"The most dangerous person in any room isn’t the one with the biggest weapon. It’s the one who’s paying attention."
***
The tremor hit like a giant’s fist slamming into the mountain’s bones.
Dust cascaded from the ceiling in gray waterfalls. The ancient stone groaned around us. The vibration ran through my feet and up into my spine like the mountain itself was trying to shake us loose.
My teammates scattered like startled rabbits.
Marcus clutched his tactical manual against his chest as if bound pages could sohow shield him from a thousand tons of falling rock. Thomlin pressed flat against the tunnel wall with his eyes squeezed shut. His lips moved in what might have been a prayer.
And Seraphina maintained that unnerving calm of hers while watching .
Always watching .
I’m starting to think her [Vital Sight] skill is more trouble than the entire Morgenthorne conspiracy.
At least assassins had the decency to try killing you. This girl just stared. Cataloged every inconsistency. Filed away every slip for later.
The collapse in the deeper sections had happened exactly on schedule. Every detail matched what I rembered from the novel. The rumbling that built for precisely thirty-seven seconds before the main shaft gave way. The pattern of falling debris that would seal the connecting passages. The timing that ensured Rhys and his team would be trapped right when they reached the deepest point of their assigned route.
The Morgenthorne sabotage had worked flawlessly. Just as the original story described across three Chapters of dramatic setup.
But I wasn’t supposed to be here.
I was supposed to be safely in the Crystal Caverns, playing the incompetent third son while Rhys died for Leo’s character developnt. The original Kaelen would have spent this entire exercise cowering near the entrance. Maybe getting lost once or twice for comic relief. Then erging just in ti to witness Leo’s heroic arrival too late to save the commoner with the sick sister.
Instead, I was closer to where I needed to be. With a healer who saw too much. And two teammates who would complicate everything.
The universe really does seem determined to make my life difficult.
Seraphina Valois. Level 1. Class: Apothecary Scholar. Authority: 2.
The information from [Narrative Appraisal] floated in my peripheral vision.
Her Magic stat is actually higher than mine. B-720. That’s not bad for soone stuck in House Onyx.
Wonderful. Just wonderful. I’m sharing a cramped tunnel with soone whose entire skillset revolves around noticing things other people miss.
"The structural integrity coefficients in Chapter Seven clearly state that listone formations under seismic stress exhibit predictable failure patterns!" Marcus’s voice cracked as he flipped through his manual with shaking hands. The pages rustled loud enough to echo in the confined space. "We need to calculate the load-bearing capacity of the remaining supports before we make any decisions about our next course of action!"
"Marcus." Thomlin’s voice ca out strangled. Barely louder than a whisper. "Look at the ceiling."
We all looked up.
Fresh cracks spider-webbed across the stone above us. Dark lines spread through the ancient masonry like infection. Each crack branched and split, creating a map of potential disaster that even Marcus couldn’t calculate his way out of. Chunks of mortar rained down, pattering against the tunnel floor like hail. Little piles of gray dust ford where they landed.
Okay. This is fine. This is all part of the plan.
Mostly.
I needed to get rid of my teammates. Fast. Every second I spent here with them was another second Rhys spent bleeding out in the dark. Another second for the narrative to lock into place and write a death that didn’t need to happen.
"We should go back," Marcus said. His knuckles were white around his manual where he gripped it like a lifeline. "The main passage has better structural support according to the surveys conducted in Year 847. We can report the situation to the professors and let them coordinate a proper response with the appropriate safety protocols—"
"The main passage is blocked." I let my voice shake just enough to sell the fear. Added a slight tremor to my hands that I knew Seraphina would notice.
Let her notice. Let her see pathetic Kaelen Leone. Terrified and desperate. Grasping at straws because he didn’t know what else to do.
"Rember? That rockfall we heard twenty minutes ago? The one that sounded like thunder? We’re cut off from the entrance."
That was a lie.
The main passage was probably fine. The cave-in had been deeper in the mine, targeting Rhys’s route specifically. But Marcus didn’t know that. He hadn’t spent countless hours reading a novel that laid out every detail of this disaster with loving attention to dramatic timing.
And his tendency to overthink, to trust written authority over his own observations, would work in my favor.
"Then we wait for rescue," Thomlin said. But his eyes kept darting to the spreading cracks above us. His hand had found the hilt of his sword. Knuckles tight. As if steel could sohow fight stone. "They’ll send teams when we don’t report in at the designated checkpoint. The professors aren’t going to just leave students trapped in these tunnels."
"They’ll send teams to recover our bodies," Seraphina said quietly.
Her silver hair caught the torchlight as she studied the tunnel walls. Those gray eyes tracked the pattern of the cracks like she was reading so ancient text.
"These passages are older than the academy itself. The original construction dates back to the pre-Consolidation era, before modern reinforcent techniques were developed. If they collapse completely, it could take days to dig through the debris. Maybe longer."
Seraphina’s assessnt: accurate. Concerningly accurate.
Her knowledge base: equally concerning.
How does a healer know so much about mining engineering? Is that in her backstory, or is she just one of those people who reads everything?
I stumbled toward the left wall. Made it look accidental when my shoulder hit the stone. The impact sent a spike of genuine pain through my still-healing ribs. Thank you, Vance, for the gift that kept on giving.
But it also put exactly where I needed to be.
The theatricality covered my real purpose as my fingers found the hairline crack I’d been looking for. A fissure in the wall that connected to the maintenance tunnels.
The original novel had ntioned these passages only in passing. A throwaway detail about the mine’s complex ventilation system that the author had probably included for verisimilitude.
But I’d read that paragraph three tis during my first life. ntally cataloged the layout because it seed like exactly the kind of detail that would matter later.
Thank you, past .
Thank you for being an obsessive nerd who noticed things.
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