The king rose from his throne. All eyes turned toward him.

  Kael, however, did not even pay attention.

  He was elsewhere.

  On another plane.

  Swallowed by the mental exercise he had triggered without realizing it.

  There are so many…

  With every gaze he cast upon someone, the Perfect Shadow exploded behind them like a silent echo. The real silhouettes almost faded — they were nothing more than shells wrapped around their truths.

  A nervous, uncontrollable smile rose to his lips.

  He continued.

  He could not stop anymore.

  A man, face neutral, seemed perfectly calm… Yet his Perfect Shadow trembled like a hunted animal. Another stared at the king with almost servile admiration… His Perfect Shadow had turned its back on him and spat on the ground in disgust.

  A woman looked at him with contempt… but her Perfect Shadow was biting her lips.

  Envy?

  Desire?

  Total contradiction.

  Kael’s eyes were vibrating. Literally. His attention slid toward the gigantic stained-glass window dominating the hall.

  By reflex, Φ activated.

  The world became covered in spirals. Perfect curves overlaid everything — walls, columns, arches, silhouettes. Everything vibrated with an invisible harmony. Proportions echoed one another, angles breathed.

  Beautiful, he thought.

  With an almost painful sincerity.

  He stared at the woman pierced at the center of the stained glass. He tilted his head slightly, captivated by a tiny detail, something that escaped common sense… A strange ratio. A missing symmetry.

  He was about to dive deeper — too deep — then pushed the thought away with a sharp mental gesture.

  The golden ratio danced everywhere on the walls, on the columns, on the faces.

  Some were saturated with it.

  Others… completely empty.

  And those contrasts burned him.

  His brain boiled. His entire body vibrated. A state on the edge between trance, absolute lucidity, and fever.

  A truly ecstatic experience.

  Finally, he looked at the king.

  A living block of marble.

  A constellation of perfect balances.

  Eyes that had never hesitated.

  Kael deactivated Φ.

  Then activated the Axiom of the Perfect Shadow Theorem.

  And what he saw — what the king was hiding — pierced him.

  A small jolt escaped him, tiny but impossible to conceal.

  Althéa was tense, but she showed nothing.

  Lucanis spoke, his tone neutral:

  “What is he doing? It looks like he’s somewhere else. His eyes keep moving, staring at people, the room, the stained glass… with a strange interest.”

  Althéa cut him off, her voice cold but slightly hesitant — she was not entirely certain of what she was suggesting:

  “He’s not looking at them… It looks like he’s staring at points next to them.”

  Before she could add another word, the king’s voice cracked through the air.

  A cold, sharp voice that sliced the room like a blade:

  “Ombrevu. Do you know the charges brought against you?”

  The sentence tore Kael from his trance like a bucket of icy water. His smile vanished instantly, swallowed by raw astonishment.

  He looked at the king.

  And answered, simply:

  “Kael.”

  A shock ran through the hall, a suspended heartbeat. The nobles turned toward each other, stunned, as if they had not understood what they had just heard.

  Kael continued, in a strangely calm voice:

  “My name is Kael.”

  The scribe, until then frozen, almost exploded, his fleshy neck trembling with anger:

  “You do not correct the king, wretch!”

  Kael did not even turn his head. He kept staring straight into the sovereign’s eyes — a stubborn gaze, completely devoid of fear. The king held the stare without blinking.

  A silent duel settled between them, intense enough to suffocate the slightest breath in the hall.

  Kael repeated, even calmer:

  “My name is Kael.”

  This time, no one laughed. A dense silence fell, almost painful.

  Althéa could feel her heart beating so fast that her breath grew short. Lucanis, meanwhile, could not even think anymore.

  Finally, the king spoke.

  His voice dropped another degree, gaining gravity.

  “Do you know the charges brought against you… Kael?”

  The scribe struggled to keep his composure. He squeezed his parchment between trembling fingers, as if he were two seconds away from tearing it to pieces.

  Kael finally broke his gaze from the king. He shrugged slightly.

  “Not really.”

  He squinted, falsely thoughtful.

  “But judging by the faces you’re all making… I suppose I must have caused quite a mess.”

  An outraged murmur shook the balconies. Some nobles opened their mouths like fish out of water.

  The king, however, remained perfectly still.

  “You caused unprecedented chaos at the Institute. Your fracture inflicted severe damage on the Latents present in the area.”

  He paused.

  Long enough for the entire hall to tighten like a drawn bowstring.

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  “How do you explain that?”

  Kael inhaled deeply, then exhaled as if the answer were obvious.

  “I have a talent for causing chaos.”

  He blinked innocently.

  “It’s not my fault. That’s how I was trained.”

  A muffled laugh rose somewhere in the crowd, quickly crushed by indignant whispers.

  Velara raised a hand to her mouth… only to hide a smile that was far too wide.

  She then winked at him — not discreetly at all.

