The estate was covered in snow.
It had been eighteen days since last Alaric saw his house.
Alaric touched the steel gate and opened it slowly without making any noise.
His garden green grass has been covered by a layer of snow.
Alaric looked at it, and moved forward.
When he reached the main gate, he stopped and calmly knocked it.
He could clearly see smoke coming out from the vent with a gorgeous smell.
After a moment, Alaric could clearly hear the voice of footsteps coming.
With a click, the door swung open.
The one who opened the door was none other than Alaric's butler Kale.
Kale looked at him as if he had seen something that should not exist anymore.
Kale's hand remained frozen on the bronze doorknob, his knuckles turning white as his fingers locked in place.
The butler, usually a model of absolute aristocratic poise, looked as if the very foundation of the estate had cracked beneath his leather shoes.
His jaw slackened, his eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated shock as they darted from Alaric's dirt-streaked face to the jagged tears in his expensive coat.
A heavy, suffocating silence fell between them, broken only by the crackle of the fireplace deeper inside the grand foyer.
"Sir... you?" Kale's voice was barely a raspy whisper, stripped of its usual professional cadence. He took a half step back, his breath hitching as he stared at the master he had presumed dead for nearly three weeks.
"How? You were supposed to..."
"Well, you can recognize me, so that's good," Alaric cut him off smoothly, his voice flat and entirely devoid of the emotional tempest that had brought him to this doorstep.
He stepped past the paralyzed butler without waiting for an invitation, the freezing air of the courtyard swirling into the warm, scented interior of the mansion.
He unbuttoned the top constraint of his coat, the weight of the last eighteen days settling heavily into his bones.
"I'll answer you," Alaric added, not even turning around as he walked toward the grand staircase, his boots leaving dark, melted patches of snow on the polished marble floor.
"But not now. I'm tired, man."
"Well....I was preparing food for myself you can have it assuming you are hunger sir ?" Kale said while closing the gate.
"Indeed I'm hungry and also give me the wine of teal charm, it's been a while since I last drink it."
Alaric said while comfortably sitting on the couch.
Kale nodded and entered the kitchen.
Finally, I feel like I am still alive. From that goddamn Vath Hills to back to my estate feels like forever.
After eating... I'll just go to sleep in my room and after that I'll start to execute my masterpiece.
My room... yes yes yes... I remember it, how could I forget it? Tylor told me he had left something so I can become an arcanist. But I am already one, though I should definitely check it.
After one hour, Alaric was lying in his comfortable bed after bathing and eating. Beside him, a parchment was there.
Alaric hadn't read the parchment yet, but this time when he entered his room he could clearly feel a conduit was present there.
So... there is no such thing except this parchment, which creates two possibilities first, Tylor created something using a conduit and it may have a time limit, or second, he never created anything.
Alaric finally grabbed the parchment and started to read it.
In the parchment, Tylor had written in a beautiful handwriting.
Alaric read it loud enough so he could subconsciously understand it.
"Tylor here if you are reading this then probably you are already an Arcanist....so there are things i must tell you because that voice is a player who doesn't tell the rules. So first thing don't be terrified or feel that you only suffered the second and third tasks are same for everyone...only first task is unique according to you and it's always easy."
"Now see , Don't forget to come out in moon atleast three days in thirty days after becoming arcanist if you are asking why ? Then I can only tell you once I meet you again personally. And second thing don't try to fight any arcanist at this point because you don't even know about Conduit medicines...when you are wounded by conduit energy in any ways only conduit medicines can heal you."
"And yes they are expensive i can't tell everything here call me through phone booth , my telephone number is 291011, see you soon."
The first thing after reading the parchment, Alaric remembered a quote.
If there is need, there is supply, if there is supply there is market, if there is market there is business.
But this doesn't matter here.
The words on the parchment blurred together for a second as Alaric slowly let the piece of paper drop onto his silk bedsheets.
The dry laughter that had bubbled up from his chest settled into a profound, suffocating quiet.
The old axiom of his trade echoed in his mind like a holy scripture.
Conduit medicines.
The aristocracy had weaponized reality itself, but they were still bound by the laws of consumption.
If arcanists bled energy, and only expensive, regulated alchemy could patch them up, then the entire supernatural hierarchy wasn't just a system of power, it was an economy.
And no matter how many gods or nobles controlled the currency, no one understood the flow of an economy better than Alaric Xyle.
But Alaric didn't want money anymore.
Volt had broken his body, but he hadn't touched the ruthless architecture of Alaric's mind.
In fact, by forcing him into the void, Volt had inadvertently handed him the keys to a completely untouched ledger.
Throwing the heavy velvet blanket aside, Alaric stood up. His fully restored legs felt solid underneath him, and the foreign, subterranean thrum of his new heart pulsed with a rhythmic, cold reassurance.
He walked over to the dark mahogany desk situated right beside his bed, the polished wood reflecting the amber glow of the gas lamps.
