They think I don't understand the system. The ledgers, the ranks, the flow of power from the Crown down to the last foot soldier in the trenches. But that's all I've had time to learn. I can tell you the exact supply chain that failed to deliver the stable Ley-Orb core. I can trace the budget line that was reallocated to ceremonial armor for the 'successful' summoning anniversary. I am, functionally, a living audit.

Today's lesson: the difference between 'expendable' and 'disposable.' The eight who arrived on time were expendable assets—valuable, but with an accepted cost of loss. I am a disposable anomaly. A receipt with a pulse. They don't fear what I might become. They're irritated by the paperwork I represent.

So I watch. I map the palace not by its grand halls, but by its service corridors, its accounting offices, its forgotten storage rooms. Power doesn't reside in the throne. It resides in the clerk who misfiles a report, the quartermaster who 'loses' a crate of healing salves, the mage who signs off on a 'minor instability.'

I was three years late to the war. But I arrived just in time for the cleanup. And you learn more about a kingdom by how it sweeps up its messes than by how it wins its battles.

(Mood: Observant. Detached. A ghost in the accounting department.)