Two n also did not sleep that night.
One was Yannis Fenn who devoured the novel page by page until dawn bled through the curtains.
The other was X.
Yannis sat alone in the dim glow of his laptop, jaw tight, eyes burning from hours of reading the condensed version of the book. He skipped the fillers.
He hunted for the parts that mattered — Alaric and Lara’s coronation, the velvet-and-steel politics of court life, the aftermath of crowns placed on willing heads. The journey to other places.
Every line landed like a quiet detonation.
The details matched. Too well.
Every impossible thing Lara had told him — the palace, the battles, the rituals, the suffocating weight of power — it was all here, dressed up as fiction.
"So this," he muttered, voice rough from disuse, "is the story she’s been reading... and her damaged hippocampus just filed it under her long term mory."
A trauma response. A neurological misfire. A neat, clinical explanation for sothing that felt anything but neat.
He felt relieved. Lara’s case will now have closure from a dical perspective.
Before the screen went dark, he booked the earliest flight to Sentra. Or tried to. The system blinked back an error — fully booked for the next five days. Every seat. Every airline.
He sighed.
Too many people moving at once ant sothing was already in motion.
He pivoted. Typed fast. Sent a ssage to the director of Hope Hospital: he was volunteering for the dical deploynt to Calma. No pleasantries. No explanations. Just intent.
Only then did he lean back and close his eyes.
Sleep refused him.
Minutes later, his phone buzzed — sharp, intrusive, final.
Artemio.
Lara is in Laguna. With the Zuvel siblings and the Norse team. They uncovered an exposed ancient wall in the island’s northern sector.
But Yannis already knew that. Hence, he wanted to go to Laguna.
Another ssage followed imdiately.
Check what’s happening there. And Yannis — I want my Lara back. Fast.
Yannis could almost hear the man’s voice behind the text: controlled, dangerous, already fraying at the edges.
He exhaled slowly, fingers hovering over the screen.
Because the truth was — he wasn’t sure that was what he wanted.
Part of him hoped that Lara’s mories would never return. That the woman who laughed too easily with Shay — Larissa Reyes, an orphan, a governess, a stubborn survivor — would stay exactly as she was.
Ordinary and safe.
Alive in a world that didn’t demand absolute obedience and sacrifices.
Not the weapon she was forged to be. Not the woman who lived in the shadows under different identities.
He locked the phone, the room falling back into silence.
Dawn was coming.
And with it, consequences.
...
On the fortieth floor of one of Lanura’s most imposing towers, X rose from the bed as if pulled upright by an invisible thread.
He didn’t spare a glance at the beauty on the bed.
The woman sprawled across the silk sheets was the kind n crossed continents for — luminous skin, long dark hair fanned like spilled ink, lips still parted from sleep or disappointnt.
Any other night, he would have lingered. Claid the mont. Do one or two more rounds and collect the worship.
But tonight he lost interest.
The call he’d received minutes earlier had sliced clean through his appetite, through the haze of alcohol and perfu and heat. Whatever desire had been building was gone, replaced by sothing colder. Sharper.
He crossed the suite barefoot, shrugging into a robe that hung open, careless and unapologetic. The city lights carved his body into planes of shadow and gold — broad shoulders, hard chest dusted with dark hair, a torso honed by discipline rather than vanity.
Late forties had not softened him; if anything, they had stripped him down to sothing harder, denser, more dangerous. The kind of man whose strength ca from control, not display.
Lanura stretched below the balcony like a circuit board of neon and ambition — restless, sleepless, predatory. His kind of city.
He stepped outside, the night air cool against his skin, and summoned his AI assistant with a flick of his fingers.
"Summarize today."
A stream of data condensed into crisp bullet points in his retinal display — headlines, viral posts, financial spikes, underground chatter, governnt silence. The internet was on fire, and at the center of it all were two nas.
The island of Isla and Ares Zuvel.
One line made his jaw tighten.
Isla identified as property of Ares Zuvel.
Property.
The word tasted foul.
Sothing dark and proprietary stirred in his chest — not outrage, not exactly. Sothing closer to insult.
At precisely 2:00 a.m., he dialed a secure number from mory.
It rang once. Twice. Three tis.
A groggy, sandpaper voice answered. "Yeah... who—"
Then a pause as if the other person was checking who the caller was.
Then, as recognition hit—
"Boss! I— I’m sorry. I thought I was still dreaming." The man’s tone snapped from half-asleep confusion to rigid alertness in a single breath. You could almost hear him sitting up straight.
X didn’t waste ti on reprimands.
"Start a narrative campaign against Ares Zuvel," he said, voice low and even, the calm that precedes damage. "Seed doubt. Make it look organic."
A pause. Fingers already flying on the other end, no doubt.
"You can fra it as a conspiracy," X continued, gaze sweeping the glittering skyline as if he owned every light he saw. "That novel Rise of an Empire and the discovery of a royal mausoleum appearing at the sa ti is too coincidental."
His mouth curved — not quite a smile.
"Suggest that soone powerful is orchestrating it. Manufacturing history. Manufacturing legitimacy."
Another pause.
"And Boss... if it traces back to us?"
X’s eyes hardened, reflecting the city like shards of glass.
"It won’t," he said simply. "Make sure the story eats itself. Conspiracy theorists, rival factions, foreign interests — I don’t care. Just make the public uncertain."
Because uncertainty was the most profitable chaos of all.
He ended the call without a goodbye and stood there in the wind, robe fluttering like a dark banner behind him.
Sowhere across the city — across the country — Ares Zuvel was consolidating power.
X intended to poison the ground beneath his feet before he could take another step.
Behind him, the woman shifted in her sleep, unaware she had just shared a bed with a man preparing to set the world on fire.
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