It was rare, to say the least.

  The sight of the absolute tyrant sprinting through the pace, face hardened and eyes bloodshot upon hearing that the Empress had colpsed ireasury—priceless, really.

  Not only the Round Table but even the pace guards were on high alert. Did they o draw their ons? Maim something? Lock down the pce tighter than a cm, preventing even a lo from esg the chaos?

  The closer Burn got to the treasury, the thicker the crowd became.

  "Her Majesty hasn't been feeliely..." someone whispered, the kind of chatter that makes one wonder who started the rumor mill.

  "I saw her being carried to the main chamber by His Majesty just this m... she’s actually... ill?" another replied, feigning shock like they hadn’t seen this ing a mile away.

  Nonsehat was merely Gahad and Landevale’s ag, not the real Man—

  "Make way!" Burn snapped, and like obedient sheep, the people parted. He bulldozed through the sea of bodies and finally caught sight of her on the ground, surrounded by physis who looked like they had just run a marathon.

  People bowed as he entered, and the physis shuffled away, as if they were somehow the real problem, horror etched on their faces.

  "What is her dition?" Bur, impatience radiating off him, not even waiting for a proper expnation as he began his own iion.

  Man y limp, her eyes open but nothing but a hollow stare, her hair a disheveled halo on the floor as Burn cradled her against him, lifting her into his p, perplexed by the absurdity of her seemingly perfect physical dition.

  "We don’t know, Your Majesty. When we arrived, she was breathing, her eyes open, and her body limp, but she didn’t respond to our calls—just as you see her now," one of the physis bravely reported.

  They tinued, noting that while her irises respoo light, she didn’t flinch at abrupt visual stimution. Sound? Touch? A vigorous application of smelling salts? All useless.

  "Man," Burn said, tapping her cheek as if hoping for a miracle or, at the very least, some sembnce of a rea. He leaned closer, kissing her jaw, then her lips, desperately trying to pour his Forto her, but nothing happehere was nothing wrong with her body—nothiured, nothing gained.

  "What happened before she colpsed? Where’s the servant whht her here?!" he yelled.

  One of the servants stepped forward, his face bowed low, looking like he’d just fessed to purloining the royal silverware. "My lord... I was the one who led Her Majesty here. I opehe treasury and invited her in, and then she asked to be left alone."

  He paused, clearly hoping for sympathy or perhaps diviervention. "After some time, I grew worried and dared to ehe room again—only to find Her Majesty already colpsing. I swear on my mrave, I genuinely don’t know what was happening to her!"

  The young ma on the floor in a pose of utter despair, as if he expected a bolt of lightning to strike him down for his sins.

  Burn, not particurly known for his generosity, couldn’t help but notice that the d was both young and already handling the key to the treasury—enough to spark a glimmer of trust in his hoy or intelligence.

  He had seen this servant flitting about with the chamberin, always eager to learn, perhaps too eager for his own good. He was clearly his pupil.

  Burn turo the physis and doctors with a raised brow. "Did you disturb anything else?"

  They all shook their heads vigorously, clearly eager to avoid any more trouble.

  "Then, be goell everyone else to return to their work," Burn ordered. Even Percival, who had just arrived with the other members of the Round Table, turned and plied.

  "You," Burn said, his gaze pinning the key-bearer in pce as if he were a rabbit caught in a sell me if there’s anything different ireasury aside from her colpse. You know the dition of the treasury since you are in charge of it, right?"

  "Sir, I only... I oered it if the Lord Chamberited. I am merely a ing boy, hardly qualified to be scrutinizing these precious items," the young man replied, his voice a mere whisper.

  "Look around and see if there’s something amiss," Burn anded once more, his tone brooking nument.

  With a relut nod, the young maured deeper into the treasury, his eyes sing the glimmering treasures, eaore ostentatious tha—a veritable kingdom of glittering chaos.

  He had often marveled at how the former king adorned himself with gold and jewels, yet today the allure seemed to wane, like sunflowers wilting under a heavy sky.

  As he observed the array of artifacts, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. The , once gleaming with a thousand refles, appeared tarnished, as if it had eoo many tedious cil meetings.

  The jeweled goblet, usually the toast of every ba, looked like it had seen far too many spills of subpar wine. Even the scepter—a supposed symbol of power—seemed to sag, its brilliance dulled as though worn down by the weight of authority.

  He peered into a dispy case where the fi jewels were enshrined, but even these suffered a dullhat echoed a greater distent. Uainty crept into his mind.

  Had the wealth of the realm turned mere tris uhe weight of disi? Certainly, because Burn wasn’t ied in wearing these things, his vigor and youth were his best accessories, letting them be ed like this. Or was it just him, imagining shadows where there were none?

  With a frowurned back to Burn, brag himself to vey his findings, unsure whether he was about to reveal a theft or simply the slow dee of opulence amidst .

  "Sir, it appears we were not careful in maintaining the luster of the former king’s treasures…" he began, "But I swear, yesterday, they weren’t this… dull!"

  Dull?

  He jogged his memory, pting the trihat cluttered Princess Shorof's room. Sure, they were full of bk-like filth, but they still sparkled with an air of intrigue, refusing to surreo the passage of years.

  Not to mention, the items that beloo his father, the former king, were uo be ied with the physical form of corrupted mana—not that anyone could install such substao creations fed of sturdy metal, crafted by the royal crafters with more experiehan the average artisan could muster.

  "Dull" was a symptom of something far more tragic: the unfortunate side effect of a broken ented object that was no longer able to bear the weight of its own runes and entments.

  Ohose delicate artifacts succumbed to the harsh realities of existehey didn’t just fade away like bad memories; they disied, sometimes dramatically, ht.

  "Ah!" The key-bearer gestured toward an obje the floor he door, his excitement palpable. It was a curious sight, unfamiliar to him but evidently an old friend to Burn. An hss with infinite sawined by the endlessly hungry ouroboros.

  Mnemosyne’s Aeons.

  "Your Majesty... this... I’ve truly never id eyes on this one before!"

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