Sneaking in and out of the palace was supposedly an impossible feat, and perhaps it was so for most. But Leopold had found that emitting an aura that compelled guards and nobles to look elsewhere when he walked by had become a sound strategy for simply waltzing out of there whenever he pleased.

  It was the sixth of Mána, and the first lukewarm spring day of the year, and most importantly, it was market day in downtown.

  No matter the day, there was sure to be a market somewhere in the capital. And if nothing else tempted Leopold could always swing by Madame Purple's or one of the numerous other nefarious places he frequented.

  But this market was special; it was part of the first of the four seasonal festivals that let vendors from all over the Empire set up a stall without having to pay the city tax for the three-day duration of the festivities. This exemption always drew in many more exotic traders and swindlers than usual, and Leopold absolutely relished the endless stream of trivial schemings that flowed from so many of the participants.

  And now he was surely making his way through the bustling streets, preparing to bathe his consciousness in the selfishness of the trades.

  The market had originally been a well-organized event with stalls set up in Saint M?na's square, but over the decades, it had slowly grown in size. Now that the market stretched far out into the streets surrounding the square, it had become vast both in size and number of people it drew in.

  Leopold strolled down the colorful street, taking in the sight of countless wares and the sound of countless minds.

  Leopold let his gaze wander over bolts of dyed cloth, crates of pungent spices, shimmering trinkets and carved fetishes from the far coast. The air shimmered faintly with the mixed aura of hundreds of traders, their eagerness and greed bleeding into the atmosphere like heat.

  Even without a guard at his back, people shifted out of his way long before he reached them.

  Some dipped their heads. Others pretended to study the nearest basket of onions. A few simply felt the prickling tingle of his aura grazing their minds and stumbled aside before they knew why.

  It was almost disappointing how predictable people could be.

  Sometimes a stray thought would jump out of the mixture and pleasantly surprise him.

  A young, chubby noblewoman was twirling a hairpin between her fingers, the image of her cruel mother-in-law contorting into a demon beast playing in her mind.

  Leopold couldn't help but laugh to himself at these little petty revenges. Unfortunately, he got too close, and the woman noticed him, her mind washed clean of anything but his presence and how to stay polite.

  "Good day, your highness."

  He didn't answer; instead, he decided that playfully holding up his finger to his lips would suit his image better. Now she could feel special, as they shared a little secret, him being here when he was not supposed to, and she, caught red-handed, buying that horrifically awful hairpiece.

  He moved through the crowd effortlessly, enjoying the colorful market, the spiced air where somewhere up ahead someone was caramelizing nuts, tingeing the wind with sweetness.

  But before Leopold could reach the snack vendor, a small but noisy crowd caught his attention. They were all gathered before a small and tattered-looking stall. They were all fascinated by whatever the merchant had on sale. Some argued it had to be fake, some that it was a scam, yet they all stuck around. Leopold decided to focus on their thoughts.

  'Evalia,' though Leopold often heard the name of his younger sister, the mention of her name still drew his attention.

  Depictions of Princess Evalia had grown in popularity as her resemblance to the leader of the first people had become a widely accepted fact. At a market like this, they would be a Ura a dozen.

  So why was this one drawing such attention?

  Someone at the edge of the stall kept an internal argument with those murmuring 'Evalia'. As far as Leopold knew, there weren't any princesses who could be mistaken for his sister, at least not if you knew even the slightest of her golden-haired appearance.

  Leopold let his aura announce his presence, and the crowd dispersed before him, leaving a clear path between him and the merchant.

  The merchant reacted instantly.

  "Welcome, your highness!" she exclaimed, the voice of the woman round and rumbling like thunder, loud enough to turn half the market toward them. Heads turned, gazes filled with awe, settled on Leopold's fine silk and golden hair. No longer was his suppressive aura enough to keep the masses at bay.

  Five full meters of bodies froze in place, caught between curiosity and opportunistic glee.

  In situations like these, Leopold knew all too well the great effect of offering a polite smile and a courteous nod. He had tried and tested it many times; nobles loved to feel special, and peasants could be satisfied with feeling acknowledged.

