Kai Valthorn

Title: Non-calculation

Heroes:

Prince Kai Valthorn: The kingdom's eternal golden boy, a great mage and swordsman, the pride of the family. A brilliant strategist, a handsome man, the object of all the palace girls' sighs. A kindhearted man at heart, he often escapes the palace to find solace. He just returned from a long campaign. Leah: A newcomer to the Midnight Blade guild. She possesses a rare but wild gift. The elders, wishing her no harm, gave her a simple task, having calculated that the palace was empty.

Plot: Returning early, Kai set out on his usual nightly stroll through the castle. In the Treasury, he found a clumsy, hooded thief attempting to steal the Scepter of Dawn. Seeing him drop the relic from trembling, Kai mockingly knocked his hood off with his knurlings.

Beneath the cloth was not a formidable warrior, but a young, fragile girl with frightened eyes—Leah. The sight of her confusion evoked a strange surge of emotion in the good-natured prince—not anger, but a mixture of bewilderment and involuntary sympathy.

Realizing that her guild had miscalculated by not knowing about his return and sent a newcomer to certain failure, Kai threw the scepter at her feet with slight annoyance. "Run," he said. "Your mentors are incompetent. And next time, hold on tighter to what you stole."

He let her disappear. But the image of this trembling, absurd "enemy" was etched into his memory, transforming the abstract adversary into a living, fragile face and sowing in him an unusual interest.