The city was singing its morning song. Market vendors called out prices of goods. Steam rose from the street-food stalls.
It was beautiful. It was loud. It was alive.
Adam walked with his hands in his pockets, soaking it in. "I'm going to miss the smell. Even the bad parts."
Noah walked beside him, his gaze fixed on the cobblestones. "I should be going with you."
"Noah..." Lian Mei said. She was walking a step ahead.
"Mother knows the situation better than you," Lian Mei said. She stopped and turned. For the first time, her face wasn't arranged into its usual indifference. "Trust her. And trust Adam."
She placed a hand on Noah's shoulder. "We will bring her back. I promise."
Noah looked at Adam. Then at Lian Mei. The tension across his shoulders dissolved into a long, slow exhale.
"If you die," Noah said to Adam, "I will resurrect you just to kill you myself."
"If I die, you lose your curse, moron." Adam grinned.
They reached the outer gates.
What waited for them was not a carriage. It was a column.
The moth, the one they came to Sutra on, along with three others, were staged in organized formation along the road outside the gate, it seemed two of them were carrying boxes of supplies.
The three soldiers standing beside were not conscripts or ceremonial guards.
They were Sutra's elite eldritch holders, and it showed in the particular stillness they carried.
Adam was still contemplating the view when one of them stepped forward.
"Voss," she said. "Are you the escort?" She looked Adam over once. "You will follow the convoy's movement protocols. You will not break formation unless ordered. And you will not make decisions that affect the group's safety." A pause. "Mother’s order were strict."
Adam opened his mouth.
"Good," Voss said, and turned away.
"She's warm once you get to know her." The voice came from his left, easy, unhurried. A man with a broad jaw, short clack hair, and a smile that seemed structurally permanent leaned against the side of one of the transports, arms folded. "Renn." He stuck out a hand. "Genuinely glad you're coming. Been wanting to see the Kingdom of Light since I was a kid. This assignment felt like a gift."
Adam shook it.
The third stepped around from behind the second hauler, a younger woman with close-cropped hair.
"Sable," she said. She glanced at Adam briefly. "We won't lose you." .
He threw his pack into one of the personal transports and turned to Noah.
"Stay safe," Adam said, extending a hand.
"Don't do anything stupid," Noah replied, gripping it.
The handshake held for a moment longer than necessary.
"Wait!"
The shout came from the road behind them. They turned to see Jin sprinting toward them, wheezing, goggles bouncing against his collarbone, apron flapping. He skidded to a halt with both hands on his knees, shoulders heaving.
"Thought... I... missed you," Jin choked out.
"Jin." Adam blinked. "Is the shop on fire?"
"No." Jin straightened, wiping sweat from his forehead. He fumbled in his apron pocket and pulled out a small spherical device made of brass and wound in silver spider-silk. It hummed faintly, just below the threshold of hearing. "Take this."
He shoved it into Adam's chest.
"What is it?"
"I call it the Echo one." Jin grinned. "Finished it this morning. You squeeze it, say something important, then throw it somewhere or hide it, and the next person who touches it hears the last thing you said."
"Does it record the sound thanks to thin silk threads inside?", Noah asked, with a curious expression on his face.
"Well, technically yes, but its more complicated than that.", Jin responded.
Adam turned it over in his palm. It was heavier than it looked. "A one-time communication device?"
"A lifesaver," Jin corrected. "Use it well. And bring me back something interesting from there, I can use anything of value."
"Alright, I’ll do my best, even though I’m not sure ill identify what objects can be of value, hahaha".
Adam then pocketed it.
He climbed into the moth beside Lian Mei. Her back felt familiar, he spend months on it after all.
"Go," Lian Mei said.
They lurched into motion. Adam looked back.
Noah and Jin stood side by side at the gate. Noah raised one hand, slow, deliberate, a single held gesture. Jin was already jumping up and down with both arms above his head, waving at nothing, waving at everything.
The convoy picked up speed. Sutra began to recede. The colors of the gate banners blurred and bled together. The two figures compressed into shapes, then shadows, then the distance swallowed them entirely.
Adam faced forward.
The road to the Kingdom of Light was long and journey ahead was a path of mystery.
The heavy oak doors of the grand guest chamber loomed at the end of the stone corridor.
Selena stood before them. To her left and right, her two elite guards, Tor and Jian, held their positions. A human general from Utopia had walked into the heart of Sutra demanding an audience.
"My Lady," Jian murmured. "Allow us to stand at your back. We do not trust the Utopians."
Selena didn't look at him. "You will remain in the corridor."
"But, "
"You will remain in the corridor."
Her voice did not rise. But the ambient temperature in the hall dropped by several degrees. Both guards lowered their heads and stepped back into the shadows without another word. They understood the order. Whatever compound was waiting behind those doors, a single misplaced breath from a loyal hand could detonate it.
Selena pushed the doors open and stepped inside. They shut behind her with a heavy, echoing thud.
The guest chamber was cavernous. Ancient stone pillars climbed to a vaulted ceiling lost somewhere in the darkness above. The room had been built to diminish, to remind anyone standing in it that they were a guest in the domain of something older and larger than themselves.
Yet, General Krul did not look diminished.
