Reincarnated As An Archmage’s Daughter

"Look at it! It's enormous! Do you think we can make it wobble?"

"Everything wobbles if you hit it hard enough," Hania said.

She was halfway through demonstrating the perfect spoon-wobble technique to Princess Thalira when a sudden pressure slammed into her chest. It felt as if an invisible hook had snagged her soul and was trying to yank her heart in two opposing directions.

The golden sphere, hovering lazily near her shoulder, jerked violently, buzzing like an angry hornet before bumping hard against her temple.

Dad.

She gasped, her fork clattering loudly onto her plate.

"Hania?" Thalira asked, her eyes widening in sudden alarm. "Are you okay? Your face just went completely white."

"I’m… fine," Hania lied, forcing her trembling lips into a tight smile even as the pressure twisted again, mimicking a second heartbeat trying to claw its way out of her ribs. "Just ate too fast. I need some air. Save me a spoon, okay?"

Before Thalira could protest, Hania slipped away from the children’s table. The banquet noise faded into a dull, underwater roar as she moved through the hall. Her bandaged hands pressed tightly against her chest, her mind racing.

Where is he? Where did he go?

She could feel him, his mana currents. The invisible thread of frost that always lingered around the Archmage was fluctuating erratically, growing brighter, and more suffocating the closer she got to the exit. Imperial servants bowed low as she passed, but she ignored them entirely, her feet practically flying across the polished marble.

The trail led her out through a side colonnade and directly into the imperial gardens.

Moonlight silvered the perfectly manicured hedges and glowing night-blooming flowers. It should have been a sanctuary of imperial peace.

Instead, Dravin stood alone in a clearing near a central fountain. A thin layer of black ice covered the ground around him in a crystalline circle, absorbing the moonlight rather than reflecting it. His back was to her. His silver hair caught the nocturnal light, but his shoulders were dangerously rigid, his hands clenched so tightly at his sides that the leather of his gloves groaned under the strain.

"Dad!" Hania called out, relief mixing with the agonizing ache in her chest.

Dravin didn’t turn around.

"Get lost, Hania."

Hania skidded to a halt at the edge of the black ice circle, shocked. In all her years since being born into this world, through all her weaponized tantrums and defiance, Dravin had never spoken to her with such detachment.

"Dad… what’s wrong?" Hania took a step forward, the grass snapping like glass beneath her shoes. "I felt it. This pressure in my chest... it’s pulsing with your mana. Talk to me!"

"I said get lost." His voice grew sharper, edged with a strained friction that she had never heard from him before. "Go back to the banquet. Now, Hania."

The golden sphere bobbed erratically beside her, its pristine sunlight-colored glow flickering violently into an anxious, bruised silver.

She took another step onto the black ice.

Dravin’s head snapped toward her. For the first time, she saw his face clearly under the moonlight.

His crimson eyes burned with chaotic intensity, the pupils dilated to the point of madness. Veins of pitch-black mana crawled across his temples like cracked porcelain. And there, on his forehead, was the red crescent moon mark.

Hania’s breath caught in her throat.

"Dad… that mark—"

"Enough."

Frost exploded outward. A massive wall of jagged black ice surged up between them, forcing Hania back several paces as the concussive wind tore at her dress. The pressure in her chest spiked violently, a wave of agony so intense that her knees buckled, forcing her onto the frosted lawn.

Dravin’s voice cracked. "I told you to leave! Do you never listen?! This is not a game! This is not for you!"

Hania staggered back to her feet, her small fists clenching as her purple eyes narrowed with unyielding determination. No, I am not letting you play the tragic martyr.

"No!" she screamed back. "I’m not leaving! That’s the same mark I had! Did the Emperor do this? Was it some kind of seal? Answer me!"

Dravin raised his hand. Invisible bands of crushing, freezing mana wrapped around her waist and arms, gentle in application but absolute in strength, dragging her backward away from the clearing.

"Lusha!" Dravin snarled in desperate panic."Get over here and take her! Now!"

Silk threads shot through the garden from the direction of the palace, severing the moonlight. Lusha appeared in a blur of shifting shadows and golden eyes, landing gracefully beside Hania. Her expression shifted from her usual playful banquet mischief to dead seriousness in a fraction of a second as she looked past the ice wall.

