The diplomatic carriage of Cypris was a masterpiece of mechanical stealth. Designed by Queen Rebecca's top engineers, the heavy cabin was suspended on magnetic runic dampeners, completely absorbing the violent kinetic shock of the mechanical horses galloping across the rugged western trade routes. Inside, the ride was terrifyingly smooth, silent, and cloaked in shadows.
Devin sat on the plush, velvet-lined bench, his elbows resting on his knees, staring blankly at the floor. The ambient blue light of the carriage's internal heating coils cast long, sharp shadows across his face. He was twenty-two cycles old now, the nineteen-cycle-old King Kross having hardened into a seasoned monarch, but the crushing weight of the continental board still pressed heavily against his skull.
Sitting exactly opposite him, blending flawlessly into the darkness of the cabin, was Lieutenant Reze.
To the rest of the vanguard, Subject 04 was a ghost—a nineteen-cycle-old weapon of pale skin, cropped white hair, and ice-blue eyes, engineered by Count Sapien for absolute, remorseless stealth. She was supposed to be a machine, much like Dawson, devoid of all human emotion.
Count Sapien, however, had made a critical miscalculation in her specific biology. He had wired her nervous system to experience a dopamine surge upon successful adherence to the King's authority.
When the Kross Selective—the underground cult worshipping Devin as a living God—had infiltrated the mechanical bays and upper rings of Cypris, Reze had not just listened to their sermons. She had entirely, fiercely consumed them.
Reze sat perfectly still, her hands resting on the hilts of her heavy, curved hook-blades, but her ice-blue eyes were completely fixated on Devin. She did not blink. She watched the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. She breathed in the faint scent of ozone and parchment that clung to his mantle, treating the very air he exhaled as a divine sacrament.
To Reze, this carriage ride was not a tactical deployment. It was an ascension.
Her God had left his Queen behind. He had left his Commander behind. Out of the thousands of lethal instruments in the Cypris vanguard, the living deity had looked down from his throne and explicitly chosen her to accompany him into the dark.
A heavy, intoxicating flush of heat spread across Reze's pale neck, a physical manifestation of her fanaticism. Her heart hammered against her ribs in a frantic, irregular rhythm that had absolutely nothing to do with combat adrenaline. She was completely, utterly consumed by a deeply inappropriate, obsessive reverence. Every time Devin shifted his weight, her pupils dilated. If he ordered her to carve out her own heart and hand it to him, she would do it with a smile of absolute ecstasy.
"The atmospheric pressure is stabilizing," Reze whispered, her voice a soft, breathy hiss that she fought to keep clinically detached. "We are approaching the Sulin border, My King. Your presence honors the earth beneath these treads."
Devin looked up, blinking away his tactical calculations. He caught the strange, heavy intensity in her ice-blue eyes, the excessive, borderline worshipful phrasing. He knew the Kross Selective was spreading through his capital, but he hadn't fully realized it had infected his elite vanguard.
"Just keep your blades sharp, Reze," Devin replied smoothly, dismissing the fanaticism. He couldn't afford to unpack his bodyguard's religious lust when they were heading into a warzone. "Emperor 8 is not a child you can underestimate. If his court is bleeding, the Federation is already unstable."
"My blades belong to you, Holy One. They will reap whoever you deem unworthy of breath," Reze promised, her knuckles turning white as she gripped her weapons, leaning forward just a fraction of an inch to be closer to him.
Before Devin could correct her title, the heavy bronze communication console mounted on the carriage wall suddenly hissed.
A pneumatic tube, connected to the subterranean relay network running along the western borders, fired a small, encrypted brass cylinder into the receiving tray with a loud clack.
Reze instantly moved, her reflexes terrifyingly fast. She snatched the cylinder from the tray, inspecting it for alchemical triggers before dropping to one knee and presenting it to Devin with bowed head.
"A high-priority transmission from the Sulin border outposts, My King. Relayed directly from Emperor 8."
Devin took the cylinder, his fingers brushing against Reze's pale skin. She shivered visibly, letting out a soft, shuddering exhale before retreating back to her seat, her eyes wide and completely star-struck.
Devin cracked the runic seal on the cylinder and pulled out the rolled parchment. The handwriting was the same archaic, rigid script the eleven-cycle-old Emperor had used in his previous summons.
Devin read the short, cryptic message.
King Kross. My seers have captured a whisper from the dying breath of my fourth minister. The phantom leaving corpses in my halls is not nameless. He calls himself Lotjed. I expect you to know what this means upon your arrival. - 8.
The parchment slipped from Devin's fingers, fluttering onto the floor of the carriage.
The air in the cabin suddenly felt completely devoid of oxygen. The latent Holy Gene in Devin's blood spiked with a violent, electrifying shock.
Lotjed.
"My King?" Reze asked, instantly sensing the massive spike in his heart rate. She leaned forward, her hook-blades halfway drawn. "Are we under attack? Give me a target."
"No," Devin breathed, his amber eyes wide, staring at the empty space in front of him. "No, it's not possible."
