The War Council had been waiting three hours.
General Vaiolder stood at the chamber's window, his seven-foot frame casting a long shadow across the marble floor. At six hundred forty-three years old, he'd served five kings, witnessed three civil wars, and learned that patience in military matters was the difference between victory and annihilation.
But this wasn't military matters anymore. This was politics. And politics made his skin crawl.
"Where is His Majesty?" General Cal'dion mir asked for the fourth time. "We have reports of elvish advances that require immediate strategic decisions. Every minute we delay—"
The doors crashed open.
A maid stumbled through, her uniform disheveled, her face the color of fresh milk. She tried to speak. Failed. Tried again.
"The king," she gasped. "The queen. The bedroom. Blood. So much blood."
Every general in the room went rigid.
"Show us," Vaiolder commanded, already moving. "NOW."
They ran through Velkyn's white marble corridors—six generals abandoning all dignity, sprinting toward the royal quarters like common soldiers responding to ambush. Palace guards joined them, hands on weapon hilts, sensing catastrophe.
The royal bedroom's doors stood open. That alone was wrong—those doors were never left open, never unguarded, never accessible.
General Vaiolder entered first.
The scene branded itself into his memory with the permanence of hot iron on flesh.
King Ashtherion'vaur lay sprawled across the bed, his throat opened from ear to ear, the wound gaping like a second mouth. Blood had soaked into white silk sheets, into the mattress, pooling on the floor in congealing puddles. His eyes stared at the ceiling with the glassy fixedness of death. His hands were frozen mid-reach, clutching at a throat that no longer functioned.
The mythril crown sat on the nightstand, spattered with arterial spray.
And everywhere—deliberate, obvious, impossible to miss—were signs of the queen's involvement. Her jewelry scattered on the floor. Her personal seal dropped beside the bed. A note in her handwriting: For my people. For justice. For all those you murdered.
"She killed him," General Cal'dion mir whispered. "The queen murdered the king."
"And fled," another general added, pointing to the open panel in the wall. The hidden escape tunnel. Every royal bedroom had them, but few people knew their locations. "She knew exactly where to run."
Vaiolder walked to the body slowly, his tactical mind processing details through the shock. The wound was clean. Professional. Single strike. The king had been gagged—cloth still stuffed in his mouth—preventing him from calling for help or using verbal spells. This wasn't crime of passion. This was assassination. Premeditated. Executed with cold precision.
"Search the palace," he ordered. "Find her. Lockdown all gates. Question every servant, every guard, every person who was in the royal wing last night."
But even as he spoke, Vaiolder knew they wouldn't find her. She had hours of head start. Could be anywhere. Could be dead by her own hand rather than face capture. Could be halfway to elvish lines, carrying intelligence that would doom them all.
"Sir," a younger officer said carefully. "There's... another problem."
"What problem could possibly be worse than this?"
"Succession. The king had no heirs. No designated successor. No clear line of authority." The officer's voice dropped. "We have no ruler. In the middle of a war."
The words hung in the air like poison gas.
Within two hours, every noble house in Velkyn had been summoned. Every government official. Every minister and administrator and bureaucrat who held even marginal authority.
The Grand Chamber—normally used for ceremonial occasions—became a pressure cooker of competing ambitions and desperate politics.
"House Vel'thorin has the strongest claim!" Lord Marathos bellowed, his face red. "We're direct descendants of the founding dynasty!"
"Your line was disinherited four hundred years ago!" Lady Kresh'ala shot back. "House Kresh has actual contemporary legitimacy!"
"Neither of you commanded armies during the consolidation wars!" another noble interjected. "Martial lineage should determine—"
The arguments cascaded, overlapping, each speaker convinced their claim was obviously superior. Ancient bloodlines were cited. Forgotten marriages were invoked. Obscure legal precedents were dragged from dusty archives.
Meanwhile, government officials huddled in their own faction, whispering about constitutional procedures and emergency powers. The Finance Minister wanted immediate elections. The Justice Minister demanded a regency council. The Trade Minister was calculating how to profit from the chaos.
General Vaiolder stood against the chamber's back wall, watching the circus with cold disgust. They were debating succession while elvish armies conquered the kingdom kilometer by kilometer. While soldiers died. While the war they'd started consumed everything.
Fools. All of them. Playing politics while the house burned.
"ENOUGH!"
His voice cut through the chaos like an axe through silk. Six hundred forty-three years of command authority condensed into a single word that made even the most arrogant noble fall silent.
Vaiolder walked to the front of the chamber. Slowly. Deliberately. His seven-foot frame making everyone else look small. His scarred face showing none of his thoughts.
"You want to debate lineage?" he said quietly. "Argue about bloodlines and legal precedents while the kingdom falls? Fine. Let me simplify the discussion."
He drew his sword—a massive blade forged from mythril, earned through five centuries of service—and drove it point-first into the marble floor. The sound echoed through the chamber like a gavel strike.
"I am General Vaiolder. Commander of the Central Army. I have served this kingdom for six hundred forty-three years. I have put down three rebellions, won seventeen major campaigns, and bled for Ul'varh'mir more times than any of you can count." His eyes swept the assembly. "And I am taking the throne. Immediately. Effective now."
Shocked silence.
"You... you can't just declare yourself king—" someone started.
