I keep it clean. Two weeks’ notice, effective immediately. I add one concession—if they need me to stay longer to train someone and hand off properly, I’m willing to extend to a maximum of six weeks.
Not because I owe them more than I’ve already given, but because I refuse to leave my coworkers in a crater if I can help it. I also make the boundary explicit: no stalling, no “we’ll circle back,” no indefinite limbo while they drag their feet and keep me on the hook out of convenience.
I schedule the email to send near the end of the day so it lands with enough time for my boss to read it, and not enough time to hunt me down in person. I leave an hour before most people do. I’m not interested in a hallway confrontation, or a last-minute guilt trip, or any of the usual rituals that pretend this is about loyalty instead of labor.
I don’t romanticize it. I don’t celebrate. I just do it, like pulling a splinter out before it gets infected, and then I go back to the motions until the clock says I’m allowed to disappear.
By the time I’m done, I’m not even thinking about servers and emails.
And then the day is gone.
—
I’m already in Nod.
One moment there’s fluorescent light and dead air and the taste of stale coffee in the back of my throat, and the next there’s heat, mineral-rich wind, and a sky that looks too clean to be real. The Singing Citadel sits under it like a black tooth, obsidian ribs catching the sun and throwing it back in hard-edged glints. Somewhere below, metal sings—my people, my hive, my Dominion—alive and moving and building without waiting for my command.
The braziers are lit. The Watchers are with me.
That reality comes with its own pressure now. Not the loud pressure of combat, not the immediate pressure of teeth and claws and a health bar bleeding out, but the steady, unavoidable weight of being seen. It’s strange how quickly it becomes normal. Not comfortable but at least normal.
Last night ended with Scott and I “logging off” from separate rooms in my keep, the world believing we’ve both turned in. We don’t owe the audience explanations for how kings move, but the mechanics exist whether anyone understands them or not. A king can appear where he last logged. A king can choose where within his domain he returns, if the rules allow it. A king can wake in Sunhome and still maintain the cover of having slept here, if he plays it right.
Spawn logic is a gift and a weapon. It keeps us mobile. It keeps us unpredictable. It also means our enemies can’t be certain where we’ll be when the night starts. Problem is that they can keep us guessing too.
Today is the last day before the summit. Three days in Solomir, in Alaric’s city, in the Holy See’s shadow. Three days away from my people. Three days where anything can happen while I’m not here to put out fires with my own hands.
Which means I can’t leave without making the right pieces click into place.
I don’t waste time.
—
Cast is where she always is when things matter: not in a throne room, not posed like a statue for anyone’s comfort, but in motion—listening, directing, adjusting the shape of the Dominion with a steadiness that makes the whole place feel like a living creature.
I find her near the inner levels where the keep’s traffic converges, where drone-labor and officer-labor braid together into something that looks almost like a real city. She’s speaking with two foremen—one of my larger drones and a smaller, sapient Hekari worker with a slate tucked under his arm—when she sees me approach. She ends the conversation with a few quiet words and a nod that sends them moving, then turns fully toward me.
Her eyes flick once over my armor, my posture, the set of my shoulders, and whatever she reads there makes her expression sharpen with understanding.
“You’re leaving,” she says.
“In a few hours yes,” I confirm.
It isn’t a dramatic statement. It’s a fact. Still, it lands in my chest like a weight. The Dominion is no longer an idea I’m piloting from a safe distance. It’s a living thing, and leaving it—even for three days—feels like stepping away from a forge mid-heat.
“The summit is here,” I add, as if she doesn’t already know. “Solomir. Alaric’s invitation.”
Cast’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Then you need allies. And information. Not more time to second-guess.”
That’s why I came to her first. Not for permission. For anchoring.
“I’ll be gone around three days,”
“And if you need anything urgent,” I continue, “you use the throne.”
That earns me a blink—just one—enough to tell me she’s listening in the way that matters.
“The tetsubo,” I say. “If something happens and you need me back immediately, lay it across the arms of the throne.”
Cast’s eyes narrow slightly. “A recall.”
“A recall,” I confirm. “I can check the throne while I’m offline. If the stream is cut via the ring, it flashes back to the throne. Victor can monitor that view if needed. I’ll check in once a day when I’m at the summit, and I will monitor the feed when I am in the Waking. If I see the tetsubo there, I come back to the Dominion instead of spawning at the summit.”
I don’t say the rest out loud: that it’s a gamble, that it assumes I’ll have the freedom to do it, that it assumes Alaric can’t interfere with king mechanics inside his own domain. But I don’t need to. Cast hears the unspoken the way she always does.
