Royal Reboot: Level up, Your Majesty!

Whispers of Power

3

A sharp laugh disturbed the quiet tennis courts. Tiffany straddled Eydis, pinning her wrists to the blue concrete. Sickly violet sparks danced in Tiffany’s eyes, sweat beaded along her brow. 

Mist coiled around them both, alive, hungry.

Eydis licked her split lip, but she neither fought back, nor struggled, nor pleaded. Her laughter faded, then settled into an infuriatingly calm smile.

Tiffany’s pulse stumbled. Her grip tightened enough to bruise. “Crazy bitch,” she snapped, “What’s so funny?”

Eydis breathed out like someone tasting fine wine. “Nostalgic, really. Exhilarating.”

Tiffany recoiled. Is this… a mistake?

That rattled Tiffany. Jillian had begged. Amanda had screamed. Eydis looked entertained.

“You’re a freak,” she hissed.

“You don’t understand power at all, do you?” Eydis replied, voice even while the mist pinched her throat. “…Let alone the whispers of darkness.”

The smoke constricted just enough to remind her, to make her body acknowledge it. Eydis gasped, but delight still glimmered in her eyes.

“You know nothing!” Tiffany snarled, though doubt had already taken root. “Nothing about my power, nothing about me!”

The smoke’s hold wavered slightly as their link fractured, just a fraction.

Eydis’s laugh was soft, but it scraped at Tiffany’s nerves. “Naïve girl. You call it power. It calls you dinner.”

Tiffany caught the look in those amber eyes: mockery, maybe pity. Pity made her furious.

How dare she?

“And when it’s over…” Eydis’s words wound around Tiffany’s thoughts like thorny vines, tightening, tightening, until her mind bled. “… there will be nothing left of you.”

“Shut UP!” Tiffany screamed. The mist trembled, thin in places.

Don’t listen! the smoke howled. Don’t listen! Lies! 

A lie. Yes. Has to be.

Or is the smoke lying?

Or am I lying?

The thought splintered through her mind. The mist tried to speak, to seduce, to convince her again. Heart pounding, she heard only one question:

Is this mind even mine anymore?

Eydis watched her. “What good is power when you’re too dead to use it?” 

The mist shrieked louder. Tiffany’s nails carved lines in her scalp. The crack widened.

"You feel it,” Eydis continued. “A parasite feeding on every insecurity, every dark wish.”

Tiffany tried to shut it out, but fear forced the fracture wider.

"Including yourself," Eydis breathed. "Be honest. You’re no longer in control. And deep down, you know it.”

Until it shattered.

The mist’s seductive voice snapped into a feral roar, a voice Tiffany had never heard until now.

“Doubt makes you weak! Lies—nothing but lies! This power is yours, Tiffany! Take control!”

The words stitched her mind together. Blue irises flashed violet. She threw back her head and laughed.

“Mine,” she breathed. “You are right.”

Eydis didn’t flinch. She only watched.

“God, you’re so full of it,” Tiffany scoffed. “You actually thought I’d fall for that? You’re all talk, just like always. Almost got me.” She leaned in closer. “But I have the power. You’re just a fly on the wall.”

She swung to strike. Eydis’s hand caught her wrist like a vise.

Panic flashed. 

Why is she so strong?

The mist struck next, only to rebound off a violet wall that erupted in a flash, flinging Tiffany across the court. She hit the ground, ears ringing.

She coughed, dazed, and saw Eydis standing within a shimmering dome. The smoke hammered the barrier again and again, useless.

Impossible.

Eydis smiled, amused, cruel. 

“Took you long enough to speak.”

Eydis pressed her hands to the ground. A chant spilled from her lips; not just foreign words, not just numbers but…

Equations? 

The earth trembled.

A sigil, an intricate mandala of emerald light, ignited beneath them. Lines of glowing symbols pulsed, then flared bright. Gears of unseen forces turned, locking into place, the mechanical click filling the silence.

Tiffany looked down, and only then did she see it. The chalk drawn circle. A cage. A trap.

A chill crawled down her spine. Pieces clicked into place, things she hadn’t noticed before.

Eydis wasn’t stalling. She wasn’t waiting for Astra or anyone else to swoop in. She was waiting for Tiffany to walk straight into it.

Like a spider sitting still, waiting for the fly to come to her. And just like that, Tiffany realised… 

She was the fly. 

No!

Seeing the mist thrashed desperately, Tiffany finally understood. It felt what she felt.

The same realisation. 

The same, inescapable, fear.

Had she been playing with something she didn’t understand?

Eydis’s irises burned like molten gold. “You actually think this power is yours, Tiffany?” She let the silence stretch just to tease. “It never was.”

“W-What do you mean…?”

Eydis smirked as a memory surfaced—the day she first understood that magic truly existed in this world, a plan had begun to take shape. Her body might not have held the same raw power as the Gifted students here, but that didn’t matter. She could use something else.

