Chronicles of the Hidden Crown: The System's Gentle Tyrant-Chapter 81: Echoes of the Old Songs

The moon was a thin, crooked blade in the night sky, casting only the faintest silver sheen over the endless forest.

At the Hidden Crown's temporary base, preparations moved in silence.No banners. No marching soldiers.Only shadows passing through shadows, readying for a war that most of the world had no idea had already begun.

Inside the stone-walled council chamber, the fifteen Crowns gathered again, seated around a long, polished blackwood table.Flickering candles gave off a dim, uneasy light that made the edges of the room seem to crawl.

At the table's head, Kieran sat.Not the public, student-faced Kieran who walked the halls of the Academy with a mask of indifference.

Here, there was no need for masks.

Only a king and his blades.

He rested one gloved hand atop the sealed tome, his crimson eyes gleaming faintly under the hood of his cloak.

Riven, First Crown and head of Intelligence, leaned forward, tapping her finger once against the wood.

"We've traced cult activity to several ruins south of the Azure Line," she said, her voice clipped. "Small movements—scouts, perhaps. They're searching for something."

Kieran nodded once.

"Not surprising," murmured Sylveria, Ninth Crown. "They feel it too. The stirring."

A soft murmur passed through the room. None doubted it.

Ever since retrieving the tome from the hidden shrine, the atmosphere had changed.The winds carried whispers at night.The animals grew restless, scattering from places that should have been safe.

And there were the dreams.

Nightmares that clung like cobwebs even after waking.Visions of spiraling towers, endless oceans turned to black glass, and skies where unknown stars bled fire.

Kieran stood slowly.

His presence, even silent, commanded the room with an ease that no king in history could match.

"Our path remains unchanged," he said, voice low and certain."But we must move faster. Before the other forces gathering realize the breadth of what lies beneath their feet."

He turned toward a wide map unfurled across the wall.

The territories of the central kingdoms.Major cities. Trade routes. Noble holdings.

But also, in faint silver ink only visible in certain angles of light—Marks of ancient sites. Forgotten ruins. Suppressed knowledge.

The remnants of the Old World.

Places that had been erased from modern history.

"We'll divide into cells," Kieran said. "Each assigned to regions near potential 'Threads' mentioned in the Codex."

He motioned toward the tome.

"The Silent Watchers once guarded these places. If any artifacts or hidden towers remain, they'll be there."

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"And the cults?" asked Elaria, the Sixth Crown, her green eyes sharp.

"They're already moving," Kieran answered."We will let them."

He smiled thinly.

"And then we will take what they find."

The Assignment of the Mission Cells

Within the next hours, the Crowns and their closest Shadow Commanders divided duties.

First Cell: Riven would lead investigations into the desolate valleys near the Fallen Star Crater, where strange lights had been seen dancing above the cliffs at night.

Second Cell: Sylveria and a team of Subterfuge specialists would infiltrate a secretive scholar's guild rumored to have unearthed forbidden texts during their excavations.

Third Cell: Elaria and her Rangers would scout the misted swamps where ancient statues had begun to weep black ichor.

Fourth Cell: Cailen, the Fifth Crown and Master of Arms, would lead elite squads to secure a suspected hidden armory—one buried before the collapse of the Old World.

Each team would operate in absolute silence. No banners, no signatures, no indication that Hidden Crown existed at all.

Kieran himself would remain behind the scenes, orchestrating movements through the system's communication web—the intricate soul-linked network formed through the Crown Crests.

But his focus, increasingly, was drawn elsewhere.

Toward the darkening threads gathering around the next great secret:The Tower of Dusk.

Whisperings in the Academy

Even as the Hidden Crown's operations spread across the continent, the Academy life continued—outwardly untouched.

Kieran's clone attended lectures, participated in duels, walked among nobles and commoners alike.

But cracks were appearing.

Tension simmered between the highborn and lowborn students, fed by unseen hands.Rumors of secret societies, assassinations, and forbidden magic whispered through dormitory halls like plague winds.

Dark cults had not ignored the Academy.

Some of the nobility's children had already been touched—corrupted by promises of hidden power, lured into ancient oaths they did not understand.

The Academy would soon become a battlefield of its own.

And Kieran intended to control it long before the others even realized it had begun.

That Night

In the private sanctum of the base, Kieran worked alone.

Before him lay a new artifact—an ancient cipher wheel recovered from the shrine.

It was a thing of tarnished brass and black stone, covered in faint symbols that shifted when viewed out of the corner of one's eye.

Using the Codex as a reference, Kieran began carefully aligning the cipher wheel's segments.

The outer ring spun slowly under his gloved hands, clicking into place with a sound like cracking ice.

As the last segment fell into alignment, a hidden compartment at the wheel's center clicked open—revealing a thin shard of dark crystal, no longer than his little finger.

It pulsed faintly with inner light.

When Kieran reached out with his senses, he realized the truth:

It was not just a crystal.

It was a key.

To what, he could not yet say.

But the feeling that whispered up his spine was clear.

This was only the beginning.