The Stepstones. Cutthroat Isle.
"Lord Jon, why did you ask him that? About the slaves?"
Narsas watched the Tyroshi envoy, Jared Lockner, disappear down the hall before turning to Jon with a puzzled expression.
"The Lord was testing the Archon's soul," a voice rasped before Jon could answer.
Narsas turned to see Kapo. The pirate looked absurdly out of place; he was still dressed in his salt-stained reaver's leathers, but he was cradling a book with a sky-blue cover as if it were a holy relic. The sight of a man known for crushing skulls now holding a delicate grimoire created a jarring, surreal contrast.
Narsas felt a prickle of envy. He knew what that book represented. It was the "Blizzard" grimoire Jon had retrieved from the North—a vessel of the very power that had shattered the ice-demons.
After returning from the Wall, Jon had discovered the System provided "Temporary Authorization Permits" for the Staff of Recovery and the Blizzard grimoire. While the primary Mage and Elementalist modules remained corrupted and locked, these permits allowed Jon to bypass the restrictions—at the steep cost of 2,000 Soul Energy units per scroll.
Jon had chosen Kapo for the experiment. Among his inner circle, only the pirate possessed a Mana stat of 2. Because the System hadn't officially "unlocked" the Mage class, Kapo wasn't a wizard; he was a user with a hijacked connection. The permit functioned like a tether; if Narsas used his Rogue skills, he could theoretically steal the authorization right off Kapo's soul.
The "Blizzard" spell had been altered by the local laws of magic. Instead of a simple snowstorm, it manifested as a volley of crystalline ice-shards. In recent tests, Jon found the effective range was fifty meters, with a three-meter kill-zone. It could flash-freeze five men instantly, making them brittle enough to shatter like glass, though the potency faded further down the line. The book held twenty "charges." Jon had used two for testing, leaving eighteen.
"Narsas," Jon said, leaning back in his throne, "we can never be true partners with slavers. We fight for the freedom of all men—under the gaze of the Gods."
(And as they find freedom, I find my kingdom,) Jon added silently.
He turned to Kapo. "How is the training? No more fainting fits?"
"I am mastering it, My Lord," Kapo replied, his face uncharacteristically solemn. "The meditations you taught me... the way of emptying the mind... it allows me to hold the cold without it freezing my heart. I feel I can control the surge now."
During the first test, the mental strain had knocked Kapo unconscious for hours. Jon, drawing on half-remembered "Zen" techniques from his past life, had devised a mental discipline for the pirate. To his surprise, the crude "East-meets-West" meditation was working.
Hours later, the sun dipped below the horizon, and the Pirate Fortress fell into the quiet rhythm of the night.
In his private quarters, Jon blew out the whale-oil lamp. The day had been a marathon of logistics and diplomacy, and his eyes burned from hours of reading by candlelight. As a ruler with no one above him, every decision—from the price of timber to the deployment of scouts—rested on his shoulders. The weight of responsibility was far heavier than any sword.
Because he lacked a "bed-mate"—partly due to his lingering modern hang-ups about hygiene and partly due to a lack of trust—he slept alone.
Outside, the sea was restless. Deep beneath the waves, an unnatural current moved toward the shore. It was a mass of shadow, dark as squid ink, that seemed to repulse the very life of the ocean. Fish fled in terror as the darkness drifted toward the beach.
SPLASH.
A black, viscous mass the size of a seal pulled itself onto the white sands. The patrolling Chainbreakers, their eyes adjusted to the moonlight, saw nothing but the shifting shadows of the tide.
A-ro-la... Ka-ka...
In a distant, lightless place, ancient syllables were whispered into the void. On the beach, the "ink" began to twitch. It rose from the sand, elongating into a humanoid shape. It lacked skin, hair, or bone; it was a silhouette given weight. Two points of baleful, crimson light flared where eyes should be.
The Shadow scanned the fortress. It moved with a terrifying fluidness—dispersing into mist when touched by moonlight, then snapping back into a solid form when it reached the dark cast by the walls. It didn't walk; it flowed through the darkness.
Within minutes, the shadow reached the window of Jon's bedroom. The lace curtains fluttered as the ink-like entity slipped through the gap, a silent, crimson-eyed predator in the room of a sleeping king.
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