The interior of the Sulin Royal Palace was an exercise in terrifying, absolute sensory deprivation.
There were no tapestries. There were no grand, gilded chandeliers, nor were there the heavy, comforting smells of engine grease or roasting meats that defined Cypris and Firebrim. Every corridor was constructed from seamless, polished white marble, illuminated by a harsh, shadowless alchemical light that made Devin's eyes ache.
Usul glided ahead of them, his pristine white robes rustling faintly. The mute servant did not look back, his silver-sewn lips gleaming as he led the King of Cypris and his zealous shadow deep into the heart of the Federation.
Reze walked exactly two paces behind Devin, her ice-blue eyes darting across the blank walls. She moved with absolute, terrifying silence. Beneath the lethal professionalism of a super-human operative, Devin could feel the heavy, intoxicating heat of her fanaticism radiating against his back. She was entirely too close, her breathing slightly elevated, drinking in the proximity to her living God.
Usul stopped before a set of massive, perfectly square marble doors. He pressed a skeletal hand against the stone, and the doors silently recessed into the walls.
The Sulin throne room was not an amphitheater of intimidation; it was a geometric void. In the center of the vast, empty white room sat a simple, unadorned throne carved from a single block of pale quartz.
Sitting on the throne was Emperor 8.
The ruler of the Sulin Federation was now eleven cycles old. He wore stark white robes that swallowed his small frame, but his posture was that of an ancient, weary warlord. His eyes were entirely black, devoid of the innocence of youth, harboring a cold, calculating intellect that made the latent Cyprian venom in Devin's blood hum with instinctual caution.
"King Kross," Emperor 8 said. His voice had not deepened with age; it was still a high, child-like tenor, but the cadence was chillingly flat and authoritative. "You traveled quickly. The variables on the eastern board must be straining your logistics."
"When an ally bleeds, Cypris answers," Devin replied smoothly, stepping into the center of the room. He kept his mantle wrapped tightly around him, projecting the flawless aura of a monarch. "Your missive spoke of three dead ministers and a ghost. Explain the board, Emperor."
8 did not move. He simply stared at Devin for a long, heavy moment.
"The Sulin Federation is built on absolute order," 8 began, his small hands resting calmly on the arms of the quartz throne. "Anomalies are chaotic. Therefore, we do not permit the Holy Gene within our borders. We did not participate in the Trangdar subjugation fourteen cycles ago because we believed our walls were already clean."
The child emperor leaned forward, the harsh light catching the dark void of his eyes.
"We were wrong," 8 stated. "Long before the fall of Trangdar, a shadow faction infiltrated my capital. They did not use swords or runic explosives. They used silence, and they used barehanded mechanical leverage. Ten cycles ago, before I took this throne, that faction assassinated my parents."
Devin's breath hitched imperceptibly.
"My royal guards found nothing," 8 continued, his voice devoid of any grief. "Just two corpses with snapped necks and shattered joints behind a locked door. But I am not my parents. I do not believe in ghosts. I tracked the microscopic deviations in my city's symmetry. I found the faction hiding in the lower aqueducts."
"And you subjugated them," Devin deduced, the puzzle pieces rapidly locking into place.
"I eradicated them," 8 corrected coldly. "I collapsed the aqueducts and drowned them in boiling lye. But order is rarely perfect on the first attempt. One survived. A young apprentice. I believed he had fled the continent. But now, three of my ministers have been butchered using the exact same Trangdar joint-lock techniques, and the killer left a bloody cipher carved into my minister's desk. The cipher translated to a single name: Lotjed."
Devin kept his face perfectly, rigidly blank, but inside, his tactical mind was reeling from the sheer, staggering shock of the revelation.
Lotjed.
The name wasn't just a myth. It was his blood. Grandfather Lotjed.
Fourteen cycles ago, when Devin had been violently ripped from the afterlife and shoved into the body of Zain Ricky, he had been a terrified teenager trying to survive in the freezing slums of Mortipia. He had made a lethal mistake. A girl named Emerald had gotten tangled up in his chaotic rebirth, resulting in a bloody, catastrophic complication that should have exposed Zain to the Mortipian guards.
But the Mortipian guards never found the body.
An old man had stepped out of the shadows of the slum. He hadn't asked questions. He had simply cleaned up the blood, disposed of Emerald's corpse with terrifying, surgical efficiency, and vanished back into the dark. Zain had never known the man's identity, but Devin Trangdar knew. It had been his grandfather, watching over the last surviving ember of his bloodline.
But why had King Arthur—Devin's father—deployed his own father, Lotjed, to the Sulin Federation years before the fall of Trangdar? Had King Arthur known Count Sapien was planning a coup? Had he sent Grandfather Lotjed to Sulin to establish a sleeper faction, a contingency plan that had ultimately failed when the child Emperor 8 drowned them all?
And now, the lone survivor of that drowned faction—an apprentice who had taken Grandfather Lotjed's name to keep the terrifying legacy alive—was systematically murdering the Sulin court in revenge.
"You possess the super-human vanguard, King Kross," Emperor 8 said, pulling Devin back to the stark white room. "You understand how to hunt anomalies better than any ruler on this continent. Find this apprentice. Execute him. If you fail, I will assume Cypris is sympathetic to Enoch's revolution, and our alliance will burn."
"Cypris does not harbor ghosts," Devin lied with flawless, diplomatic conviction. "I will find the apprentice, Emperor. The debt will be settled."
"See that it is," 8 dismissed him, waving a small hand. "Usul has prepared your quarters. You have three pars before I expect a tactical update."
Usul materialized from the shadows, gesturing toward a side corridor. Devin turned on his heel, his mind churning violently as he followed the mute servant, Reze shadowing him with terrifying precision.