"Watch me." Vaiolder's smile was cold and absolutely certain. "The military answers to me. Every general in this room serves under my command. Every soldier, every officer, every garrison from here to the borders—mine." He let that sink in. "So unless you want to fight me for it—and I promise you'll lose—I suggest you accept reality and start addressing me as Your Majesty."
Lord Marathos found his voice. "This is tyranny! Military dictatorship! The nobles will never—"
"The nobles," Vaiolder interrupted, "will accept this or find themselves stripped of titles, lands, and heads. In that order." His hand rested casually on his sword hilt. "I'm not asking for your approval. I'm informing you of fact."
The nobles exchanged glances. Calculating. Weighing options. Realizing with dawning horror that they had no leverage. The army was loyal to Vaiolder. The king was dead. The queen was fled. And this ancient general had just seized absolute power with nothing more than certainty and a sword.
"However," Vaiolder continued, his tone shifting slightly, "I'm not unreasonable. The genocide stops. Immediately. All purge operations cease. We need every soldier focused on the elvish invasion, not hunting civilians."
Relief flickered across several faces.
"But," Vaiolder added, and that single word made the relief evaporate, "we maintain the existing legal framework regarding mana users. No new persecutions, but no protections either. They remain second-class citizens. No voting rights. No property ownership. No positions of authority."
Lady Kresh'ala leaned forward. "That's not enough. They're filth. Corruption. We can't have them in our society at all—"
"You can have them alive as second-class citizens, or you can have civil war while elves conquer the kingdom." Vaiolder's voice went deadly quiet. "Choose."
"The mana users must be removed!" Lord Marathos insisted, standing. "They weaken us! They—"
"SIT. DOWN."
The two words carried enough menace that Marathos sat as if his legs had been cut out from under him.
"I have made my position clear," Vaiolder said. "The genocide ends because we need military focus. But I understand your concerns about mana users. So we compromise. They live, but marginalized. Controlled. Separate." He looked around the chamber. "Anyone who can't accept this is welcome to challenge me. I'll be in the throne room all afternoon. Bring your weapons."
Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. The message was clear: obey or die.
"Good." Vaiolder turned and walked toward the exit. At the doorway, he paused. "Emergency war council in one hour. Every general, every minister, every advisor who wants to keep their position. We discuss elvish containment. Nothing else. Dismissed."
He left them in stunned silence.
Behind him, nobles and officials processed what had just happened. A military coup. Executed in minutes. With nothing more than raw authority and the implicit threat of overwhelming force.
Someone laughed nervously. "Did that just... did we just witness—"
"A new era," Lady Kresh'ala said flatly. "Welcome to martial law."
Four hundred kilometers northeast, in the command tent of the elvish expeditionary force, High Queen Lyse'andra Vel'synthara studied intelligence reports with increasingly furrowed brow.
"This makes no sense," she said finally, looking up at her generals. "Vel'koda'mir is allied with Ul'varh'mir? Against us?"
"Confirmed, Your Majesty. Defense pact. They're mobilizing troops from the southeastern border. Estimated thirty thousand soldiers."
"But Vel'koda'mir is eighty-five percent mana-capable," another general said, confusion evident. "Their entire culture is built around mana warfare. Their military doctrine, their social structure, their identity—all centered on mana manipulation." He gestured at the map helplessly. "Why would they ally with a kingdom that's exterminating mana users?"
Lyse'andra stood and paced, her mind working through possibilities. "Either their leadership is insane, or we're missing critical information. Vel'koda'mir's military council isn't stupid. They wouldn't ally with genocidal maniacs unless—"
She stopped. Turned to face her intelligence officer.
"What do we know about Ul'varh'mir's king? His actual strategic goals?"
"He claimed ideological motivation. Chakra supremacy. Mana users as corruption—"
"But what did he gain?" Lyse'andra pressed. "Politically. Economically. Strategically."
The intelligence officer consulted his notes. "Unity among nobility. Consolidated authority. Eliminated internal opposition. Created external enemy to justify—" He stopped. Understanding dawned. "It was never about mana users at all. It was about power."
"Exactly. And if that's true, then what does Vel'koda'mir gain from this alliance?" She looked at her generals. "What if the genocide was negotiated? What if Ashtherion'vaur promised Vel'koda'mir something valuable enough to overlook the persecution of their own people?"
"Territory," General Kal'tharos said slowly. "Access to Ul'varh'mir's dungeon network. Rare metal deposits. The Mizox'tra forests—"
"Or," Lyse'andra interrupted, "what if Vel'koda'mir isn't actually supporting the genocide at all? What if they're positioning troops to intervene once Ashtherion'vaur falls? To 'rescue' surviving mana users and gain client states from the chaos?"
The tent went silent as everyone processed the implications.
"That's... horrifyingly brilliant," someone whispered. "Let the genocide weaken Ul'varh'mir, then swoop in as saviors. Gain territory, population, and moral authority in one move."
"It's speculation," another general cautioned. "We have no evidence—"
"Then get evidence," Lyse'andra commanded. "I want intelligence on Vel'koda'mir's actual objectives. Their troop movements. Their communications with Ul'varh'mir's command. Because if they're playing a deeper game, we need to understand it before we accidentally start a three-way war."
As her officers scrambled to gather intelligence, Lyse'andra stared at the map showing Vel'koda'mir's forces advancing toward the conflict zone.
Something was very wrong. Pieces didn't fit. And in her eight hundred years of political experience, she'd learned that when simple explanations didn't work, the truth was usually far more complicated—and far more dangerous—than anyone anticipated.