The palace didn't just tremble when Castel entered the hall. It flinched.
It wasn't the sound of his boots that did it, but the thing that moved with him a heavy, invisible pressure that flattened the air and made the lungs of every guard ache. Cion stumbled half a step behind him, looking like a man who had already seen his own ghost. Rell, Aideon, and Krince were waiting at the corridor's end. They were too still, too silent. They had felt the King's shift. They knew the storm had arrived.
"Open the portal," Castel commanded. No greeting. No explanation. Just the raw weight of his will.
Rell raised his hands, his voice tight with the effort of holding back the King's power. "Where light and darkness meet open and bring forth my will!"
The air didn't part gently. It ripped.
Darkness spilled out like ink dropped into a basin of water thick, alive, and hungry. It twisted into a ring of violent black fire. Beyond the threshold lay the forest of the Void's edge. Moonlit. Drowned in fog. Waiting.
Castel stepped through without a heartbeat of hesitation. Aideon followed, and Krince caught Cion's arm, jerking him forward. "What the fuck did you do in that room, Cion?" Krince hissed.
Cion's throat worked, but no sound came out. He didn't get the chance to answer before the air around them spiked with Castel's lingering rage. Krince shoved him through the portal, and Rell entered last, the black ring snapping shut behind them.
From behind a marble pillar, Astelion bolted. Her heart was a drum in her ears. She dove through the closing rip in reality just as the portal sealed, her body tumbling onto the damp, cold earth of the forest.
The Void wasn't silent. It growled a low, endless vibration that suggested the world itself was alive and starving. A jagged crack had split across the barrier's surface, as if something vast had tried to claw its way out from the inside.
Castel walked straight to the crack. His left eye ignited with a golden brilliance; his right burned a cold, abyssal blue. He turned to the men who served him.
"All of you..." He paused, his gaze raking over them with absolute disdain. "...are fucking useless."
The words didn't echo they hit like physical blows. The Council dropped instantly, their knees slamming into the dirt so hard the earth burst around them.
"We are useless! Forgive us, Sire!"
The Void rumbled in response. Then, a voice tore from the darkness older, deeper, and filled with the resonance of a dying sun. Krismont.
Castel smiled. It was a wild, sharp expression that looked entirely wrong on a human face. "Well... hello, dear father-in-law."
"You took my child, abomination!" the Dragon King roared from behind the veil.
"I did," Castel replied, his smile widening. "And I married her."
A massive tail slammed into the barrier from the other side. The forest shook with the impact, trees snapping like toothpicks, but the barrier held. Krismont staggered on the other side, his scales shimmering with a furious heat.
"You're getting old, Krismont," Castel said lightly.
"Where is she!"
Something in Castel's expression shifted. The amusement vanished, replaced by a lethal, quiet gravity. "You slaughtered my parents," he said. He didn't raise his voice, but the wind stopped blowing. "But here I am showing you mercy by marring your daughter."
A shadow stepped forward from behind the Dragon King, peeling out of the darkness and taking human form. Tas. Astelion, hidden in the brush, felt her breath catch in her throat. "Father..." she whispered, the word a ghost on her lips.
Tas's eyes didn't soften. They were as cold as the Void itself. "You do not love her, Castel," Tas said. "This is not love. It is obsession."
Castel laughed. It was a dead, hollow sound. "You must be the bitter ex she never mentions." He tilted his head. "Should I tell you how beautifully she moans my name when I—"
"SILENCE!" Tas roared, his power clashing against the barrier.
"No fun if your going to be throwing a tantrum. I have had enough of this anyways," Castel said, turning away as if bored. "Stand."
The Council rose instantly. Castel pressed both palms against the barrier. His eyes burned pure, blinding gold.
"Take hold," the Council began to chant, their voices trembling, "and bind those who are not of us..."
Castel didn't wait for the rhythm. He dragged a blade across his palm. No hesitation. No flinch.
His blood fell.
The Void drank it greedily. The black barrier turned a deep, bruised red. The color thickened, spreading like a stain, hardening into something that looked like petrified meat. Stone.
Inside the rift, hundreds of dragons roared. It wasn't rage this time. It was the sound of prey realizing the trap had closed. Tas moved toward the nesting grounds, his face a mask of horror. Krismont didn't move. He just stared at Castel through the red glass.
There was hatred. There was grief. And beneath it all, there was a jagged, terrified fear.
The Palace
Arastella froze mid-step in her chamber.
Something tore through her chest not a physical wound, but a connection snapping. A thousand voices suddenly flooded her mind, screaming in a language of fire and ash. Her knees hit the marble floor.
"Father? Tas? What... what is happening?"
Pain flooded her veins, burning like molten lead. It was a consuming, oily heat that made her skin begin to glow.
"Father!" Her scream shattered the vases in the room and sent the heavy curtains flying.
Guards and maids rushed in, but they stopped at the threshold. Arastella was arched backward, her body trembling violently. Red and white light flickered beneath her skin, unstable and jagged.
"I feel them..." she gasped, her voice breaking. "He's hurting them! His blood... he used his blood to seal the sky! STOP HIM!"
Images slammed into her brain the hatchlings, and the sky turning into a ceiling of hardened blood.
"I promised..." her voice cracked into a whisper. "I promised peace... but he's turning my world into a graveyard."
The connection snapped.
The light died. Arastella collapsed inward, her breath coming in ragged, shallow sobs. She looked up, and for the first time, the violet in her eyes was gone, replaced by a cold grey.
"I will kill him," she whispered.
Then, the darkness took her, she passed out hitting the floor hard.
The Forest
The chanting stopped. The Void stood sealed, not by magic, but by the King's own life force.
Castel stepped back, unbothered, wiping the remaining blood from his hand onto a silk handkerchief. "Rell. The portal."
Before stepping through, he looked back at the red-stained barrier. "She will visit," he promised Krismont. "When I decide she is ready."
He stepped through the Council followed. Cion lingered for a second, staring at the red prison he had helped create. "...Fuck," he muttered, before vanishing into the light.
Astelion ran forward the moment they were gone. Her voice was sharp, desperate, and loud enough for the dragons on the other side to hear.
"Ile volema utzen nser ropoi! Aima durf imi lymeno hege lla icht knono!"
(She will save our people! Blood can be washed away—but never made pure again!)
She dove through the portal just as it flickered out of existence.
On the other side of the red stone, Krismont finally collapsed. The red walls reflected in his eyes. Somewhere deep in his ancient heart, there was a new, fragile thing. Hope. Because his daughter had felt the strike. And if she could feel them, she could free them.