  The king continued staring at him, demanding a real answer.

  Kael finally said, in an incredibly composed tone, almost serene — a calm too controlled to be innocent:

  “I think the presence inside my fracture caused all of this. And I think you know exactly who it was… the one who brought you all to your knees.”

  He did not raise his voice nor straighten himself. But in the way he spoke, there was an icy confidence.

  His eyes, locked onto the king’s, did not waver. Not an ounce of hesitation. Not a blink.

  And that was exactly what made the room shudder.

  The queen gripped the throne with her hand, a rictus of frustration slightly twisting her face — as if every word from Kael crushed her chest.

  A brief, heavy silence fell — then one of the Seven of the Celestial Laws spoke.

  His voice cut through the air.

  Aggressive. Brutal.

  Kael almost felt like every syllable was a punch thrown straight into his face.

  “You talk big for a guy nailed to the floor.”

  The man speaking was a living mass.

  A monstrous build, sun-burned dark skin, a face square as an anvil. His short hair, almost metallic white, clashed with his enormous arms — two trunks of stone that looked like they weighed as much as two Kaels combined.

  He wore nothing but metal bracelets around his forearms, a sleeveless top, and heavy trousers.

  But that was nothing compared to his aura.

  His mere presence crushed the air.

  No explicit threat.

  Just… physical certainty. Weight.

  Another member of the Seven intervened immediately, placing her hand on his massive arm.

  She stammered slightly — a hint of nervousness belonging only to her voice, never to her presence.

  Because despite her hesitation, her aura did not tremble.

  She wore a long black dress and a translucent veil, almost spectral.

  Through it, Kael glimpsed her blue eyes, gentle… almost too gentle.

  “Garron… let the king handle this,” she murmured.

  He pulled his arm away with a sharp motion — almost like a hatchet blow — and replied aggressively:

  “No one asked you, Rheyla.”

  The king spoke again, firm, no emotion showing in his voice.

  He leaned slightly forward, as if the smallest nuance in the answer would decide the fate of the entire hall.

  “You claim the Primogene of Doubt was present in your Trial?”

  Each syllable echoed like a verdict.

  Kael did not blink.

  He did not even breathe.

  He held that gaze that would have made anyone here falter.

  And answered, in a calm, utterly unshakable voice — a voice not trying to convince, only to state naked truth:

  “I do not claim it. I affirm it.”

  The sentence fell into the hall like a slab of stone dropped into a bottomless well.

  Another member of the Seven, who until now had not granted Kael even a glance, finally turned her eyes toward him. The shift was almost palpable.

  A radiant woman.

  Blond hair, nearly luminous.

  Eyes of the same color — two pale golden shards, peaceful and immovable.

  Her gaze held something strangely soothing, like a calm forcing its way through the heart of a storm. She wore light armor, brown metal veined with midnight blue that seemed to breathe under the stained-glass light, and a white cape falling perfectly across her shoulders.

  She said nothing.

  But her silent interest weighed more than a speech.

  Another figure, just to her right, immediately noticed the attention she was giving the boy.

  And he, in contrast, did not hesitate to dramatize his reaction.

  His voice unfolded, honeyed and smooth, every syllable almost whispered like a deliberately studied caress. His brown hair, perfectly styled, seemed unfamiliar with the concept of chance. His face, too perfect to be honest, displayed a controlled beauty, almost manufactured. And his electric-green eyes shone with sharpened intelligence — and an ambition he did not even try to hide.

  He wore light white armor, magnificently fitted, extended by a matching cape that rippled with every calculated movement.

  “If Elyndra shows the slightest interest in this boy,” he declared with demonstrative elegance,

  “I believe we should all do the same.”

  Every word came with a small gesture of the hand, a movement of the shoulder, as if he were performing for an invisible audience.

  An actor who perfectly mastered his role — and knew he was being watched.

  The king spoke again, and the knights immediately fell silent.

  “What was a divine being doing inside the fracture of an Ombrevu?”

  The question fell like a guillotine.

  Kael did not blink.

  “He trained me. Even if he claims he was not a guide, but an initiator.”

  On the balcony, Lucanis froze.

  “A Primogene trained him…?” he whispered, his voice strangled by disbelief.

  Beside him, Althéa remained upright, but her neck stiffened almost imperceptibly.

  “Impossible,” she said sharply.

  Not to contradict Kael. Rather like someone trying to push away a reality too absurd to consider.

  She and Lucanis exchanged a brief glance — one lost, the other refusing to admit what the other had just understood. The world around them continued to breathe… but the two of them did not.

  The king, who until now had shown no sign of emotion, gave the slightest frown.

  Almost imperceptible.

  But he waited.

  He wanted Kael to elaborate.

  And Kael continued.

  “My Trial was hijacked by Dubium.”

  A ripple of confusion passed through the hall.

  “The Indecisive. Dubium. His real name… it means ‘doubt’ in Latin.”

