False Weakling, True Power

Princess Isolde of the Aurelian Empire announces that she will choose a husband through open combat. The empire is built on magic and expects the tournament to settle the question quietly. Instead the announcement reaches the three northern kingdoms, and their fighters arrive to make a point about who the strongest really are. The northern mages start trouble in the streets of the capital and nobody can stop them. Then one spell lands from somewhere in the crowd and the attacker is gone, killed outright by magic at a level the city has not seen. Kael, the empire's First Mage, starts looking for whoever cast it. He works through the noble houses and the known masters and comes up with nothing, because he is looking in the wrong places. The caster is Lucien, a young man everyone in the capital has spent years dismissing as weak and useless. He has been hiding what he can do for a long time and has had reasons to keep hiding it. The selection tournament is where that ends. When he steps onto the platform, the empire finds out that its most powerful mage has been standing in front of it the whole time being laughed at.