She could use an external source of power.

Sigils.

And the possibilities were endless. Unlike conventional spellcasting, sigils didn’t drain a mage’s own mana. They drew from the world itself, tapping into an energy source beyond personal limitations. But they demanded the right command to function: the perfect balance between the language of magic and the logic of mathematics.

Math was constant across worlds. That left the arcane dialect as the only variable. And so, she had rewritten it. Weeks of translation, refining, testing, until the sigils listened.

Her first success had been a simple protection sigil, enhancing her physical strength. Slow, but at least it worked.

But power wasn’t about defense. The strongest sigil wasn’t one of mana, nor protection, nor destruction.

A binding sigil. That was power.

Few could master it. Fewer still dared to call upon the primal evils of her world.

But Eydis wasn’t most people, now, was she?

Her eyes snapped back to the smoke, writhing inside the half-formed circle. The trap was laid, threaded through every line of earth beneath them. But it wasn’t finished.

It needed a name.

Eydis’s voice dipped low. “You’ve been quite naughty, haven’t you?”

"W-What are you talking about?" Tiffany whimpered.

Eydis’s golden eyes were locked on the seething dark. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

Her fingers cut elegant strokes through the air, finalising the sigil. “Rise,” she commanded. “And bind yourself to me. Remember your master. Thy name I call forth. Show yourself!”

The air thickened. Magic pressed down. The sigil throbbed with a malevolent green as Eydis whispered, a single final word.

A name.

"Envy!"

The swirling mass buckled inward, collapsing into itself, shaping, refining, until obsidian scales gleamed, luminous violet light slithering along its form.

A serpent. Elegant, sinuous, precisely as she had envisioned. Her first Sin.

It stirred, slow and disoriented, before its golden eyes locked onto hers. Memories crashed through its mind, carving away at the primal fog of hunger.

“Y-Your Majesty? Q-Queen of Shadows?"

“Forgotten me so soon?”

The serpent writhed pathetically at her feet. "Forgive me, Your Majesty! I... I couldn't recognise your energy. Our binding was severed the moment we… Without a master, without memories, I… I only knew hunger.”

"Are you sure?" Eydis's hand shot out, tightening around the serpent's throat. "Do you recognise me now? Slow suffocation... you did seem to enjoy it so much before."

The fear in the serpent’s eyes drained away, replaced by a warped devotion. It slipped free, coiling around Eydis’s arm.

"It is you! Your Majesty. But your touch could use refinement."

The audacity almost earned it another squeeze, but Tiffany’s shrill voice split the moment.

"Hunger?!" she screamed. "I'm your MASTER!"

"Master?" The serpent’s forked tongue flickered in contempt. “You are a puppet tangled in your own strings. Bow before Her Majesty, insect, before I silence your noise.”

Eydis gripped its neck. “Touching, Envy. Loyalty looks good on you, considering you were ready to constrict me a moment ago.”

The serpent’s scales shifted with shame. “When I awoke, Your Majesty, I was lost. This world felt wrong. Empty-minded and starving, I found her—bitter, envious, overflowing with need. A feast.”

“Liar!” Tiffany pounded the ground until her hand bleed. “You chose me because I am special!”

Eydis smiled coldly. “You were special, Tiffany, but only as a food source.” She indicated the glowing sigil. “I prepared for two possibilities. Envy or Pride. Though I always suspected it was Envy. Pride is… well, Pride.”

Tiffany stiffened.

“But the moment Envy opened its mouth,” she said, “there was no room for doubt.”

Envy twitched in embarrassment.

“Well, this has been entertaining. But we seem to have gotten sidetracked.” Eydis lifted her hand. Violet magic pulsed, tearing mist from Tiffany’s body. The stolen power streamed back to its rightful owner.

Violet sparks flared faintly at her fingertips. Power, finally hers again.

Tiffany gasped, clawing at Eydis’s leg. “No! It is mine! Give it back! I need it!”

“Entrust my power to you?” Eydis said, “Might as well give a toddler the launch codes.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just checking.” Eydis shrugged. “Was the imagery too subtle?”

She freed herself from Tiffany’s grasp and turned away. Silently, she willed the serpent to erase the sigils with its scales.

“Farewell, Tiffany. May you find peace in the emptiness you’ve created.”

Invisible now, the serpent whispered, “A masterpiece of a sigil, as always. I almost pity whatever is trapped inside.”

Eydis’s lips twitched. 

“This vessel, though,” Envy continued, “its aura does not match yours.”

“Because it isn’t mine,” Eydis sighed. 

Retrieving all of her power would be… difficult.

“If you’re here, then the rest of my power is scattered across this world?” she mused. “Then we have work to do. And if we fail…”

Envy hissed, “Then the Pandora’s Box will crack open… and what follows—”

“—would be catastrophic,” she finished.

The night swallowed her footsteps whole.