"What is it?" I couldn't help but ask urgently, my voice tight with sudden tension. My nerves instantly went on high alert—making sharp sparks of electricity seem to run through my veins, activating every defensive instinct I possessed. My enhanced senses immediately sharpened to their maximum capacity, preparing my body to face whatever danger might fall upon us in the next critical moments.
But somehow, despite my heightened awareness, there wasn't anything obviously out of place that I could detect. Nothing immediately threatening was visible or detectable here in this festive hall. Everything appeared normal—the music continued, the dancers moved gracefully, the audience watched with pleasure.
There wasn't any sign of danger until the elaborate dance performance unfolding in front of us reached its dramatic highest point. The drumbeat suddenly accelerated, becoming faster and more intense, and the coordinated movements of the dancers correspondingly picked up their pace to match the driving rhythm.
Then, without any warning whatsoever, one lone dancer abruptly broke away from the carefully choreographed formation. She lunged forward with sudden violence, pulling a concealed dagger from somewhere in her costume and driving it directly toward Arvid with lethal intent.
"Defense Magic: Wall of Protection!" I shouted out loud as quickly as I could form the words, my voice cutting through the music. Just as the assassin's dagger was mere inches from reaching its intended target—from piercing Arvid's throat or heart—a substantial magical barrier erupted into existence directly in front of us. The defensive wall manifested as a translucent surface of pale blue energy, shimmering and solid.
The thrown dagger struck the magical shield with force and embedded itself harmlessly in the barrier, stopped completely. Its point couldn't penetrate through to reach Arvid.
I felt a surge of relief and gratitude that I had devoted all of my recent leisure hours to intensively studying the precious tome that Aiona had gifted me—the ancient book her father had painstakingly written on behalf of her mother, preserving dragon magic for future generations.
I had learned and memorized numerous powerful defensive spells from that invaluable tome, all carefully written in the flowing elvish script. It seemed that Aiona's human father had been remarkably fluent in that notoriously difficult language, which made sense given his scholarly nature and his dragon wife.
Though her initial attack had been completely unsuccessful, the determined woman who had launched the assassination attempt didn't stop or retreat. Instead, she somehow conjured two more gleaming daggers out of absolutely nowhere, materializing them in her empty hands through what appeared to be magic. Then she immediately hurled both of these newly created weapons toward us with practiced accuracy.
But my defensive wall of protection held firm and strong against this second assault as well, simply allowing the unsuccessful daggers to embed themselves harmlessly in the magical barrier alongside the first one.
The hall immediately erupted into chaos. There were sharp gasps of shock, terrified screams from nobles who had never witnessed violence up close, and general pandemonium as people scrambled to get away from the perceived danger. But the assassin woman was quickly apprehended by alert guards before she could conjure any more weapons or do additional harm. Multiple soldiers grabbed her arms and forced her to the ground.
The woman, who was undeniably beautiful despite her current state—possessing deep earthen-colored skin and intense brown eyes—began cursing at Arvid with all her considerable might once she was restrained. Her voice was raw with hatred and grief.
"You monster! You killed all of us! You slaughtered us in the desert like animals! You damn thing, you cursed creature!" she screamed at the absolute top of her lungs, her voice cracking with the force of her fury.
It became immediately clear from her words and accent that this crazed woman was Dergu, one of the people we had fought in the desert. But what wasn't at all clear, what made absolutely no sense, was how she was able to conjure physical daggers out of seemingly nowhere in her bare hands. Such a remarkable feat shouldn't be possible for any normal human, unless she was a genuine witch or sorceress with innate magical abilities.
But both of those species—witches and sorceresses—were supposedly long dead and extinct from the world. There hadn't been verified sightings in centuries.
It seemed that Arvid had the exact same burning question that I did.
"How are you able to use magic?" he asked with remarkable calmness, his voice steady and controlled despite the chaotic atmosphere swirling around us and the fact that someone had just attempted to murder him.
The restrained woman laughed in response, and it was a deep, guttural laugh—nothing short of genuinely menacing and disturbing to hear. The sound raised goosebumps on my arms.
"I met an elf," was her cryptic answer, delivered with obvious satisfaction at our confusion and concern. "A real, living elf. And it generously taught me this magic too."
Then she added ominously, "And it taught me this as well," before beginning to chant some kind of incantation rapidly under her breath in a language I didn't immediately recognize.
But as I focused and caught the specific words she was speaking, my eyes widened in absolute horror. I recognized the words—it was a self-destruction incantation, designed to create a devastating explosion.
"Get away from her! Move back now!" I screamed desperately at the soldiers who were holding her firmly in place, trying to warn them of the imminent danger.
But my warning came too late—there simply wasn't enough time.
There was a massive, deafening explosion that shook the entire hall. The unfortunate woman and all five of the soldiers who had been physically restraining her were instantly transformed into a bloodied, horrifically gory mess. Body parts and blood sprayed outward in a wide radius, coating nearby surfaces and causing fresh screams from the traumatized witnesses.
---
The assassination attack had left absolutely everyone in the castle profoundly shaken to their cores. The incident was so horrifying, so audacious and unprecedented, that the sheer amount of boldness required to attack the emperor directly in his own castle during his own wedding celebration left everyone genuinely scared and paranoid.