He pulled out a blank sheet of heavy linen paper and dipped a fountain pen into the black inkwell.
His right hand, the hand that had been a blunt, fingerless stump only hours prior, gripped the pen with an icy, flawless precision.
He began to write.
At first, the ink bled into a chaotic mess of frantic gibberish.
Numbers, fragmented names from his past, calculations of grain shipments from the Western Sector, and half-remembered ledger entries from before his fall rolled out across the page in a wild, unreadable script.
But as the pen scratched violently against the fiber, the gibberish began to organize itself.
Beneath the scrawled chaos, Alaric's hand grew steady. He began to draw.
First, he made a stark, triangular diagram representing the flow of wealth between the Western aristocracy and the underground market of the lower sectors.
Beside it, he sketched a jagged, intersecting matrix mapping out the known associates of Volt, lined with calculated question marks where the missing intelligence lay.
Finally, he drew a circular, heavily inked glyph that mirrored the sharp, precise boundary of the void-space currently resting between his own ribs the anchor point of his new reality.
He wasn't just planning a murder, he was structuring a hostile takeover.
For someone who didn't know who Alaric was, they might think this was a plan for capturing a market or establishing a business, but it was something only Alaric could understand.
One thing was certain, it was not related to business.
Alaric laid the pen down, the dark ink glistening under the lamplight.
He leaned back into the leather chair, slowly lacing his fully restored fingers together, resting them gently beneath his chin in a posture of absolute, calculating dominance.
The purplish hue of Singularity seemed to flash just beneath his skin for a fraction of a heartbeat.
He stared at the web of ink before him, a cold, ruthless smirk finally breaking across his face.
"Masterpiece," Alaric whispered to the empty room.
"Kale!" Alaric's voice wasn't loud, but it carried a sharp, unyielding weight that sliced cleanly through the quiet of the second-floor landing.
Downstairs, a chair scraped against the floorboards. Within moments, the crisp, hurried footsteps of the butler ascended the grand staircase.
Kale appeared at the doorway, his posture completely straight, though his eyes still held a lingering, uneasy curiosity about the man sitting before him.
"You called, Sir?"
"Bring me the logs," Alaric commanded, not looking up from his desk. He kept his eyes locked on the dark ink diagrams drying under the amber lamp.
"I want a complete, itemized balance sheet of everything that has happened with Glow and Shine and Red bamboo over the last eighteen days. Every lost contract, every frozen shipment, every sudden dip in revenue."
Kale blinked, slightly caught off guard by the immediate demand for ledgers. "Right now, Sir? The hour is quite late—"
"Now, Kale," Alaric interrupted, his tone flattening into a cold, dangerous calm.
"And do not just bring the internal deficits.I want the external data.Cross-reference our losses with our competitors. Find out which merchant houses scooped up our bleeding clients."
He continued. "Look for the ones who used highly aggressive, unethical shortcuts to bypass standard trade agreements while I was gone and which affected my company in any possible way. And most importantly... find out which of those opportunists have strings leading back to Lord Volt."
The butler's expression shifted from confusion to a grim understanding.
He bowed his head deeply. "It will take some time to compile the underground trade rumors and ledger adjustments, Sir. But I will have it ready."
"You have an hour," Alaric said softly.
True to his word, exactly one hour later, Kale quietly re-entered the study. He carried a thick, leather-bound portfolio containing several freshly inked sheets of parchment. The ink was still slightly tacky, smelling heavily of iron and solvent.
He placed the balance sheet directly on the mahogany desk, stepping back into the shadows.
"The damage to Red Bamboo is extensive, Sir. With you presumed dead, they didn't waste a single day."
"You may go."
Alaric picked up the sheets, his newly restored fingers turning the pages with a practiced, rhythmic flick.
His eyes tore through the numbers, but he wasn't looking at the loss of gold coins or silver circles with the grief of a merchant.
He was looking at them as a map of his enemies' movements.
The sheet didn't just show a loss of capital, it showed a coordinated, predatory harvest.
While he was floating in the absolute silence of the void, Volt's shadow had been guiding the hands of specific high-tier businessmen in the Western Sector to dismantle Alaric's empire piece by piece.
They had used illegal seizures, falsified debts, and pure intimidation to swallow his distribution routes.
A low, subterranean thrum resonated faintly behind Alaric's ribs, a quiet reminder of the power waiting to be unleashed.
He picked up his fountain pen, dipping it once more into the black inkwell.
His eyes locked onto three specific names at the bottom of the ledger men who had grown obscenely wealthy over the last eighteen days by eating his remains, all of them safely tucked under Volt's protective umbrella.
Slowly, deliberately, Alaric drew a heavy, thick black circle around each of the three names.
The nib of the pen dug so deeply into the linen paper that it nearly tore the fiber.
He stared at the three marked targets, a cold, ruthless smirk twisting his lips in the dim gaslight.
The hostile takeover of the Western Sector was about to begin, and it would start by bleeding the men who thought they had inherited his ghost.