  A graceful little wave, just enough to seem benevolent, wafted a detering wave through the air, and soon his presence was all but forgotten, only the merchant still smiled brightly at him.

  "Do not feel shy! What can my humble stand offer a fine man like his highness?" The woman opened her arm, gesturing exaggeratedly toward all the wares on her table. "I trade only in the finest of aura instruments."

  Leopold doubted that very much.

  But he stepped closer anyway.

  "I couldn't help but notice you selling a depiction of my dearest sister." Leopold made sure to keep his tone casual, a remark with no strings.

  "Depictions of her highness, you say?" The merchant feigned a playful ignorance. "Unfortunately, I have no such treasure in my inventory."

  The merchant let the denial hang for a moment, her lips curling into the sort of smile that promised mischief rather than truth.

  "However..." she said, dropping her voice theatrically, "what I do have is a depiction of a princess from a land far beyond our Empire's borders. A marvel brought to me by the most intrepid of traders. A treasure unlike anything you have ever seen, your highness."

  Thoughts of the vast sum of money she was planning to earn from this exchange were the only thing filling her mind, but Leopold could appreciate a simple-minded person with a clear goal.

  "A foreign princess." Leopold was intrigued, but surely this would only be a disappointment, and as such he kept his expectations low. "It just so happens I know many of such descriptions. You have my attention."

  A wide smile spread across her face, and the merchant held out a shiny black tablet, which looked ornamental, though there was no script engraved or anything. Then she carefully placed a small aura stone on the tablet, and surprisingly, the black surface lit up to reveal a lifelike image of none other than her, .

  The image showed her smiling broadly, as if mid-laugh, with a young man next to her kissing her forehead playfully. There were odd symbols at the top that, in writing, he had never come across.

  This was truly a peculiar tablet; Leopold had never seen such a lifelike image. He could not even tell if it was painted. It was as though someone had captured a moment in time and frozen it onto the little tablet.

  "Can I take a closer look?" He extended his hand even before he got an answer, so eager to find out more about this aura instrument.

  "But of course you may, your highness!"

  However, as soon as the aura stone was removed from the tablet, it went back to being nothing but a black shiny stone.

  As he held it in his hand, it did not feel like a typical aura instrument, not biting at his power, hungry to consume. Rather, it felt dead, just like a normal stone.

  But this didn't deter Leopold; he had just seen how it could be powered by aura, and he channeled his imagination into reigniting the image on the tablet, and slowly it lit back up.

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  The image of her smiling was so different from how he knew her; if not for the uncanny resemblance and the unmistakable hair, he would have hardly believed they could be the same person.

  "How much for this?" Lepold was already rummaging in his pocket for some change; he had to own this instrument. Maybe if he brought it back to her, he would get to see the parts of her mind she usually kept locked away.

  "Oh well, your highness, you see this trinket is one of a kind, it's a lifelike depiction of a foreign princess, you see." There was pride in the merchant's voice as though she believed it, but Leopold could tell it was all just a charade; she had gotten the tablet from another poor tradesman who didn't know what it was. "But for you, your highness, I shall offer you the trinket at an excellent price, just two Mark."

  This little tablet had, without a doubt, been one of her possessions before she got mixed into whatever had led her to be branded that day so long ago. But now that she was not allowed to own anything, this merchant had every right to sell it at whatever price she saw fit.

  And of course, Leopold knew that everyone had to make enough to put bread on their table, and since he could afford it, he did not argue.

  He let the two metal coins drop into the palm of the merchant, and before she could thank him, Leopold had already turned away, consumed by the thoughts of what he could do with this instrument.

  He lingered in the market for a little while longer out of habit, but his attention was no longer on the stalls. He found himself wandering aimlessly, his thoughts on a constant circular path, returning to the peculiar tablet stored in his pocket and the smile of the girl that defied all that he knew of her.

  By the time he realised he had turned another corner, he could not recall a single thing he had walked past in the last twelve minutes; he decided it was no use pretending.

