The morning in Firebrim did not arrive with a sunrise. Instead, the bruised purple sky simply lightened to a dull, hazy magenta, illuminated by the shifting glow of the massive geothermal vents surrounding the capital.
Devin sat at the obsidian table in the guest suite, nursing a cup of bitter, ash-filtered tea. He was fully dressed in his charcoal-gray mantle, reviewing the topographical maps Fenrys had provided.
The heavy oak door unlatched with a soft click.
Devin looked up from the parchment as Dawson walked into the room.
For the first time in fourteen cycles, the Commander of the Royal Knights looked genuinely disheveled. Dawson's usually immaculate pale blonde hair was wildly ruffled, sticking up at odd angles. The collar of his dark tunic was misaligned, three buttons were entirely missing, and there was a faint, undeniable scent of synthetic crimson lotus clinging to his clothes.
Dawson stopped exactly two paces from the table. His oxidized steel eyes were as blank and terrifyingly calm as ever, completely at odds with his rumpled appearance.
"The diplomatic mission was a success, My King," Dawson reported flatly. "The alliance is secure."
Devin took a slow, deliberate sip of his tea to hide the massive grin threatening to split his face.
"I see that, Commander," Devin replied smoothly. "Did you encounter heavy resistance?"
"The Queen's stamina is... statistically anomalous for a human of her cycles," Dawson stated, offering a rare, clinical assessment of human biology. "Her tactical approach was highly aggressive. I adapted to the parameters."
Devin had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud. He was about to ask if Dawson required medical attention when a sharp knock echoed at the door.
Dawson instantly pivoted, his hand instinctively dropping to the empty space on his hip where his broadsword usually rested. Devin waved him down and opened the door.
A Firebrim palace attendant stood in the corridor, bowing deeply.
"King Kross," the attendant murmured respectfully. "Queen Atelia sends her profound apologies. She has declared that the expedition into the Northern Expanse must be delayed by exactly one par. The Queen is... indisposed this morning and requires the day to recover her strength."
The attendant's eyes briefly darted to Dawson, widening slightly at the Commander's state of undress, before quickly staring back at the floor.
"Please inform the Queen that we completely understand," Devin said, his voice entirely even. "Rest is vital for royal duties."
The attendant bowed again and scurried away. Devin closed the door and turned back to Dawson, finally letting out a quiet chuckle.
"Go take a bath, Dawson. You earned the par off."
With the expedition delayed, Devin found himself suffocating in the heavy, sulfur-scented air of the guest suite. He needed to move. He needed to understand the board he was playing on.
He left Dawson to completely sanitize his armor and sought out Fenrys Mortipia.
The scholar was already awake, standing on the sprawling outer balconies of the eastern wing, sketching the flow of the magma channels in her leather journal. When Devin proposed a walking tour of the upper rings of the capital, Fenrys agreed immediately.
They walked side by side out of the palace gates, accompanied by a discreet escort of two Firebrim guards who kept a respectful twenty paces behind them.
Firebrim was a marvel of brutalist survival. The architecture didn't soar; it hunkered down. The buildings were constructed from thick, interlocking blocks of dark basalt and obsidian glass, designed to flex and hold during the frequent seismic tremors. The heat radiating from the cobblestones was intense, baking through the soles of Devin's leather boots.
"The foundries are the heart of the kingdom," Fenrys explained, pointing down toward the sprawling, smoke-choked lower rings where the sub-human populations were concentrated. "Atelia's engineers tap directly into the magma veins to heat the massive iron crucibles. It's a flawless industrial loop. But it requires thousands of bodies to maintain the pressure valves."
Devin looked down at the dark plumes of smoke. "Bodies that are currently listening to a ghost named Enoch."
"Can you blame them?" Fenrys asked softly, glancing at him. The ambient noise of the city masked their conversation from the trailing guards. "They live in the ash, Devin. They die in the ash. You built a paradise for your people in Cypris, but the rest of the continent is still trapped in the dark ages of the subjugation."
"I know," Devin murmured, the heavy mantle of King Kross feeling suffocatingly tight. "But burning down the foundries won't free them. It will just give Ferran the excuse he needs to march the Mortipian Federation across the border and slaughter them."
They continued their walk through the winding, bustling markets of the upper ring. Merchants sold heat-tempered glass, rare spices imported from Colstar, and heavy, insulated clothing designed for the Expanse.
For a few hours, Devin allowed himself to simply be a tourist. He listened to Fenrys explain the intricate fault lines and the geopolitical history of Firebrim. Her sharp, inquisitive mind was just as captivating as it had been when they were children under the weeping willow. She didn't look at him with the sycophantic worship of his subjects, nor the guarded respect of his political rivals. She looked at him as an equal.
But as the day waned and the purple sky deepened into a starless, smoky black, the oppressive heat of the city seemed to thicken, carrying a dark, palpable tension.
