General POV

Chronicles Newspaper Headquarters

Kaeden didn't hear half of what the boy said; he'd stopped listening the moment he heard "Instance Seven." Every idiot with a quill and ambition thought the lower brackets hid a miracle. They never did. The last kid who begged for Instance coverage ended up crying over vendor sales data, and Kaeden had no patience left for that brand of disappointment. This kid's voice carried that same edge of nervous fire. He wasn't a kid, obviously, but to Kaeden they were all kids, he'd long hit his first century after all.

The newsroom around them was full of reporters scrambling between desks, crystals flickering with incoming feeds from the upper brackets. Kaeden had built this empire of information from nothing, watched it grow from a two-desk operation to the kingdom's premier news source. He'd covered three wars, seven royal scandals, and more tournament upsets than he could count. Every story bled the same after a while.

"Sir, if I could just explain—"

"You can try," Kaeden said, not lifting his gaze from the crystal reports hovering over the desk. "You've got ten seconds before I start charging for the air you're wasting."

"I want to cover Instance Seven."

Kaeden looked up, and the stare did all the work. "You want to cover garbage. Why?"

"Prince Theodore's competing."

"The one they buried in that bracket so he'd stop embarrassing the crown?"

"He's changed," Simon said.

"No, he hasn't. You want to think he has because you're young and soft. You think redemption sells. It doesn't. Scandal sells. Blood sells. You don't even understand what you're chasing. So unless the prince is banging some noble's daughter we can either sensationalize or not depending on whether their family gives us enough money or threats to keep our mouths shut, don't bother."

Kaeden watched the boy's eyes flicker. Hope, then confusion, then the stubborn glint that made rookies think they were exceptional. He'd seen it so many times it felt mechanical.

He'd break the pride early, save them the pain later. But this one didn't back down. That annoyed him more than it impressed him.

"Sir, I've done the research," Simon said. "Some of the competitors—"

"I don't care who they are," Kaeden cut in. "If they mattered, they wouldn't be in Seven"

The silence that followed was long enough to sour the air. Kaeden leaned back. "You done?"

"I can find a story," Simon said.

Kaeden smiled thinly. "Then find one before the instance even starts tomorrow. Moving pictures, exclusive, something that sells. Do that, and Instance Seven is yours. Fail, and you're back on vendor stall duty until you quit. Deal?"

He didn't wait for a response; he'd already marked it settled in his head. No one found a story in a waiting area. The challenge was a leash disguised as a gift. The boy would choke on it by morning. Kaeden turned away, satisfied, his irritation replaced by a small, cold amusement. He'd almost forgotten how easy it was to crush enthusiasm.

Simon didn't feel crushed. He felt cornered, and that was worse.

The walk to the staging grounds took forty minutes through the capital's morning rush. Merchants hawked tournament memorabilia—cheap crystals claiming to hold "exclusive footage," poorly painted portraits of favored competitors, betting slips that promised fortune but delivered poverty. Simon passed three different bookmakers, each shouting odds for the upper brackets. Nobody mentioned Instance Seven.

Kaeden's words replayed in his head, but underneath all the humiliation he felt was heat burning in his chest. The man didn't even listen. He didn't even consider the possibility that he could be wrong. Simon wanted to prove him wrong so badly it made his hands shake.

He walked fast, not thinking about direction, just moving. The newsroom noise blurred around him.

Simon arrived at the staging grounds with the same hope that got him humiliated the day before, but it was already bleeding out of him by the minute. There were just competitors lounging around, eating, napping, pretending to stretch. There was no story. He'd been here four hours with a recording crystal in hand, chasing stories. Every time he thought he saw tension, it fizzled into nothing. Every time he heard laughter, it was from the other reporters covering better brackets.

He'd stopped pretending he didn't see their smirks.

He tried to ignore the thoughts that came next, but they pressed in anyway. Rent was due in three days. His mother's medicine would run out next week. If he failed this, he'd be done. He could already hear Kaeden saying it in a calm, dismissive, and certain tone "I told you so."

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He turned off the crystal and slumped on the nearest bench. "Kaeden was right," he muttered. "This is career suicide. There's nothing here."

The crowd shifted somewhere ahead, and Simon didn't look at first. He thought it was just more nobles moving through, but then he noticed people parting for someone. He saw Jason Kormack at the center of it, walking through like he owned gravity. Even Simon knew that name. The man who'd flattened a Rank 4 noble. The one everyone said would win Instance Seven without breaking a sweat.

Jason stopped. And when Simon followed his gaze, he realized who he was looking at.

Theodore Lockheart.

The noise died out without anyone saying a word. Jason looked him up and down slowly. The silence was long enough that even Simon forgot to breathe. Then Jason said, "Your Highness. Good to see you. I'd heard you'd grown stronger, but I needed to see it with my own eyes." He paused. "Indeed you have. This should be interesting."