“You’ll be a continent away,” she says calmly. “And you want to be sure I can pull you home if the walls start burning.”
“Yes.”
“And if they don’t,” she says, “you want your hands off the forge long enough to learn what you need to learn.”
“Yes.”
Cast exhales, slow and steady. “Then it will be done.”
The conversation could end there. It should end there. Practical. Clean. Controlled.
But my body doesn’t move away. My thoughts keep circling the same quiet dread: three days is long enough for a mistake to become a disaster, long enough for an enemy to test my defenses, long enough for a rumor to reach the wrong ears.
I step forward before I can talk myself out of it, and I wrap my arms around her.
The hug is brief, firm. Not sentimental. Not a display. It’s something I do because I’m tired of pretending I can hold this world at arm’s length.
Cast goes still for a fraction of a second—surprised, despite herself—then she settles into it, one hand coming up to press to the back of my shoulder with a quiet steadiness that feels like steel.
In that moment, I let the resonance carry what can’t be spoken aloud.
I need one more thing from you, Cast, I say through the resonance. Find the most compatible drone, and feed that to him. The forty-eight hours will be fine—just make sure he incubates above ground, in the new barracks on the surface.
Cast doesn’t react outwardly. Not even a twitch. If someone is watching—and there is always someone watching—it looks like a king giving comfort to his right hand before leaving.
But in the resonance, I feel her acknowledgment like a lock clicking shut.
Understood, she returns, a thread of calm certainty. We will be prepared.
I release the hug, forcing myself to step back before I linger and turn this goodbye even longer.
Cast’s hand stays on my shoulder for one last heartbeat. Her voice is smooth when she speaks aloud, perfectly neutral.
“You don’t have to worry so much,” she says. “I kept this kingdom alive before you came, and I can keep it safe now while you’re gone. Go gather information. Go gather allies.”
Her eyes hold mine, and the unsaid rides the surface like a shadow: I will do what you asked. I will do what you didn’t have to say.
Then she lets me go.
And I make myself walk away.
—
The twins’ workshop smells like leather, oil, and heat—like craft and effort and the kind of pride that comes from making something with your hands.
They’re already working when I arrive. They always are. Two bodies moving with a mirrored rhythm, passing tools back and forth without words, arguing silently in the way only people who share a lifetime can. When they see me, they stop, already realizing why I am here.
I don’t waste their time with small talk.
“The sword,” I say.
One of them—Cael, I think, though I still get their names wrong more often than I like—grimaces apologetically. The other, Aeris if I'm right with Cael, lifts her hand in a small, placating gesture.
“Not done,” she says. “We’re close, King Kyris. But close isn’t finished, and finished is what you deserve.”
I nod, I can respect craft enough to not demand miracles.
“We made you something else,” the other says, and he reaches behind a hanging cloth and draws out a garment that makes even the harsh workshop light look softer.
A doublet.
It’s cut to fit me like it already knows the shape of my body. The leather isn’t plain—there’s a subtle shimmer to it, a depth that catches light differently depending on the angle, like a shadow moving under a skin. Male ashwing wing leather. I’ve seen those wings spread. I’ve heard them thrum. I’ve watched that creature try to kill me with nothing but hate and hunger. Seeing its hide turned into something this elegant feels like magic.
The collar is lined with sable choir down, dark and soft, and the down isn’t decorative—it’s placed with intention, like insulation against cold, like a whisper of warmth around the throat. Silvered thread runs through the seams in fine, precise patterns—resplendent without being gaudy, the kind of detail that makes you look twice even if you don’t know why you’re looking.
I take it, and the weight of it is perfect—substantial but not heavy, protective without being armor.
“It’s…” I start, and for once the word I reach for isn’t there.
The twins exchange a glance that is half pride, half relief.
“You’ll look like you belong at a summit,” one of them says quietly. “Like you’re not a minor king scraping your way up from the edge of the world.”
I meet his eyes. “I am a minor king scraping my way up from the edge of the world.”
He snorts. “Not anymore.”
I run my fingers along the collar, feeling the down shift under my touch, and I picture Solomir—cathedrals, spires, the kind of grandeur designed to make a man feel small. The kind of place Alaric would build to remind everyone who the center of the world belongs to.
This doublet doesn’t give me power but it does give me presence.
And presence matters.
“The sword will take a few more days,” the other twin says. “We’ll finish it. We’ll send it when it’s ready.”
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I nod. “I won’t be allowed weapons in Solomir anyway.”
