Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

Seraphina promised softly, resting her cheek against his shoulder. ”I was just looking at the moon. I’m not going anywhere.”

Kaelus held her, oblivious to the ancient ghost of her past that had just visited the balcony, completely focused on the only thing that mattered to his future.

The cool, fragrant night breeze of the Imperial Gardens swept across the deserted marble balcony, rustling the heavy silk curtains that Duke Kaelus von Nacht had violently torn from their brass rods mere moments ago.

The air was entirely silent, save for the distant, muffled strains of orchestral music drifting up from the grand ballroom below.

To the untrained eye, the balcony was completely empty.

But the physical realm is merely a canvas, and true masters of the arcane know how to paint themselves out of the picture.

A faint, almost imperceptible ripple distorted the moonlight near the grand stone pillar. It looked like a heat mirage shimmering over a summer road.

The ripple expanded, the ambient mana of the Palace actively bending, folding, and rearranging itself to accommodate a truth it had been forced to ignore.

The concealment spell dissolved.

The mysterious stranger with hair like absolute midnight and eyes like the deepest, lightless void stepped forward from the space he had never actually left.

He had not teleported or fled from the scene.

He had simply wrapped himself in a fold of spatial invisibility, standing less than three feet away from the terrifying Archduke of the North the entire time.

Roan Charte, the Supreme Archmage of the East and the undisputed, utterly chaotic Grandmaster of the Aethelgard Mage Tower, leaned casually against the marble balustrade.

He crossed his long legs at the ankles, a low, incredibly rich, amused chuckle vibrating in his chest.

”Fascinating,” Roan whispered to the empty air, his pitch-black eyes gleaming with a mixture of profound respect and wicked entertainment.

He mentally replayed the scene that had just unfolded.

When Kaelus von Nacht had burst onto the balcony, radiating an aura of suffocating bloodlust, Roan had fully expected a battle.

The Archduke’s reputation as the Reaper was not exaggerated; the crushing density of Kaelus’s mana was enough to suffocate a lesser mage on the spot.

But Kaelus had not attacked.

Roan had watched from behind his invisible veil as Kaelus dropped his priceless, legendary sword onto the marble floor without a second thought, completely abandoning his martial dignity to drop to his knees and scoop the tiny child into a desperate embrace.

And then, just before Kaelus had carried Seraphina away, the Archduke had done something that sent a thrill of adrenaline down Roan’s spine.

Kaelus had paused.

The Reaper had slowly, deliberately turned his head, his glowing, violet eyes locking exactly onto the empty space where Roan was standing hidden.

Kaelus couldn’t see him.

The concealment spell was flawless, woven from the highest echelon of spatial theory. But Kaelus had felt him.

The Archduke’s predatory instincts had detected the microscopic displacement of air, the faint, lingering scent of ozone.

Kaelus had glared directly into Roan’s invisible eyes.

The Archduke had not drawn his sword again.

He had not shouted, simply narrowed his glowing eyes, projecting a silent, focused, lethal wave of pure killing intent directly at the empty air.

It was a promise, carved in ice and blood: I know you are there. I am choosing not to slaughter you right now because my daughter is in my arms and I will not frighten her with your blood. But if you ever approach her again, I will tear the fabric of reality apart to find you.

Roan let out another soft, breathy laugh, shaking his head.

”An overprotective watchdog with the bite of a leviathan,” Roan mused, resting his chin in his pale hand, looking out over the glittering Imperial Gardens. ”He sensed a Grandmaster’s spatial fold and chose restraint for the sake of the child’s emotional stability. How entirely, wonderfully unexpected. The Reaper is a domesticated father.”

But Roan’s amusement slowly, inevitably faded, replaced by the heavy, crushing, familiar tide of the sorrow that had anchored his soul for over a decade.

His black eyes dropped to the spot on the marble floor where Seraphina had stood.

He remembered the shape of her face.

He remembered the exact, impossible shade of her hair, the exact same midnight black that adorned his own head.

And her eyes.

Those dark, bottomless, beautiful eyes.

In an Empire where the nobility prided themselves on vibrant, jewel-toned genetics, finding someone with the exact, recessive, ancient markers of his own bloodline was a statistical impossibility.

Unless it wasn’t a coincidence.

’Cecil,’ Roan’s mind whispered the name, the syllables tasting like ash and starlight on his tongue.

For countless years, Roan had searched the continent.

He had used every scrying pool, consulted every ancient oracle, and torn through the restricted archives of the world, searching for a single, solitary trace of the woman who had stolen his heart and vanished into the void.

He had found nothing. She had been erased from the canvas of existence.

And tonight, a six-year-old girl holding a folded paper duck in her pocket had simply waddled onto a balcony, carrying the exact, undeniable echo of the woman he loved.

Roan raised his hand, pressing his long, pale fingers against his own chest, feeling the frantic, uncharacteristic hammering of his heart.

His instincts, the primal, magical intuition that had elevated him to the position of Supreme Archmage were deafeningly screaming at him.

This child was the key. She was the anchor. Whether she was a reincarnation, a descendant, or a metaphysical anomaly, Seraphina von Nacht possessed the thread that would lead him back to Cecil.

”I cannot simply walk away,” Roan whispered to the moon. ”Not when the universe has finally blinked.”

Suddenly, the ambient mana behind Roan violently twisted.

It was not a smooth, elegant spatial fold like the one Roan utilized. It was a frantic, highly stressed, brutally efficient tear in the fabric of reality.