Couple of weeks back, when Nyx, Briar and Lyra was escaping through the Sewers,
The alarms in the Obsidian Palace did not scream. That would be too vulgar for the seat of the Human Empire. Instead, the alarms sang.
A low, resonant hum vibrated through the black stone walls, a frequency designed to wake the dead and alert the Solar Realm rulers that the unthinkable had happened.
A breach.
Empress Seraphina Everglow stood in the center of the Forbidden Armory. Her crimson robes trailed over the dust and rubble that littered the floor. Her face was a mask of imperious calm, perfectly sculpted porcelain that betrayed nothing.
But inside, her heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
She looked at the hole in the wall.
It wasn't a picked lock. It wasn't a melted hinge. It was a jagged, violent tear in the reality of the palace's defenses. The suppression runes, carved by the greatest mages of the last century, had been eaten. There was no other word for it. The stone around the edges of the breach wasn't broken; it was erased.
"Impressive," a voice grunted from behind her.
Emperor Thorn walked in. The red-bearded warlord kicked a piece of masonry aside with his heavy boot. He wasn't wearing his ceremonial robes, he was in his training gear, his massive muscles gleaming with sweat. He looked at the destruction not with anger, but with the appreciation of a man who respected brute force.
"He smashed through a load-bearing wall reinforced with Tier-5 geometric wards," Thorn chuckled darkly. "With a sword he found in the trash heap. The boy has teeth."
"He stole the Star-Slayer," Emperor Kael's voice was icy.
The Scholar Emperor floated into the room, his feet inches above the dust. His blue eyes were scanning the magical residue in the air, his mind already calculating the variables. He looked less amused than Thorn. He looked violated.
"That weapon is a Rank-S cursed artifact," Kael muttered, adjusting his glasses. "It drives its wielder insane within minutes. And yet... the containment chains are shattered. He didn't just take it. He bonded with it."
Kael turned to look at the hole, his expression darkening.
"And he didn't leave alone. The mana signatures... Briar and Lyra are with him."
Seraphina kept her back to them. She stared into the dark abyss of the tunnel that led to the sewers.
She knew. She had felt it the moment the bond snapped, the moment Briar's fiery presence and Lyra's cool intellect vanished from the sensory grid of the palace.
"They have been kidnapped," Kael stated, his voice devoid of emotion. "The Void Vessel has taken two Imperial Princesses hostage to ensure his escape. We must deploy the Sun-Legion immediately. If we intercept them at the river-"
"No," Seraphina said.
Her voice was soft, but it cut through the room like a razor.
She turned around. Her brown eyes were cold, hard, and terrifyingly empty. She looked at Kael, then at Thorn.
"They were not kidnapped, Kael," Seraphina said. "Look at the footprints."
She pointed to the dust.
"There are no drag marks. There are no signs of struggle. Briar walked into that hole with her weapon drawn, facing outward. Covering his back. And Lyra..."
Seraphina pointed to a small, discarded scrap of parchment near the entrance, a calculation of structural integrity.
"Lyra did the math to ensure the ceiling wouldn't collapse on them. They didn't flee in panic. They left with a plan."
The silence in the Armory was heavy.
"Traitors," Thorn spat, his hand tightening into a fist. "My own daughter. Running off with a monster because he has a pretty face."
"They are confused," Kael corrected, his tone clinical. "The Void Vessel... his pheromonal influence must be stronger than we anticipated. He has compromised their judgment."
"Or maybe," Seraphina said, walking past them toward the door, "they just hate this place."
She stopped in the doorway, the crimson silk of her dress swirling around her ankles like blood in water.
"Do not send the Legion," Seraphina commanded. "If you send an army into the sewers, you will corner them. Briar will fight to the death. Lyra will burn out her mind trying to save them. And Nyx..."
Seraphina's eyes flashed.
"Nyx will eat your soldiers alive. Do you want to lose a battalion today, gentlemen?"
"Then what do you suggest, Empress?" Thorn growled. "We let them walk?"
"We let them run," Seraphina said. "They are heading for the border. Let them go. The world outside is cruel. When they realize that a rogue god cannot feed them or clothe them... they will come back."
She lied. She lied as easily as she breathed.
She knew they wouldn't come back. She knew Briar's stubbornness. She knew Lyra's resilience. They were gone.
"Secure the perimeter," Seraphina ordered the trembling guards waiting in the hall. "Seal this breach. And get out of my sight."
She swept down the hallway, leaving the two Emperors in the dust of their own failure.
Seraphina didn't go to the Throne Room. She didn't go to the War Room.
She went to her private chambers in the highest spire of the Everglow Palace.
