Reincarnated as an Elf Prince-Chapter 107: Prisoner (5)
Pain stopped being pain after the second hour.
It became architecture.
The kind of structure your body started organizing itself around when nothing else made sense. Bones were now furniture for agony to drape itself over. Nerves sang like pulled harp strings. Skin? Mostly decorative.
Lindarion lay curled against the far wall of the cell.
Not because he chose to.
Because there was nowhere left to go.
His breathing came in uneven pulls. Shallow. Controlled. The kind that rationed oxygen because anything deeper would mean moving something he hadn't catalogued yet.
His thoughts felt distant.
Not slow.
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Just… filed.
He'd learned early that pain wanted to be loud. It wanted center stage. But if you made it wait its turn—if you made it share the room with your thoughts—it lost its teeth.
Barely.
The air still smelled like iron and burnt mana. His own, probably. His fingers twitched reflexively, the phantom memory of restraint still wrapped around them.
No chains.
No ropes.
Just tools.
Real ones.
Blades with serrated edges that whispered across bone. Instruments that didn't glow, didn't hum—just cut.
And the voice.
The one behind the mask.
The man. The same man as always.
Always polite. Always smiling beneath words that tasted like vinegar.
"Pain, young prince, is not the enemy," he had said.
"It's the translation."
Lindarion hadn't responded.
Not once.
He didn't give him the lines he wanted. No screams. No questions. Just breath.
Measured.
Efficient.
The kind he still had control over.
But control didn't mean intact.
He couldn't move his left arm.
Shoulder joint partially dislocated. Ligaments shredded. The needles had gone in deepz
His core was sealed.
Partially.
Not through mana suppression.
Through something worse.
Understanding.
They'd mapped it.
Whoever they were. They'd studied the structure of his threadwork, the rise and fall of his affinity waves, and found a way to interrupt—not block, just interrupt—the harmonics his spells required to stabilize.
He could still feel his mana.
He just couldn't touch it.
That was what made it worse.
That was what made it torture.
Not the blades.
Not the fire.
Not the hollow needles dipped in something that smelled like melted copper and childhood fear.
The waiting.
He hadn't said a word. Not even when the man had asked.
"Tell me," the voice had whispered near his ear. "Where do the shadows go when you sleep?"
A joke.
A threat.
Or something in between.
Lindarion hadn't answered.
He still wouldn't.
Not even now.
Not even as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth in slow, methodical taps onto the blackened floor. It wasn't symbolic. It wasn't noble. It just was.
Time passed.
He wasn't sure how much.
Hours?
A day?
The lights in the ceiling didn't shift. There were no changes in temperature. No guards. Just the door.
Closed.
Not locked.
That was part of the test too.
He was supposed to break first.
Then crawl toward the threshold like a good little project.
Lindarion shifted, finally.
Sat upright—barely—using the wall as his spine.
And exhaled.
Carefully.
Slowly.
'You want me to play your game…' he thought.
—
The surveillance chamber was elegant in a way that never invited comfort.
Polished marble floors. Curved ceiling lined with thin veins of glowing aetherstone. One wall entirely covered in silent illusions—each one a window to a different room, cell, or monitored site.
The cell at the center of the array—the one on screen six—showed a boy sitting against a wall.
Barefoot. Bloodied. Breathing, barely.
Lindarion Sunblade.
The man stood with his hands folded neatly behind his back, mask in place.
Gold-trimmed porcelain. Smiling.
Always smiling.
"Three hours," he said softly. "Twenty-three tools used. Six mana distortions. No confession. No breakdown. No emotional spikes large enough to suggest mental collapse."
He tilted his head slightly.
"Impressive."
Around the room, the others stood or lounged in silence.
Not quite a council.
Not quite friends.
Just predators with a shared project.
To his left, a woman in ink-black armor tapped her gauntlet against the glass—once, like punctuation. Her voice was low, dry. "You broke a noble heir in half that time."
"I did," the man agreed cheerfully. "But this one isn't just a noble. He's a variable."
A tall man in blood-red robes chuckled from the corner. "You always say that."
"I'm usually right."
The masked man closest to the man—short, broad, and unmarked by insignia—crossed his arms. "The boy's resisting even passive resonance. You're losing time."
"I'm learning," the man corrected. "If I needed results, I would've cut him into syllables by now."
He took a few steps forward.