That line comes out bitterer than I intend. I’ve lived too long with a weapon within reach to like the idea of walking unarmed into another king’s territory.
“Holy See rules,” one of the twins mutters, and the disdain in his voice makes it clear he doesn’t respect the sanctimony. “They don’t want kings settling disputes in their streets.”
“They want kings settling disputes with words in their courts, but also want to have the power to cull if needed,” I correct, and the twins go quiet.
Scott and I will walk into Solomir unarmed and “defenseless,” at least in appearance. No blades. No hammers. Nothing obvious. Only what we can do with our own bodies, our own will, our own kingdom-built artifacts that can’t be taken from us.
The twins bow as I prepare to leave.
“You’ll represent us,” one says, voice steady. “You’ll represent what we’ve built. Be proud and hold strong.”
“I will,” I promise.
Then I turn and go, doublet folded under my arm like a banner of war ready to be unfurled.
—
I don’t let myself fall into a “status report” loop before I leave. That path is a trap—one more check, one more ledger, one more walk through the worksite to reassure myself it’s moving. The Watchers would call it responsible. I know it for what it is: a way to avoid the moment of departure.
Instead, I take one purposeful pass through the places that matter most right now, in motion, letting my eyes confirm what my officers have already told me.
The border fort stands with its obsidian teeth bared to the north, almost complete. The choke point is no longer an idea on a map—it’s stone and glass and angles, a place that will force any threat to funnel into a kill zone if they come by land. Workers move along the walls, setting the last supports, sealing joints, laying foundations for towers that will soon have archers and siege engines perched on them like carrion birds.
Further along, the archive outpost grows around the research site like a protective shell. Tables, shelves, storage. Resin and obsidian walls rising. Defensive lines sketched into the ground with stakes and string, becoming real as drones set stone and drive posts into the sand. Helisti’s people—my people—move with purpose, not the frantic scramble of a camp but the practiced rhythm of a team that knows what its doing.
And everywhere, the drones.
At first, they were function. Hive. Insect. They moved because they were told, because the Dominion’s will flowed through them like a program.
Now, they pause when I pass. They bow, or salute, or raise a hand to their chest in an imitation of the gestures my officers use. One tilts his head at Shenzah as if curious. Another steps aside not because it is commanded but because it chooses to give me space.
It’s subtle. It’s incremental. It’s the kind of evolution you miss if you aren’t watching closely.
But I’m watching. These are my people, my children almost. I will always notice.
The Watchers love it. I can feel their attention sharpen around those moments—the human hunger to see something become more than it was. They don’t just want a king winning fights. They want a world changing in response to him.
And so do I.
I don’t linger. I don’t let myself sink into the comfort of being surrounded by my own dominion. Departure is the point.
When the time comes, Shenzah is waiting for me near the east gate.
—
Shenzah’s muscles roll beneath his hide as I mount, the motion practiced now. He’s still wary of me in the way war-beasts stay wary of anyone who isn’t their handler, but he respects routine. He respects certainty. Today, he feels like a loaded tool—ready to run north, ready to pull weight, ready to carry me where I need to go.
I ride out with the Citadel behind me, the black sand stretching like a sea, and the road north carved into it by traffic and labor.
The completed fortress rises ahead as I approach the border, the choke point where my domain and Thalos’s touch. Dominion sentries and Sunforged warriors stand along its line together now—two cultures sharing the same wall, two sets of eyes watching the same horizon. As I pass through, they salute in their own ways. My drones lift their hands to their chests; the Sunforged strike fists to armor in a sharp, disciplined beat.
The walls are extending east and west from the defensive position, growing day by day. Towers are taking shape along the line, ribs of scaffolding reaching upward, obsidian blocks being set into place like teeth in a jaw. Beyond the walls, the mesas on either side loom—impossible slabs of stone and glass, jagged with obsidian outcroppings that catch the sun and throw it back in a way that makes the landscape look broken and sharpened.
Strategically, it’s simple: anyone who wants to strike either kingdom by land will have to come through here. It’s a gate. A funnel.
Air is the only clean bypass.
And for now, the kings who can do that—who can fly, who can send forces over walls, who can ignore geography—don’t seem interested in us. Not yet.
I don’t know if that’s luck or timing or something more deliberate, like predators circling and waiting for the right moment to strike.
I don’t let myself dwell on it.
Sunhome is ahead.
