The throne room made Octavius’s palace seem a mud hut. Vaulted ceilings soared into crystalline gloom, lit by a cold, sourceless blue radiance that gleamed off walls of polished white stone veined with silver. The air hummed with a low, sub-audible power. His group lay stunned around him, grappling with the revelation: they were on another world.

  His people.

  His mind, still reeling, and still latching onto the sight of the wrong moon hanging in the cold sky. As dozens of blue-skinned, white-haired, eyes like winter ice trained on him and his group. They looked to be Southern Kazarians. His people. But wrong. Their skin was smooth, unweathered by harsh living conditions of the wilds. Their hair was intricately braided with silver and gems or worn short, not tangled and wild with bone beads. They wore silks and fine, articulated armor of gleaming metal, not furs and leather. And worse yet, they weren't tattooed and wearing body paint designs. They stared, a sea of shocked, aristocratic faces from the galleries.

  A clatter to his left. Corvannafax stumbled to her feet, her red skin and golden hair a violent blasphemy against the cool blue and white. Her golden eyes were wide, her hand instinctively grasping for the blade lost in the Void-transit.

  “Emberhold spy!” “Red malatak!” “Crimson Devil!”

  The shouts cut through the babble. A towering warrior in ornate silver plate stood guard beside the dais, leveling a slender pike not at Koronos, but directly at Corvannafax.

  The word acted like a catalyst. The stunned silence shattered into hostility. Four guards broke from their posts, moving with a fluid grace Koronos had never seen, their intent clear.

  His body moved before his mind could process the politics. Years of ingrained reflex took over. He surged upright, placing himself between the guards and Corvannafax. He still had his spear slung across his back, the Sword of the First firm in his grasp. A low growl rumbled in his chest.

  “Touch her,” he said, his voice rough from the portal’s passage but carrying in the sudden hush, “and I will cleave you in half and spill your entrails across this sickeningly opulent floor!”

  The guards froze, not from fear, but sheer surprise. Their eyes flicked from his defiant stance to his face. The confusion was plain: He is one of us… but he is not.

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  From the periphery, Hybornyesis and Pericles were up, forming a ragged defensive knot with Daggeroth, who retched on the glorious floor. Zeyzey crouched, assessing exits with a predator’s cold eyes. Shelove was a shadow at his side, fur raised, teeth bared in a silent snarl.

  The standoff crackled. A hundred weapons trained on them—pikes, crystalline bows, blades shimmering with captive cold.

  Then, a voice cut through, not loud, but absolute. It held the weight of centuries.

  “Enough.”

  All movement ceased. All heads turned to the dais.

  Upon a throne carved from a monstrous geode of purple amethyst sat the source. He was ancient, his blue skin like parchment stretched over a regal skeleton, his white hair a magnificent cascade over shoulders draped in glowing white fur. A crown of icy platinum sat on his brow, its center holding a stone of deep, soul-like blue. His eyes, the same white as Koronos’s, held not confusion, but a profound, weary knowing.

  The emperor. And more. Koronos felt it the moment their gazes met: a resonant hum in his blood, a pressure behind his eyes. Everliving. He’d never seen an old Everliving before; this one must be of an age beyond counting. Octavius had been twelve centuries old and looked a man in his prime. This being was a relic.

  The ancient man’s gaze swept over them, lingering on Koronos, on Corvannafax, then on the Sword. He did not look surprised. He looked, Koronos thought with a chill, resigned.

  “Lower your weapons,” the emperor commanded, his voice filling the vast space. “But keep them ready.” His white eyes fixed on Koronos. “You have stepped through a door closed for an age. You will explain this. But first,” he gestured with a skeletal hand, “you will be disarmed, and you will be separated.”

  He snapped his fingers.

  The Sword of the First was yanked from Koronos’s grip as if by an invisible giant. It whirled through the air and landed gracefully in the emperor’s outstretched hand. Koronos tried to recall it to his own hand, to exert his will upon it—but it would not yield. The emperor’s power was a mountain, his own a pebble.

  The guards moved in with grim purpose, crystal pikes aimed to halt any advance. Koronos looked at Corvannafax, saw the fury and understanding in her eyes. They were outnumbered a hundred to one, in the heart of a power they could not comprehend. To fight was to die here, uselessly.

  The cold certainty settled in his gut, colder than any Helfire glacier. They were not just in a different kingdom. They were lost in the most fundamental way possible.

  The point of a crystal pike touched his chest, a cold promise. Around him, his friends were similarly surrounded.

  The standoff was over. The captivity had begun.

  Koronos the Kazarian | Royal Road