Resistance did not arrive with banners.
It came quietly, wrapped in courtesy and ink.
Kael discovered it three days after Virell's surrender, in the form of a ledger.
Seris placed it on the council table without comment. The room was filled with familiar faces now—merchants, magistrates, guildmasters—men and women who had survived three regimes by learning when to bend. The ledger lay unopened between them, heavy with implication.
"What am I looking at?" Kael asked.
"A deficit," Seris replied. "One that shouldn't exist."
She opened the book and turned it toward him. Grain tallies that didn't match. Harbor fees collected twice, then recorded once. Wages paid to soldiers who had never existed.
"Your predecessor was bleeding the city," Kael said.
"Yes," Seris agreed. "But he did it clumsily. This is different."
Kael scanned the names. He felt it then—a faint tightening in his chest, not the warmth of power, but its warning. The gift responded not just to ambition, but to threat.
"This was done after the surrender," he said.
A murmur rippled through the council.
Seris nodded. "A faction within the merchant guild. They believe you are temporary."
"Everyone does," Kael said calmly. "At first."
That evening, Kael walked again—this time not through markets, but through the warehouse district by the river. Crates were stacked high, tarred against rain, marked with sigils of trade houses older than Virell's walls.
He felt eyes on him long before he saw their owners.
"You walk boldly for a conqueror," a voice called out.
Three figures stepped from the shadows. Well dressed. Well armed. Not soldiers—professionals. The kind hired to make problems disappear quietly.
"I prefer honestly," Kael said. "It saves time."
The tallest of them smiled. "Then let's be honest. You've disrupted established interests."
"By stopping theft?"
"By changing expectations," the man replied. "Cities run on momentum. You intend to redirect it."
Kael tilted his head. "You're here to warn me?"
The man shrugged. "To measure you."
Steel flashed.
Kael moved before thought. Not faster—truer. He felt the power align his body, sharpen his intent. The first attacker went down with a breath knocked from his lungs. The second hesitated, just long enough.
The third never drew his blade.
"Enough," she said.
She stepped forward, hood falling back to reveal a woman with steel-gray eyes and scars earned, not decorative. She assessed Kael with the same intensity he felt from the power within him.
"This wasn't supposed to be a fight," she said. "You weren't supposed to be real."
Kael lowered his stance. "And now?"
She exhaled. "Now I have to report that you are."
They withdrew—not routed, not defeated, but changed. Kael let them go.
The warmth stirred again—not triumphantly, but thoughtfully. Conflict resolved without domination. Another rule, learned.
Back at the spire, Aurelian waited.
"You were tested," she said without preamble.
"I passed?" Kael asked.
She smiled faintly. "You survived. That's different."
Seris joined them, arms crossed. "The merchant guild will back down. For now."
"For now," Kael echoed.
That night, Kael dreamed—not of conquest, but of a vast wheel turning. At its center, a throne. Empty.
He woke before dawn, heart steady.
Resistance would come again. In sharper forms. In subtler ones.
But for the first time, Kael understood something vital:
Power did not demand that he crush every challenge.
Only that he choose which ones were worth becoming stronger for.