Reitz walked the barracks before dawn, murder simmering in his eyes.

  Men snapped to attention as he passed.

  The captains fell in beside him—Fulmen garrison officers in quilted coats and mail, Blackfyre sergeants with soot still caught in their beard-braids, city-watch lieutenants who’d spent the kidnapping sprinting rooftops and alleys. They were his chain, and they looked like men awaiting sentence.

  Aerwyna’s Riverrunners stayed off his shoulder. They held the yard’s edge in fish-jaw helms, a quiet line of steel—present to witness, not to be commanded.

  Each captain expected to be stripped of rank, demoted, reassigned to shovel shit in the stables until their hands bled.

  Reitz asked questions instead.

  “How many of you heard chanting and still closed distance?”

  A man swallowed. “My lord—”

  Reitz cut him off.

  “How many of you waited for a Field reading that never came?”

  Another captain shifted, eyes flicking to the Riverrunners like they might intervene. The Riverrunners held blank faces.

  Reitz’s gaze moved from man to man like a knife along ribs, measuring where it could enter.

  “You fought,” he said softly. “You did what you were trained to do.”

  No one breathed.

  His quiet held no mercy.

  “You fought what you thought she was,” Reitz continued. “And you died because you couldn’t get a read.”

  He stopped at the center of the yard. Frost still clung in the cracks of stone from earlier drilling.

  “In Fulmen,” he said, “we have the doctrine: identify and respond. It keeps us alive in the marches. It also leaves openings when the threat is internal.”

  He swept the line with a hard look.

  “Men. Brothers-at-arms. This is the truth of the Aufsteigfrieden. This is what you will bleed for.”

  Silence spread across the yard.

  “The law that binds the Empire,” Reitz said. “The covenant in blood. We cannot rally armies, so we draw daggers to stave the day—the Aufstiegsrecht. Heirs get massacred in their sleep. Cloaks darken the night.”

  “For years we’ve faced arcanists,” he spat, “bandits and raiders. That time is over. My heir is born, and those forces see a sword in their way. They want the Blackfyre standard to fall. We still don’t know whose hand is on our throat.”

  Boots scuffed frost. Mail whispered. Someone spat a curse. The captains held still, faces tight, as if motion itself could be counted as guilt.

  Reitz let the discomfort sit.

  “What we do know,” he went on, “is the Empire’s own sons come for our homes and our way of living. A sad day. An inevitable day. We point our swords at our own.”

  “This means you learn how an imperial noble fights—how he chants, how he thinks, how he reacts. How his mana condenses. The timing of a higher-tier circle spell.”

  His voice stayed flat.

  “You are unfamiliar with higher-tier spells. You are familiar with patterns.”

  He turned, eyes sweeping the ranks.

  “To fight a high-tier mage, you need to fight one.”

  Reitz faced them square.

  “I will chant,” he said. “Ready your blades, your shields, and your spell.”

  A ripple moved through the ranks. Even the captains straightened.

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  “Shields!” a captain shouted, voice cracking.

  Steel rasped. Shields came up. Buckles snapped as straps got yanked tight. Men closed distance and formed instinctive clusters. They had drilled; this still raised panic.

  A Blackfyre sergeant slammed the butt of his axe on stone. “Form up! Form up!”

  The lines broke into clumsy cells—two men to a knee with shields forward, a third behind with a spear angled over their shoulders. Another pair slid left to cover a gap.

  Across the yard, a city-watch lieutenant stepped in front of his squad. “Cover your eyes! Don’t stare at it!” The order came out like he was trying to command something larger than a man.

  Someone started a counter-chant—short, ugly words meant to dampen, not to build. His voice shook. The syllables tripped.

  A Knight with Earth affinity slammed his palm down. [Earth Wall]. A jagged ridge of stone pushed up through frost. Waist-high. Uneven. It blocked line of sight.

  Reitz watched the reactions, not the spell.

  The pattern showed itself: who moved on sound, who waited for orders, who froze and searched for certainty.

