[Mordred PoV]

  Lucius’s voice came low, rid of any ceremony. “The one who called you,” he said to the gathered heirs, “is our Sovereign.”

  Mordred felt the word run through his veins like cold as ice. A tremor shivered along the tendons of his hand where it rested on his knee. Across the chamber, the reactions appeared in uneven waves. The Imperialists and the Militarists took the blow full on. Their eyes widened, postures faltered as if an invisible gravity pulled them. Some went pale, some merely still, but all of them felt it. A unique weight seemed to come off the man on the throne.

  He looked around, noticing every reaction. Katherine’s face showed no shock, only a frown that deepened, as if puzzling over an equation. Her companions in the Reformist row mirrored it, confusion without surprise, as if this moment had been expected even if its details were not.

  'They knew it.' Mordred pondered.

  In the fifth row, Atlas Blackwell sat with his head tipped to one side. His expression showed bewilderment. New to the Great Houses, dropped into a game already in motion, he had the look of a man catching names in a language he barely spoke.

  For a second, Mordred almost pitied him. 'To enter as a Great House on the same week a Sovereign decides to present himself, he must be cursed.'

  Mordred turned his gaze back to the man they said was a Sovereign.

  'It’s him. No doubt.' The thought hammered through Mordred as breathing became more difficult. The Energy flowed in the air to the point that it felt heavy. It crawled along the skin in fine static and left a metallic taste under the tongue. For someone not trained, this much Energy bordered on toxic.

  “Lucius. Be silent,” said the figure in the white lab coat.

  The voice was hoarse, and there also seemed to be a difficulty in speaking, as if it were a tool he wasn’t accustomed to using. Heads turned toward the throne as if yanked on a line.

  The declaration hit the Imperialist bench like a stone in water. Adonis froze, his usual anger vanishing in an instant. Two seats down, Scipio and Zip exchanged a quick, nervous glance toward Stewart. The famous general of the Sixth Division had bowed his head, however, not to the Emperor, but to the man with an eyepatch and a single violet eye.

  “Who do you think you are?!” Adrian burst out as he recovered his words. “Get out of that seat. That chair represents our entire Empire, it isn’t—”

  “Adrian!” Lucius’s reprimand cracked like a whip. One look, hard and unblinking, ordered his son to silence.

  The Sovereign laughed. It started as a dry rattle, then swelled until his voice boomed off the panels and into the bones of the room. “Your Empire? No. It's mine. Child, who do you think lifted you to where you stand?”

  Adrian’s fury stalled mid-stride. He bit down so hard the muscles in his jaw jumped, torn between outrage at a stranger on the throne and the greater shock of his father bowing his head to him.

  “Finally,” Mordred said, rising with an arrogant ease that made the word a declaration. “I was tired of dealing with your errand boy.”

  Lucius’s eyes widened, an involuntary flicker of disbelief at the insult’s audacity. Stewart stayed on one knee, gaze pinned to the floorboards. Across the front benches, heirs wavered between instinct and caution, the calculus of survival turning their faces thoughtful or blank.

  “Oh?” The Sovereign’s one visible eye regarded Mordred without interest, a predator’s glance that measured and filed. “And you think you know who I am?”

  “Know?” Mordred’s mouth tilted toward a smile that did not reach his eyes. “I’ve studied you my entire life.”

  “How?” The question carried genuine curiosity. “For millennia, very few have discovered. Fewer still stayed alive.”

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “My grandfather,” Mordred said. “He was among the ones. It wasn’t hard to notice a pattern if you were looking. Every Emperor elected promising to end the war, then—once enthroned—shifting to expansion, prolongation, escalation. He couldn’t name it then, but something larger was manipulating them.”

  As he spoke, he shoved the low table in front of him aside and strode past it, closing the distance to the platform where the throne was mounted. Behind him, Sacras’s shoulders rolled once, considering when to take action; Dawn’s gaze tracked exits.

  “Unfortunately,” Mordred went on, “the discovery shortened my grandfather’s life.” He didn’t look away from the throne. “But after negotiating with the Orks, things became clearer. It was much easier to see who has been masterminding this war.”

  “Masterminding isn’t the right word,” the man on the throne said, fingers drumming lazily on the armrest. “Catalyst, that's better. I encourage you. You have only two options: die, or fight.”

  “A creator who uses his creation to butcher the rest,” Mordred answered, his voice pitched to carry. “To you, we’re a cockfight. Blooding each other to amuse you.”

  “In a way, you're right.” The Sovereign smiled. “I made you, long ago. And today, you repay me. You kill the Orks and prove that I am the best Sovereign.”

  Mordred pointed up at him as if sealing a contract. “Good. That’s all I needed.”

  He moved before the room could catch up. His Gauntlet bloomed with shadow. Black matter extruded from ports along the bracer and crawled up his arm in slick ribbons, spreading across his torso and down his legs in overlapping plates. It wasn’t grown so much as deployed, like extruded basalt flowing and hardening at once.

  It climbed his throat and sealed along his jaw with a soft click. The armor was not the gray of artificial Ranger Armor. However, it also wasn’t simple or made only of Energy like those powered by a Z Crystal.

  Across the chest, from a point over the sternum, golden filaments spidered outward in thin, branching lines. They pulsed once, then crept farther, like a parasite tracing a nervous system.

  Mordred could feel the eyes on his change, on the armor. Stewart lifted his head a fraction, attention sharpening without posture changing. Katherine’s eyes tightened. Demi sat forward a centimeter, pupils narrowing.

  “A black armor,” the Sovereign observed. “Is that all? I expected more from the man who usually messes with the Empire’s plans. Using a Crystal stripped from a defeated Sovereign?” His gaze dipped to the chest’s branching filigree. “There’s hardly any Energy left in it.”

  Mordred didn’t answer. Keeping the suit steady demanded every strand of concentration; sparring with the Sovereign’s contempt would only bleed him faster.

  The draw on the core was vicious. Energy consumption spiked in his Gauntlet’s subdisplay. 'Two minutes?' He measured, grinding his teeth. 'No. Not even. Ninety seconds if he held back. Less if he used it at its maximum.'

  He curled his hand. The armor obeyed. Black material crawled over his knuckles, swallowed his palm, and extruded into a tapered spike.

  “I’ll save us both some time,” the Sovereign said, and actually yawned. “No Armor will work on me. They’re all made from our power.”

  “Then let’s test that,” Mordred replied, and kicked off the floor.

  The shockwave hammered the chamber. Air bucked. Chairs skidded. Banners snapped against their mounts. Heirs flinched in a stuttering ripple.

  The Sovereign rose as if lifted by invisible hands and caught the punch with his open palm.

  The impact cracked like a gunshot. Sound slammed against the walls and came back ragged. The Sovereign’s arm didn’t so much as tremble.

  “I told you,” the man on the throne said, bored more than triumphant. “A Black Ranger will achieve nothing here.”

  “Who said this is Black?” Mordred’s voice came iron-flat. “This isn’t a construct spun from your kind. This is mine. The first Onyx Armor.”

  The Sovereign’s eye flicked to the branching gold that pulsed under the armor’s planes. Interest touched his mouth and vanished. “Even so—there’s almost no Energy left in that crystal you scavenged.”

  'Thirty seconds,' Mordred recalculated, discarding the hope of two minutes like dead weight. 'Fine. Then it will be thirty seconds at the maximum.'

  He stamped his heel.

  The floor answered.

  Shadows ran toward him like ink running on a page.

  [Shadow Realm]