The elders were already seated when Okjin entered the chamber.
They looked up as one, as if summoned not by footsteps but by the gravity that clung to him now. He did not bow. Did not greet them with the customary pleasantries. He walked to the center of the hall with quiet certainty, the echo of his steps trailing behind like a blade drawn slow.
"Lirien," Elder Gaius said with that same measured calm he always used, as though speaking to a storm politely might stop it from breaking. "We assumed you would need time to consider the engagement."
"I have," Okjin said, voice cool. "And I'm ending it."
A flicker. Barely more than a breath passed through the room, but he felt it—the quiet tension twisting under the weight of centuries-old protocol.
Elder Mirabel cleared her throat. "You would do well to reflect more deeply. The Vaeloria alliance is—"
"—a sham," Okjin cut in, gaze sharp. "Forged under the assumption that I was a pawn to be moved without question."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. His words landed like falling stars—silent, bright, impossible to ignore.
"You used my name. My body. My title—without consent. Did you think I wouldn't notice? That I'd smile and nod while you bartered my future like coin?"
A silence thickened.
Elder Mirabel's brows pinched. "We acted in the interest of the Duchy. Of stability. Surely you understand that—"
"I understand perfectly," Okjin said. "And as the heir of House Sylvaine, I'm invoking my right to nullify any engagement arranged without my approval or presence. You want stability? You'll get it. But not by selling me off like a sealed letter."
The room chilled. The shadows bent.
Lirien's mana slipped loose—slow and quiet, but heavy, like moonlight pressing down on water.
Elder Gaius shifted uncomfortably. "You're letting emotion cloud your judgment."
"No," Okjin said. "I'm finally seeing things clearly."
He stepped forward, expression unreadable, voice like silk drawn taut.
"And while we're speaking of clarity—I want access to the ancestral records."
That, more than anything, seemed to shake them.
Mirabel frowned. "Those archives are sacred. Not to be accessed without due cause."
"I have cause," Okjin said. "You placed me in a position that directly affects the future of this Duchy, this Empire—and I don't even know what I am."
The elders stilled.
Up until now, he'd assumed Lirien was infertile.
It made sense at the time. Or at least, it had—the evasive language, the side glances, the sudden rush to marry him off under the guise of political duty. Like they were trying to quietly pass him off before anyone asked the wrong questions. That was a familiar story in aristocratic circles: an heir who couldn't produce an heir of their own.
But the pieces weren't adding up anymore.
The way his body reacted. The strange fever that came with his celestial magic. The raw sensitivity to mana. Whatever was happening inside him—it didn't feel like absence. It felt like something was being suppressed. Controlled.
There was no emptiness in him. No broken mechanism.
There was something else.
And they knew. They had to.
His jaw tightened.
"I want answers," he said, cold and clear. "You knew about the conditions of my body. You knew about the rumors, the secrecy. And yet you said nothing."
He took a breath, steadying himself, gaze sharp as glass.
"So if I'm to be the Jade Mage, to lead this family, I will not do it blind."
Because whatever was locked inside this body—whatever secrets they were trying to keep hidden—Okjin was done playing the part.
He was going to find the truth.
Even if he had to pry it from the bones of this estate himself.
…
A heavy silence followed Okjin's declaration.
Then, from the head of the table, Lady Yseult rose.
Her eyes didn't leave him. She studied his face not with surprise, but something quieter. Older.
Something that had waited for this.
She turned slightly toward the others, voice low but ringing with significance.
"The heir awakens."
The room stilled.
Lord Ashton's gaze sharpened. A subtle shift passed between the elders—like a ripple beneath still water. No one spoke, but the weight of the moment settled thick in the air.
Okjin felt it but couldn't name it.
He straightened, jaw tight. "If I'm to lead, I'll do it with open eyes. Not under your thumb."
Lady Yseult nodded once—slowly. Almost reverently.
Then, without breaking eye contact, she reached into her sleeve and drew a silver key, ancient and etched in runes.
She placed it on the table.
"To the archives," she said. "You may go."
He stepped forward, hand closing around the key.
It felt colder than it should.
"And the engagement?" he said quietly.
Another pause. Lord Ashton exchanged a look with Lady Yseult.
Then: "Consider it annulled."
Something in Okjin's chest loosened. But even as he turned to leave, he could feel their eyes still on him.
Watching.
Waiting.
As if they'd seen this moment coming for a long, long time.
.・゜-: ✧ :- -: ✧ :-゜・．
It was a full month before Okjin used the key—partly because the archives could only be accessed during certain lunar phases, and partly because he was far too busy surviving to go digging through haunted vaults.
In that time, he'd grown used to raising the moon on his own. The first few nights were hell—his body trembling with fatigue, the flow of enormous amounts of mana near unbearable—but eventually, he adapted. He had to.
The magic itself wasn't something to adapt to, however. It obeyed him. More than that—it anticipated him. He would think about wanting light, and torches would spark to life. Consider floating a book to himself, and it would already be rising into the air before he even reached for it. The laws of magic bent around him like he was gravity.
And yet… as the days crawled toward the next full moon, something else grew with it. A warmth. A pressure behind his ribs. At first, it was like a fever in his chest, subtle but persistent. Then it worsened. Hotter. Heavier. He'd tried suppressing it with magic—layer after layer of cooling spells, sigils, shielding—but it only bought him time.
The drain on his magic never stopped. The fever never cooled.
He thought it would fade after the first week. It didn't. If anything, it felt like it was building toward something. Like it was waiting.
He didn't know for what. (And he wasn't in the mood to guess. Probably some celestial puberty milestone. Or fire-induced demigod awakening. Whatever.)
