Enslaved by the Crown: The Weakest Slave Has the Strongest Ability

The castle was quieter than Eldrin had expected.

He remained outside the outer wall for several minutes, watching.

Nothing moved along the battlements. No torchlight passed between the windows. The main gate hung half-open, its hinges stained with rust.

The nearest section of wall was low enough to climb. He pulled himself over, dropped silently onto the other side, and stayed still for a moment.

He moved along the edge of the courtyard.

Then, Eldrin entered the castle through entrance gate.

He moved slowly, checking the rooms one by one.

The entrance hall.

Empty.

A dining room with broken furniture.

Empty.

Several bedrooms.

Nothing.

He searched the western wing, then the upper floor.

The place had been stripped years ago.

Whatever valuables had once been inside were long gone. There were no fresh footprints, no signs of a recent camp, nothing that suggested the courier had stayed there.

Eldrin kept looking anyway.

Nothing.

After nearly two hours, he returned to the entrance hall.

He stood in the middle of the room and looked around.

Nothing.

The castle had given him absolutely nothing.

Eldrin glanced at the broken windows.

Maybe the courier had never entered.

But even that was only a guess.

He spent another hour searching the grounds.

An old stable.

A collapsed carriage house.

The rear courtyard.

The surrounding road.

Nothing connected to the missing ledger.

Eventually, Eldrin stopped beneath the ruined gatehouse.

His frustration had begun to settle into something more useful.

I’m looking in the wrong place.

He looked back at the castle.

The request hadn’t said the courier was last seen inside this place.

Only that he had disappeared somewhere around Briarhook.

The castle had simply been one possibility.

He had spent most of the night trying to prove a theory he had invented himself.

Eldrin exhaled.

"Fine."

He folded the map and put it away.

If the castle had nothing, he would stop wasting time here.

He returned toward the road.

....

...

..

The next day produced almost nothing.

Eldrin returned to Briarhook in daylight and followed the road from the castle in both directions.

He found old tracks.

Old buildings.

An abandoned stable.

A ruined tollhouse.

Nothing connected cleanly to the courier.

By midnight, he had started repeating his own footsteps.

That was a bad sign.

When sun rises, he gave up and returned to the city.

He had been given seven days.

There was no reason to waste the first two trying to force an answer out of a place that wasn’t giving one.

That morning, he sat in the library with the bureau’s papers spread across the desk.

The archive was nearly empty.

Rowan was somewhere in the upper stacks.

He had read the report so many times that he could almost remember the wording without looking.

Courier.

Merchant ledger.

Briarhook Road.

Three days missing.

Abandoned trading estate.

He leaned back.

Something was wrong.

Not with the castle.

With the report.

Eldrin pulled the original sheet closer.

He read the courier’s route again.

Briarhook Road.

Then he looked at the rough map.

His finger traced the marked road.

The castle was here.

The old trading district here.

And the abandoned estate...

He stopped.

There was a road between them.

Not the main road.

A smaller one running toward the river.

Eldrin looked back at the report.

The courier had been carrying a ledger valuable enough for the bureau to offer ten silver for its recovery.

Yet the search teams had apparently gone straight to the last known location and found nothing.

Why?

He stared at the map.

Then something clicked.

The missing courier hadn’t simply disappeared.

The people looking for him had been searching where they expected him to go.

Eldrin slowly sat forward.

What if he never went there?

He looked at the line describing the courier’s final route.

There was a note beside it.

Expected delivery route.

Not confirmed route.

Eldrin read it again.

Then a second time.

A faint smile appeared.

"There you are."

He reached for a blank sheet.

If the courier had deliberately abandoned the expected route, there had to be a reason.

And if there was a reason...

There would be another destination.

Eldrin lowered his eyes to the map.

The river road was the first place he would check at night.

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