Chapter 180 Blue Wax

Chapter 180 Blue Wax
Caelum's POV

Sliding away from the formal party was remarkably easy for a man who had spent his youth learning how to move unseen.

I discarded my heavy, stiff formal dress tunic in a quiet side room near the upper terrace, trading it for a comfortable leather scouting jacket, dark wool trousers, and my familiar, broken-in riding boots. Slipping down a narrow, shadowy servant stairwell beneath the busy palace kitchens, I emerged into the crisp midnight air of the lower city without drawing the attention of a single noble, foreign envoy, or patrolling guard. Up above on the high marble hill, the royal ballroom was a suffocating blur of artificial laughter, heavy perfume, and spilled wine. Down here, the wide stone avenues were quiet, dark, and still. The mountain wind coming off the northern ridges was sharp and cold, carrying the raw, earthy smell of pine needles, wet granite, and river mist as I walked at a fast, silent pace toward the military district.

I found Soren waiting for me in the deep, pitch-black shadow of a grand stone archway near the old armory vault.

He was leaning against the cold masonry with his arms folded tightly across his broad chest, his heavy dark scouting cloak pulled tight around his neck to keep out the biting frost. He did not bother with formal military greetings when I walked up to him. He simply gave me a quick, sharp nod of his head, pushed off the wall, and led the way down a flight of worn, slippery granite steps that descended into the damp subterranean basement beneath the main guard station.

"How bad is it down here?" I asked in a low voice, keeping my steps light as our boots clacked rhythmically against the stone.

"It is messy, Caelum," Soren reported, his voice dropping into that quiet, cold register he always used when a routine patrol turned into a disaster. "A clean, highly targeted break-in. It happened roughly two hours ago, right while Kestrel was giving her opening speech up at the palace gala. Every senior guard commander and squad leader in the district was posted on the upper perimeter wall or guarding the foreign delegates."

"Did they take weapons?" I asked, my brows furrowing in deep thought. "The lower armory holds enough steel to equip an entire frontline battalion."

"No," Soren said, stopping directly outside a massive, ten-foot-tall door crafted from solid ironwood and reinforced with heavy steel bands. "That is the strange part. There are over two hundred fresh steel longswords in there, forty heavy military crossbows, three racks of silver-tipped spears, and three heavy wooden chests full of raw silver coin meant for the guards' seasonal payroll. They did not touch a single blade, crossbow, or piece of silver."

I stepped up to the massive doorway, my eyes narrowing as I took in the scene. "If they did not want gold or steel weapons, what were they after, Soren? Why risk breaking into an imperial vault during the gala?"

Soren pushed the heavy ironwood door open with a dull, echoing groan, stepping into the dark room and pointing his silver stylus toward an open iron cabinet built directly into the far stone wall. "They passed right by the weapons racks and went straight for the restricted archives in the back storage. They took three specific leather-bound files."

I walked across the damp stone floor to look at the empty wooden storage slots. "Which files did they take?"

"The complete master blueprints for the capital's magical shield network," Soren said grimly, his dark eyes meeting mine in the torchlight. "Along with the historical architectural maps showing all the old subterranean passages, drainage tunnels, and hidden escape routes built under the imperial palace during the original build of the city."

A cold, heavy weight settled directly into my stomach, pressing hard against my ribs. Whoever took those documents did not care about quick street cash or arming a small band of rogue mountain thieves. They wanted the exact, detailed blueprint for how to tear the capital's magical and physical defenses apart from the inside out.

"Show me the vault door lock," I commanded, turning back toward the entrance.

I pulled a small crystal light-orb from my jacket pocket and ignited a bright, clear beam of white magical light, illuminating the heavy steel mechanism. The lock was an old dwarf-made construct featuring seven complex internal tumblers, engineered specifically to withstand heavy battering rams, pick-locks, and explosive breaching spells.

I knelt beside the heavy door and examined the steel housing carefully under the bright white beam. There were no scratch marks anywhere around the outer keyhole. There were no bent internal pins, no melted metal from acid spells, no scorch marks from flame magic, and no signs whatsoever that anyone had used physical force or breaching charms to pop the internal tumblers.

"This was opened cleanly from the outside," I said softly, running my bare thumb over the smooth, undamaged edge of the iron latch. "Someone simply walked up to the door, put a real master key into the lock, and turned it."

"Look deeper inside the keyhole mechanism," Soren added softly, kneeling down beside me on the cold stone floor and handing me his thin magnification lens. "Right against the back tumbler pin."

I adjusted the light-orb, angling the bright white beam deep into the narrow steel keyhole while looking through the glass lens. Stuck right against the central iron pin was a tiny, microscopic smear of dark blue sealing wax.

I stared at the tiny blue mark for a long, silent moment, my jaw setting tight as my blood ran ice-cold. That specific shade of deep blue wax was not available for purchase in the public markets of Ashveil, nor was it used by merchant guilds, scholar academies, or provincial lords. It was a proprietary, highly restricted chemical compound used exclusively for the official signet rings of the Imperial Guard Captains to seal royal directives and confirm top-tier security clearance. There were only six men in the entire realm who carried rings capable of leaving that exact mark inside a vault lock.

"Who was officially on duty at the main gate house tonight?" I asked softly, my voice dropping into a lethal, dangerous register.

"Captain Marcus and his inner squad," Soren replied quietly, his hard face setting into rigid lines of granite. "Marcus claims he was doing personal rounds on the upper north wall when the break-in took place. He claims no one entered the lower level."

"Marcus has carried that blue signet ring on his right hand for ten long years," I said, standing up slowly from the cold stone floor and extinguishing the light-orb. "He has complete access to every armory ledger in the district."

"I know," Soren said, his hand dropping casually onto the worn leather pommel of his belt knife. "I already went to his private guard office while I was waiting for you to leave the party. Two whole pages from tonight's duty logbook have been cleanly sliced out with a sharp blade. The timeline of his patrol was completely fabricated."

"Where is Marcus right now?" I asked, turning toward the stairs.

"He took a small squad of four guards and left through the southern city gate twenty minutes ago," Soren answered, his eyes dark with cold anger. "He claimed he was investigating a suspicious light on the outer perimeter ridge, but he never filed a formal dispatch report with the desk sergeant."

I looked back at the empty iron cabinet, the heavy silence of the underground vault feeling infinitely more dangerous than the arrogant murmurs of the noble crowd at the party earlier that evening. We were not dealing with an external threat trying to climb over our thick stone walls or break through our front gates. The real danger was already standing inside our rooms, wearing our own silver armor, eating at our tables, and holding the keys to the entire city.

"He didn't just abandon his post, Soren," I said, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper as I met my friend's grim gaze in the dim torchlight. "He took the master maps and handed the keys to the entire kingdom straight over to the Cabal."

"Then we better track him down before he reaches their main camp," Soren said, adjusting his cloak and stepping toward the stairs. "Because if he gives those blueprints to Lord Cassian, Ashveil won't survive the night of the final exams."