And it became painfully, undeniably apparent to all observers that after Arvid's extended absence from Arpa while dealing with northern affairs, the defensive capabilities and vigilance of the supposedly great fortress city had significantly deteriorated and lowered.
Though the military had certainly advanced and improved in many offensive areas—the gun technology and various other attack weapons had developed considerably—the actual defensive measures and protocols had remained essentially the same as they'd been for decades. It was a critical, significant error in strategic judgment that had now cost lives.
And now it was clear that the defenses needed to be prepared specifically for magical attacks as well, not just conventional physical threats. But the inherently unpredictable and varied nature of magic made it almost impossible to adequately defend against that particular element without magic users of your own.
Among the scattered remains of the suicide bomber, careful investigators discovered something extraordinary—small shards of what appeared to be magical crystal embedded in her flesh and clothing. The discovery was shocking because magical crystals were essentially mythical items at this point in history. Virtually no one alive had ever actually seen genuine magical crystals in their entire lives. They were so incredibly rare that I had only read about them in a very few obscure historical records.
According to ancient texts, magical crystals could manifest in various colors depending on the dragon they came from. They were found exclusively in the tombs and burial sites of dead dragons. After a dragon's death, a significant amount of residual magic would slowly leave its decaying body over time.
And dragon corpses couldn't be burned in any ordinary fire, no matter how hot—they could only be consumed by dragon flame produced by another living dragon. Since that was rarely available, in most historical cases dragon bodies had simply been buried intact in elaborate tombs.
After burial, the lingering magic left inside the dragon's massive body would very gradually solidify over an extremely long period, eventually transforming the entire corpse of that mystical being into one gigantic, solid magical crystal formation. But this transformation process was extraordinarily long—taking at least a full century to complete, sometimes several centuries for particularly powerful dragons.
Magical crystals like the ones we'd found were small shards carefully harvested from those solidified dragon bodies. They contained actual usable magic drawn from the dragon's essence, although the amount of magical power was necessarily limited compared to what the living dragon had possessed.
I examined the particular shard we'd recovered more closely—it was red in color and had a distinctive shiny, almost glass-like quality. Even now, I could sense it was still full of residual magic, although most of its stored power had clearly already been used by the assassin.
This discovery was completely unheard of in modern times. It was something that belonged in ancient legends and myths—but now it was here, physically existing right in front of us, impossible to deny.
And the implications were deeply disturbing. The meaning and significance of this crystal existing, combined with the other crucial information we had discovered about the mysterious elf who had apparently met with the Dergu woman and provided her with both the magical crystal and knowledge of deadly spells—all of it clearly foreboded something much bigger and more dangerous coming in the future.
"This is indeed extremely weird and concerning," Aiona said quietly in my mind, her mental voice troubled.
"What specifically is weird?" I asked her somewhat sarcastically, exhaustion making me irritable. "The fact that a supposedly mythical item is sitting right here in front of us, proving myths are real? Or the disturbing fact that there's apparently a living elf somewhere who actively wants Arvid dead and is willing to arm assassins with powerful magic to achieve that goal?"
I rubbed my aching temple with my fingers, trying to ease the building tension headache. I hadn't managed to sleep at all last night despite my exhaustion. I had been far too on edge, too worried about Arvid's safety and too busy analyzing every possible threat. I simply couldn't bring myself to relax enough to sleep.
Our long-anticipated wedding consummation night had been indefinitely postponed without setting a new date. It was inevitable and understandable—immediately after the attack, Arvid had left directly for the military barracks to personally oversee efforts to strengthen the city's defenses. He had been completely gone for the entire night, working non-stop. It was now midday and he still hadn't returned to the palace. I missed him and worried about him working himself to exhaustion.
This particular shiny red shard of magical crystal that I was now turning over in my hands—I had personally picked it up from the bloody mess yesterday before leaving the chaotic main hall. It had caught my eye immediately, standing out among the gore. Now that I finally knew what it actually was and understood its implications, my head hurt even worse.
"The fact that this crystal exists at all means that somewhere, somehow, a dragon tomb has been opened and disturbed," Aiona said slowly, working through the logical implications. "This discovery actually answers something that has been persistently nagging at me for quite some time now, a question I couldn't resolve."
"What question is that?" I asked her, my curiosity immediately piqued despite my fatigue.
"Do you remember the dagger that your Nanny Martha used to stab you?" Aiona asked. "The one that nearly killed you? It was a very special dagger embedded with actual dragon flame—genuine fire from a dragon, somehow preserved in the weapon. That item was mythical too, arguably even rarer than these magic crystals. Dragon flame weapons are almost impossible to create and were thought to be completely lost to history."
She paused. "The critical question that has been bothering me ever since that attack was: where the hell did Martha actually get that impossibly rare dagger? It had been nagging at me constantly. Even after conducting our initial investigation into her background and connections, absolutely nothing useful came out about the weapon's origin. No one could explain where she'd obtained such a thing."
Aiona's voice grew more certain. "But now that I think about it with this new information, the dragon flame dagger must have come from the tomb of a dead dragon as well. That's the only logical source."
I sat up suddenly at that revelation, my exhaustion forgotten. The implications were genuinely disturbing.
"If the dragon flame dagger came from the same place these magical crystals originated from, that means—" I stopped speaking abruptly, my mind racing ahead to a terrifying conclusion.
No. This couldn't be possible. It was too horrible to contemplate.