"Dravin, what the Hell—" Lusha started, then froze entirely as she caught sight of the glowing red crescent. "Oh. That’s... that is catastrophic."

"Lusha, don’t you dare!" Hania struggled against the freezing bands of mana, her boots sliding against the stone path. "Something is consuming him! I need to know how to stop it!"

The pressure in her chest was becoming unbearable now, a suffocating vice that threatened to black out her vision. The golden sphere spun wildly, emitting soft, distressed, chimes as it repeatedly smashed itself against the ice wall separating her from her father, desperate to break through.

Through a small fissure in the jagged ice, Dravin’s eyes met hers for one brief second. Behind the freezing command of an Archmage, Hania saw something she never thought she’d see in the strongest man in the Empire.

Fear. Not for his own life, but for hers.

"Take her back inside," Dravin ordered Lusha, his voice dropping as he fought to keep his own magic from tearing the courtyard apart. "Seal the garden. Do not let her return until I have excised this."

"Dad, please—" Hania’s voice cracked, a tear of frustration and pain escaping her eye. "Don't shut me out! We're family! We're supposed to face things together!"

But Lusha’s arms were already wrapping around her. Her grip was strong, and heavy with centuries of survival instinct. Soft, thick strands of spider silk wound around Hania's limbs, efficiently binding her in place to prevent her from throwing herself back into the freeze.

"I’ve got her," Lusha said quietly toward the ice wall. Then, leaning down against Hania’s ear: "Little one, we need to go. Your presence is making his control slip."

As Lusha hoisted her off the ground, she reached out one bandaged hand through the silk threads, her fingers straining toward the fading silhouette of her father.

"Tell me what happened!"

★★★

Lusha carried Hania away from the clearing with rapid speed. The golden sphere trailed them desperately, bumping against Lusha’s shoulder as if pleading with the nanny to stop. Hania thrashed wildly within the silk cocoon, her mind firing in a million different directions.

Think, Hania. Think. In every novel, the high-tier magical backlash requires an anchor or an expulsion vector. If he locks himself down, he's going to freeze his own mana core.

"Let me go!" Hania demanded, her voice vibrating with a commanding authority that made Lusha flinch slightly. "He needs an external mana stabilizer! You saw... it’s a systemic infection!"

"Little one, stop," Lusha said, her golden eyes tightly fixed on the path ahead. "Dravin gave a direct territorial order. When the Archmage uses that specific frequency, even the entities of the shadow realm stop to listen. If we stay, his localized blizzard will shred your core."

Behind them, the temperature of the entire imperial garden suddenly inverted.

Duke Leonarth came sprinting down the moonlit path, his formal robes torn at the collar. His eyes blazed like furnaces as he skidded to a halt at the edge of the black ice circle, his hands already weaving complex, glowing fire runes in the night air.

"Dravin!" Leonarth roared, the heat radiating off his body instantly melting the nearby frozen roses into scalding steam. "What in the burning hells is this?! I felt the foundations of the palace shifting from the banquet hall!"

Dravin’s voice carried across the courtyard. "Seal it, Leonarth. The entire perimeter. A total isolation grid. No one enters. And Lusha—get her out of the capital. Do not look back."

Leonarth didn’t ask for an explanation. He knew the stakes of an Archmage losing structural integrity. He slammed his palms together with a concussive boom. A towering dome of amber-gold solar fire erupted from the earth, encasing the entire garden clearing and blending seamlessly with Dravin’s black ice.

The barrier shimmered, turning translucent, then completely invisible. To any noble looking out from the palace windows, the garden now appeared perfectly quiet, and empty.

Hania felt the magical severance instantly. The throbbing pressure in her chest became a dull ache as the direct line to her father's mana was forcefully cut off by the barrier.

"It’s an absolute isolation seal..." Hania whispered. "Uncle Leonarth cut the resonance."

"Smart girl," Lusha murmured, her pace never slackening as they neared the outer gates. "That’s the point of state-level secrecy."

They burst through the iron gates only to be intercepted. Raylas came sprinting up from the shadows of the colonnade, his usual smooth composure entirely shattered.