Hands still behind his back.
Calm.
Clean.
Clinical.
On the screen, Lindarion shifted again—barely perceptible—but not unconscious.
Not broken.
Just quiet.
Still thinking.
The Gentleman loved thinkers.
"His core refused our dampening field," he continued, voice still warm.
"That wasn't a miscalculation. That was intentional instability."
"Cursed?" asked the woman in black.
"No," the man replied. "Worse. Taught. Or perhaps born with it."
He tapped the screen once.
"Do you see what I see, gentlemen?"
The others glanced at each other.
No answers.
The man didn't expect one.
He moved to the table in the center of the chamber—set with files, relics, dissected magical tomes, and one elegant bottle of dark wine that no one dared touch.
He picked up a thin, rune-stamped folder and opened it.
A record.
| Lindarion Sunblade, Void, Blood, Astral, Lightning, Fire, Divine, Darkness, Time, Water, Ice |
"It shouldn't even be possible to possess this many affinities, yet alone so many special ones."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "You think the boy's a vessel?"
"No," he said. "Worse."
A long pause.
Then, finally, the man in the red robes asked the real question:
"Then what is he?"
The Gentleman looked at the screen again.
The boy hadn't moved.
But his eyes—those eyes were open.
Watching.
Alive.
"He's an answer," the man said simply. "We just haven't asked the right question yet."
Another beat.
The masked woman finally asked, "And if he breaks?"
The man's smile never wavered beneath the porcelain. "Then I'll build something better out of the pieces."
He turned to the others. "But for now—no more blades. Let's try the old ways. Memory pressure. Fabricated illusions. Feed him a shadow of the truth and see what sticks."
"You're going to push him into madness."
"No, no," the man replied lightly. "We're going to push him into remembering."
He tapped the screen again.
"Now… let's see what else our little prince forgot to tell us."
—
The discussion shifted like air pressure before a storm.
They stood around the table as the Gentleman spoke of illusions, memory pressure, and restraint.
Restraint.
It was not a word this room enjoyed.
The man standing across from him—a brute of a thing, half-burnt from some ritual long passed, face half-covered by a jagged steel mask—let out a grunt that was almost a laugh.
"You talk like he matters," the brute said. "Like this little princeling is some missing piece of the puzzle. He's not. He's a tool. And tools break."
The room didn't move.
It didn't need to.
The tension shifted one degree. The kind of shift only men who dealt in death could feel.
"I say we carve the secrets out," the brute continued. "We've gotten what we need. His aura signature. His blood. The map of that core. It's enough. Burn the rest and erase the variable."
No one responded.
The masked woman blinked, slow and unimpressed.
The red-robed man didn't even look up from the file in his hand.
But the man? The leader?
He smiled.
Still.
Of course.
He stepped forward once. A single, graceful step.
"Gentleman," he said calmly, "what's your name again? I always forget the small ones."
The brute stiffened.
"Zareth," he growled. "Sector Four. You put me in charge of—"
"Yes. Of cleaning blood off the tiles." The man nodded thoughtfully. "And you've done it well, truly. But I must've forgotten the part where I gave you permission to speak above your position."
Zareth's hand twitched near his belt. Not for a weapon. For leverage. Mana coiled at his shoulder—something primal, burning.
He was going to fight.
Which meant he was going to die.
"I said," Zareth growled again, "we should kill the—"
He didn't finish.
There was no flicker. No flash.
Just a blur.
Then silence.
Then Zareth's body slumped sideways, very gently, and slid down the far wall with a wet sound that didn't match the quiet elegance of the room.
His head hit the floor last.
Still attached.
Barely.
Blood dripped in perfect rhythm. Five drops. Then a pause.
The man turned, wiping the edge of a thin, curved blade that hadn't been in his hand a moment ago.
"I detest being interrupted, especially by small ants." he said softly.
No one spoke.
He placed the blade back onto the table. Clean. Unscratched.
He looked back towards the cell.
The boy hadn't moved.
Still breathing.
Still watching.
"You don't kill variables," the Gentleman said, voice calm again. "You measure them. You pressure them. You find the limits."
"And then?" the red-robed man asked.
"Then," the Gentleman said cheerfully, "you make them yours."
He clapped once.
Crisp.
Efficient.
"Clear the corpse. Reset the chamber. Tell the Hallucinator to begin Phase Three."