  The shimmer above Reitz thickened as the invocation continued. The yard took on weight, pressure settling from above.

  A tight moment.

  Reitz raised two fingers.

  The chant ended.

  It cut off clean, like a rope severed.

  Pressure vanished. Heat that had started to gather bled out of the air. Frost stopped steaming. The pale shimmer snapped into nothing.

  The soldiers stayed braced with shields raised, waiting for the delayed impact. A spear tip trembled and clicked against a shield rim. Someone swallowed loud in the silence.

  Reitz let it sit.

  Then he spoke.

  “Good.”

  Judgment.

  He stepped down and walked the front of the ranks, taking faces in as he passed.

  “Some of you moved on command,” he said. “Some moved on the chant. Some moved when you felt the yard change.”

  His eyes settled on a young soldier whose shield stayed high. The boy stared at the ground like it had betrayed him.

  “Some of you stayed still.”

  The boy went pale.

  Reitz kept his tone even.

  “That chant was the invocation,” he said. “The warning. The part your enemy cannot hide when he’s about to do something big.”

  He tapped two fingers against his breastplate.

  “When invocation starts, the Field shifts. the effect gathers. Air changes. Ground tightens. You have a window—ten breaths, sometimes less.”

  He angled his head toward the captains, still addressing the yard.

  “If you wait for a reading,” Reitz said, “you die.”

  Shields lowered a fraction. Eyes dropped.

  Reitz scanned them again.

  “You did better than you think,” he said. “You still did worse than you need to.”

  He stopped by the [Earth wall] and knocked with his knuckles. Dull stone answered.

  “This is the right instinct,” he said. “Break line of sight. Break density. Make the spell hit something that isn’t your body.”

  His gaze fixed on the Knight who had cast it.

  “You placed it straight in front. One direction covered. Flank exposed. A real caster hits the side.”

  The Knight stiffened.

  Reitz continued.

  “Build to move,” he said. “Angles. Funnels. Cover that lets you shift. Don’t build a monument.”

  He pointed to the man who had tried to counter-chant.

  “And you. Counter-chanting.”

  The man went rigid.

  “You wasted breath,” Reitz said. “If you don’t know the spell, you don’t counter it. You disrupt the chanter. Break cadence. Put steel in his throat.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Reitz held up two fingers again.

  “Here is the lesson,” he said. “You won’t always have me here deciding to stop.”

  His hand lowered.

  “This morning was charity.”

  His voice went colder.

  Now we drill—delayed and chantless.

  Ezra watched pieces of it from a window seat, chin on his hands against the sill.

  The city still bore scorch.

  The block where he’d screamed MAMA sat under white covers and workers, the crater being swallowed by scaffolding. People walked around it like an open grave.

  In the courtyard below, men moved through new patterns—Fulmen’s first clumsy steps toward surviving people like his mother… and people like Catalyna.

  For the first time since he’d arrived in this world, Aerwyna gave him space.

  It had taken time.

  They rooted out spies—at least the ones they could see.

  Ezra proved he wasn’t an infant to be wrapped in cloth and hidden.

  If not for him—and for Evan—Aerwyna knew she’d be a frozen statue in a broken street, and her son would be halfway to who-knew-where.

  So she made a decision that shocked half the keep.

  She gave him a room.

  A nursery in name only. A refurbished guest suite in the inner keep. The bed was too small for the room; the shelves were the point.

  The masons grumbled when they received the brief.

  “A baby’s room,” the steward told them, rubbing his temples. “Remove the wall hangings. Built-in bookcases along the north side. Here, here, and here. And a desk.”

  “A desk?” one mason repeated, flat.

  “Yes,” the steward said, tired. “And a recessed groove for ink. So the ink pots don’t slide.”

  The masons exchanged looks.

  By the time they finished, word had already spread through the castle:

  The lordling’s “nursery” had more shelves than toys, and a custom ink dock.

