Reinventing Magic: An Inventor's Tale-Chapter 96: The Weight of Crowns

The words hung in the air like a blade unsheathed—’Duke’s engineers’.

Edric’s fingers twitched toward his sword, the instinctive reaction of a man who had spent too long in the viper’s nest of royal politics. His mind raced, stitching together the implications:

’Marveil’s wealth. Bryndis’ ambition. A flying ship. Dwarven allies. And now, the Duke’s own craftsmen reinforcing this barony’s bones.’

This was no mere alliance. This was something far more dangerous.

Kael observed the herald’s reaction with the detached focus of a scientist noting variables. The man’s pulse had spiked—visible in the slight flutter of his carotid. His pupils dilated, betraying the moment his arrogance cracked into realization.

’Good.’

"Felix," Kael said, without breaking eye contact with Edric, "gather everyone in the grand hall. We’ll address the council shortly."

Felix bowed and melted into the crowd, his robes whispering against the cobblestones.

Kael turned back to the herald. "Lord Edric, my apologies for keeping you waiting. There’s much to discuss—privately. If you’d accompany me to my study?"

The invitation was a courtesy in form only. The air between them thickened, charged with the unspoken understanding that refusal was not an option.

Edric’s jaw tightened, but he inclined his head. "Lead the way, Baron."

---

The manor’s study was a sanctum of ordered chaos. Blueprints weighted by enchanted stones sprawled across the central table, their inked lines shifting in real-time as construction progressed elsewhere in the territory.

Shelves groaned under treatises on arcane physics, craftmen-forged metallurgy, and agricultural engineering—subjects no noble of Ardania should prioritize, let alone master.

And at the room’s heart, the Arc Nexus pulsed softly where it rested on Kael’s gauntlet, its nanites threading through the metal like living silver.

Edric’s gaze locked onto it. "An interesting artifact."

"A tool," Kael corrected, gesturing to a chair. "Harold, tea for our guest."

The steward materialized from the shadows, silent and deliberate, carrying a tray with practiced grace. The porcelain gleamed, flawless, and the rising steam carried the crisp scent of mountain herbs—a subtle test.

Would the herald decline, exposing his paranoia, or accept and yield a fraction of control?

Edric took the cup, his grip steady. Yet his knuckles whitened as Harold poured without ever touching the pot, the liquid bending effortlessly to his will through mana manipulation.

’So. The steward is a spellcaster too. But how is he casting without an incantation?’

Before Kael departed on his journey for Eldersilver, he had entrusted his key vassals with a ring—an artifact of his own creation. Embedded within was a small spirit crystal, a reservoir of carefully stored spells, waiting to be unleashed with mere thought. One of them was telekinesis.

Kael leaned back, fingers steepled. "You’re here because the Crown learned of the ’Skyward Sentinel’."

No pretense. No deflection. The directness made Edric’s eyelid twitch.

"A flying vessel," the herald said carefully, "is a strategic asset. One that, by rights, should be presented to His Majesty for the realm’s defense."

Kael smiled. It did not reach his eyes. "And if I told you it’s the least of what Bryndis holds?"

The silence that followed was a blade balanced on its edge.

Edric set his cup down with deliberate precision. "Baron Bryndis. You are summoned to the capital. The King’s patience is not infinite."

"Nor is time." Kael’s voice was low, measured—the kind that pressed against the walls, demanding attention. "Tell me, Lord Herald—has your Crown ever studied the ruins of the Ancients?"

A misdirection? A trap? Edric’s thoughts raced for footing. "Irrelevant. You will—"

"Five thousand years ago," Kael continued, cutting through the herald’s words, "a civilization far greater than ours fell to a cataclysm they called ’the Rift.’ Monsters poured through. Cities burned. In their desperation, they built weapons—constructs forged to fight back."

He lifted his gauntlet. The Arc Nexus pulsed, nanites coiling into the shimmering outline of a towering construct—’Project Golem,’ scaled down to a ghostly miniature.

"The Rift is reopening. In four years, the first breaches will form. And Ardania is unprepared." His gaze locked onto Edric, sharp and unwavering.

"I gave the King his chance to prepare when I first presented the evidence. And what did he do?" His voice hardened. "He sent spies."

Edric’s breath caught. The projection’s details were too precise, too ’real’ to be mere fabrication. Acknowledging that meant conceding the Crown’s ignorance—an admission he could not afford.

"You expect me to believe," he said slowly, measuring his words, "that you alone stand between Ardania and annihilation?"

"No." Kael’s eyes flicked to the window, where Sentinel’s hull gleamed in the distance. "I expect you to report this conversation verbatim to King Julius. And then I expect him to do what tyrants always do when cornered by truth."

He leaned forward, the Arc Nexus flaring.

Edric stood abruptly, his chair scraping stone. "This is treason."

"This is ’inevitable’." Kael rose, the plates of his boots clicking against the floor. "You have two choices, Lord Herald. Return to your King with warnings of my ’insolence’—and watch as his fear drives him to reckless action. Or..."

He extended a hand. The nanites rippled, reshaping into a flawless replica of the royal seal.

"Stay. Witness what Bryndis is building. And decide whether Ardania’s future lies with a tyrant clinging to his throne... or with those preparing to save it."

The herald’s pulse roared in his ears. Every instinct screamed to flee, to rally the royal legions and raze this nest of heresy to the ground.

But then he looked past Kael—at the blueprints, the Nexus, the cold certainty in the Baron’s gaze—and something far colder than fear settled in his gut.

’This man does not bluff.’

And that made him more dangerous than any rebel lord in history.

’I need to report this to the King.’

He made his choice.

---

The moment Edric’s polished boots left Bryndis soil, the air itself seemed to exhale.

Harold watched from the manor’s highest balcony as the royal herald’s retinue vanished down the southern road in a cloud of dust and indignation. The steward’s gnarled fingers tightened around the railing, the veins standing stark against weathered skin.

"My lord," he said without turning, "was that wise?"

Behind him, Kael stood framed in the arched doorway, the Arc Nexus humming softly at his wrist. Alice and Astra flanked him like twin sentinels—one serene, one stone-faced.

"No," Kael admitted. "But necessary. We’re out of time for politics."

The wind carried the distant clang of hammers from the new district, the rhythmic pulse of a territory building itself into something unprecedented.

Somewhere below, Durnek bellowed at his dwarven crew, their forges already spitting molten rune-steel into the twilight.

Harold turned, his sharp eyes missing nothing. "Julius will come for us now. With everything he has."

"Let him." Kael’s gauntlet flickered, nanites swirling into a miniature projection of Bryndis—its walls thrumming with mana, its skies patrolled by Sentinel’s sleek silhouette. "Every soldier he diverts here is one less between the Rift and oblivion."

A beat passed. Somewhere in the gardens below, a nightbloom opened with an audible pop, its petals glowing faintly in the dusk.

"Grand hall," Kael said at last. "It’s time."

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