The blood on the floor had dried to a dark brown that the gold tiles had absorbed poorly. It sat in the grouting between each tile, settled into the seams, a record of something that had happened in this room and had not been cleaned because no one had been ordered to clean it. A severed head rested against the base of the nearest pillar. The figure that entered the chamber noted it without stopping.
Red banners ran the full height of the walls on both sides, floor to ceiling, shifting slightly despite the absence of any wind. The pillars between them were dark stone, polished enough to reflect distorted shapes but not faces. The room smelled of iron, the kind that settled in sealed spaces and did not leave.
The figure moved through the chamber at a measured pace. Its steps were slow and even, each one deliberate, the red robe it wore trailing the gold floor without sound. It was not human. The body beneath the robe was humanoid in proportion only. The surface where skin should have been was metal, jointed and articulated, the seams between plates hairline-precise. The head held no expression because it held no face in the conventional sense, only a smooth forward surface with two narrow apertures that carried a faint internal light.
It registered the dried blood in the tile grouting, the head against the pillar, the remaining distance to the throne. It did not slow.
The throne was large and dark. The woman seated on it held her jaw rested against one fist, elbow on the armrest, legs crossed at the knee. She appeared to be observing something in the middle distance. As the mechanical figure covered the remaining ground and reached the appropriate distance, it lowered itself to one knee and held that position.
Nothing was said. The throne room absorbed the silence without difficulty.
"I have arrived," the mechanical figure said. Its voice carried no breath behind it, no variation in cadence. It produced language the way a mechanism produces output.
The woman on the throne shifted her gaze downward. The motion was slow and carried no urgency, adjusting her attention from the middle distance to the figure below with the quality of interest she might give a sound she had already identified and confirmed harmless.
"Are preparations complete?"
"Yes, Your Eminence."
Nothing followed. The mechanical figure remained on one knee. The throne room did not change around them.
Then the woman on the throne lifted her head fully and looked at the figure in front of her.
She wore a red cape that fell from her shoulders and red fur across the back of them, both leaving her collarbone, chest, abdomen, and the upper length of her legs exposed. A single piece of gold scale covered what it needed to cover. Her build was toned and curved, muscle and shape existing in the same frame without either erasing the other, tall and entirely at ease with its own dimensions. Thin scars ran from her feet up through her legs, across her abdomen, and onto her face in fine lines that had healed clean. Her eyes were gold. Her red hair fell past her shoulders without arrangement.
She rested her free hand on the skull sitting on her right armrest. The skull had been fitted as a cup. Dark wine sat inside it.
"You are to proceed," she said.
"With the plan," the mechanical figure confirmed.
"Yes."
Then her gaze moved. It did not move far. It sharpened and carried something precise in its direction, and where it landed on the metal surface of the figure's upper arm, a thin line opened in the plating. Not from a visible weapon. From the quality of attention she had extended toward it. The cut was clean. A hairline separation in the jointed metal, as though the gaze itself had found the tolerance between two plates and decided to use it.
The mechanical figure did not register this externally. It held its position on one knee.
"Your head rests too high," she said.
"Yes."
"Leave nothing."
"Understood."
She settled back against the throne.
"Has there been any sign of Alexander?"
"The remaining heir of the House of Tempest has been sighted near Vex," the mechanical figure replied. "He remains within their jurisdiction."
She did not respond to that. Her expression did not move. She lifted the skull and drew a slow pull from it, then lowered it back to the armrest.
"And our population."
"The elderly have been cleansed." A pause. "Birth rates remain low—"
"A constant factor," she said. Her voice did not rise. It cut across the word and finished it.
"Yes, Your Eminence."
She uncrossed her legs and stood. The red cape shifted around her as she rose. She moved to the edge of the raised platform and stopped there, looking down at the kneeling figure.
"Report back after the destruction."
The mechanical figure held its position. After a moment it spoke. "The renegade. If she hears of this, there is a possibility—"
She did not reply.
"She and I crossed paths recently."
She descended one step. Then another. Her footfall on the stairs was even and unhurried. She stopped when she was close enough that the figure would have needed to tilt its frame upward to face her directly.
"We have remained inside our borders for a century," she said. "As long as she moves through the scattered realms, conquest remains paused. That arrangement holds."
She reached out and set one hand on the skull resting on the armrest of the lower step. Her fingers traced its surface once.