—
The south gates of Sunhome gleam in the distance. The city is busy even from this far—movement along the walls, banners catching wind, patrols shifting in their loops. I ride in near the Bastion as planned, where the road widens and traffic thickens, and the first thing I feel is the difference in atmosphere. Sunhome doesn’t vibrate like the Singing Citadel. It thrums like a living city—voices, footsteps, commerce, laughter.
Scott is waiting where he said he would be, already mounted on Hamu.
Hamu looks like a creature built from quiet menace and comfort at the same time—massive, smooth, eyes like dark glass. Scott sits astride him like he belongs there.
He grins when he sees me. “You’re on time.”
“So are you,” I say
We don’t do long planning out loud. Not here. Not with the city around us, the Watchers listening, the wrong ears possibly close. We exchange what we need in short, harmless phrases—the kind that could mean anything.
“The missive?” I ask.
Scott nods. “Camp’s set. Small. Controlled.”
“And the escort?”
“Waiting,” he says. “They’ll take us out. Then we dismiss them.”
We fall into movement, riding out together with a small contingent of Sunforged guards as cover and ceremony. It isn’t a parade. It isn’t secrecy. It’s just enough presence to look like kings traveling with appropriate caution.
Behind us, Iskri and Felkas stand near the gates, watching.
Felkas’s posture is stiff with restrained emotion. He wants to come. I can see it in him. He wants to be near me, near Scott, near any decision that might touch his future.
But this is Solomir. This is Alaric. This is a summit where the Holy See sets the rules, and I don’t know how those rules will react to a beast-tribe boy with a shattered kingdom and a target painted on his back.
So he stays.
Iskri stays with him, a living wall of fur and fangs and loyalty. Protector. Sentinel. Anchor.
Felkas lifts a hand in a small, brave gesture as we pass. I return it. I don’t make a speech. I don’t promise safety I can’t guarantee.
I just ride.
—
The pickup camp is exactly what Scott describes.
Three small tents around a larger central pavilion, set on a patch of flattened ground like someone carved a circle out of the world and laid it down by hand. Only six of Alaric’s soldiers are visible at first, and even that feels like an intentional choice—enough to enforce, not enough to escalate.
Their presence is different from Sunhome’s.
Sunforged feel like soldiers guarding their home. These soldiers feel like tools—pieces placed where they’re needed, waiting to do what they’re told.
Inside the pavilion, the air is cooler. The smell changes—wax, incense, something metallic underneath. A magic circle is inscribed into the ground with precise geometry, lines that catch light in a way that makes my eyes want to slide off them. There is an aide standing beside it, hands folded, posture so controlled it borders on unnatural calm.
My instincts don’t like it.
We don’t hide our doubt. There’s no point pretending we’re comfortable with something we’ve never used.
“This will take us to Solomir?” Scott asks, voice even.
The aide inclines his head. “Yes, my lords.”
“And it’s safe,” I say, not phrased as a question.
“It is a standard transport circle of the Holy See,” the aide replies. “It costs faith to move bodies across distance. Solomir possesses more than enough to bring kings to the summit.”
“Convenient,” Scott mutters.The aide’s expression doesn’t change. “You will not be stranded. When you choose to retire for the night, you may return to your kingdoms upon waking. The Holy See has accounted for the… unique nature of kings.”
He says it like he’s discussing a known species of animal. Like he’s memorized our rules from a book and learned how to speak about them without awe.
I don’t know if that’s confidence or arrogance.
Probably both.
We dismiss our escort before we go any further. The Sunforged guards exchange brief words with Scott, then step back out of the pavilion. I turn to Shenzah and lay a hand against his neck, feeling the heat under his hide, the steady pulse of life.
“Go back,” I murmur, not because he understands language the way Iskri does, but because he understands tone. “Return to Sunhome. Wait.”
Scott does the same with Hamu, patting his mount with a familiarity that suggests they’ve learned each other in ways I haven’t yet learned Shenzah.
The separation hits harder than I expect. As the mounts and guards pull away, the pavilion feels emptier, colder, the way a room feels when you shut a door and realize you’re alone with someone you don’t trust.
Scott and I stand in the center of the pavilion like two pieces on a board, waiting for the other side to move.
Then the knights step forward.
—
They don’t arrive with fanfare. They don’t announce themselves. They simply appear at the pavilion’s edge and move in with practiced control, two on each side like a ritual made physical.
Their armor is primarily silver metal, polished to a dull sheen rather than a mirror shine—functional, not ornamental. White cloth hangs beneath it in clean lines, and red trim marks edges and seams like blood made orderly. Here and there, black accents break the brightness—gauntlets, leather straps, the undersides of layered plates.
