The heavy mahogany doors of the Crown's Anvil club room swung open, letting in a draft of cool hallway air that briefly disrupted the thick, cigar-scented atmosphere inside.
Leon stepped over the threshold, leaning heavily on the doorframe for a second before flashing a brilliant, easy-going smile. He looked a little pale, his sandy brown hair slightly unkempt, and his uniform hung a fraction looser on his shoulders than it had a month ago. But the moment he entered, the tension in the room visibly deflated.
"Well, well, well," a voice called out from the plush velvet sofas near the fireplace. "Look who finally decided to crawl out of his deathbed."
Leon chuckled, running a hand through his hair as he stepped fully into the room. He had that rare, effortless aura of friendliness—the kind of extroverted charm that made people lower their guard without even realizing it.
"Missed me, boys?" Leon asked, his voice a little raspy but full of warmth. "I swear, that fever nearly had me shaking hands with the Reaper. But I wasn't about to miss the most important month of the year. Not when there's an election to win."
A few of the senior students laughed, stepping up to clap him on the back. Leon accepted the greetings gracefully, wincing playfully when a particularly large third-year slapped his shoulder.
He was a second-year, but his status in the faction was cemented. During last year's bloodbath of an election, Leon had been the extroverted glue holding their voter base together. He knew everyone's name, everyone's grievance, and exactly what to say to make them feel valued. He was one of the most trusted lieutenants in the Second Prince's inner circle.
Leon took a seat near the center table, sinking into the leather armchair with a relieved sigh. He looked around the room, taking in the faces. The heavy hitters of the faction were all here.
'The board is set,' he thought, his eyes tracking the nervous energy of the room. 'They're on edge.'
A heavy silence abruptly fell over the room. The double doors at the far end of the club opened, and the temperature seemed to drop by several degrees.
Prince Arey de Solaria walked in.
He was a third-year, tall and imposing, with the striking silver hair of the royal family pulled back into a severe, immaculate braid. His violet eyes were sharp, devoid of the gentle warmth his younger brother possessed. Arey didn't walk; he presided. He took the high-backed chair at the head of the table, steepling his fingers.
"Leon," Arey said, his voice smooth and dangerous. "Good to see you on your feet. We are going to need your tongue in the coming weeks."
"Always at your service, Your Highness," Leon replied smoothly, offering a respectful nod from his seat.
"Let's begin," Arey announced, looking around the table. "Report."
The faction's intelligence gatherer, a scrawny boy with spectacles, cleared his throat nervously. "Your Highness, the current projections are… complicated. Our base remains solid among the traditionalist noble houses. However, the Third Prince's faction is expanding at an alarming rate among the commoners and the lower-tier nobles."
Arey's jaw tightened. "My dear little brother is playing the saint again. Throwing smiles and empty promises to the dirt of the academy to pad his numbers."
"It's not just Aurelius, Your Highness," another senior interjected. "Lady Aurora is making moves. The Marquis's daughter has locked down the entire alchemy and magical research divisions. The intellectuals are rallying behind her. She's a tough match."
"Aurora is stubborn, but she is predictable," Arey dismissed with a wave of his hand. "She plays by the rules of old money. Aurelius is the anomaly. He acts like he doesn't want the power, which only makes the masses want to hand it to him more."
"There is… one other thing," the intelligence gatherer muttered, wiping sweat from his brow. "We've been hearing whispers in the lower courtyards. A new faction. They don't have a unified name yet, but they're distinctly anti-royal. They're scooping up the students who feel disenfranchised by the Solaria family monopoly."
Arey scoffed loudly. "Anti-royal? In this academy? Let the peasants whisper. They lack the resources to even get a candidate on the final ballot. Keep your eyes on Aurelius. If we shatter his golden image, the rest of the board falls into our laps."
The room murmured in agreement.
Leon leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked around the table, his expression morphing from friendly to dead serious.
"If I may, Your Highness," Leon said, his voice cutting through the chatter.
Arey looked at him. "Speak, Leon."
"Attacking the Third Prince directly is exactly what he wants us to do," Leon said, his tone measured and thoughtful. "If we hit Aurelius, he plays the martyr. His followers will only rally harder around him. He thrives on being the underdog fighting against the big, bad establishment."
Arey's eyes narrowed. "Are you suggesting we do nothing?"
"I'm suggesting we cut off his oxygen," Leon replied, a sharp, calculating glint in his eye. "Aurelius's faction relies on the middle-tier nobles feeling safe under his umbrella. We need to make them feel very, very unsafe."
The room went completely quiet, hanging on his every word.
"We don't attack the Prince," Leon continued. "We squeeze his infrastructure. Your Highness, your family and your loyalists control the major guild contracts for the southern and western territories, correct?"
"We do," Arey confirmed slowly.
"Then we start cornering the middle-tier nobles who are leaning toward Aurelius," Leon proposed. "We make it clear, behind closed doors, that a vote for the Third Prince is a vote against their family's business interests. We threaten their supply lines. We threaten their post-graduation military placements. We don't need to defeat Aurelius in a debate; we just need to make supporting him a financial and social liability."
A long, heavy silence filled the club room.
Arey stared at Leon, his violet eyes gleaming with sudden, predatory approval. It was a vicious, underhanded, and ruthlessly effective strategy. It bypassed the popularity contest entirely and attacked the students where it hurt most: their families' survival.
"It's a risky move," the intelligence gatherer squeaked. "If word gets out that we are extorting votes, the backlash—"
"The backlash won't matter if we win," Arey interrupted, a cruel smile touching his lips. He looked at Leon with newfound respect. "The sickness hasn't dulled your fangs, Leon. It's a brilliant strategy. Brutal. Effective. It reminds them who actually holds the power in this empire."