  Of course, the servants said in the kitchens. Of course it did. He’d been seen with quills. They said he’d shouted orders like a grown man during the abduction. They said he’d guided arrows. They said he’d run up walls.

  They said a lot of things.

  The only person allowed past the door without Aerwyna’s explicit permission was Sir Evan.

  Which, to the maids, was the strangest part.

  “The milk mother’s replacement is a Knight,” someone whispered over stew. “Sworn Shield now, they say. She gave him lashes and a promotion in the same sentence.”

  Heads shook—half afraid, half impressed.

  Evan stood by the window like a ceremonial statue, working hard to keep his face neutral.

  Three days had passed since Aerwyna had lashed him in the Castle Courtyard and then, in the same breath, bound his fate to Ezra’s. His back still ached when he moved wrong. The ache meant little beside the quiet terror of being alone with the child.

  In battle, with adrenaline up, Ezra’s commands and analysis had been easier to accept.

  Afterward—once the smoke cleared and the city stopped burning—reality set in: Evan sworn to guard a child whose questions sounded like a scholar’s, whose eyes sometimes held Reitz’s gaze, who had guided his arrows like a fortune teller.

  “Evan,” Ezra said, dropping formalities.

  He sprawled on the carpet with a book open in front of him. Mana sat in his body constantly now, giving him precision that looked wrong on a baby. The movement was only part of it.

  Evan watched how Ezra reinforced himself—how he stood, how he shifted weight. The technique felt otherworldly. He could describe the effect; he couldn’t name the mechanism.

  “Yes, Milord,” Evan replied automatically.

  He fixed his eyes somewhere above Ezra’s head. Direct eye contact made the hair on his arms rise.

  “Your primary element is Water, right?”

  “Yes, Milord.”

  “You used Earth more in the fight,” Ezra said. “Rock Bullets. No Flood Cannon. Why?”

  Evan cleared his throat.

  “Earth is more practical, Milord,” he said. “For Knights. My talent in Water sits just below 3rd circle, but my core is small. I can cast [Flood Cannon] twice, at most, before I am spent.”

  His jaw tightened, as if admitting a limit was an offense.

  “[Earth Wall] and [Stone Gauntlet] are difficult for me. My Earth affinity is weak. I trained [Stone Bullet] because it is efficient.”

  “Efficient how?” Ezra’s right eyebrow rose.

  “Disruptive,” Evan answered, slipping into instruction the way he would with a squire. “Low-circle, quick to cast, cheap to maintain. One well-placed [Stone Bullet] breaks a charge, staggers a caster, opens a guard. After that, it is steel and speed.”

  He paused, then added with care:

  “Knights rely on their bodies, not only their cores. If we burn our mana on one or two impressive spells, we become useless on a battlefield with dozens of enemies.”

  Ezra nodded slowly.

  So they did have the right idea.

  Low circle doesn’t mean low value. Cost per effect.

  “And Wind?” Ezra asked. “I haven’t seen anyone use it. If your primary element is Wind, can you still use Earth?”

  “Not easily, Milord,” Evan said. “This is Fulmen. Far south in the Imperium. Aeromancers are more common in the north, near the highlands and the coasts. Here, among the nobility, we have Hydromancers, Pyromancers, and Terramancers. That is the tradition.”

  Ezra frowned.

  “Why?” he asked. “Geography? Climate?”

  “Actually…” Evan hesitated, scratching his head. “I do not know, Milord. That is how I was taught.”

  Ezra filed it away.

  Maybe climate affects affinity ratios.

  Or it’s politics—House lines breeding for elements.

  He turned a page with careful fingers, scanning dense script. The book was a plain history of Fulmen’s early days, but even between dry treaties and skirmishes, resource disputes bled through.

  “Magic crystals and cores,” Ezra said, eyes still on the page. “Tell me what you know.”

  Evan relaxed a fraction. Familiar ground.

  “They’re mined from certain caves,” he said. “Not every mana-rich vein creates them. Some do. Some don’t. The ones that do…”

  “They’re worth killing over.”

