Maria didn't just stand up; she changed. The moment she accepted my hand, the desperate, broken girl vanished, replaced by a woman who finally had a target for her grief.
"I have a dress," she said, her voice regaining that sharp, noble edge. "But it's buried in a cellar three blocks from here. I didn't think I'd ever need to look like a lady again."
"Keep it ready," I told her. "But for now, we need a place where the Royal Guard won't dare to knock."
Every great man needs a base, but I didn't want a castle on a hill. Castles are easy to siege. They're easy to see. I wanted a fortress that lived in the cracks of the city, something that the nobility would step over without ever realizing it was there. I chose the Old Tannery in Sector 7. It was a massive, rotting building that smelled of chemicals and salt, surrounded by narrow alleys that were a death trap for anyone who didn't know the turns.
As we walked through the heavy iron doors of the tannery, the shadows seemed to stretch toward me.
[System Note: Territory Marked. Dragon's Domain: Level 1.]
[Feature Unlocked: Presence Concealment (Allies within the domain are harder to detect).]
The inside was filled with men who looked like they'd already been buried once. These were the "Discards"—veteran soldiers of Aethelgard who had lost limbs or been poisoned by mana-leakage during the border wars. Once they were no longer useful as meat shields, the Kingdom had tossed them into the slums without a copper to their names.
"Who's the girl, Ghost?" one of them asked. He was sitting on a crate, his left trouser leg pinned up where his knee should have been. His name was Jax, a former sergeant of the Iron Vanguard.
"A friend," I said. "And the woman who's going to make sure you never go hungry again."
I walked over to Jax. His stump was red and angry, an old mana-burn that refused to heal. The Kingdom's mages could have fixed it in seconds, but they didn't waste "holy light" on commoners.
"Let me see the leg, Jax," I said.
"It's a lost cause, kid. The mana-rot has settled in the bone."
I didn't argue. I pulled out a small mortar and pestle and began grinding a mix of Common Thistle and crushed charcoal. To anyone watching, it looked like simple slum medicine. But as I worked, I let a tiny, controlled pulse of Dragon Essence flow from my fingertips into the paste.
[Skill Used: Sovereign's Touch (Minor).]
"This is going to sting," I warned.
I applied the paste to his wound. Jax hissed, his hands gripping the edges of the crate so hard the wood splintered. But then, his eyes went wide. The angry, purple veins of mana-rot began to recede. The skin, which had been weeping for months, suddenly closed and turned a healthy, dull pink.
"What... what did you do?" Jax whispered, moving the stump without wincing for the first time in years. "That's not herbalism. That's a miracle."
"It's just chemistry, Jax," I lied, keeping my voice flat. "The right herbs at the right time. Your body did the rest."
Over the next few hours, I went through the room. I "cleaned" infections, reset bones that had knit crookedly, and gave these broken men something they hadn't felt in a decade: the ability to fight back. I didn't give them magic—I gave them their humanity back.
By the time the sun started to bleed over the horizon, I had twenty men standing tall. They weren't a disorganized mob; they were a unit.
"Why help us?" Jax asked, standing on a makeshift wooden leg I'd helped him carve, though he was moving with a fluidness that suggested his nerves were perfectly healed. "Nobody does anything for free in Sector 7."
"I'm not doing it for free," I said, looking him in the eye. "I'm building a world where men like Albert don't get to decide who lives and who dies. I want peace, Jax. But to get it, I need a sword that won't break."
"You have mine," Jax said, hitting his chest with a fist. One by one, the others followed.
Maria stepped forward then, holding a crumpled piece of parchment she'd intercepted from a courier earlier that evening. Her face was pale, her jaw set tight.
"Jayden," she said, using my name in front of the men for the first time. "You need to see this."
I took the paper. It was an official Royal Proclamation, stamped with the Prince's golden seal.
"A Gala of Remembrance: Celebrating the Heroic Sacrifice of the Fallen Apprentice, Jayden Reed, and the Victory of the Abyssal Expedition."
I read the words twice. The bastard wasn't just moving on; he was using my "death" as a PR stunt. He was going to stand in front of the King and the High Mages, drink expensive wine, and tell a fake story about how I died bravely so he could boost his popularity before the upcoming succession vote.
"He's selling tickets," Maria hissed. "Five hundred gold pieces a head to watch a magical reconstruction of the 'battle' where you saved his life. He's making a fortune off your ghost."
A low growl started in the back of my throat. It wasn't human. The shadows in the tannery seemed to thicken, pressing against the walls as my Essence flared.
Albert hadn't just tried to kill me; he was currently dancing on my grave to make himself a king.
"When is it?" I asked.
"Tomorrow night," Maria replied. "The Royal Hall will be packed with every influential noble in Aethelgard. Security will be at its peak—Wards, Tier 5 mages, and the Royal Guard."
I looked at my men. They were looking back at me, their eyes bright with a new kind of hunger. They had been the Kingdom's trash for too long. They wanted to see the "Golden Boy" bleed.
"Maria," I said. "You said you have that dress?"
"I do."
"Good. Get it ready. You'll be entering through the front door as the 'disgraced' Lady Valerene. They'll expect you to beg for your status back. Let them think that."
I turned to Jax and the others. "The rest of you... we're not going there to kill everyone. Not yet. We're going there to show them that the dark has teeth. We're going to let them know that the 'Hero' they're toasting to is very much alive."
I picked up the obsidian blade, The Remorseful Fang. It hummed against my palm, the black metal reflecting the dim light of the tannery.
"We've spent three months hiding in the dirt," I said, my voice dropping to a whisper that carried to every corner of the room. "We've spent three months being ghosts. But tomorrow, the Ghost becomes a Sovereign."
I looked at the blackened sword and then back at my small, loyal army.
"We're going to a party," I said, a cold, sharp smile spreading across my face. "Dress in your best shadows. It's time we showed the Prince what a real sacrifice looks like."
Jax grinned, a jagged, terrifying expression. "What's the plan, boss?"
"We let him give his speech," I said. "We let him tell his lies. And right when he's at the peak of his glory, right when he thinks he's untouchable..."
I drove the obsidian blade into the wooden table, the wood splintering under the force.
"...I'm going to make him wish he'd stayed in the mud with me."