Lotjed. It was a name entirely erased from the history books of the Northern Kingdoms. It was a name that did not belong to the modern era, and it certainly did not belong in the sterile, hyper-rigid halls of the Sulin Federation.
Fourteen cycles ago, before the fall of Trangdar, King Arthur had ruled the anomaly kingdom with a fair, just hand. But every kingdom had a shadow, and Trangdar's shadow had belonged to Devin's grandfather.
He had commanded a single, terrifying operative. A pure sub-human whose mastery of mechanical leverage and joint-locking combat was so absolute, so flawlessly lethal, that he didn't even carry a weapon. His name was Lotjed. In the old court, he was simply known as the 'Royal Cleaner'.
When a political rival threatened the Trangdar throne, they didn't die in a duel. They simply vanished in the night, or were found in their locked chambers with their necks snapped and their joints shattered, leaving absolutely no trace of a struggle. Lotjed was the monster that kept the Trangdar royal family safe in the dark.
But Devin knew the timeline. Lotjed had been an old man even when Devin was a child. When Count Sapien unleashed the Cyprian beasts and slaughtered the Trangdar bloodline on the courtyard stones, Lotjed should have died with them. Even if he had somehow survived the massacre, the sheer biology of human aging dictated that he would be dead by now.
It couldn't be him.
Unknown to Devin, the ghost haunting Sulin was not the old man himself, but an apprentice. A prodigy who had survived the slaughter, inherited the master's brutal techniques, and taken the name of Lotjed to keep the terrifying myth of the Royal Cleaner alive.
"Who is Lotjed, My King?" Reze asked, her voice dropping into a reverent whisper, eager to be let into the divine secrets of her God.
Devin slowly picked up the parchment, crushing it in his fist.
"He is a ghost, Reze," Devin said, the raspy, dangerous edge of Prince Trangdar bleeding into his voice. "He was the executioner of my old... of the old regime. A man who kills with his bare hands. If he is alive, and he is operating in Sulin, he isn't just assassinating ministers at random. He is sending a message."
"If he is a ghost, I will cut him until he bleeds like a mortal," Reze vowed fiercely, her pale eyes flashing with absolute devotion.
Devin didn't answer. He turned his gaze toward the viewport, staring out into the rushing darkness. The mystery of the Royal Cleaner was waiting for him. Someone who knew the deepest, darkest secrets of the Trangdar royal family was systematically dismantling the Sulin court, and Devin was marching straight into the center of the trap.
The carriage slowed, the rhythmic gallop of the mechanical horses shifting into a heavy, measured trot.
"We have crossed the border," Reze announced, smoothly rising to her feet and adjusting her silver armor, her fanaticism instantly suppressed beneath a flawless veneer of lethal professionalism.
Devin looked out the reinforced glass.
The Sulin Federation was a geopolitical anomaly. It was a kingdom that entirely rejected the chaos of nature. There were no winding cobblestone streets like in Cypris, no volcanic ash like Firebrim, and no sprawling slums.
The capital city of Sulin was built with terrifying, absolute symmetry. Massive monoliths of pure white marble pierced the night sky, arranged in flawless geometric grids. Every street was perfectly straight, intersecting at exact ninety-degree angles. The alchemical streetlamps did not flicker; they burned with a stark, blinding white light that cast no shadows.
It was a sterile, hyper-ordered environment designed to reflect the mind of its eleven-cycle-old ruler.
The carriage rolled down the central avenue, passing columns of Sulin guards who stood at perfect attention, their uniforms completely immaculate, their faces hidden behind polished silver masks. They did not speak. They did not move as the Cyprian transport passed.
At the end of the avenue sat the Sulin Royal Palace—a sprawling, block-like structure of white marble that looked more like a giant, impenetrable vault than a castle.
The carriage hissed to a halt at the base of the massive, perfectly smooth steps.
Reze threw the iron latch and stepped out first, her hook-blades resting securely on her hips, her ice-blue eyes scanning the blindingly lit courtyard for any microscopic deviation in the symmetry.
Devin stepped out after her, the heavy charcoal fabric of his mantle breaking the sterile white aesthetic of the courtyard.
Waiting for them at the top of the stairs, standing in absolute, eerie silence, was Usul. The tall, gaunt servant of Emperor 8 wore robes of stark white. The thick, silver threads permanently binding his mouth shut glinted in the alchemical light.
Usul did not bow. He simply turned, gesturing with a long, skeletal hand for the King of Cypris to follow him into the flawless, terrifying vault of the Sulin Federation.
Devin adjusted his mantle, the phantom ache of the Trangdar prince flaring violently in his chest. The Royal Cleaner was inside. And the past was finally ready to collect its dues.
"Stay close, Reze," Devin ordered quietly.
"Always, My King," Reze whispered back, her voice trembling with a barely contained, ecstatic thrill.
Together, the false God and his zealot assassin ascended the white marble steps, stepping into the sterile domain of the child emperor to hunt a ghost.