Chapter 114 MAGICAL ATTACKS
But somewhere deep within the palace walls, Celine's secret plan was slowly moving forward.
Celine invited the Royal Physician and pays him to poison the crown princes food and wine everyday.
But strange things began to happen to prince Kaelion.
The first to feel it was not the court.
Not the guards.
Not even the king.
It was Selene.
\---
She stood alone in the eastern corridor, where the windows were narrow and the light came thin and pale across the stone. She had been walking without purpose—something she had learned to do when her thoughts grew too loud.
Then she stopped.
Not by choice.
But by instinct.
The air had shifted.
Subtle.
But wrong.
Selene’s breath slowed as her senses sharpened. She closed her eyes—not in calm, but in focus.
There it was.
Threadlike.
Slipping through the palace like a whisper too soft for ordinary ears.
Magic.
Not cast within the walls.
Coming from outside.
Her fingers curled slightly at her sides.
“Who dares…” she murmured.
This was not wild magic.
Not uncontrolled.
It moved with intent.
Searching.
Touching corners of the palace that had long been left undisturbed.
Selene felt it brush against the edges of older wards—ancient protections laid into the bones of the structure itself.
And for a moment—
Those wards trembled.
Her eyes snapped open.
“No.”
That should not have been possible.
Not for anything weak.
Not for anything careless.
This was… deliberate.
A chill slid down her spine.
“Could it be that celine has learnt magic…” she whispered.
It would make sense or not. Except it was coming from outside the palace.
And Celine had always favored subtlety over force. Poison over blade. Influence over chaos.
And this—
This felt like something meant to creep, to listen, to find.
Selene turned sharply.
"Or is he here?" She asked herself. "No maybe I should visit Lira after I confirm my guess at the palace."
\---
But Kaelions half had felt it long before Selene reached him.
He stood in the grounds were he had slaughtered, alone, a wooden blade resting loosely in his hand.
He stood like he had been waiting.
Though for what, he could not have said.
Then—
The air changed.
Not around him.
Through him.
His grip tightened slightly on the blade.
Then the whispers returned.
But faint.
Brushing against his thoughts like fingers testing the surface of water.
His head tilted.
Listening.
Not with his ears.
With that other sense—the one he could fully understand.
The one that had been growing stronger with each passing day.
“This again,” he said softly.
The magic circled him.
Careful.
Uncertain.
As if it had found something it recognized—but did not yet trust.
Kaelion’s eyes darkened slightly.
“Show yourself.”
The words were quiet.
But something in them carried weight.
The air stilled.
Then shifted again.
He felt it more clearly now.
Not hostile.
Not entirely.
But heavy with emotion.
Grief.
Rage.
Loss.
Something inside his chest tightened unexpectedly.
He frowned.
“Celine,” he said under his breath.
But they were both wrong.
\---
After Athalia left the palace gates. Athalia did not return to the gates.
Not that day.
Not the next.
Nor did Kaelion reach out.
The palace had made its answer clear—not with violence, but with something worse.
Indifference.
She moved through the city like a shadow now, careful, quiet, watching without being seen. The hood remained low over her ugly face as usual, her steps measured, her presence forgotten the moment she passed.
It was safer that way.
But safety did not bring her closer to the truth.
And time—
Time was not on her side.
\---
Kaelion had found her once.
Spoken to her.
Offered help but didn't reach out.
She remembered the steadiness in his voice, the strange weight behind his words. He had not dismissed her. And he had not laughed.
But still—
He was just a noble.
That was what the Athalia thought.
What the palace allowed.
A boy taken in by his uncle. A curiosity. And not a political piece.
Not power.
Not authority.
And it was not enough.
Athalia sat alone beneath the broken arch of an abandoned shrine at the edge of the market district. The city noise drifted around her, distant and muffled.
“He cannot open those gates for me,” she murmured.
And she could not wait for permission.
But she had no allies inside.
No servants to whisper truth.
No guards to bend.
No eyes.
No ears.
Only herself.
Only what she had carried out of the tower.
Only what had survived with her.
And then she looked over the forbidden book. The one she had met open when she arrived to her small chamber.
The page clearly showed a writing. Like ink rising to the surface after years buried beneath pages.
"Rage breeds Pain and feeds redemption or destruction. Choose your path."
And then she understood it.
Her rage fed it.
Every denial.
Every shove.
Every word that declared her dead—
It answered.
The mark on her chest pulsed faintly beneath her skin.
Not painfully now.
But insistently.
Athalia closed her eyes.
“If they will not hear me,” she whispered, “then they will feel me.”
Her fingers curled slowly against her knees.
Magic did not come to her the way it once had—controlled, measured, deliberate.
Now it answered differently.
It moved with her emotion.
With her anger.
With the sharp, buried grief that had never been allowed to rest.
She inhaled slowly.
Then exhaled—
And with it, she began to whisper from the forbidden book.
\---
The words were not loud.
They did not need to be.
They slipped into the wind like secrets.
Ancient syllables.
Fragments of something older than the kingdom itself.
Not a spell cast in force—
But a curse woven in patience.
The wind carried it.
Through alleyways.
Over rooftops.
Across stone walls that had never known her absence.
Toward the palace.
\---
At the gates, the guards shifted uneasily.
“Did you feel that?” one muttered.
“Feel what?”
“Nothing… just—cold.”
They said nothing more.
But they straightened.
\---
Inside the palace walls, the first effects were subtle.
Lights and Candles flickered in rooms without drafts.
Servants paused, glancing over their shoulders without knowing why.
In the lower halls, a young maid dropped a tray and burst into tears without understanding what had frightened her .
But Athalia’s voice did not stop.
Each word threaded into the next.
Each breath carried further.
Not destruction.
Something softer.
Something searching.
\---
In his chamber, Kaelion stood at the window.
Still.
Listening.
He could not feel it. But assumed it was a chill.
His fingers pressed lightly against the glass.
The air around him shifted.
The whispers reached him—
Brushed against him—
And for a brief, flickering moment, they recoiled and touched him fully.
\---
But Kaelion’s half was still figuring if it was celine. Or if she had employed someone again do this.
But it was all Athalia's doing.
Kaelion's eyes darkened slightly.
“Who are you… that dares touch my half?” he murmured.
Not afraid but curious.
\---
Far across the city, Athalia stopped.
As her breath stuttered.
The wind circled back around her, restless now.
Uncertain.
As if it had found something inside the palace it could not pass through cleanly.
But it still lingered.