They turned down the grand avenue leading back toward the towering basalt gates of the royal palace. The streets here were wider, lined with heavy iron braziers burning with bright, alchemical fire.
"We depart at first light tomorrow," Fenrys said, her tone shifting back to the expedition. "The Expanse is unforgiving. If Enoch is out there, he has to be using heavy runic heat-stones to keep his followers from freezing solid. We can track the thermal signatures once we cross the border."
"Dawson will take the vanguard," Devin agreed, his eyes fixed on the palace gates in the distance.
There were four Firebrim royal guards stationed at the heavy iron portcullis, their curved blades resting casually against their hips. The shift change was likely approaching.
Then, the ambient noise of the avenue shattered.
It wasn't a roar of a mob like the day before. It was a single, feral, blood-curdling scream of pure, absolute desperation.
Devin and Fenrys stopped dead in their tracks.
From the narrow alleyway directly adjacent to the palace gates, a figure burst out into the flickering light of the braziers. It was a sub-human man, his clothes nothing more than soot-stained rags clinging to his emaciated frame. His eyes were wide, completely dilated with a terrifying, unnatural frenzy.
But it was what he held in his hands that made the breath catch in Devin's throat.
The man was wielding a massive, jagged industrial shear—a heavy, two-handed blade stripped directly from the metal-cutting machines of the lower foundries. It was a weapon too heavy for a starving man to lift, yet the Holy Gene pulsing in his veins, amplified by sheer, adrenaline-fueled madness, allowed him to swing it with terrifying speed.
"For Enoch!" the man shrieked, his voice tearing his vocal cords.
The Firebrim guards at the gate reacted, but they were a fraction of a second too slow. They had grown accustomed to the disorganized riots, not a suicidal, surgical strike by a lone fanatic.
The closest guard reached for the hilt of his curved blade, his mouth opening to shout a warning.
He never made a sound.
The sub-human didn't hesitate. He didn't flinch. He swung the massive industrial shear with a sickening, wet crunch of raw kinetic force.
The heavy, jagged metal cleaved effortlessly through the guard's heat-tempered armor, tearing through the mail collar and completely severing the man's neck.
The guard's head spun into the air, a grotesque arc of helmet and bone, bouncing heavily onto the basalt cobblestones and rolling to a stop just a few feet from where Devin stood.
A massive, arterial spray of bright crimson blood erupted from the stump of the guard's neck, painting the iron portcullis and his fellow guards in a slick, horrifying coat of red. The headless body stood rigidly for a terrifying second before collapsing heavily onto the stone.
Devin froze.
The two Firebrim guards trailing Devin and Fenrys instantly drew their blades and surged forward, shouting commands. The remaining guards at the gate engaged the sub-human, their curved swords clashing violently against the heavy industrial shear.
But Devin couldn't move. He couldn't speak.
He stared at the severed head resting on the cobblestones, the lifeless eyes staring blankly up at the purple sky. The coppery, heavy stench of fresh blood completely overpowered the sulfur in the air.
For fourteen cycles, King Kross Sapien had lived in a sanitized, carefully controlled world. When violence was necessary, Dawson executed it with flawless, non-lethal precision. Bones were broken cleanly, men were rendered unconscious without a single drop of blood hitting the floor. Devin had orchestrated peace. He had sat in velvet chairs and debated tariffs.
He had entirely forgotten what true, brutal slaughter looked like.
He had forgotten the exact sound of flesh being torn open. He had forgotten the sudden, absolute finality of violent death that he himself had experienced on the courtyard stones of Trangdar.
The sub-human fought like a cornered beast, taking two deep slashes to his torso before finally being run through by the captain of the guard. The fanatic collapsed, choking on his own blood, still weakly whispering the name Enoch as the light faded from his eyes.
Fenrys grabbed Devin's arm, her grip shockingly strong, pulling him back as the Firebrim guards secured the bloody perimeter.
"Devin," Fenrys snapped quietly, her voice a sharp anchor cutting through his shock. "Look at me."
Devin dragged his amber eyes away from the blood pooling on the stones, looking down at the Mortipian scholar. His heart was hammering violently against his ribs, the latent Cyprian venom in his blood surging in a sudden, instinctive response to the scent of death.
"The peace is over," Fenrys said, her dark eyes completely unyielding, entirely unaffected by the brutality. She was a scholar of the world, and she knew exactly how the world worked. "Enoch isn't just inciting riots. He is weaponizing the despair of your people. If we don't stop him, this blood is going to wash across the entire continent."
Devin took a slow, shuddering breath. The shock receded, instantly replaced by the cold, tactical ice of a king who had survived the grave.
He looked back at the dead sub-human lying in the ash. The man had died believing he was striking a blow for freedom, but he had only succeeded in tightening the noose around the neck of every anomaly in Firebrim.
"We find Enoch," Devin whispered, his voice dark and resolute, the shadows of the Trangdar prince bleeding fully into the eyes of Kross Sapien. "We find him, and we end this before he gets the rest of them slaughtered."