CHAPTER 113: HEADLINES AND HEADACHES

There was a lot of sulking.

Sighs left and right. The great baby dragon slouched in his chair like the weight of entire kingdoms pressed down on his tiny shoulders. His method of protest? A single leaf of lettuce.

From his burger.

Orien had plucked it out with painstaking precision, his face twisted in anguish as though he were tearing out his own claw. The discarded lettuce sat on the plate like a symbol of his suffering, a leafy monument to his denied freedom.

Apparently, this was the exact kind of pain one endured when not allowed to go to see a friend for a playdate.

Riley stared at the scene, torn between laughing and applauding the dramatics.

But then Kael’s voice cut in, casual, sharp, and cold enough to freeze the lettuce where it lay. "Dragons who desecrate food do not deserve to eat special things."

The effect was immediate.

Orien’s eyes widened. His claws twitched. Then, with a speed that nearly blurred, the lettuce was snatched back up and shoved straight into his mouth. He chewed furiously, glaring at the table like it was his enemy.

The image was unforgettable: a baby dragon sulking by rejecting food, only to gulp it down the moment his uncle threatened his privilege.

Riley pressed a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. Good lord. He had seen death, councils, and Kael’s tempers. But nothing quite like this.

And yet, in all of this, Riley couldn’t help but wonder: why was Orien even still here?

The boy had already done his part, going through stacks of merfolk faces in an attempt to spot anyone familiar. Surely he didn’t need to keep vigil in the office, sighing loud enough to rattle windows, while Riley worked.

It wasn’t like they needed another being cooped up inside watching endless replays of the succession rite on his small, offline tablet.

But of course, unbeknownst to the weary aide, Kael had his reasons.

The dragon lord sat silently, calculating. If they sent Orien away, then Riley—the fragile little twig of an aide—would be left alone.

First, there was the issue of possible flare-ups from ingesting dragon blood, but another reason was security. Even if Orien was but a little pea, that one was still a dragon. Unfortunately.

But fortunately, it meant having someone with enough ability to watch over the human in case of an emergency.

After all, Kael still could not risk sending him to other departments where the entire Ministry would no doubt gawk at him like some rare beast. Not that they didn’t try. But it was precisely because they did that they discovered it wasn’t safe out there.

And worse, the press had already gotten wind of Riley’s recent trip to the dragon clan’s estate. Which meant the rumors were spreading. Attention was sparking everywhere.

Riley Hale was fast becoming headline material once again.

Of course, a headline could only remain a headline for so long.

The good news was that Riley’s name had finally been toppled off the front page.

The bad news was that the new headline came with work allegedly more important than the leads Riley had been chasing. Leads that he was so close to cornering, if only he could beat the truth out of a few well-placed suspects.

Verbally, of course.

Because obviously, he was not built for physical altercations. The last time he tried, he ended up making out with the "victim", who even asked for it.

So what exactly was this big thing that could force him to lay low on what he was doing?

The fresh disaster? It was delivered by none other than Lyra, the elf receptionist who had, in Riley’s mind, already partially sentenced him to death once.

"My Lord," Lyra began, standing at the door with a pale expression, "I’d like to apologize for this disruption, but it seems there is a big enough problem that warrants your attention."

Riley’s head snapped up at her tone.

Great. Just great. What could it possibly be this time? They hadn’t even finished dealing with the case in front of them!

Then again, to everyone else in the Ministry, Riley and Kael looked like they were "handling other matters." Which was a polite way of saying: no one had any clue what they had been up to since Riley’s sudden disappearance from public view.

So no, they couldn’t really explain that they were, in fact, a bit too busy right now.

Riley pinched the bridge of his nose as he waited for Kael to say, "Fine. Speak."

Lyra held up a news article, voice trembling. "The headline says: ’Theft of the Moonveil Codex: Ancient Rune Book Vanishes from Silvara.’"

Riley blinked once. Twice. Then snatched the article to read it himself.

Even he, with his painfully "limited" human knowledge of magical artifacts, knew about that one.

"The Moonveil Codex..." Riley muttered, eyes widening as he skimmed the text. "This is bad. This is really bad."

Kael raised a brow but said nothing. He didn’t need to. His silence was already heavy.

The. Moonveil. Codex.

Riley read the words again, half hoping the letters would shuffle themselves into something less catastrophic, like "Moonveil Cookbook Stolen: Legendary Pancake Recipe Missing." But no, there it was in plain text: Codex. Not cookbook

. Codex.

He exhaled slowly, shoulders stiff.

That thing was no ordinary tome.

Written during the First Rune Era, it was the culmination of the elves’ attempt to bind natural law itself into script.

Even back in his university days, Riley had studied fragments and references to it in comparative linguistics and artifact theory. Professors always warned that proto-runes were not simply letters. They were symbols of raw power—anchors of meaning capable of redefining magical limits.

His skin prickled as he remembered footnotes buried in old texts, the kind of lines that made even scholars uneasy: a single untested rune could invert cause and effect, untether time from sequence, or silence the very growth of matter. The Codex was more than an artifact. It was a manual for rewriting existence.

That was why it had never been allowed outside Silvara, safeguarded under oath by the ruling family for millennia. Its presence was a reminder of both elven ambition and elven restraint.

And now someone had stolen it.

Riley’s breath caught. For most, the Codex might look like a shimmering relic, translucent pages that glowed faintly in moonlight. Something to admire from behind glass.

But he knew better.

After working for the Ministry, he’d learned why rumors were rumors to these magical creatures.

And this time, they said it could alter physical constants. Gravity. Light. Growth. Decay.

As a human, maybe no one expected him to care much about leyline flows. But he absolutely cared about gravity. He cared about light. He cared about growth and decay, because the moment those things were tampered with, his very mortal body would be the first to notice. Worse still, he cared about the political chaos that would ripple outward and, without fail, land squarely on his desk.

Sure enough, this was not just a disaster. This was the kind of disaster that made entire continents lose sleep.

Those were the long-term implications, though. What they were facing right this moment was something just as bad.

"My Lord," Lyra said, her voice stiff with tension, "House Elowen put the entirety of Silvara on lockdown effective immediately."

"!!!"

Riley nearly dropped the parchment. "You’re kidding me."

But no. The article confirmed it word for word. Only with the express permission of the High Lord and Lady could anyone enter or exit Silvara. All portals, gates, and leyline crossings had been sealed with warding runes.

His mouth went dry as he skimmed further. Foreign envoys hadn’t even been given the time to be recalled or expelled. They were now trapped inside. And elves traveling abroad? Barred from returning home until further notice.

Riley leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling in mute horror. "So the elves just slammed the door, bolted it shut, and announced no one gets in or out? Fantastic. Nothing like an international hostage situation to really brighten the day!"