"The supreme commanders are currently occupied," she said. "Let your thoughts not wander."
She straightened and moved to stand directly above the kneeling figure, her full height over it.
"You are dismissed."
The mechanical figure rose, turned, and crossed the chamber toward the entrance. Its steps were the same as when it had entered. Slow. Even. The red robe trailed the gold floor. The cut in its upper plating was visible from behind, a clean separation in the metal that had not been there when it arrived.
It did not look back.
The entrance closed behind it.
The woman walked back across the gold tiles, past the dried blood in the grouting, past the head at the base of the pillar. She returned to the throne, settled into it, crossed one leg over the other, and rested her jaw against her fist again.
The red banners moved without wind.
The skull sat on the armrest beside her.
She set her other hand against it and traced its edges with two fingers, narrowing her eyes at nothing in particular.
Crepuscula waited for the destruction to begin.
His eyes opened.
For a few seconds Lucid remained still, trying to identify the feeling in his chest. It was difficult to name. He had experienced what felt simultaneously like a nightmare and something almost pleasant, and the two had left behind a residue that was neither fully one nor the other. Something about it had shaken him. Underneath the discomfort there was also warmth, distant and unclear.
He groaned and pressed a hand to his forehead before sitting up slowly.
His eyes adjusted to the room. His quarters inside the Starlight Carriage. He looked around until his attention settled on a small clock sitting nearby and held there for a moment.
"That is right."
He had destroyed the old one at the Vex residence. He remembered buying it because it had looked like something from Earth.
He sighed. "I just destroy things for no reason."
He rubbed his face and sat at the edge of the bed. His fingers found the red gemstone pendant resting beside him. He picked it up, looped the chain over his head, and adjusted it until the pendant sat flat against his chest.
He stood in front of the mirror.
He looked rested. He also looked exactly as foggy-headed as he felt.
He wore a white shirt and dark trousers, the same clothes Karmen had provided some time ago. He moved to the cupboard and reached for the life vest hanging inside.
Then he stopped.
"Guess I do not need this anymore." He held it up and yawned.
The system manifested a description around the object, a familiar white outline gathering at its edges.
He read it.
Description: A vest once worn as a safety net when the seas grow restless. A lifeline upon which one can depend.
Rank: UR
Grants: ██▒▒▒
He stared at the last line.
"Corrupted."
He had seen the same display when Alice's status had first surfaced. Hidden attributes behind a barrier that required either a Destinologist or someone with Fate Thread Resonance to read through. He had met no one with that ability so far. Arthur knew how to guard. Ayame knew where to strike. Valen, or Pilt, or whatever name he was operating under at this particular moment, knew how to be professionally inconvenient.
He lowered the vest.
Then a name arrived in his mind without being called for.
'Mary.'
His expression changed. The memories of the academy returned with uncomfortable precision. The people there who had suffered. The promises he had made, and the ones he had not made but had implied. The anger came quickly after that. The black badge uniforms. The professors who had looked away. Alaric. And the square-faced one who had followed him around.
Alaric remained the one he resented most. Even now. Even after it appeared the man had shifted, had chosen differently in the end.
Resentment built over months did not dissolve because someone had finally decided to act like a person.
That was not how it worked.
Still, it had not ended without cost.
The brother turned into something unrecognizable and he had lost him.
There was no clear winner.
The Chapeu had paid in subordinates, and Lucid still carried the memory of one of them.
He felt the guilt about her without finding anywhere to put it.
She had chosen her path.
There was nothing he could have done.
His fingers twitched at his side. It had only recently started happening, and he didn't know why. Involuntary movements and unbidden gestures.
When no one was around, he found himself showing signs of discomfort, subtle flinches, quiet winces, traces of pain he never let anyone else see.
It was completely uncharacteristic of him.
He set his hands on his hips and exhaled.
"No need to be so down about it."
He waited.
Nothing.
He looked around the room.
He had expected Alice to insert something by now. A comment, a correction, something delivered with that particular formal weight she used when she thought he was being imprecise.
She said nothing.
His expression settled into something quieter.
"She is not here."
He looked at the empty space beside him for a moment. Then at the vest in his hands.
"It is not like she has not done that before," he said.
The room was noticeably quieter without her. He was not sure when exactly he had gotten used to that, but he had.