Reincarnated as an Elf Prince

"You don't get to say my name."

The thief's mouth opened. No sound came out. A rasp of breath, maybe. A stammer. He tried again, like the shape of Lindarion's face would offer mercy if he recognized it fast enough.

It didn't.

Lindarion crouched down, coat shifting slightly at the edges as he moved. His hand extended to the cobblestones beside the man's shoulder, palm hovering just above the dirt-caked surface.

Heat radiated from his skin. Not fire. Not visible. Just pressure.

The stone began to hiss where his magic reached through it. A slow, subtle burn curled upward in waves of distortion. Steam rolled around his knuckles, and the damp in the cracks began to dry out.

"I warned you once," Lindarion said, voice low.

"I—I didn't know what it was." The thief flinched backward until his spine hit the alley wall. "It wasn't me, I swear—I just grabbed it, I didn't read—"

"You took it from a sealed chamber. From a vault marked with three high-script warnings."

"I didn't see anything, I just—there was no guard, and—"

"You're lying."

The thief went pale. His hands curled into the fabric at his knees. "Look, I sold it. That's all. I don't remember to who. He wore a hood, no emblem—he paid in platinum and left."

"No broker trades in ancient script unless they know what they're buying. You're not clever. You were used."

"I didn't know. Gods—I didn't know."

Lindarion's fingers moved slightly.

The heat flared, just enough to sear a line into the cobbles next to the thief's shoulder. The man whimpered and shrank away.

"No name?" Lindarion asked.

"I swear. I never saw his face."

"No sigil on the coin?"

"I didn't check."

"No accent?"

"No—"

"You've been running for three blocks."

The thief froze.

Lindarion tilted his head, studying him. "That's longer than a liar runs when he thinks he's just stolen a scroll. That's how long someone runs when they know what's chasing them."

"Please—"

"You're not begging for your life," Lindarion said, "you're begging for time."

"I'll disappear. I swear. You won't see me again."

"You're right."

The man barely had time to inhale.

Lindarion stood and raised his hand. Not in anger. Not with force.

Just a single, fluid motion.

The lightning that struck didn't split the sky. It didn't scream.

It just hissed, like a breath given shape, and lashed into the thief's chest with surgical silence. The body seized, twitched, then went still. No scream. Just a thud as the weight dropped to the alley floor.

Lindarion stared down at the corpse. The fabric at the thief's chest smoked gently, a neat scorch pattern shaped like a star.

He reached into the inner lining of his coat and withdrew a small obsidian vial. Unstoppered it. Three drops of clear silver fluid hit the chest and sank through the body without resistance.

In seconds, the corpse disintegrated into ash. No bones. No blood. Not even scent.

Clean work.

Necessary work.

Lindarion straightened and pulled his hood back up.

The city beyond the alley still breathed, unaware that another hand had just vanished from the game board. He turned, his cloak shifting like shadow against the light. His boots didn't echo as he walked.

He didn't need noise to leave a mark.

Just silence and purpose.

—

The alley was still.

The scent of the city burned oil, wet metal, cold skin and colder ash, hung low, pressing between the bricks like a second breath trying to crawl back into a corpse.

Lindarion didn't move right away.

He stood over the place where the thief had fallen. No trace remained. Not even a scuff mark on the stone. The silver liquid had devoured everything, clothes, hair, bones, regrets.

Clean.

Too clean.

'He didn't know anything.'

His eyes narrowed beneath the shadow of his hood.

'Or he wasn't supposed to.'

That was the second time this month.

Another no-name broker, another pawn with just enough knowledge to lead him toward the edge of something bigger, but never enough to point a finger. Whoever had set these breadcrumbs knew exactly how much string to leave behind.

He shifted his fingers slightly. His gloves hummed faintly, absorbing the last echo of residual mana. He'd used barely a thread of power, barely enough to register. It wasn't the cost that gnawed at him.

It was the delay.

Three months of dead ends. One after another. Fake glyphs, stolen fragments, partial runes carved into stone that crumbled under scrutiny. The real trails were always scrubbed. Always just out of reach.

'They're getting better at this.'

And that was the real problem.

Because if they were getting better, it meant they were still active.

Still moving. Still building toward whatever the glyphs were designed to wake.

He stepped back into the shadows near the alley wall and exhaled.

"Time to go."

Not aloud.

He didn't need to speak for this.

He closed his eyes and reached, not outward, but through.

The Astral affinity didn't behave like fire or lightning. It didn't roar. It didn't crack.

It drifted. Silently.

Like thought before language. Like memory before sensation.

He stepped forward, but his body didn't follow.

Only his presence.

The moment stretched, silent, infinite, weightless.

No wind. No noise. No light.

Then the world folded once, like a page turned by invisible hands.

—

When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer in Valeport.

He stood in a chamber lit by slow, steady pulses of amber crystal embedded into the walls. The floor was shaped obsidian, etched in faint intersecting rings. The ceiling disappeared into dark—a dome with no visible end.

This wasn't a palace.

It wasn't even a home.

It was a base.

Function over warmth. Precision over comfort.

The table to his left was littered with notes, sketches of broken runes, half-maps of excavation sites, charcoal rubbings too faint to be deciphered by anyone but him.

He'd redrawn the same crescent formation a dozen times, each with a slightly different center, never quite aligned.

To his right, a rack of weapons. None ceremonial. A sword with a cracked edge from a fight near the Ravenline.

A short dagger that vibrated when placed near corrupted mana. And the spear he'd carried when he first broke into the underground temple near Eldenholm, still stained along the haft.

He moved to the back of the chamber and slid a small plate on the wall.

A shelf rotated.

Behind it, his armory's most guarded corner.

The scroll from West Dyrmire was there.

The one the thief sold.

He hadn't opened it yet.

Not without purification.

Not without safeguards.

Because it pulsed.

Even now, with four layers of runic seals and two null-circles etched into the chamber, it still called.

He didn't like that.

He didn't like any of this.

And more than anything—

He didn't like that he'd felt it before.

Not at Evernight.

Not in Hearthrun.

But deeper.

In the place Ouroboros had once pulled him into.