  He turned his steps back toward the upper streets and made his way to the palace.

  Sneaking back in was even easier than sneaking out. The guards at the side entrance were deep in thought on how they would miss the upcoming festival nights; Leopold's aura slid over them in thin tendrils, gently nudging their attention in the opposite direction as he passed.

  Soon, he had returned to his chamber, the noise of the market only faintly audible through his balcony doors.

  Any attendant who had attempted to follow had been sent away, leaving Leopold in the company of only his own curiosity.

  From his pocket, he carefully drew the tablet. It had gone dark and lifeless, resting without an aura supply. But before he carelessly offered his power to this device of unknown origin, he meticulously observed every little etching and peculiarity about it.

  At first, he had thought it was an aurastone of some kind, but now he was quite sure that the blank side where the image had appeared had a glass surface, and turning the tablet over, the other side was of a different material. Drumming his fingertips against it, it sounded more like a hardwood with a lacquer coating.

  Leopold thought back to how Madam R?fna had mentioned the girl being completely unfamiliar with the ways of aura.

  Running his fingers along the edge, there were little protrusions that, when pressed, made a distinct clicking sound. Nothing he did seemed to have any effect, and before long, his patience had run thin, and he succumbed to curiosity. Letting just a little bit of aura flow from his palm and envisioning the image coming back to life was enough for the tablet to wake from its slumber.

  He slid his finger across the smooth surface, not really expecting anything more, merely a reaction to seeing the bright smile on her face. But to his surprise, the image was suddenly obscured, and even more of those symbols appeared, looking rather like a foreign script.

  Leopold stared at the symbols, trying to discern any meaning at all. Nine of them were arranged in a perfect square, each placed neatly in a small circle. Centred below the square, a tenth one shaped like a ring in its own circle, it almost looked like the empirian script for six, but then again, not quite; it was a little too elongated.

  He touched his finger to the centermost symbol, and the tablet gave off a faint tremor. The way it reacted to his bare hands, no aura needed, told a story that did not start in the smitheries of aura artisans.

  Touching the other symbols made the same faint tremor emanate from the tablet. He kept tapping the symbols, hoping for something more to happen, until suddenly the circles disappeared, and the only thing on the tablet was a single, long line of script, with two symbols below that would change over time: one constantly remained, while the other changed only a few times.

  It was all very strange and fascinating at the same time.

  Leopold pressed one of the small protrusions along the edge again, and to his dismay, the surface went dark again, but his aura was still streaming into the tablet.

  For a flicker of a moment, he worried. Had he ruined the only concrete proof of the girl's impossible life? Had he offended the tablet, leaving this a dead end of discovery? But his own worry made his aura surge ever so slightly, and the image reignited underneath the glass surface; however, it was no longer the same image of her smiling beside a man.

  On the tablet was now the girl surrounded by other young women, all of them dressed in obscenely ugly clothes and jewelry. Their arms were thrown around one another, glasses raised toward the beholder. They were frozen in time, laughter painted on their faces, the blur of colored lanterns behind them, the unmistakable air of revelry.

  Leopold studied the fantastical sight, completely enamored with the impossibility of this girl and the place she came from. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that these could all just be illusions, false images meant to trick those who dared steal her tablet.

  And at the same time, he was puzzled by the truth that someone had created this instrument. In any court Leopold had ever tread, not even once had he come across something that captured moments in time quite so lifelike as these. Even the best painters in the empire would leave strokes behind, though there was a fuzziness to these images; for the life of him, he couldn't pick out a single sign that this was painted.

  Leopold had also never come across an aura instrument that could display the memories of a person so finely and vividly. The best conjurers could create almost anything in aura, but capturing and freezing pure aura was not a trivial matter, for such was the fleeting nature of aura.

  At the bottom of the tablet, he noticed two symbols that did not look like the other, and on a whim, he let his finger press the rectangular one and slide across the tablet.

  In his mind, he was prepared to see more symbols arranged in some pattern like before. However, instead of seeing the square of symbols, now he was looking straight through the tablet at the tapestry on the wall across from him.