She locked the door. She activated the privacy wards, layers of soundproofing and anti-scrying magic that she had woven herself over decades.
Only then did she let the mask fall.
Her legs gave out. She slumped against the heavy oak door, sliding down until she hit the cold marble floor.
She let out a breath that shuddered through her entire body.
"They made it," she whispered to the empty room.
Relief washed over her, so potent it made her dizzy. Briar was safe. Lyra was safe. They were out of the snake pit. They were away from Thorn's brutal "lessons" and Kael's cold "optimizations."
She closed her eyes, imagining them running under the stars. She imagined Briar laughing freely, without looking over her shoulder for an assassin. She imagined Lyra reading a book without worrying if it was 'efficient' enough for her father.
"Run," Seraphina murmured, a sad smile touching her lips. "Run far, little fires. Don't look back."
She stood up slowly, walking over to the massive mirror that dominated one wall. She looked at herself.
She saw a woman of breathtaking beauty. Raven hair, flawless skin, eyes that could command armies. She was the Empress. The third pillar of humanity. The woman who had clawed her way up from a minor noble house to sit beside monsters.
She touched her reflection.
"You are alone now," she told the woman in the glass.
For years, Briar and Lyra had been her purpose. She had played the game of thrones, poisoned rivals, and signed death warrants, all to build a wall of power around those two girls. She had been their shield.
Now, the shield was protecting an empty room.
She walked over to her balcony. The wind whipped at her hair. She looked out over the sprawling capital city, with its millions of lights.
It felt like a graveyard.
Her gaze drifted to the West, toward the river. Toward him.
Nyx.
The man who fell from the sky.
She remembered the moment she saw him in the crater. The way the air around him seemed to vibrate. The way her heart had slammed against her ribs, not out of fear, but out of a hunger she hadn't known she possessed.
The "Charm."
Kael called it a defense mechanism. Thorn called it a trick.
Seraphina closed her eyes, remembering the feeling.
It had been intoxicating. For the first time in two hundred years, she hadn't felt cold. She hadn't felt calculating. She had felt... desperate. Irrational. Alive.
She remembered sitting by his bed while he slept. She remembered the heat radiating from his skin. She remembered the terrifying, possessive thought that had looped in her mind, Mine. He's Mine.
Now, the magical compulsion was gone. The fog had lifted from her mind the moment he broke the First Shackle.
She should be angry. She should be furious that a stranger had manipulated her emotions, made her act like a love-struck fool in front of the Ancestors of Myriad.
But she wasn't angry.
She pressed her hand to her chest, feeling the slow, steady beat of her heart.
"I miss it," she whispered.
She missed the intensity. She missed the feeling of wanting something so badly that the rest of the world faded away. In a life defined by gray politics and cold alliances, Nyx had been a flash of blinding color.
"You took them from me," Seraphina said to the wind. "You took my peace."
She gripped the stone railing until the rock cracked under her fingers.
"And you left me here."
A tear slipped down her cheek. It was hot and angry.
She wasn't sad that he was gone because he was a weapon. She wasn't sad because he was a "resource."
She was sad because, for a brief moment, she had looked at him and thought, Finally. Someone strong enough to break this cage.
But he hadn't broken her cage. He had broken out of his own and taken the only two people she loved with him.
"Selfish," she hissed. "You selfish, beautiful monster."
She wiped the tear away angrily. The moment of weakness was over.
She turned back to her room. She walked to her desk, where a stack of reports waited. Troop movements. Supply lines. The preparations for the Tournament at the Sacred Grounds.
She picked up a quill. Her hand was steady again. The mask was back in place.
"Go," Seraphina thought, sending the thought out into the night like a prayer. "Go to the Elves. Go to the Dragons. Get strong, Nyx."
She dipped the quill in ink.
"Because if Kael and Thorn find you first, they will destroy you."
She signed a document authorizing the deployment of the Sun-Legion, but she changed the patrol route. A small, bureaucratic error. A shift of ten miles to the South. Just enough to leave a gap in the northern perimeter. Just enough to give three fugitives a chance to slip through.
It was treason. It was love.
"I will hold the door," Seraphina whispered. "But you better come back."
She looked at the empty spot in the room where Briar and Lyra used to sit during their secret tea times.
"Come back," she murmured, her eyes dark with a promise of violence and longing. "And when you do... bring an army. Because I am tired of this cage, how many more are suffering like me in this cage?"
Seraphina Everglow, the Ice Empress, the Ruler of the West, sat alone in her tower.
She was just a normal woman here and she didn't pray for the prosperity of the Empire.
She prayed for its ruin.
And she prayed for the man she thinks who would bring it.