"Lusha," Raylas said quickly. "Valentin, that traveling scholar... He slipped away from the Empress the exact second the temperature dropped. I tracked his aura; he's heading straight toward the garden's blind spot."

Lusha’s hidden spider legs clicked sharply beneath her dress in irritation. "Of course he is. That preening parasite never knows when to stay out of a disaster zone." She shot a lethal look at Raylas. "Keep the Emberlyn extraction escort active at the eastern gate. If this dome breaches, the capital becomes an active war zone."

Hania knew she was running out of time. If Lusha got her to the carriage, she would be locked away in the Noctis Tower, entirely blind to the plot.

She forced her body to go completely, limp in Lusha’s arms. She let out a choked whimper, her eyes rolling back slightly as she let her mana drop to a dangerously low frequency.

"Lusha… it hurts," Hania gasped out. "My chest… the blood… I think my core is rupturing."

Lusha stopped dead in her tracks, her maternal panic instantly overriding her military discipline. "Hania? Where does it hurt? Look at me—"

The moment Lusha loosened the silk bindings to inspect her chest, Hania struck with malice.

Using every ounce of her remaining power, she flared her purple eyes and cast a high-intensity, localized illusion directly onto her own face. A blood-red crescent moon mark erupted across her forehead, pulsing violently with simulated dark mana. Simultaneously, she commanded the golden sphere to explode in a blinding, flash-bang burst of solar light right in Lusha's face.

"Dad's corruption is transferring to me!" Hania shrieked with staged terror.

Lusha instinctively recoiled, hissed as her sensitive golden eyes were scorched by the light, and threw her hand up to shield her face. The silk bindings unraveled completely.

Hania slipped through her grasp like an eel, her bare feet hitting the cold stone path. She didn't look back. She bolted.

"Hania! No! Stop!" Lusha screamed, her vision clearing as she realized she’d been thoroughly played by a child.

Raylas cursed loudly, lunging forward to grab her dress, but Hania ducked beneath his arm, her small body giving her a distinct agility advantage. The golden sphere shot ahead of her like a glowing beacon, guiding her back toward the invisible amber dome.

Ten meters.

She could feel the heat of Leonarth’s barrier reflecting off the air. She could feel her father's agonizing frost waiting just behind the veil.

"I’m sorry, little one," a voice whispered directly behind her ear.

Before Hania’s fingers could touch the barrier, Lusha appeared out of thin air. Eight massive spider legs propelled her forward in a blur, her arms wrapping around Hania’s waist from behind, lifting her off her feet and pinning her arms to her sides.

"Let me go!" Hania screamed, thrashing wildly, her small heels kicking against Lusha’s shins. "He’s going to freeze himself from the inside out! Let me in!"

"You want to protect him. I know," Lusha whispered, her voice heavy with heartbreaking sorrow as she held the screaming child tight. "But right now, my only duty is to ensure the Noctis line doesn't end tonight. Protecting you means keeping you away from him."

Soft, glowing strands of enchanted silk brushed against Hania’s neck. A wave of Lusha’s irresistible sleeping magic flooded her nervous system.

Hania’s limbs went heavy, turning to lead. Her furious thrashing slowed to a weak tremble.

"I just… wanted to help him," Hania mumbled, her purple eyes fluttering shut, her small fingers losing their grip on the air. "He always... protects me..."

The last image she saw before the darkness took her entirely was the invisible garden dome.

Lusha caught her limp body, cradling the unconscious princess against her chest. The golden sphere dropped from the sky, humming a mournful tone as it rested its warm surface against Hania's pale cheek.

Raylas skidded to a halt beside them, his eyes wide as he stared at the sleeping girl. "She really was going to walk straight into an Archmage's collapse, wasn't she? Without a single weapon."

"She’s a Noctis," Lusha said softly, using her thumb to brush a stray silver hair away from Hania’s face. "They don’t know how to abandon family. Even when staying means execution."

She turned her gaze back toward the invisible barrier.

"Come," Lusha commanded. "We take her to the secondary estate. And we pray Leonarth knows how to put out a fire that bleeds."