Kaiser sat in silence.

  The walls around him pulsed with that faint, artificial blue. Rivers of light etched across seamless metal, flowing like veins through something that should not be alive. The air smelled clean. Too clean. The kind of sterile that made battlefields feel more honest by comparison.

  He hated it.

  He hated this machine. This so-called dragon steel and humming power. He hated how it moved, how it breathed, how it seemed to listen even when it made no sound. He hated how its insides glowed with a magic he could not understand, how its structure twisted the rules he had once believed were fixed. He hated not knowing whether it was alive or just pretending to be.

  He hated how much of this world made no sense to him.

  Its culture, its language, the ancient cities and the machines buried deep beneath the sand. The way people wielded magic like it was no more difficult than breathing. The way Regulus spoke of Liberatoriums and dragons as if they were the most common knowledge imaginable.

  He did not even know what year it was.

  He did not know this continent’s name.

  He did not know its rulers or its enemies.

  He did not belong here. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  But what he hated more, more than any of that, was the truth this world held close. It had preserved only two pieces from the world he once knew. Only two.

  Sabel Stoorm.

  And himself.

  The worst men it could have chosen…

  His fingers twitched in his lap, and his right hand curled inward as if it were preparing to strike. He let it. He watched the shake begin, slow and rhythmic, as if his own body were sounding the drumbeat of some distant war.

  Sabel. The name alone threatened to rupture his calm. That soft-voiced prince, that serpent dressed in silk, that shining thing draped in virtue. He had preached peace while laying the groundwork for slaughter. He had lit the kindling and called it mercy. And Kaiser, blinded by pride and hungry for purpose, had believed him. He had allowed it all to grow.

  But no matter how many times he twisted the memory, no matter how hard he tried to shove the blame outward, the truth always found its way back in. Sabel had not killed her. Kaiser had. Not with a blade, not with malice, but with the choices he made. By dragging her too close to the fire he had chosen to live in. By believing he could protect her from a world built on knives. The woman he had loved—Sabel’s little sister, Kaisers wife—had died because he let her stand beside a man who only knew how to make war.

  His jaw clenched, teeth grinding as the cold blue light from the walls carved hard angles across his face. He hated Sabel for turning ideals into weapons, for dressing war in noble words and calling it salvation. But he hated himself more. Because in the end, he had not saved her. He had become the kind of man she never would have followed. And still, she had.

  Yet for all his rage, for all the grief he carried like a second spine, he could not say he hated this world entirely. There were things he loved about this world. He could not deny that.

  It looked ancient. The kind of ancient that felt earned, not fabricated. Mountains that seemed older than memory, skies too wide to belong to men, cities that whispered secrets no one spoke anymore. He had always loved to learn, even if he rarely admitted it. And this world gave him endless puzzles to obsess over.

  He loved that somehow, impossibly, he had changed since arriving. His strength had grown. His senses sharpened. Powers had awakened in him that he did not possess before. They felt wild, volatile, and deeply personal. Each one was tied to something emotional, something real, and that terrified him as much as it thrilled him.

  But he hated not knowing why.

  He hated that he didn’t understand any of it. He didn’t know where his new powers came from, or why they reacted so violently to his emotions. He didn’t know what their limits were, or what consequences they carried. And most of all, he didn’t understand how so many people in this world wielded so much power.

  It felt like he had been dropped into a game he didn’t know the rules for, surrounded by players who had already mastered every move.

  Still, when he looked at the things he hated… and the things he loved, even if they were few and hard to grasp… he found himself asking something.

  Was there anything else?

  Anything beyond the thrill of growing stronger?

  Anything beyond the mystery of it all?

  Was there something,or someone, that made this world worth staying in?

  His thoughts hadn’t even settled before a sudden pulse of light snapped across the room.

  A small glowing figure blinked into existence a few feet ahead of him, hovering for half a second before reality caught up and dropped it to the floor with a soft thud.

  From that shimmer of teleportation, Aria tumbled out in a disoriented heap, her voice echoing through the corridor as she groaned into the polished floor.

  Kaiser looked at her and smiled.

  ‘Yeah, there is.’