  In a moment of shocked disbelief, he had nearly thrown the tablet to the floor.

  He turned the tablet over to see if a hole had formed or if this was more illusion; to the pleasure of his curious mind, the back looked exactly as lacquered as before.

  Just to be sure, he turned it back and let his hand pass between the tablet and the wall; the illusion was perfect as he saw how his hand came into view on the smooth surface.

  He felt burning warmth spread in his body, his mind racing with ecstasy, his neck tensing up in sheer excitement as the scope of his mystery expanded endlessly before his eyes. Not even beautiful women could make him feel like this.

  He forced himself to set it aside, for now.

  In the following days, he returned to the tablet seeking that same high he had felt the first day. He found himself sneaking away between obligations, staying up late at night, and even getting as bold as to seek the thrill while attendants fussed with his clothes in the morning.

  Every time he returned to the tablet, a new image of the girl would appear; often, the man from the first image would be there, and Leopold could start to recognize some of the women.

  Some that radiated joy, others quieter, lost in thought. At some point, the images started repeating, and after a while, there were no more surprises, only familiar fragments of the same impossible life.

  On the fifth day, he finally made a new discovery. When the tablet was translucent, he would place his finger on a specific symbol, and the tablet would transform into a mirror showing his face back to him. He also found that this mirror could capture moments of his face, which he could look at for a short while, but contrary to those of the girl, his moments would be gone the next time he returned to the tablet.

  The grid of symbols remained an enigma. No matter what order he tried, they only buzzed under his fingertips, shifting occasionally into that long line of unreadable script and the pair of changing symbols at the top; by now, he suspected they counted the time. The counter grew longer each time he ended up there, but whatever it measured, it never granted him anything new in return.

  When he pressed too many of them, the device always returned to the long line of indecipherable script and the shifting symbols at the top. The counter grew longer each time he reached it, but whatever it measured, it never did anything more.

  He had concluded three functions about the tablet; it held moments or memories frozen for all to view, it could turn translucent from one side, and it could be a mirror.

  For a few days, that had seemed like enough. Three concrete discoveries, all pulled from an object that he was almost certain should not exist.

  But the more he circled those same functions, the more hollow they began to feel. No matter what he tried, he never got any further.

  By the end of the week, he surrendered to his own inability to figure out anything more.

  He could keep guessing in the dark, or he could hand the puzzle to someone whose entire livelihood was built on understanding the strange and the misplaced. Someone who might tell him not only how this instrument was made, but also how a girl like her had ever come to own it before being branded before his eyes.

  It was time to visit his most unlikely acquaintance.

  They had met at Madame Purple's, where the appraiser was racking up big winnings to the point where other people started to equate him to Leopold, which Leopold took as a bit of a challenge, a threat to his undisputed superiority if nothing else.

  And thus, he had agreed to play against the man in Overherre.

  It turned out this man was likely the most brilliant mind Leopold had ever come across, a true genius. Had it not been for Leopold's mind-reading abilities, that day would surely have been the end of his reign as undefeated in every game.

  After their game, Leopold had approached the man in private and engaged in conversation to uncover every little peculiarity about his existence.

  It had turned out he was an unsuccessful businessman running an apparel shop, but due to his grave incompetence in the ways of business, the man had turned to gambling, which had proved a lucrative way to live his life.

  Ever since that day, Leopold would occasionally visit the man's dingy little shop, seeking his wisdom and throwing a coin his way.

  Instead of sneaking, Leopold had opted to bring a guard for this excursion. The shop was located in a notoriously rough part of the capital, and thus, there was no reason to be careless.

  Leopold's last obligation of the day had drawn long, and now the spring evening was already turning dim. As he turned a corner, he saw the yellow light spilling out of the smudged windows of the little store nestled between a brothel and a pub. Above the door hung an illegible wooden sign, the paint nearly gone, and the hanger so rusty it was a wonder it hadn't crumbled under the weight.

  As Leopold stepped through the door, he couldn't help but think to himself.