The guest quarters were as aggressively sterile as the rest of the palace. The room was a massive square of white marble, containing a simple, low bed, a washbasin, and a single, perfectly centered window overlooking the blindingly lit courtyard.
Usul bowed and left, the heavy marble door sliding shut behind him with a soft click.
The moment the latch secured, the atmosphere in the room violently shifted.
Devin walked over to the washbasin, splashing cold water onto his face. He was exhausted. He had a wife and a three-cycle-old son back in Cypris, Enoch was marching a holy army across the continent, and now he had to hunt down a zealot who fought with his own grandfather's techniques.
He reached for a white towel, but a pale hand beat him to it.
Reze stood directly beside him. She didn't hand him the towel; she gently pressed it against his cheek, dabbing the water away with a slow, agonizingly intimate reverence.
Devin froze. "Reze. I can dry my own face."
"You carry the weight of the continent, Holy One," Reze whispered, her voice a breathy, intoxicating hiss. Her ice-blue eyes were blown wide, completely dark with a heavy, obsessive lust. "You should not have to bear the burden of mundane tasks. Let me serve you."
Before Devin could step back, Reze reached up and unclasped the heavy silver pauldron on her left shoulder. The armor clattered loudly onto the white marble floor. She unhooked the leather straps of her breastplate, letting the silver steel fall away, leaving her in a thin, form-fitting black undershirt that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.
She stepped completely into his personal space, the heat radiating from her skin entirely contradicting her ghostly appearance. She looked up at him, her chest heaving, completely intoxicated by the fact that they were alone behind locked doors.
"The Kross Selective knows the truth," Reze breathed, her hands resting boldly on Devin's chest, her fingers curling into the fabric of his mantle. "We know the Creator abandoned us. We know you are the true light. You chose me from the vanguard, My God. You brought me into the dark with you. I am your blade, but I can be whatever else you require to ease the burdens of your throne. Let me worship you properly."
She leaned up, her pale lips parting, closing the distance toward his mouth.
Devin caught her wrists. His grip was entirely gentle, but it possessed the immovable, terrifying leverage of a Trangdar royal. He stopped her dead in her tracks.
He didn't feel lust. He felt a profound, exhausted irritation. He loved Rebecca. He loved Arthur. And the last thing he needed while trying to unravel a geopolitical assassination plot was his lethal bodyguard trying to turn a diplomatic mission into a religious concubine arrangement.
"Lieutenant Reze," Devin said. He didn't shout. He didn't use the King's Command. He simply used the cold, absolute authority of a Commander speaking to a subordinate.
Reze let out a soft, shuddering gasp at the tone, her pale cheeks flushing a deep crimson. She was completely, hopelessly down bad, reacting to his dominant authority with a visible thrill.
"Your devotion to the crown is noted," Devin said, his voice entirely flat, completely rejecting her advances without breaking her conditioning. "But the only service I require from my blade is security. Put your armor back on."
Reze's breath hitched. A flash of profound disappointment crossed her face, instantly replaced by the desperate need to obey her God.
"Yes, Holy One," she whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
"And Reze," Devin added, dropping his hands from her wrists and turning his back on her. "You are my vanguard. Your place is on the perimeter. Take your weapons and stand guard outside that door. Nobody enters. Not Usul, not the Emperor. Understand?"
Reze practically vibrated with the thrill of the direct, commanding order. To be cast out of the room was a rejection, but to be explicitly trusted as his sole line of defense was an absolute honor.
"I will slaughter anyone who casts a shadow on your door, My King," Reze vowed fiercely.
She scrambled to retrieve her heavy silver armor, hastily buckling it back into place. She drew her curved hook-blades, the steel hissing in the quiet room, and backed out of the marble doors, securing the latch from the outside.
Devin was finally alone.
He let out a long, heavy sigh, rubbing his temples. The Kross Selective was going to be a massive internal problem when he returned to Cypris, but for now, the door was secured.
He walked over to the single, perfectly centered window. He unlatched the glass, pushing it open to let in the sterile, scentless air of the Sulin night. He stared down at the blindingly lit courtyard, trying to calculate how to hunt a man who fought exactly like him.
"You project the authority of a sovereign flawlessly, King Kross," a voice whispered from the shadows above. "But your stance... your stance belongs to the ash of the old world."
Devin didn't flinch. He didn't draw a weapon. The Holy Gene in his blood had already sensed the presence hiding on the sheer marble wall directly above his window.
A shadow detached itself from the blinding white architecture, dropping silently onto the window ledge.
He was young—perhaps nineteen cycles old. He wore tight, unadorned black clothing designed for absolute mobility, completely devoid of any armor that might make a sound. He didn't carry a broadsword or a dagger. His hands, wrapped in heavy, dark linen, were his only weapons.
The young man crouched on the ledge, his dark eyes locking onto Devin. There was no hostility in his gaze, only a deep, profound curiosity mixed with an ancient reverence.
"You killed Emperor 8's ministers," Devin said quietly, keeping his voice low so Reze wouldn't hear through the heavy door.
"I am merely balancing the ledger for the blood the child spilled in the aqueducts," the young man replied, his voice a smooth, calm tenor. He tilted his head, studying Devin's face. "The master told me many things before the lye took him. He told me about the fall of the kingdom. He told me about the boy named Zain who lived in the Mortipian slums. But he never told me Zain Ricky would wear the crown of the enemy."
Devin's amber eyes narrowed.
"You took his name," Devin stated.
The young man offered a slow, respectful bow, remaining perfectly balanced on the narrow marble ledge.
"I am the last student of the shadows," the apprentice murmured. "I am Lotjed. And I have come a very long way to finally speak with the Blessed Prince of Trangdar."