The portal shrank to a point and disappeared, leaving the room in silence for what felt like an eternity. King Roland looked at Tower Master Nelius with a questioning look.

  “I sense no presence apart from ours,” Nelius said.

  Then Marshal Halden exhaled sharply through his nose.

  “Majesty… we have just allowed an unknown Arcanist to vanish freely from your hall. Without an escort. Without surveillance. Without even a mark on him.”

  Elion swallowed. He knew this was coming.

  “Prince Elion,” the Marshal said, turning. “You will explain everything. Now. From the beginning of your disappearance.”

  The king nodded once. “Speak.”

  Elion started explaining how he found Michael. While escaping the ambush, he saw Michael standing beside a giant gray wolf with wounds on its head similar to those seen on the armored targets earlier, and he had scared away the criminals with a few shots.

  Elion took a breath, steadying himself under the weight of every gaze in the chamber.

  “There was not a scratch on him,” Elion continued. “He yelled at the men chasing me and fired again until they fled. He grabbed me and opened one of those black rings he calls portals, and pulled me through.”

  Halden’s eyes narrowed. “So he killed the wolf and used his artifact to scare away your pursuers. Efficient.” He kept on talking, “The ones who ambushed you were most likely from Cendros, those bastards.”

  His voice dropped, colder. “And after that? You claim he sheltered you for a month?”

  Elion hesitated, not from fear of telling the truth, but from knowing how absurd it would sound.

  “In another realm,” he answered plainly. “A place with no mana at all. A place where the lights came from the ceiling with a single press of a button. A place where water, hot or cold, came instantly out of metal fixtures.”

  Halden scoffed. “Hot water on command? Without fire, without runes? Ridiculous.”

  Elion’s jaw tightened. “Majesty, I swear it. I saw it. He called it a ‘shower.’ He had two knobs-turning one made cold water, turning the other made hot water. No mage, no spell, no enchantment.”

  Alana, the female mage, leaned forward, interest sharp. “And you felt no mana in the water? No enchantment in the knobs or pipes?”

  “No,” Elion said. “Nothing. Everything just… worked.”

  The mages exchanged uneasy looks. Halden’s expression darkened further, as if every new detail insulted his worldview.

  “And what else did he show you?” Halden demanded.

  Elion hesitated again, this time at the memory of the strange glowing rectangles.

  “He had… other artifacts. Small ones. He touched them, and they lit up like tiny slate mirrors, with moving words and moments frozen in time. He could speak to people through them. Even see their faces even if they were not in the room.”

  “Impossible,” Halden snapped immediately. “You expect us to believe he made a mobile communication artifact small enough to fit in his hand?”

  “Prince Elion… everything you have described thus far,” Nelius said carefully, “could only be attempted through the combined might of several Arcanists all at tier Four or higher, and even then, the mana cost would be high.”

  Elion nodded quickly. “But Michael didn’t use mana. Not for anything. The only mana I could feel for an entire month...” he looked at himself, perturbed by the memory “... was my own.”

  He continued, voice steadying as he listed them.

  “He had a metal box that cooked food in minutes with just the press of a button. Another box colder than any ice cellar, keeping food fresh for days. I never once felt the temperature of his home shift-it stayed perfectly warm; some rooms had slightly different temperatures, but they remained unchanged, even at night, even after weeks. It was all just a commodity for him. And food I have never seen before, sometimes I ate food that seemed like a giant version of ours, yet with a much richer taste.”

  Marshal Halden’s lips thinned.

  “And this same man,” he said with a cold voice, “told us that the elites of his homeland wield weapons that can wipe out kingdoms in seconds… and that he serves no one.” He turned slightly toward the king. “If he serves no one, what stops us from assuming that he is one of those elites himself?”

  Elion stiffened. “He… he could be,” he admitted quietly. “Michael did not act like a servant. No one ordered him. No one summoned him. He came and went as he pleased.”

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  Halden seized on that. “Yet he never once announced your presence to his rulers. He never reported a foreign prince wandering his streets. Why?”

  Elion shook his head, but the words hit close to what he’d already suspected.

  “When he spoke into his device,” Elion said slowly, “I could not follow the words. I only know some basics of his tongue-enough for greetings, not enough for meaning. But… he never said my name. Not once.”

  Nelius tilted his head. “He kept your identity secret.”

  “Yes,” Elion said. “If anyone in his world knew about me, knew where I came from, they never spoke to me. I also suspect that he is the only one who knows how to open those portals.” His brow furrowed. “If others had the same power, they would have taken over by now. He would have brought an army.”

  Halden’s gaze hardened. “So. A man who might be counted among these ‘elites,’ armed with world-breaking artifacts and a power no one else in either realm possesses. A man who hides a foreign prince from his own authorities, and from ours.”

  He looked back at Roland.

  “Majesty, if that does not concern you, then nothing will.”

  King Roland’s fingers drummed once on the armrest, the only outward sign of the storm behind his eyes.

  “It concerns me greatly, Marshal,” he said. “But concern does not blind me to opportunity.”