  A tiny flicker crossed his gaze. A micro-hesitation.

  As if a thought had struck his mind head-on before vanishing.

  His eyebrows barely twitched — a thousandth of a second — then his expression became smooth again, unshakable.

  A mental parenthesis closed with silent violence.

  And he resumed immediately:

  “My Trial was absolutely nothing dangerous. I was a student in a school, I attended classes during the day, and I went home in the evening. But the Indecisive… he decided things would not unfold as expected.”

  He inhaled.

  “So he created a temporal loop inside my Trial. I kept reliving the same day, endlessly.”

  The king, though usually hard and impassive, now seemed… incredulous.

  As if Kael’s words slid against his logic without ever managing to enter it.

  Kael, still seated, pinned to the floor by the banner, never took his eyes off him.

  A woman then spoke.

  One of the Seven, her platinum-blonde hair cut short, impeccably.

  Blue eyes, feline, with an almost cutting clarity. She wore a dark red dress slit high along the thigh, trimmed with fur.

  Her black and red fan moved through the air with calculated slowness, like a breathing threat.

  Her voice — sensual, warm, dangerous — slipped through the hall:

  “He is not lying. Everything this boy says is true.”

  Kael twitched.

  She reminds me of someone…

  Lucanis leaned slightly forward, intrigued.

  “Who is that?”

  Althéa answered, her tone slightly tense:

  “That’s Lyssara Aeternis… Velara’s older sister.”

  Lucanis blinked.

  Once.

  Then a brief expression — almost imperceptible — passed across his face.

  He simply murmured:

  “…Ah. Right. I thought so.”

  The king seemed to truly listen to the woman’s words.

  He spoke, in a simple and direct tone:

  “Why did he create a temporal loop in your Trial?”

  Kael sighed.

  “Why, huh?… So I could serve as a test subject. He wanted to observe me. To understand how to identify his own cause and escape it. But him… divine as he may be… even if I think you exaggerate a little with your Primogenes…”

  He shrugged slightly.

  “I assure you, they’re not that exceptional.”

  Outraged exclamations immediately burst out — nervous laughter, shocked gasps, frantic murmurs. It sounded like a hall full of people suddenly incapable of deciding whether they had just heard blasphemy… or a mad truth.

  The queen spat venomously:

  “And now he blasphemes.”

  The king slowly turned his head toward her.

  She fell silent immediately.

  So did the crowd.

  Silence dropped like a heavy shroud.

  On the balcony, Althéa murmured, hesitantly:

  “Has he gone mad?”

  Lucanis answered without taking his eyes off Kael:

  “Let him finish.”

  Kael continued, still staring directly at the king:

  “Dubium did not see far enough. And neither did Velasquez. Velasquez believed that if one wished to escape the ouroboros of causality, one had to understand the cause itself. Before the consequences erupted, then the cycle could be broken. Dubium applied Velasquez’s reasoning to me. By altering the time between the cause and the triggering of the consequence, I had a chance to escape the ouroboros. Hence the temporal loop.

  But I understood that their reasoning was wrong… or at least incomplete.”

  At the mention of the name, an almost imperceptible ripple crossed the hall.

  Not a sound.

  Not a word.

  Simply…

  A change in the air.

  Elyndra barely lifted her chin — a rare curiosity for her.

  Lyssara abruptly stopped fanning herself.

  As for the king, there was a tiny movement in his eyes.

  Infinitesimal.

  In the balconies, several nobles exchanged bewildered glances.

  Their faces all said the same thing:

  What is he talking about? Who? What?

  Althéa tapped her foot absent-mindedly, nervous.

  “But… what is he even talking about? And who is this Velasquez?”

  Lucanis opened his mouth to answer, hesitating, but no words came out.

  He finally said, more quietly:

  “…I don’t know.”

  The king stared at Kael with his amethyst eyes, cold, attentive, as if he were trying to decipher a foreign language.

  “Continue.”

  It was not an invitation.

  It was an order.

  Kael obeyed.

  “They believed they could exit the ouroboros without triggering consequences, by leaving the cause as it was. So I deduced that a cause produces no direct consequence if it is erased.”

  The hall held its breath.

  “So I undertook to erase my own cause, in order to reach the Velasquez Limit.”

  Vélara, among the Seven, rubbed her temples.

  Kael continued, imperturbable:

  “Except my cause was more complex than expected. It would have taken several hundred loops to erase it completely… and in any case, I don’t think I would have had the strength.”

  He inhaled, his gaze still fixed on the king.

  “So I chose another option. The most radical one.”

  A shiver ran through the hall.

  “To kill my own cause.”

  Nobles paled.

  Others remained frozen.

  Even the air seemed confused.

  Kael smiled faintly.

  “And that… is how I reached the Velasquez Limit.”

  And thus, for the first time, the entire kingdom held its breath — suspended on the words of an Ombrevu pinned to the ground.