1: Lorenzo’s POV
“Life is like a ball. To play it, you must ball.”
I stare at the line for a long moment.
Then I flip the page.
The illustrated hero with a square jaw, exaggerated muscles, tragic backstory hinted in three badly written speech bubbles is apparently about to save the world using nothing but confidence and poor metaphors.
I don’t know why I’m still reading this.
The cover reads Crimson Velocity, Issue #7. The paper is cheap. The dialogue is worse.
“Pain is temporary. Swag is eternal.”
I close the book.
Silence settles over my study, thick and undisturbed. Mahogany shelves line the walls, filled with ledgers, war reports, territorial maps, and briefings. Documents that decide who eats, who prospers, who disappears.
And in the center of my desk — this.
A comic book.
Yhomsi left it here three nights ago after our strategy meeting. My best man. My oldest ally. The only person in this empire who speaks to me without calculating the consequences first.
“You need to laugh,” he had said, dropping it onto my desk as if it were a classified file. “Or at least feel something that isn’t rage.”
I don’t laugh.
And I certainly don’t need instruction from a fictional man in a red cape.
Yet I keep reading it.
Perhaps because the hero’s world is simple. Villain. Fight. Victory. Applause.
No council politics. No betrayal disguised as loyalty. No weight of an empire pressing into your spine every time you stand.
A knock sounds at the door.
I slide the comic beneath a stack of reports before answering.
“Enter.”
The council meeting stretches for hours. Trade routes contested. Rumors of insurgent whispers in the southern districts. A captain requesting permission to execute three men suspected of treason.
“Make it public,” I tell him.
Fear is more efficient than forgiveness.
When the meeting adjourns, the men leave in orderly silence. They always do. No one lingers. No one asks unnecessary questions.
Control is maintained.
By the time I return to my study, dusk has painted the sky in bruised shades of violet and ash.
I shut the door behind me and freeze.
I know something is wrong even before I spot it. Perks of being in this world.
The air is wrong. I just know it.
I don’t reach for a weapon just yet.
“‘Pain is temporary. Swag is eternal.’”
The voice is female.
Calm.
In my study.
My pulse does not spike. It sharpens.
A woman —no taller than five-two — stands near my desk, my comic book open in her hands as though it belongs to her. There is no panic in her posture, no hurried excuse forming on her lips. She turns a page with idle precision, calm and unbothered, reading as if she occupies this room by right. As if I am the one intruding.
There are four guards assigned to this wing. Two outside the corridor. One at the stairwell. One at the courtyard entrance. Yet no alarm was raised.
Which means this breach was deliberate. Clean.
A failure on my side first, and then my men’s.
I assess the consequences at once. If this breach becomes public, word will spread that my security is slipping, and doubt spreads faster than fear. If I handle it quietly, the correction may be clean, but it won’t restore the authority that’s already been tested.
“How,” I ask quietly, “did you enter my study?”
She closes the book but keeps her finger between the pages. Marking her place.
“I am Violet Delrose,” she says, ignoring what I asked.
Bold. I’ll give her that.
“Through your security,” she clarifies, as if that alone explains everything.
Not past but through.
I step closer. Slow enough to unsettle. “You have until I reach three to decide whether you answer correctly.”
Her gaze doesn’t drop.
“One.”
Silence. She either has a death wish or is confident I won’t kill her.
“Two.”
“The stairwell guard has a limp,” she says. “Left knee. Old injury. He shifts his weight every twelve seconds. Predictable rhythm.”
I don’t stop walking.
“Three.”
“The corridor pair rotate their watch early,” she continues. “They assume no one would dare approach while your council is in session.”
I stand inches from her, looming over her smaller frame. She’s half my size at most, her head just brushing the center of my chest. I can snap her neck in three seconds at most, I think to myself.
Close enough to see the steadiness in her breathing.
“And the fourth?” I ask.
“I never encountered him.”
Ice slides into my veins. They are so over.