  “Your father was… is… adamant about the mines the Rex Imperia awarded him,” Evan continued. “Five Nobles have claims in that region. They proposed joint mining contracts—share rights, share profit. Lord Reitz refused. Those crystals and cores are worth a pretty penny. I am not privy to the numbers, but I know they are high.”

  Ezra’s mind jumped to Catalyna. The canyon ambush. The timing of the attempts.

  “So they had motive,” he murmured. “At least for the first attempt.”

  Evan swallowed.

  “Yes, Milord. When we first heard of the assassination attempt, the mines were the first suspicion.”

  Ezra smiled faintly.

  “See? You do know things Mother doesn’t tell me.”

  Evan went rigid.

  Ezra’s face flushed red to the collarbones.

  In that instant, the veteran Knight felt more afraid of a petite woman in furs than of any spell.

  “I—”

  His tongue tied itself.

  Ezra blinked.

  “Are you overheating?” he asked, serious. “Your skin turned red. Is that a side effect of mana overuse? Or shame? Is shame a magical condition?”

  Evan almost choked.

  He stared straight ahead, ears burning, and made a quiet vow to speak only inside Aerwyna’s rules.

  Some punishments were not worth repeating.

  Ezra watched him struggle, then let it drop.

  He had a different question.

  “What about Arcanists?” he asked. “Everyone keeps mentioning them. What are they, exactly?”

  Evan’s blush, barely fading, deepened.

  “Milord…” he managed.

  Then stopped.

  Mines had been a mistake.

  Arcanists were worse.

  Aerwyna had forbidden any explanation until Ezra was older. Evan’s mind flashed the Castle Courtyard—the lash biting skin, Aerwyna’s disappointed stare.

  He chose cowardice.

  “I… don’t know enough to say,” he said stiffly. “It would be improper for me to explain half-truths, Milord.”

  Ezra squinted.

  Liar. Loyal, at least.

  He could press or he could note the reaction—file it under sensitive topics—and wait.

  He chose silence.

  The castle grew busier as the Day of Introduction approached.

  Servants ran themselves ragged—baking, roasting, stewing. Casks of wine rolled in. Musicians and entertainers were hired. Banners were mended and rehung.

  The Day of Introduction wasn’t a birthday party.

  It was a declaration.

  In the Rex Imperium, siring children meant nothing by itself. You presented one who might hold your seat when you were gone.

  A Day of Introduction announced to the world:

  This one has a chance. This one is worth watching.

  Not every son or daughter received one.

  To stand in the Castle Courtyard before vassals and rivals and say this child is a potential heir cut both ways. It marked Ezra as protected… and worth aiming at.

  Deterrent and invitation.

  The Right of Ascent made it worse.

  In fifteen years, any sworn vassal who believed themselves more worthy could invoke the ancient edict and challenge for the domain. The higher Ezra rose, the more dangerous he became to anyone who dreamed of Fulmen under their banner.

  In the days leading up to the ceremony, Ezra saw them less and less. Reitz vanished into councils with captains, reshuffling units, calculating how many men he could pull from border patrols without inviting disaster. Aerwyna split her time between security and letters to neighboring Nobles, sealed and sent by carrier hawks.

  Invitations.

  A Day of Introduction required them. Courtesy and test—who came, who sent gifts, who ignored the summons.

  One letter went farther than the others.

  A slim scroll on heavy paper, bound with black wax bearing the Blackfyre sigil, went by rider straight toward the Capital.

  Rex Imperia.

  By law and tradition, every lord who declared a child for Introduction sent formal invitation up the chain. For most Houses, that meant two letters: one to their liege lord and one to the Emperor. The liege usually read it and visited. The Emperor and Primarchs almost never did.

  In the Capital, a clerk cracked the seal, copied the particulars into the Rolls, and filed the original. Custom and archive.

  The Rex Imperia never came.

  He ruled an empire.

  He did not ride out every time a provincial family held a feast and paraded a child.