  Aria groaned like a dying animal as she pushed herself up from the floor, hands flailing to find purchase on the smooth metal surface beneath her. Her hair was a mess, her coat twisted around her shoulders like a strangled scarf, and her fake eyes flickered wildly with static blue before stabilizing.

  "What the hell was that?!" she barked, scrambling to her feet and immediately pointing a finger toward the nearest wall like it was the source of all her problems. “REGULUS! You bastard! You kidnapped me! You didn’t even warn me! I really hated teleportation before, but I hate it even more now!”

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  Her voice echoed sharply through the corridor, bouncing off the curved walls with unapologetic fury. She stomped forward, fists clenched, clearly aiming to throw hands with Regulus—even if he wasn’t currently in the room.

  “I swear to all the gods, if you don’t tell me where Kaiser is, I’m going to break everything in here! And don’t think I won’t! I’ll start with this wall—then the floor—and then I’ll attack these fancy windows!”

  But then, her tirade paused. Her gaze drifted around the chamber for the first time, really seeing it—the smooth metal, the pulsing lines of blue energy, the quiet, thrumming power in the walls. Her expression shifted mid-rant from indignation to curious wonder. The sparkle in her fake eyes reignited, and her smirk stretched wide across her face.

  “…Actually,” she murmured, tapping one of the chairs a knuckle, “This place is fancy. Feels expensive.” She looked around again, her grin gaining a dangerous tilt. “Oh yeah. I’m gonna smash so much expensive stuff. He’ll beg me to stop. That’ll teach him not to teleport me like I’m some crate of food.”

  She raised her leg, ready to kick the nearest wall, when a soft cough interrupted her. Aria froze. Slowly, as if the sound itself were suspicious, she turned her head—and there he was.

  Kaiser was only a few meters away, still seated, one arm resting across his knee, his body rigid like stone. His red eyes—burning like twin embers beneath the curtain of his black hair—locked onto hers, and for just a moment, everything in her lungs escaped her.

  Her body went cold, because this wasn’t the Kaiser she knew. Not the one who made dry jokes, or complained about candy, or even the gloomy one. This was something else entirely. There was a wrongness in how he sat so still, how the light bent oddly around his face, as if shadows clung to him in defiance of the bright, glowing walls. His expression wasn’t furious. It wasn’t sad. It was absent—like he had gone somewhere deep and terrible, and hadn't fully come back.

  The air between them pressed tight.

  Aria’s voice came out in a whisper, barely audible. “Who… are you?”

  Kaiser blinked once, and only then realized what she was seeing. The way his presence had unraveled into something feral and raw, how his composure had slipped. For a few seconds, he had dropped the mask. The version of himself he always wore for the sake of others. The one that smiled, and joked, and kept the weight behind his eyes tucked neatly out of view.

  He stood quickly, posture relaxing, and a wide, bright smile cracked across his face—too practiced, too clean to be real.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice suddenly warm and cheerful, like the last minute hadn’t happened. “Good to see you, little spider.”

  Aria stared at him for a second longer, unsure if what she had seen had really happened. But she didn’t press. She forced a smile back, a shaky one, and rubbed the back of her neck.

  “You’re gonna owe me a lot of candy for this,” Aria muttered, her voice trying to steady itself while her knees betrayed her, still a little wobbly from the teleport. She stalked around the room like a cat pretending not to have fallen off a windowsill, feigning confidence as her heart continued to claw its way up her throat.

  Kaiser said nothing. He only watched. The grin he wore seconds ago faded beneath the weight of silence, his eyes tracking her every motion. There was something still wild behind them—like the remnants of a nightmare that hadn’t quite faded in the light.

  Aria paused. She stood there, fists clenched at her sides, eyes scanning the walls but not really seeing them. Then, without a word, she turned and ran at him—not out of fear, but something stranger. Braver. Something that even she didn’t fully understand.

  She jumped straight into his lap.

  Kaiser blinked in shock, stiffening like someone had thrown a rock into his chest. Her weight wasn’t much, but it landed like a statement.

  “I knew it,” she said softly, her head pressed against his chest. “I knew you wouldn’t leave me. Even when I was scared, even when you were scary… I knew it. Somewhere in here—” she tapped her fingers against his chest, “—I knew you’d come back.”