He sat at a small, delicate porcelain tea table positioned in the exact center of the vast floor, an almost absurd arrangement in a room of that scale. His body was big and bulky, an intimidating size that reflected power. His attire was a display of imposing luxury: a tailored, crisp grey-and-white suit worn effortlessly open, revealing a heavy gold collar resting against his bare chest. A massive mantle of pristine white fur draped his shoulders, framed by jagged, icy crystals. He did not stand when she entered. He simply smiled, a sharp, unhurried smirk, and reached for the silver teapot with a clawed hand of jagged, glowing purple crystal.
"Lady Selena." His voice carried pleasantly off the high stone walls. "Please. Join me. The draft in these ancient halls is quite terrible, but the tea is just right."
Selena crossed the chamber. Her footsteps made no sound. She sat across from him.
Krul poured. It was a servant's task, but he performed it with deliberate care. "Tea is a delicate thing," he said, watching the amber liquid fill the cup. "A fraction of a degree too hot and the leaves burn. The flavor turns bitter. It requires a gentle control." He slid the cup across the table. "Don't you agree?"
"I find," Selena said, her hands remaining folded in her lap, "that boiling water removes impurities." She let that settle. "What brings Utopia's military weight to my land, General?"
Krul took a slow sip from his own cup, closed his eyes briefly, then set it down. "Tragedy, I'm afraid. We are in mourning. The destruction of the City of Light was a catastrophic loss."
Selena watched his hands. "It was a loud statement. I was under the impression Utopia preferred diplomacy to turning capitals into glass craters."
Krul chuckled, a warm sound, entirely without malice. "Lady Selena. Please do not insult our methods. Utopia does not throw tantrums. We perform surgical excisions." He paused. "That crater was not our doing, and I find it hard you didn’t know that already."
He leaned forward, forearms resting on the table. The smile held, but something left his eyes.
"You already know, that was Him."
The pronoun sat in the room's silence with its own weight. Selena did not move.
"An entity of that magnitude," Krul continued, his voice dropping into the register of a confidential briefing, "walking the earth, completely untethered. It breaks the geopolitical balance, but," he exhaled, a sound of careful political relief, "we take comfort in one detail. He shares our position on the Original Curse Bearer. He wants the anomaly eradicated just as badly as we do."
"A common enemy makes for convenient bedfellows," Selena said.
"Indeed." Krul lifted his teaspoon and began to stir his cup. "Which is why the current situation is so precarious. It is a profound shame about Kaiser, isn't it? A tragedy of his own making."
The teaspoon clicked against the rim and stopped.
Beneath the table, Selena's fingernails pressed into her own palms. Compromised?. The word arrived quietly and dismantled things in its wake, decades of positioning, of careful inference, of intelligence she had trusted. Her spies had not brought her this. Not a word of it.
The geometry of everything she thought she understood shifted by several degrees, and none of the new angles were better, it felt like he just confirmed a theory she had, a theory, she didn’t want to believe, that’s why Kaiser didn’t come to us himself, that’s why he left Adam a book, what in the world happened, what in the world, was able to compromise the almighty Kaiser, and how.
A single bead of condensation traced a line down the side of the silver teapot. Krul was watching her eyes.
Selena reached out and picked up her teacup. Her hand did not tremble. She brought it to her lips, took a slow sip, and set it down.
The following words, were a gamble.
"Pride is a heavy anchor," she said, her voice a calm, undisturbed surface. "It drags even the strongest to the bottom eventually."
Krul smiled. He leaned back. "I am glad we understand each other." The polite architecture of the conversation thinned. "Utopia is hunting Kaiser, Lady Selena. We will find him, and we will finish him. If we discover that Sutra, or its esteemed Pillar, is looking for him as well, we will not send diplomats next time. We will burn your peaceful land until there is nothing left but ash and memory."
Selena held his gaze. Her eyes were cold. "You speak very boldly in a room where your army cannot hear you scream, General."
Krul didn't flinch. He adjusted his sleeves with unhurried movements. He glanced around the chamber, surveying the shadows at the base of the pillars. "There is a rumor. A paranoid, silly rumor. That the Original survived the blast in the Kingdom of Light thanks to your intervention. That he scurried away like a plague rat."
His eyes came back to her.
"A rat like that carries a sickness that infects everything it touches. It hides in walls. It hides under the floorboards of beautiful, ancient houses." He stood, smoothing the front of his uniform. "I am so very glad that Sutra's borders are secure. Because if Utopia found that rat hiding in your beautiful house, we would have to clean it."
Krul stepped back from the table and offered a perfectly executed courtly bow. "Thank you for the tea. It was brewed to perfection."
He turned and walked the length of the chamber toward the door.
"Wait."
His hand had not yet found the handle. He stopped. Turned.
"Why didn't you move earlier? Why now?"
"Who said we didn't?" A beat passed between them, brief, measured, each of them reading it differently. Then Krul said, "Excuse me, Your Majesty. I hope our paths cross again soon. And that our relationship remains as good as it has always been."
He stepped into the corridor. The heavy oak swung shut behind him and clicked into its stone frame.
The chamber was empty.
Selena sat at the dead center of the room. She did not move, did not blink, her hands resting flat on the table beside the spreading amber stain. After a moment, she reached for the teacup.
Her fingers tightened.
A sharp, brittle crack split the silence, the cup fracturing cleanly down its center, hot liquid spreading in a slow, widening stain across the stone table.
Then the tension left her face. Something resolved behind her eyes, quiet and certain, like a variable finally solved. A sound built in her throat, low at first, then fully present.
She laughed.
"I see." Her voice was composed. "So, the King of Utopia, is dead."