  A polite acknowledgment would arrive—congratulations, sealed with the Emperor’s signet. From time to time, for Houses that mattered—old lines, strategic domains—an Envoy would be sent.

  A banner.

  A representative.

  Someone to drink wine, deliver a formal blessing, and carry back a report.

  An Envoy of the Rex was an honor that could anchor a House’s reputation for a decade.

  Reitz expected neither, fallen from grace. Protocol still demanded the letter.

  The Day of Introduction dawned clear and bright.

  By mid morning, the Castle Courtyard had become a living painting. Nobles from across Fulmen stood in clusters beneath their banners. Silk curtains flashed color against stone. Servants wove through with trays; musicians filled the air with strings and flutes.

  Ezra wore formal miniature robes that made him look like a stuffed turkey, at least in his opinion. Aerwyna disagreed. He sat on her hip as she moved through the receiving line. What little hair he had had been combed flat; his cheeks scrubbed.

  Reitz stood at her side—scars and all—in ceremonial black, wearing it like someone who preferred armor and understood the role anyway.

  “Smile,” Aerwyna murmured to Ezra between greetings, lips barely moving. “But not too much.”

  I am a baby, Ezra thought. I should be wailing and flailing.

  She pinched his side, gentle and precise.

  For a moment it felt almost normal.

  A trumpet sounded.

  Not the brassy, slightly out-of-time blare of local heralds.

  A clear, piercing note from the outer gate, held a shade too long. Drilled discipline behind it.

  Conversation broke.

  Heads turned.

  “Another guest?” a minor Noble murmured.

  “We’re already all here,” his neighbor answered, frowning.

  A second trumpet followed, then a third.

  Dignitaries like envoys from Theladon Synodus received two.

  A procession unfolded—colors close to Blackfyre’s.

  Banners unfurled.

  Reitz’s head snapped toward the gate.

  “Who else was invited?” Aerwyna asked, low.

  “That should be about it,” Reitz said, confused.

  They stayed on the dais, but guard formations shifted. Lines tightened.

  Sunlight poured through the widening gap, turning the approaching shapes into white silhouettes.

  First came riders.

  A wedge of cavalry in crimson cloaks advanced at a measured pace, armor polished to a mirror sheen. Their breastplates bore the same sigil, repeated: two lions back to back, both exhaling stylized streams of flame toward a single blaze between them.

  Murmurs rippled through the Castle Courtyard.

  “Those colors…”

  “That crest…”

  “Regaladeus,” someone breathed. “The Twin Fires.”

  House Regaladeus.

  The Imperial House.

  “They sent an Envoy,” another Noble whispered, half awe, half envy. “To Fulmen…”

  Even that would have been unprecedented. An Envoy bearing the Rex’s heraldry was a statement.

  This was more than an Envoy.

  The fanfare said so.

  It could mean imperial blood—some branch family. That alone was pressure.

  We are watching this child.

  Her eyes stayed on the gate.

  Behind the cavalry rolled a carriage.

  Heavy. Functional. Dark oak banded with steel, with strappings of gold. Big enough for a small family. Four colossal steeds pulled it—black from mane to hoof, harness traced in understated silver.

  The soldiers in red fanned out as the carriage halted before the dais.

  The courtyard straightened as one.

  Reitz’s jaw clenched.

  “Envoy,” Aerwyna murmured. “It has to be an Envoy.”

  It had to be.

  The carriage door swung open with a soft click.

  A figure stepped out.

  Dark fitted coat. Embroidered doublet with house colors and sigil on his shoulders. Auburn hair catching light. Crimson pupils tracking the crowd.

  Guards formed and split into two ranks. He paused on the carriage step and let the nobles see his sigil: a single lion in the center, with two flames—one black, one red.

  No herald announced him.

  He didn’t need one.

  Breath left the Castle Courtyard in a collective, soundless exhale.

  The man was not an Envoy.

  The Rex Imperia himself had arrived.