  “As you know, we are not the strongest kingdom on the continent.” Everyone is attentive to the King’s words, as it is rare for one to admit weakness. “Yet now we could gain power that no one else has. Power to rival even the Atheri and Duraki. Our small kingdom’s power could surge larger than its size on a map.”

  Roland nodded once. “If this Arcanist plots some grand scheme, we cannot yet see it. Perhaps we will never see it coming, and we were already fated to clash with Cendros. But whether his plans succeed or fail…” His gaze swept the room. “If Valoria claims his knowledge before any rival kingdom even knows it exists, we will stand above all others, regardless.”

  He leaned back, expression carved from stone.

  “So we prepare for the worst,” he said, “and trade for the best. Prepare our defenses, Marshal Halden. And Tower Master Nelius…”

  “Working together, we can make the greatest kingdom and the greatest magic tower, perhaps even above the Atheri Council someday.”

  “I believe that together, the Tower and the crown could lift Valoria into an age where no kingdom or tower surpasses us.”

  “We will cooperate for our mutual prosperity.”

  “That is all I ask.”

  He rose from the throne.

  “All of you, leave us. Captain Julius, Marshal Halden, wait outside the doors.” Roland commanded, surprising them all.

  The heavy doors shut, leaving only Roland and Nelius behind.

  Pointing at the gun on the table, Roland said, “Tell me, Nelius, does this ‘gun’ he demonstrated seem familiar to you?”

  Nelius’s expression tightened.

  Roland continued, voice barely above a whisper: “Ten winters ago… when you overthrew the last Tower Master, the tyrant who nearly plunged Valoria into chaos, you ended the battle with a similar artifact, did you not?”

  Nelius did not answer.

  Roland turned to him fully. “A primitive version. Single-shot. Metal pipe on a wooden handle. Smoke and sound like thunder. You called it ‘the artifact from another realm.’”

  “It was an accident. We meant to summon a weapon with imperceptible mana, and instead retrieved a relic that obeyed no arcane laws. A crude tube that hurled metal at lethal speeds with no mana at all.”

  Roland’s brows lowered as the pieces fell into place.

  “No mana…” he murmured. “That’s why he dropped his guard.”

  Nelius’s silence confirmed it.

  Roland paced once, slow and deliberate, stopping with his back half-turned toward the Tower Master.

  “A fifth-tier mage, arguably the strongest this kingdom had seen in generations. Why would such a man bother raising physical shields against a group of Tier Three and Four mages who spent their lives inside libraries rather than training yards?”

  His voice hardened.

  “He wouldn’t. He didn’t. Because to him, only mana mattered.”

  Nelius exhaled once through his nose.

  “He sensed nothing from the weapon. No arcane magic. No structured intent. No flow of mana. To his senses, it might as well be a stick.”

  “And now we have encountered a man who wields not a crude tube of metal, but refined weapons built on the same principle, except stronger, faster, more reliable, and he can appear anywhere at any time. And that is only taking into account guns.” Taking a deep breath, he looked at the remains of the broken crystal on the table. “We’d better tread carefully, my friend.”

  ◇◇◇

  Michael stepped into his bedroom and shut the portal behind him. The silence hit first. Then the shaking.

  Holy crap… I almost died.

  I actually almost died.

  His knees felt like rubber. His chest was tight. His pulse was still spiking from the swords at his throat.

  What the hell was I thinking? Opening a portal in front of a king without saying a word, like some deranged stage magician? God, that was stupid. I could’ve gotten executed right there. “Off with his head,” stupid!

  He ran both hands down his face.

  Next time I demonstrate anything, I speak first. Or at least point. Or gesture. Or-anything that doesn’t make a room full of armed people think I’m about to assassinate their monarch.

  He forced himself to breathe, slow and deep. The panic subsided… and something else rose in its place.

  Excitement.

  Raw, electric excitement.

  They believed me.

  They saw the portals, the gun, the taser-everything. And instead of chaining me to a dungeon wall, they want to trade. They want what only I can offer them. He grinned.

  A laugh slipped out, half-relieved and half-disbelieving.

  I walked into another world’s throne room and walked out with a deal. Me. The guy who used to microwave leftover pizza at 2 AM like it was fine dining.

  And now the possibilities hit him like a wave.

  I can get land. A base over there.

  I can bring things back here, too-rare metals, herbs, anything unique. Sell them quietly. Build capital.

  Hell, with portals, I could make a fortune without anyone even realizing how.

  His mind raced faster and faster.

  Imports. Exports. And a monopoly of trade between worlds. This is unlimited.

  Then another thought-one that almost made him giddy. Looking at the translation artifact in his hand.

  Magic. I could learn magic.

  Elion had talked about aura, about mages, about training children early. Michael didn’t know if any of that applied to him, but the Tower Master clearly wanted something from him-knowledge for knowledge.

  If they teach me even the basics… If I combine portals with magic? Combine modern tech with magic?

  He stared at his hands, still faintly trembling, but now for a different reason.

  I could become something no one else in either world has ever been.

  An unstoppable grin spread across his face.

  Alright, Michael. You nearly got yourself killed today. Lesson learned.

  But tomorrow, you start building an empire.