My Seven Wives Are Beautiful Saintesses - Chapter 208

Chapter 208: Chapter 208: The Trial
Inside the eastern wing of the Imperial Succession Hall, Prince Dareth lounged across a crescent couch, one leg draped over the armrest, a crystal goblet rotating lazily in his fingers. He laughed openly as his attendants relayed the report.

“A frontier lord?” he scoffed. “From Astralis Border Seven?”

An aide nodded cautiously. “Yes, Your Highness. Formerly a mercenary commander. Recently elevated.”

Dareth waved a dismissive hand. “Celestine collects oddities. Philosophers. Executors. Now mercenaries, it seems.”

A few courtiers chuckled softly.

“He seized a continent,” another attendant added carefully. “And dismantled Azure Dragon Sect influence.”

Dareth snorted. “Sect politics. Petty wars. Give a dog enough teeth and it will bite. That does not make it a dragon.”

He leaned back, entirely unconcerned.

“Let him enjoy his moment. When the real powers move, he will fold or be crushed.”

Across the hall, Princess Lysera did not laugh.

She stood near a panoramic window overlooking the orbital ring, her silver eyes narrowed as data streams scrolled silently across her retinal interface. Her attendants remained quiet, sensing her mood.

“A mercenary does not restructure economies,” she said softly. “Nor does one survive direct imperial observation without consequence.”

She gestured subtly, and one of her aides stepped forward.

“I want everything,” Lysera ordered. “His early records. His first appearance. Financial movements. Cultivation anomalies. Any mention of him before Astralis Border Seven.”

The aide bowed deeply. “At once, Your Highness.”

Lysera folded her hands behind her back.

Celestine did not choose recklessly.

If she had brought this man into the succession arena, then he was either a liability she intended to discard, or a blade she intended to wield.

Either way, ignoring him would be foolish.

Elsewhere, Prince Kaelen had already locked himself into his private strategy chamber.

The polished walls shimmered faintly as layered privacy formations sealed the space. His advisors stood in a semicircle before him, each wearing expressions of carefully restrained concern.

“He chose her,” Kaelen said flatly.

No one answered.

“He looked me in the eye and chose her,” Kaelen continued, his voice tightening. “Not neutrality. Not delay. Her.”

One advisor cleared his throat. “Your Highness, Celestine is an Executor. Her banner carries weight, but also scrutiny. Aligning with her invites—”

“Silence,” Kaelen snapped.

He turned toward a floating projection of the Eastern Continent.

“Erase the myth,” Kaelen said. “I want facts. I want weaknesses. No lord rises that fast without enemies. Without compromises.”

Another advisor hesitated. “If we investigate too openly, it may alert him.”

Kaelen smiled thinly. “Good. Let him know he is being measured.”

In the lower strata of the Core World, among lesser imperial houses and bureaucratic clans, reactions were more chaotic.

Some dismissed Vahn as a temporary phenomenon.

Others were openly afraid.

Trade guild leaders began quietly recalculating routes. Administrators adjusted projected tax flows. Intelligence offices flagged Crimson Hawk networks as entities of interest rather than regional nuisances.

One thing became clear very quickly.

Vahn’s arrival had destabilized assumptions.

Not laws.

Assumptions.

In the Grand Archive Spire, a cluster of imperial historians and analysts convened under emergency classification. Their task was not political, but existential.

“He does not fit established models,” one analyst said, voice strained. “Not as a conqueror. Not as a reformer.”

Another nodded. “His governance metrics contradict his Void alignment. That alone should be impossible.”

A third analyst leaned forward, eyes dark. “Unless Void alignment itself has been misclassified.”

The room fell silent.

That suggestion was dangerous.

Meanwhile, Vahn himself remained conspicuously absent from public view.

No appearances.

No statements.

No tours of the capital.

He did not attend salons. Did not accept invitations. Did not posture.

This unsettled the court far more than arrogance would have.

“He is not advertising himself,” one noble muttered during a private gathering. “That means he is either terrified, or utterly confident.”

“Which do you think?” another replied dryly.

Inside Celestine’s estate, Vahn spent the day in quiet observation.

Renka accompanied him through limited sections of the inner district, her posture composed but alert. She felt the weight of scrutiny constantly, not hostile, but invasive.

“They are watching you,” she murmured as they passed beneath a floating colonnade of light.

“Yes,” Vahn replied calmly. “And deciding how dangerous I am.”

Zutian, walking a few steps behind, glanced around uneasily. “I preferred it when people just tried to stab us.”

Renka smirked faintly. “That comes later.”

By mid-day, the first probes arrived.

Not interrogations.

Introductions.

Minor heirs sent envoys bearing gifts that were not gifts. Artifacts with embedded observation arrays. Scrolls inscribed with subtle loyalty tests. Invitations designed to elicit reactions.

Vahn declined them all.

Politely.

Firmly.

That, too, was noted.

Celestine observed the reactions from her private council chamber, reviewing reports in silence. Her expression remained composed, but her thoughts were anything but.

