile touching her lips. "The language of the hum?"
"The language of power."
He spent the next several hours explaining the concept of a magnetic field. He used two pieces of lodestone and a handful of iron filings to show her the invisible lines of force.
"The world is a giant magnet, Elara," he explained, his eyes bright. "And if we move a conductor through these lines of force, the electrons move. It's a dance. We're just creating the stage."
He was interrupted by a frantic knocking. Gaston burst in, his face white.
"It's here," the accountant gasped. "A messenger from the capital. From the First Prince, Julian."
Olivier's blood ran cold. Julian was the eldest—a man known for his tactical genius and his absolute lack of mercy. He was the frontrunner for the throne, governing the Golden Coast, the wealthiest province in the realm.
"Give me the letter," Olivier said.
Gaston handed over a scroll sealed with the crimson wax of the Crown Prince. Olivier cracked it open.
To my 'dearly beloved' brother, Olivier,
Word has reached the capital of a 'Sun' rising in Ashbourne. Our father, the King, is amused. The Church, however, is calling for your head on a silver platter. They claim you have enslaved a Soulbound to mimic the divine. I told them you were far too lazy for such an ambitious sin.
However, to settle the matter, I am sending my own attaché, along with a tithe-collector from the Church, to inspect your... 'innovations.' They will arrive in three days. If they find anything other than a Prince living in quiet, humble exile, Ashbourne will be purged.
Do be a good boy and hide your toys, Olivier. I would hate to have to execute you myself. It would be such a waste of a good tailor.
— Julian Cinderfall
Olivier crumpled the parchment. "Three days."
"We can't hide it," Gaston wailed. "The soldiers have already seen the light! The smiths are talking! The whole town knows!"
"I'm not hiding it," Olivier said, his mind racing. "Julian thinks he's sending an inspection. He thinks he's the one with the power."
He turned to the table, grabbing a fresh sheet of parchment. He began drawing furiously—not the dynamo, but something smaller. Something portable. Something that looked like a very long, heavy tube with a handle.
"Gaston, forget the waterwheel for now. We don't have time for a power grid."
"Then what are we doing, Your Highness?"
Olivier looked at the carbonized bamboo, then at the heavy iron rods the soldiers were dragging into the courtyard.
"Julian wants to see a miracle? I'll give him one. But he's going to learn that lightning doesn't just provide light. It also provides... perspective."
"What are you building?" Elara asked, stepping closer to the drawing.
Olivier didn't look up. His pen scratched against the paper with a violent, frantic energy.
"The first 'Diplomatic Tool' of the new age," he muttered. "I call it a Capacitor-Discharge Rail. But for the Bishop, we'll just call it the Hand of God."
He looked at Elara, his eyes narrowed. "Three days, Elara. We have three days to turn this tower into a fortress that can defy a Kingdom."
The Fourth Prince stood up, the crumpled letter from his brother falling into the fireplace. As the flames licked the royal seal, Olivier felt a strange, familiar sensation. It wasn't the fear of a prince being hunted. It was the thrill of an engineer with a deadline.
"Let them come," he whispered. "I've been working in the dark long enough. It's time to see who survives the glare."