  Kaiser let out a breath, long and slow. For a moment, he didn’t move. Then he flicked her lightly on the forehead, the old warmth returning to his voice. “I’m starting to regret agreeing to bring you along.”

  Aria grinned up at him, completely unbothered. “Too late. A journey without me is a waste of time.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  “It is.” She gave him a smug, self-satisfied nod. “And also, you scared me. So now you owe me.”

  “For what?”

  “For emotional damage. You owe me a mountain of candy.”

  Kaiser sighed. “Is that… negotiable?”

  Aria sat upright like a royal judge preparing for a verdict. “The only negotiable part of this conversation is how many wagons of candy you’re buying. Minimum three. And that’s me being generous because I like you.”

  Aria continued, her eyes narrowed, but there was laughter buried beneath the exasperation. “Three wagons, and I will consider us even.”

  Before Kaiser could respond, the soft sound of splitting magic lit the air in front of them, and then, another body appeared.

  Ivan materialized in full form… still clinging to something that was no longer there. Arms tightly wrapped, legs bent at a strange angle, spine curved like a bridge. His lips were pursed in an expression of reverence and romantic intensity, as if he were moments away from whispering sweet nothings to Varisis’s leg.

  He hovered for a heartbeat, frozen in space and time like a lover caught in prayer. Then gravity struck, and with the grace of a falling tree, Ivan crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs and gasped breath, his romantic moment meeting a very sudden, very humiliating end.

  Ivan flung his arms wide, voice echoing through the chamber. “Regulus! That heartless bastard! He stole her!”

  He got up on one knee, clutching his chest. “Varisis... the divine beast... my gleaming angel of steel and fire!”

  Throwing his head back with theatrical agony, he howled, “We shared a bond! A moment! A love! And he tore us apart!”

  The room was silent for a second—just long enough for Ivan’s soul to briefly leave his body in embarrassment—before he turned his head from where he lay sprawled across the floor. His eyes met Kaiser’s, then Aria’s.

  Kaiser leaned back slightly, resting his arm on the seat like a king watching a court jester perform. “I’ve heard rumors before,” he began, voice calm, measured, and absolutely deadly in its mockery, “Of certain people who fall in love with animals. Usually goats. Sometimes horses. While I’ve always considered such men perverts, but I suppose I can’t shame a young soul for discovering… unique preferences.”

  Ivan’s mouth opened in horror. “It was a mechanical dragon!” he snapped, pointing one accusatory finger. “Not an animal! And I wasn’t in love with it—I was appreciating craftsmanship!”

  Aria snorted, still tucked comfortably in Kaiser’s lap like a gremlin child in a throne. “Oh yeah? Is that what you call full-body clinging and whispering my majestic queen under your breath?”

  “I didn’t say that!” Ivan shouted, going red to the tips of his ears.

  “You did,” Kaiser added, expression as unreadable as stone, but his eyes gleamed with cruel amusement. “Or rather, you basically did with that little show you put on for us.”

  Ivan flailed slightly, arms wide as if to dispel the slander with air alone. “You two are the worst,” he muttered, then added, quieter, “I was having a spiritual experience…”

  “Spiritual, he says,” Aria giggled, curling into Kaiser’s chest. “Wait till Regulus hears you tried to elope with his ride.”

  Before Ivan could launch into another flustered defense, another pulse of light lit the room—a clean, silvery glow that shimmered rather than cracked. It hummed low in the bones and echoed gently across the floor like the chime of glass bells.

  Mia appeared in a graceful motion, landing upright with both feet on the ground, arms at her sides, eyes immediately scanning the room. Her short hair fell in perfect place as if the teleportation spell had styled it for her. The contrast between the siblings was absurd.

  She looked from Ivan, who was still halfway rising from the floor with one boot caught on the edge of his coat, to Aria, who was draped across Kaiser like a lazy cat, and finally to Kaiser himself—who merely nodded as if this was all entirely normal.

  Mia blinked once in utter confusion.

  “Welcome aboard,” Kaiser said dryly, the corner of his mouth twitching. “We were just celebrating Ivan’s engagement to Varisis.”

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