Chapter : 1277

It was not a picture. It was a moment. A single, fleeting, and now utterly, and impossibly, and permanently, captured instant of time.

Lloyd lifted the paper from the tray, the image now fully formed, a perfect, ghostly, and utterly magical reflection of a moment that had already passed.

He held it up for the entire, silent, and now utterly, completely, and absolutely, and very, very terrified, hall to see.

The room, which had been a sea of polite, and slightly bored, curiosity, now erupted in a wave of pure, unadulterated, and deeply, profoundly, and almost religiously, avaricious awe.

This was not just a tool. This was not just an invention.

This was a new, and very, very dangerous, form of magic. A way to capture a moment in time. A way to steal a piece of reality itself.

And every single, powerful, wealthy, and deeply, profoundly vain person in that room, had the same, single, and absolutely unified thought.

I must have one.

Lloyd, the humble decorator, the quiet, eccentric innovator, had just revealed a technology that would change their world forever.

And the nobles, the great and the powerful, were not just impressed. They were desperate. They were hungry. And they were, he knew with a quiet, and very satisfying, certainty, about to make him a very, very rich man.

The silence in the Grand Hall, in the wake of the miracle, was of a new, and very different, kind. It was not a silence of respect or of fear. It was a silence of pure, unadulterated, and deeply, profoundly, and almost religiously, covetous desire.

The hundreds of noble lords and ladies in that room, men and women who had everything, who commanded armies, who owned vast tracts of land, who could purchase any luxury the world had to offer, were now staring at a simple, damp piece of paper with the raw, naked hunger of a starving man looking at a loaf of bread.

They were not seeing an image. They were seeing a new form of immortality. A way to capture their own, fleeting beauty, their own, magnificent power, their own, glorious moments of triumph, and to make them permanent. To own a piece of time itself.

The Duchess of Thorne, the subject of the first, miraculous image, was the first to break the spell. She glided to the dais, her usual, haughty composure now a thin, brittle veneer over a raging, desperate, and very public desire.

“Lord Ferrum,” she began, her voice a little too high, a little too strained. “This… this miracle. This… picture. It is… exquisite. A true work of art.” She paused, her gaze fixed on the image, a look of pure, acquisitive hunger in her eyes. “I must have it. Name your price.”

The first shot in a new, and very, very expensive, war had just been fired.

Before Lloyd could even respond, a dozen other voices, the voices of the most powerful and most wealthy women in the kingdom, all clamored at once.

“And I!”

“Lord Ferrum, my daughters are to be presented at court next season! I must have one of these… light-catchers!”

“My husband is a general! To capture his image, in his full dress uniform… it would be a treasure for our house forever!”

The room, which had been a model of courtly decorum, was now on the verge of becoming a very elegant, and very high-stakes, auction house.

Lloyd, the humble innovator, the man who had just, with a single, brilliant move, created a market for a product that no one had even known they wanted a moment before, simply smiled. A calm, quiet, and deeply, profoundly, and almost comically, satisfied smile.

He held up a hand, and a new, and very different, kind of silence fell over the hall. It was the silence of a hundred hungry wolves, all waiting for the master of the hunt to speak.

“My ladies, my lords,” he began, his voice a smooth, calming, and utterly, infuriatingly, and captivatingly, reasonable thing. “You are too kind. But this… this is merely a prototype. A proof of concept. The technology is still… new. Unstable. It is not yet ready for the public market.”

The collective, disappointed sigh that went through the room was a physical thing, a wave of pure, frustrated desire.

He had them. He had them completely, and absolutely, in the palm of his hand.

It was in that moment of perfect, masterful control, that a new, and very significant, player entered the game.

Chapter : 1278

King Liam Bethelham, who had been watching the entire, magnificent spectacle from his throne with an expression of pure, unadulterated, and deeply appreciative amusement, descended from the dais. He moved through the crowd, a quiet, unassuming figure whose simple, profound authority parted the sea of nobility before him.

He stopped before Lloyd, his eyes, those sharp, intelligent, and all-seeing eyes, gleaming with a mixture of amusement and a profound, and very real, respect.

“Will this… miracle… be available on the market soon, Lord Ferrum?” he asked, his voice a low, casual thing, but with an undercurrent of very real, and very royal, interest.

Lloyd met the King’s gaze, and a silent, shared, and deeply conspiratorial understanding passed between them. They were not a king and a subject. They were two grandmasters, two players of the great game, and one of them had just made a move so brilliant, so audacious, that the other could only stand back and admire it.

Lloyd simply smiled. “Of course, Your Majesty,” he replied, his voice a quiet, and very promising, murmur. “For a price.”

The whispers that followed, the frantic, avaricious calculations that were now being made in the minds of every wealthy person in that room, were a testament to his success.

He had not just created a new product. He had created a new form of currency. A new symbol of status. A new, and utterly, absolutely, and beautifully, indispensable luxury.

Even when, in a later, private conversation with a particularly persistent Duchess, he casually, and with a deep, theatrical sigh of regret, hinted that the current, prohibitive cost of the rare, alchemical components would likely place the price of a single Light-Catcher box at somewhere in the neighborhood of… ten thousand gold coins… the noble ladies were not deterred.

Their desire was absolute. And their purses were very, very deep.

The Light-Catcher was not just an invention; it was the ultimate status symbol, a way to capture and to own beauty, time, and memory itself.

In a single, brilliant, and utterly magnificent move, Lloyd had just, in the middle of his own, secret, and very deadly war, almost as an afterthought, secured the financial future of his house, and his own, personal war effort, for generations to come.

The humble decorator had just become a merchant king. And his reign was just beginning.

The first night of the royal reception was a resounding, and multifaceted, success. On the surface, it was a beautiful, flawless, and deeply moving celebration of a new royal alliance, a glittering spectacle that had reassured the kingdom’s nervous nobility and had sent a powerful message of unity and strength to their enemies.

Beneath the surface, it had been a perfect, silent, and deeply successful military operation. Lloyd’s beautiful, deadly trap had remained unsprung. The enemy had not shown themselves. But his ghost brigade had performed with a flawless, invisible precision, their very presence a silent, suffocating net of security that had made the entire palace the single safest, and most dangerous, place on the continent.

And on a third, and even more profitable, level, it had been a commercial masterstroke of a magnitude that would be studied in the kingdom’s academies of commerce for a century. The "Miracle of Light," as the bards were already beginning to call it, had not just been a demonstration; it had been a declaration of a new economic age.

In the days that followed, Lloyd was the most sought-after, and most infuriatingly elusive, man in the entire capital. He was besieged by a constant, and very powerful, stream of dukes, marquesses, and viscounts, all of whom were suddenly, and very desperately, his best and most loyal friends, and all of whom just happened to have a wife or a daughter who would simply die if they could not be among the first to possess one of his miraculous Light-Catcher boxes.

Lloyd, the newly crowned and deeply reluctant merchant king, played his part with a masterful, and very profitable, perfection. He met with them all, in his quiet, sun-drenched study that was now, for all intents and purposes, the most exclusive and most desirable showroom in the world.

He was a master of the art of the sale. He did not sell a product; he sold a dream. He spoke not of the box’s mechanics, but of its magic. He spoke of capturing a child’s first smile, of preserving the image of a beloved, aging parent, of immortalizing a moment of perfect, fleeting joy.