The Genius Mage Was Reincarnated Into A Swordsman Family - Chapter 327

Chapter 327: The Price of Acceptance

Alexandra’s boots crunched on the gravel next to him. Klaus focused on that sound—normal, steady, human. They were leaving the Eastern Tower behind, all that hammering and shouting from the construction crews fading into the background. The paths of the Lionhart estate were quiet, almost too perfect, but right now Klaus needed the peace.

His mind was a battlefield.

Since Greed told him about Arkadius—about the second Ego hiding somewhere in his soul—Klaus had been waging a war he couldn’t win. The enemy was invisible. He couldn’t sense it, couldn’t find it, couldn’t even tell where it was hiding. Just this massive intelligence coiled up in the dark, waiting. All Klaus could do was starve the damn thing: keep his thoughts flat, his ambitions small, his power usage minimal. Don’t give it anything to latch onto.

That’s where Alexandra came in. Every ounce of attention he threw outward was attention he wasn’t turning inward, where the real danger lived. So he watched her hands when she talked. Listened to how her voice rose and fell. Noticed the trees, the sky, the birds. Anything but his own head. Even Greed had gone silent, retreating into that cold obsidian ring. One less voice in his head, at least.

“—the tournament’s probably getting canceled,” Alexandra was saying. “The recruits are going to lose their minds. They’ve been training all season.”

Klaus let her talk. Estate drama, tournament politics, none of it mattered. But that was exactly what made it useful.

Alexandra didn’t expect anything from him. She didn’t need the Monarch act or the strategist. She just saw Klaus. Her cousin. The kid she grew up with. And when he was around her, the constant splitting headache in his skull eased up. Just a bit. Just enough.

They passed the training grounds, heading for the stables.

“You’re not okay.”

Her voice changed. Went flat.

Klaus didn’t tense—couldn’t let himself—but every alarm in his head started blaring. He kept his face blank.

“What makes you say that?”

She stopped walking. Turned to look at him, arms crossed. “Because you’re not here. Everyone else has been running around like chickens since the ball. But you? You’re just… empty. And don’t tell me you’re fine. I know you, Klaus. You’ve always been hard to read, but this is different.”

Shit. She’d noticed. Just not what she was actually seeing.

“The ball was a mess,” she went on. “Everyone knows it. The delegations, Grandfather trying to do damage control, Sabrina Petrova vanishing into thin air even with half the empire looking for her. It’s a disaster.”

There it was. The perfect excuse. A crisis everyone could see.

“You’re right,” Klaus said. He let himself sound tired. “It’s been a lot.”

Alexandra’s expression softened. “Then stop thinking about it for five minutes. That’s what horses are for. Come on.”

They got their mounts ready—Klaus’s black stallion, her chestnut mare. The work was simple. Buckles and leather and the smell of hay. It pulled his focus outside, which was exactly where it needed to be.

They rode out along one of the old roads that circled the estate. The air was cool, the rhythm of hooves almost hypnotic. For a while they didn’t talk. Didn’t need to. Alexandra was just there, and that was enough.

But somewhere in the ride, Klaus’s mind started turning.

He’d been so focused on survival. Since he woke up in this second life, everything had been about getting stronger. The Ten Eyes Mantra, power, dominance—whatever it took to survive. When he learned about Arkadius, it got worse. Every thought became: survive long enough to kill this thing.

Me versus it. My life first.

And then it hit him. That was exactly what the Ego wanted.

Arkadius was pure selfishness. Survival and power, nothing else. By obsessing over his own survival, Klaus wasn’t fighting the monster. He was becoming it. Training himself to think exactly like it. Feeding it.

The thought made him want to throw up.

The road narrowed. Up ahead, a huge iron gate appeared between moss-covered walls. The military cemetery. Where they buried House Lionhart’s fallen soldiers.

And behind that gate were the graves of Team 55. His first command. His White Lion task force.

The people who died at Northwatch because of him.

Alexandra dismounted. Klaus followed, slower. The second his feet touched the ground, the shame hit him.

He’d never come here. Not once.

He’d only ever thought about Northwatch in terms of what it cost him. His first failure. A mark on his record. A setback. He’d seen those soldiers as casualties. As liabilities. Numbers on a page.

Not as people who trusted him and died because he screwed up.

He was their captain. Their deaths were on him.

And he’d just walked away. Chased power for months and acted like they never existed.

He looked at Alexandra. Her eyes were wet. She’d been there at Northwatch. She’d survived it with him, watched their team die. But she wasn’t the one who gave the orders. She didn’t carry the weight of command. Yet here she was, mourning them. Remembering them.

While Klaus had spent all this time thinking only about himself.

The shame felt like a physical weight. Like something crushing his chest. He’d made an oath as their commander and then just… forgot about it.

And suddenly everything made sense.

He was still their leader. That duty didn’t end just because they were dead. By running from it, by focusing only on power and staying alive, he’d been doing exactly what Arkadius wanted. The Ego didn’t care about duty or loyalty. It wanted Klaus to be selfish. To think only about himself.

Power for its own sake is what feeds the Ego.

The Ten Eyes Mantra wasn’t about raw power. It was about seeing truth. About looking at yourself clearly and accepting what you saw. Klaus had been trying to force the sixth eye open through sheer stress and willpower. Like trying to pick a lock with a sledgehammer.

The key wasn’t power. It was acceptance.

He had to accept what he actually was. Not a host for a monster. Not a survivor at any cost. But Klaus Lionhart. Flawed, broken, carrying the weight of people he failed. A commander with responsibilities he couldn’t abandon.

Living in constant terror, thinking only about survival, just made the monster stronger.

I have duties. I need to honor them. The rest will follow.

That shift—from survival to duty—was what he’d been missing. Simple. Obvious in hindsight. Like finally seeing the answer that was right in front of him the whole time.

Klaus stepped next to Alexandra. Put his hand on her shoulder for a second. A silent promise that he’d carry this weight now. That he wouldn’t forget again.

She leaned into the touch, eyes still on the graves. For the first time in weeks, Klaus felt real. Not performing. Not hiding. Just quiet.

Then the world broke open.

BONG.

The sound was huge. Ancient. It tore through the silence like a physical thing. Not the estate clock—this was something older, deeper, vibrating through the ground.

BONG.

The second strike hit Klaus in the chest. It came from the direction of the main estate, past the trees. He could feel the urgency in it. The desperation.

Alexandra’s head snapped up. Her eyes met his, wide and scared.

BONG.

The third ring shook the trees. Then faded into heavy silence.

Klaus stared back at her. Neither of them had heard that sound before. The estate had protocols, signals, procedures for every kind of emergency. But this was something else. Something primal.

A last resort.

Whatever just happened, everything had changed.