He redirected his focus elsewhere.
The staff assigned to his personal wing had, at first, reacted with silent, wide-eyed terror. Did they respect him? Absolutely. Probably too much. That wasn't the issue. The issue was that if he so much as asked someone for a cup of tea, someone cried. One person fainted.
Apparently, being spoken to directly by the Jade Mage was considered an honor of such divine magnitude that they were too scared to respond without kneeling, bowing, or whispering prayers under their breath.
They treated him like a deity come to judge their laundry-folding technique.
How had Lirien put up with this?
Answer: he hadn't.
From what Okjin gathered, Lirien had been so antisocial and overworked that he rarely spoke to anyone outside of Jeremiah. The steward handled everything—requests, commands, silent glares that meant bring tea before I explode. The staff had followed orders from a distance. None of them had ever actually spoken to their master before.
WTF, Lirien—do you have divine-level social anxiety?
Still, things changed.
After a few painfully awkward conversations, a disastrous attempt at humor involving enchanted socks, and Okjin's unfortunate tendency to thank people a little too enthusiastically, something shifted.
The awe dulled into curiosity. The fear softened into fascination. Then, hesitantly… familiarity.
It wasn't instant. But his casual tone, sarcastic jokes, and visible lack of godlike detachment threw them off balance—and slowly, reverence gave way to something human.
Old habits didn't vanish, of course. They still bowed. Still used the formal titles. But they smiled more. Spoke first, sometimes. And once—after Okjin made a particularly dry remark about the state of the empire's budget—someone even laughed.
Progress. :)
He also got used to the robes. Lirien's layers of ceremonial silk and embroidered moon-thread were ridiculous at first, but once he realized the fabric was designed to soothe hypersensitive skin—Ah. That explained a lot. The robes weren't just fashion. They were armor. Being hypersensitive to mana wasn't all perks, apparently. Anything that didn't have mana coursing through it felt foreign—like sandpaper against his skin. Hence the special silk: bathed in moonlight, infused with mana, and absurdly soft. Decadent? Yes. But also the only thing standing between him and a full-body rash.
He delegated all the paperwork Lirien used to do by himself—thousands of pages of estate reports and empire-wide mage correspondences—straight back to the elders. Where they belonged.
And to his surprise, they accepted every request. Every demand. Like they were waiting for it.
The change unsettled him. But he let it happen.
Until the night the mark on the Moon Pool shimmered with light.
.・゜-: ✧ :- -: ✧ :-゜・．
That night, Okjin found himself beneath the garden's Moon Pool.
He was exhausted.
It had been hours since he rose the moon over the capital, but the magic hadn't left him. It couldn't. That was the terrifying part. The ritual wasn't a one-and-done performance like he thought. It was a trigger. A switch.
The moment the moon rose, the cost began.
Lirien's body didn't just raise the moon—it sustained it. Magic continued to pour from him in slow, ceaseless threads, tethered to the sky like he was some kind of living conduit.
And as Okjin had quickly realized, there was a catch: if he slept, it stopped.
Which meant… he didn't sleep.
That first night—his first night trapped in this body—he thought he'd blacked out from emotional exhaustion. But now he understood. His mind had been overwhelmed, flooded by magic his own soul wasn't used to. It was euphoric and searing all at once—like being skinned by stars.
He had stayed seated in that courtyard like a ghost, unblinking, unmoving, frozen by the sheer magnitude of mana crawling through his veins.
And Jeremiah hadn't said a word.
Because apparently—Lirien did that.
He would "meditate," they said. "Rest in stillness." No one dared disturb him. They didn't know he was burning alive behind closed eyelids.
Okjin grit his teeth, fatigue dragging at every limb.
How many nights like that had Lirien endured?
It was only after the power steadied—once he trained himself to breathe through the ache—that he allowed himself to follow the pull of the key.
The Moon Pool shimmered, undisturbed. But tonight, a symbol glowed faint at its base: a star pierced by a crescent moon.
He knelt, pressed the key into the groove.
There was no click. Just motion—quiet as breath, inevitable as tide.
The water parted, curling back like mist, revealing a narrow spiral staircase beneath the pool.
He hesitated.
Then stepped in.
The stone beneath his feet was slick, cool with condensation. The air smelled of moss and old magic—the kind that asked no permission and offered no answers.
Faint runes lit the walls, flickering blue in response to his presence. Mana butterflies fluttered lazily in the air, drawn to the celestial residue clinging to him.
The deeper he descended, the quieter the world became.
Until the sound of his own heartbeat was the only thing left.
The chamber below was small. Rounded. Ancient.
This wasn't a library.
It was a vault.
Every wall was lined with sealed scrolls, cracked ledgers, and preserved silk-bound tomes that pulsed faintly with protective spells. A shallow basin caught the moonlight pouring in from a small stone crack above—but it didn't reflect the sky.
It reflected him.
He turned away.
Drawn instead to a faded tapestry near the back wall.
The threads were brittle with time, but the image was unmistakable:
A star, pierced by a crescent moon.
He stared.
Beneath it, inked in old, shimmering letters:
"When the gods grow restless, and their Star dims, the Rebirth shall begin.
Light reborn, veiled in mortal silk.
A soul unfit for chains.
Let him remember, or let him break."
Okjin's breath slowed.
He didn't know what it meant.
Not yet.
But it wasn't just a prophecy.
It wasn't metaphor.
It felt like him.
This body.
This magic.
This burden he was inheriting with no map and no warning.
And for the first time…
He wondered if Lirien had ever known what he truly was.