"Thank you, Your Highness," Leon said, leaning back into his chair with a modest, loyal smile.
The rest of the meeting was spent ironing out the logistics. Leon eagerly volunteered to gather the names of the most vulnerable nobles in Aurelius's camp. He sat there for another hour, absorbing every piece of critical information Arey's faction had to offer—their patrol routes, their blackmail material, their weaknesses. He nodded, he smiled, he joked. He played the part perfectly.
When the grandfather clock in the corner chimed midnight, Arey finally dismissed them.
"Good work tonight," the Prince said, standing up. "Leon, ensure that list is on my desk by tomorrow evening."
"You'll have it before dinner, Your Highness," Leon promised, offering a crisp salute.
The members dispersed, filtering out of the club room into the chilly academy hallways. Leon walked with two of the third-years for a while, laughing at a joke about a strict instructor, before branching off toward the secondary male dormitories.
"Get some rest, Leon!" one of them called out. "Don't relapse on us!"
"I'll be fine!" Leon waved back, his cheerful smile unwavering until he turned the corner.
The moment he was out of sight, the smile vanished.
Leon's posture shifted. The relaxed, extroverted slump disappeared, replaced by a rigid, hyper-aware stillness. He navigated the dimly lit corridors, his eyes tracking the blind spots of the academy's magical security cameras.
He didn't go to the secondary dorms. Instead, he slipped into the narrow, lightless gap between the outer dormitory wall and the old, abandoned clock tower. He stood in the absolute darkness, making sure no shadows had followed him. He extended his senses, checking the mana signatures in a fifty-yard radius.
Clear.
Leon reached down to his wrist and tapped the heavy silver bracelet hidden beneath his uniform cuff.
The mana inside the crimson stone hissed.
The illusion shattered like hot glass dropped in the snow.
I let out a long, ragged exhale, leaning my head back against the cold stone brick.
My sandy brown hair shortened instantly, the color bleeding out to shift rapidly into a familiar, messy blonde. My shoulders narrowed slightly, the robust, healthy build of a second-year veteran melting away to leave the fragile, lean frame of the "weakest" Leonhart. My facial structure shifted, the bone deep ache subsiding as my jawline sharpened. And finally, my eyes transitioned from a warm hazel back to their natural, piercing crimson.
I stretched my neck, hearing a satisfying series of pops.
"God, maintaining someone else's posture for three hours is exhausting," I muttered, my voice snapping back from Leon's raspy tenor to my own calm, steady pitch.
I rolled up my sleeve and glanced at the silver bracelet. The crimson stone was dull now, the magic entering its twenty-four-hour cooldown phase.
'It seems my disguise worked flawlessly,' I thought, a smug, deeply satisfied chuckle escaping my lips. 'I should have gone into the film industry in my past life. My acting is Oscar-worthy.'
The high-grade artifact I had haggled for in the Black Market was an absolute masterpiece. But an artifact like this was useless without the right catalyst. It required a physical anchor. Blood.
Getting Leon's blood had been the easiest part of this entire operation.
Every student in the Academy of Aetherion was required to provide a baseline blood sample to the infirmary upon enrollment. It was a safety protocol, designed to help the healers identify curses, poisons, or magical abnormalities by comparing infected blood to the pure original.
Because I was the author of this world, I knew the academy's layout better than the architects. More importantly, I knew the schedules of the NPCs. I knew that Madam Vane, the head nurse, possessed an unshakable addiction to imported Earl Grey tea. Every single day, at exactly 2:00 PM, she left the refrigeration room unlocked to go brew a pot in the staff lounge for exactly twelve minutes.
I had slipped in, located the second-year records, extracted three drops of Leon's blood—who was currently bedridden in the city hospital with a severe case of swamp fever—and walked out before the kettle even whistled.
I pulled my uniform jacket tighter around myself against the night chill.
The information I had just gathered was priceless. I now knew exactly how Arey's faction operated, who they were targeting, and what their immediate plans were.
But more importantly, I had just planted a massive, ticking time bomb in the center of the election.
Arey thought the strategy I gave him was brilliant. He thought cornering the middle-tier nobles and threatening their families would crush Aurelius. And it would damage the golden boy, absolutely.
But what Arey, blinded by his own arrogance, didn't realize, was the psychological fallout of that strategy.
If the Second Prince started acting like a tyrant, threatening the livelihoods of the student body to win a school election, those students wouldn't just quietly submit. They would be terrified. They would be furious. And they would realize that the Royal Family, whether it was Arey or Aurelius, only viewed them as pawns on a board.
When you back people into a corner, they don't look for a saint. They look for a rebel.
I looked up at the sliver of moon hanging over the academy towers.
'Go ahead, Arey,' I thought, my crimson eyes glowing faintly in the dark. 'Squeeze them. Threaten them. Show them how ugly the royals can be.'
When he did, he would be driving half the academy straight into the waiting, open arms of the newly formed Anti-Royal faction. He was going to build Serene's voter base for her, and he was going to thank me for the privilege of doing it.
The elections were coming nearer. The pieces were moving exactly as I wanted them to.
"I have to make sure to play even smarter from here on out," I whispered to the shadows.
I adjusted my collar, making sure the bracelet was hidden, and stepped out of the alleyway, walking back toward the first-year dorms as Rias von Leonhart. The weakest son. The discarded fiancé. The invisible variable pulling the strings of the entire empire.