They are circling him, she thought.

Testing boundaries.

Testing me.

One of her aides spoke hesitantly. “Executor, some factions believe he is merely your shield. A deterrent.”

Celestine’s eyes flicked upward. “And others?”

“Others believe he may be something you cannot control.”

A pause.

“That belief,” Celestine said calmly, “is not incorrect.”

That evening, formal intelligence briefings began to reach the throne’s inner ring.

Fragments of Vahn’s past surfaced.

A socially isolated mortal youth. A transmigration event tied to a collapsed realm. Rapid ascension patterns that defied known cultivation logic. A Void lineage untainted by madness.

The deeper they dug, the less coherent the picture became.

“It is as if he was… inserted,” one investigator whispered during a closed session.

“Inserted by whom?” another demanded.

No one answered.

In a separate wing of the palace, Princess Myrienne read the same reports and felt a slow, cold thrill.

“This one is different,” she murmured.

Her advisor frowned. “Different how?”

“He is not chasing the throne,” Myrienne replied. “He is positioning himself where the throne cannot ignore him.”

She smiled faintly.

“Men like that either become kingmakers, or kings.”

Back in Celestine’s estate, night settled once more over the Core World.

The capital dimmed into layered constellations of light, its endless machinery shifting into nocturnal rhythm. From the highest terraces, the galaxy itself seemed close enough to touch.

Vahn stood alone on a balcony, hands resting on the stone railing.

He could feel it now.

The pressure.

Not from a single enemy, but from an entire civilization recalibrating around his presence.

Behind him, soft footsteps approached.

Renka stopped a short distance away. “You have unsettled them.”

“That was inevitable,” Vahn replied.

“Some dismiss you,” she continued. “Others are afraid. A few are preparing moves.”

Vahn nodded. “Good.”

Renka studied his profile. “Good?”

“If everyone reacted the same way, I would learn nothing,” he said calmly.

She exhaled slowly. “You are standing in the heart of a storm that has devoured gods.”

Vahn turned to face her.

“Yes,” he said. “And for the first time, I am exactly where I need to be.”

Far above them, within sealed imperial towers, heirs plotted.

Some laughed.

Some calculated.

Some sharpened knives.

And all of them, whether they admitted it or not, had begun to adjust their futures around a single variable.

Days Passed.

The announcement came at noon on the third day after Vahn’s arrival.

No trumpet sounded. No celebratory fanfare followed.

The Core World simply acknowledged a truth it could no longer delay.

Across every imperial district, from the upper orbital rings to the deepest administrative strata, a single decree unfolded simultaneously, projected into the air by law-bound arrays that carried the weight of absolute authority.

Trial for the Throne Initiated.

Seven Days Until Commencement.

The capital did not erupt into chaos.

It sharpened.

Vahn felt the change immediately. It was not pressure aimed at him alone, but at everything. Ambition rose like heat. Suspicion condensed into focus. Alliances that had lingered in half-formed silence solidified behind closed doors.

Seven days.

That was all the Empire allowed before bloodless politics turned into open confrontation.

Renka read the decree aloud in Celestine’s inner council chamber, her voice steady but tight. “The trial format has not been disclosed. Only eligibility conditions.”

Zutian leaned back in his seat. “Let me guess. Impossible tasks, moral paradoxes, and at least one situation designed to get people killed.”

Celestine did not smile.

“The Trial for the Throne is not meant to be fair,” she said calmly. “It is meant to reveal who survives pressure without breaking the Empire.”

Her gaze shifted to Vahn.

“And who reshapes it without destroying it.”

That night, the Core World changed rhythm.

Imperial heirs withdrew from public view. Defensive formations around noble estates intensified. Intelligence exchanges spiked so sharply that several data nexuses overloaded and had to be rebuilt within hours.

Vahn did not isolate himself.

He trained.

The seven days that followed were unlike anything he had experienced since his ascension.

Celestine did not teach him techniques.

She did not need to.

Instead, she challenged his perspective.

They met daily in sealed chambers where fate arrays hummed softly, distorting probability itself. There, Celestine unfolded fragments of imperial law comprehension, not as doctrine, but as lived reality.

“You see power as inevitability,” she said on the second day, watching him stabilize a collapsing Void spiral with unnerving ease. “But inevitability without restraint becomes tyranny.”

Vahn met her gaze. “And restraint without inevitability becomes stagnation.”

She did not refute that.

Instead, she pushed him harder.

They sparred, not physically, but conceptually. Celestine forced him to navigate layered fate constructs, each representing an imperial decision point where thousands of lives hinged on a single choice.

Vahn responded not with domination, but with reconfiguration. He bent outcomes without snapping them. Redirected catastrophe instead of erasing it.

For the first time, Celestine felt something her foresight could not fully trace.

Not chaos.

Adaptation.

At night, their conversations grew quieter.

More personal.

They spoke of the Empire’s decay, of its strengths and blind spots. Of Celestine’s frustration at being able to see countless futures, yet never finding one where the system healed itself without immense sacrifice.