Authenticity

Twenty minutes after the declaration, Babimyna delivers Benjamin's ruling to Room 1014: the substitute prince bears no legal responsibility, and Oito's indictment — contempt of a state ceremony and lese-majeste — is deferred while the real Woble's whereabouts are unknown, in deference to a prospective queen mother. The price: confinement to the master bedroom, with any exit charged as flight. Kurapika does the arithmetic — the martial law doubles as a ship-wide manhunt for Woble, and it came far too fast for that to be the whole reason.

Inside Marayam's Room 1013 Nen space, Saquelle acknowledges a radio order set to fire at 2:15 — and Bisky reads the tension under his calm. Her options: comply and be marched out, or neutralize Benjamin's plant and accept a treason charge. Leaving loses: only Sevanti's powerless guards may escort Marayam, the Belerainte precedent says the door doesn't readmit, and a maintained Nen space at this scale is probably a one-time-use ability — exit could reset, sleep, or erase the prince's beast. She calls Vergei over: they hole up.

The lockdown finds Luzurus's household in a scramble: the Seventh Prince is gone, and so is Rice. Satobi's guess — the Cha-R boss — goes out with orders for immediate contact. Ridge gives his account: Luzurus's last order was to stall Kanjidol, and the killings in the break room were already done before martial law existed to justify them. Nearby, the bound Kanjidol smirks at exactly that timing problem: a Hunter restraining Benjamin's trusted soldier is the 'objective proof' his treason-purge pretext needed.

Sirens and a ship-wide broadcast — not a drill — as soldiers flood the lower tiers. The terms reach every prince's door: relocate to Room 1001, weapons surrendered on entry, only Royal Army escorts allowed and left outside, Benjamin alone speaking to the princes — and if the crisis holds, all of them living together under his roof. Camilla doesn't pause her massage; Coventoba panics over Zhang Lei's coin; Tserriednich keeps training through the sirens; Rihan puts a pistol to a joking researcher's head and calls it suspicion.

Oito and Kurapika work the general-store dealer's drone line: a routine safe-and-well postcard carrying a coded message in Yamato script to her sister, with clumsy phrasing excusable as a foreigner's grammar. Kurapika coaches the tradecraft — no names, no places, a rendezvous keyword only the sisters know — while privately inventorying every failure mode, up to a cracked code proving the real Woble is out of the contest. Babimyna accepts the eight postcards without inspection: censorship is abolished, but the military still runs the channel.

Flashback, two months before departure: on the night of the Seed Urn ceremony, Combo Master's conjured laptop flags a curse on Furykov — two afflicted users, himself and one anonymized prince. He phones Beyond, who confirms everything with a smile: planted at birth, twenty-plus years of siphoned aura, armed by the ceremony, fired by Furykov's death — and hopeless to counter, needing about a year of deciphering at Beyond's side plus seven hundred days to conjure a cleansing item. The parting counsel from father to son: only a sole surviving prince keeps the Guardian Spirit Beast's blessing.