No one knew if it was respect or mockery.

Theodore smiled lightly. "Indeed."

The crowd held its breath for three more heartbeats. A few nobles in the back whispered behind silk fans, their words carrying just enough to be heard—"The prince's stance has changed," and "Look at his eyes." Even the other Instance Seven competitors had stopped pretending not to watch. They all knew what this meant. If Jason acknowledged Theodore as worth his attention, then maybe, this bracket wasn't the career graveyard everyone assumed. Or maybe Jason was just being polite to royalty. Nobody could tell, and that uncertainty was electric.

After three seconds of eye contact with Theodore, Jason nodded once and left.

Simon checked his crystal, hands trembling as he saw the light. The entire moment was there. He rewound it and watched it again. "This is it," he whispered. "Rivalry Between Royalty and Rising Star. Prince and Prodigy—Collision Course in Instance Seven." The words formed themselves. He didn't even feel like he was writing them; they just came.

He ran straight to the nearest Chronicles dispatch crystal, nearly tripping over a spell-line in the pavement. He slammed the crystal into the receptacle and started dictating.

The translation enchantments etched his words in real time. He refined, edited, shaped the chaos into a headline worth bleeding for. Then he sent it.

Half an hour later, the Chronicles crystals flared across the capital. Within minutes, the moving picture played above every evening edition. Readers touched the headline, and the moment replayed. The capital went mad.

In taverns, men argued until the tables shook. "Jason was threatening him!" one said. "No, he was showing respect to royalty!" another shouted back. "The prince didn't even flinch," someone else cut in. "Maybe he's not as weak as we thought?"

In betting halls, odds twisted like storm currents. Some said Jason's confidence proved dominance. Others that his words meant caution. Small bets on Theodore surviving more than five minutes appeared like weeds in the dirt.

In noble tea houses, outrage and fascination mixed until it was impossible to tell one from the other. "That merchant's son dared speak to the prince like that?" one noblewoman hissed. "And yet," another murmured, "did you see Theodore's composure? Almost like his father before negotiations."

At the Chronicles office, Kaeden frowned at the sales numbers climbing across the report slate. The evening edition was outselling every other bracket combined because there was nothing interesting going on in them today.

Instance Seven, the garbage heap, was the story everyone wanted. He didn't smile. Even broken clocks are right twice a day, Simon would learn that. But he knew what it meant. He'd have to assign three more reporters to Seven. He'd have to act like it was his idea.

Simon didn't know that yet. He was too busy watching his byline glow across the newest print. For the first time in months, the other juniors weren't laughing at him.

***

Theodore POV

Theodore had to admit, Jason saw right through him. Not completely, thank the gods, but enough. The way the guy had looked at him, like he was actually seeing past all the bullshit reputation and recognizing there was something dangerous underneath.

Smart bastard.

He just didn't know how strong Theodore actually was. Which was good, because if Jason knew the truth—if anyone knew what Seraphina had turned him into—well, that would be a whole different kind of problem. But it didn't matter. Not anymore, with Seraphina's ultimatum hanging over his head like an executioner's axe.

The waiting area cleared out as Instance 7 began. Theodore watched competitors disappear one by one through the portals that popped up, each vanishing into whatever hellscape the tournament organizers had cooked up this year. His turn came without fanfare. He just walked through.

The transition hit him like diving into cold water, that weird sensation of being pulled apart and put back together in the space between heartbeats. Then he was through.

He took a deep breath.

Forest. Dense, dark, endless forest stretching in every direction. The kind that looked like it went on forever and probably did, at least until the instance boundaries kicked in. Felt real too. The tournament didn't mess around with their environmental simulations.

And yeah, it wasn't real, not in any way that mattered. Given how much he knew about dimensions and space now, he was certain that this was indeed a virtual environment. How it functioned, though, he didn't know.

His mana thrummed under his skin. All his skills were there, lined up in his mind like weapons on a rack.

And his clones. He could feel them, distant but present, like fingers on a hand he wasn't currently looking at. That connection hadn't been severed by entering the instance. Good. That would make things easier.

Seraphina wanted him to win. No, that wasn't right. She'd ordered him to win. Decisively. Make an impression. Minimum two hundred bracelets in the first event alone, she'd said, like that was a reasonable request and not completely insane. Most people would be happy with twenty. Fifty would be considered excellent. Two hundred? That was insane.

But then again, most people didn't have Seraphina as a teacher.

Theodore had really wanted to play this safe. Keep his head down, advance quietly, avoid the kind of attention that got you killed or worse. That had been the smart play. The careful play. Seraphina had taken that option and burned it to ash.

So fine, he'd win. He'd win so decisively that everyone would lose their minds trying to figure out how the wastrel prince had suddenly become dangerous. He'd collect those two hundred bracelets and probably give half the capital a collective heart attack in the process.

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