On their chests, the symbol is unmistakable even at a glance: a red sword shaped like a cross, and behind it a crying eye—tear trailing downward.
The symbol of the Holy See.
Their demeanor is not cruel. Not friendly. Controlled.
They treat us like honored guests and controlled assets at the same time, and the contradiction makes my teeth want to grind.
“Arms,” one says. Not a demand. A procedure.
We extend our hands. They pat down our clothing with brisk efficiency, checking waistbands, sleeves, boots. They don’t linger. They don’t grope. They simply confirm what they already know: we are unarmed, by their definition.
One knight meets my eyes for a brief moment as his hand presses against my side. His gaze is flat, disciplined. No hatred. No warmth. Just duty.
Then he steps back and nods to the aide.
“Proceed.”
Scott and I exchange a look—quick, loaded, silent.
Then we step into the circle.
—
The world lurches.
For a heartbeat, everything is black. Then it’s blinding white—light so intense it feels like it’s inside my skull, flooding behind my eyes. My stomach flips hard enough that my body tries to vomit even though there’s nothing to bring up. I clamp my jaw and breathe through my nose and taste bile anyway.
The air changes mid-breath.
Pressure slams into my ears like invisible fists. A sharp pop cracks through my head, painful enough to make my vision blur, and I stagger a half-step before I can catch myself.
Scott makes a sound beside me—half curse, half choke—and I feel him brace like he’s fighting dizziness the same way I am.
Then the light drops away.
Stone is under my feet again. Real stone. Different stone.
The pavilion we step out of isn’t the same one we entered. The geometry is similar, the ritual circle etched into the floor, but the air is colder, thinner, carrying a scent of incense and distant rain.
High elevation.
My ears throb as they adjust, and I realize—hard and sudden—just how close to sea level my Dominion sits. This pressure change isn’t subtle. Solomir is high. Mountain-high. I find myself thanking the twins for their foresight into the warmer weather dublet. The inferno of the ashwing inside me will keep me warm, but the doublet will help me blend in with the others more.
No wonder Alaric feels like an empire. He built his Holy See in the sky.
We step out of the pavilion into open air and stop.
Not because we’re told to.
Because the city hits us like a wall.
Solomir sprawls around us in cathedral-scale grandeur—spires and buttresses and arched bridges linking towers across open space like a web of stone. The architecture is holy in the way it’s designed to be holy: meant to make you look up, meant to make you feel small, meant to imply that whatever rules govern this place are older and stronger than you.
Sunlight glances off stained glass the sizz of houses. Bells hang in towers so high I can’t see their ropes. Roads curve around plazas filled with white stone and red banners, the Holy See’s symbol repeating everywhere like a brand burned into the world.
Magic is not hidden here. It’s built into the bones.
A line of soldiers waits nearby, and two assistants step forward as if they’ve been assigned to us the moment we materialize.
One inclines his head toward me. “King Kyris.”
The other mirrors him toward Scott. “King Thalos.”
Hearing our titles spoken in this place feels different. Smaller.
Like calling yourself a king in a cathedral built for gods.
I swallow, forcing my lungs to accept the thinner air, forcing my spine straight.
A thought slips through me before I can stop it, raw and honest. How the hell is this fair. What a busted starting point.
Scott makes a quiet noise beside me that might be laughter, might be disbelief.
And then—like a thread tightening around my finger—I feel the ring at my hand respond.
A private chime in the corner of my vision.
A message.
alright, mission start right bro?
I exhale slowly, letting the air burn in my lungs, letting the reality of it settle. The ring works. The upgrade holds. We can speak without giving the Holy See our words.
I answer with the same quiet directness.
That’s right. We have three days to find out what Alaric’s apex is… and what we need to do to help it take him down.
I pause, watching a line of red-and-white knights cross a bridge high above us like blood cells moving through a vein.
He’s going to make us wait to meet him until the end, I add. He’ll sequester us away from our people in his overbuilt city to make us feel inferior.
Thalos’ reply comes back almost instantly.
Well, lets show him what the Songbird guild is capable of
The words steady me when I needed it most.
Scott turns his head slightly, eyes flicking to me in a way that tells me he’s reading at the same time I am. We don’t speak. We don’t need to. The assistants are waiting, the city is watching, and Alaric’s shadow hangs over everything like a judgment waiting to fall.
We compose ourselves the way men do before walking into a room full of concealed knives: shoulders back, expression controlled, steps deliberate.
Then we step forward.
Out of the pavilion.
Into Solomir.
And into day one of the summit.