The palace, once jammed with bodies, lay hushed. A few lamps bled enough light to outline the red velvet path to the throne, a ribbon to prevent stumbles.

Back before Richard VI was assassinated, a tide of petitioners poured in daily. Some brought rare tribute like ants bearing sugar. Some fished for hints of future policy, reeds twitching at the slightest breeze. Most did both, courting the iron-blooded king enthroned above all, kneeling early to avoid being culled later.

But that was already yesterday’s ash.

The throne sat empty. Only the regent occupied the minister’s seat set half a step lower, a shadow at the foot of power.

The court’s grandees were gone as if a tide had receded. Facing him stood one man, sweating like rain on stone: the cabinet minister Sankachi, reporting what he saw in the North.

“Lord Rockridge, there’s something wrong with General Slandor and her Northern Army. During our visit, they were hostile, cold as ice. In my view, they’ve already crawled in with those reformist rabble. I’d wager these so-called proofs were tampered with by them, only…”

“Only…?”

“O-only! Their staged play is cunning, and the rabble eat up grand talk about duty and justice like warm porridge. If the Red Orchid Society beats us to the punch, the lowborn across the provinces may follow them. I mean—no hidden meaning! I only fear if we can’t suppress those brainless wretches in time, it might disrupt the plan…”

He babbled as he spoke, scrambling to explain, terrified the regent would find a different flavor in his words. Rockridge only listened, like stone under rain, offering no opinion. He did not speak until Sankachi handed over the letter from General Slandor.

He took the envelope from that trembling hand. He only skimmed its surface like a skater on thin ice. He didn’t open it to see what the Red Orchid Society had told Slandor.

Murky, water-hued mana seeped from his fingertips, soaking the paper like rot, and the envelope sloughed into pulp.

“Send all our garrisons stationed in Balad to the border.”

“Eh? A-all of them?”

Rockridge’s eyebrow rose, carving new furrows into a forehead already plowed by years. “What is it? You think you misheard?”

“No, of course not!” Sankachi bent low like a grass blade in wind. “I only think if we pull all our garrisons, Balad’s interior will be hollow. If the Red Orchid Society starts trouble, we’ll be on the back foot…”

“Sankachi… why so little faith in our plan?”

Rockridge shook his head and rose from the minister’s seat. He stepped close. His spine was bent like an old bow, yet he still stood a head taller than squat, stumpy Sankachi. Sankachi could only look up, his presence smothered, his feet sliding a step back.

Then Rockridge simply—kindly—patted his shoulder, like a quiet hand on a skittish horse.

“I watched you grow up, Sankachi. In a way, I’m your elder.” His steps didn’t slow as he walked into the dark behind Sankachi. “You’ve always been this way: too suspicious, too cautious, a turtle under its shell. Have you forgotten? Beneath Balad lies an ‘army’ at our command that will never betray us. Moving the visible garrisons is nothing.”

“B-but—”

“No buts.” Rockridge cut him off. “The Red Orchid Society? Hah. Clowns on a stage. Before the true design, their resistance is a fly without a head, buzzing in the wrong direction. They can’t threaten us.”

Pressed by that hand, Sankachi’s face flushed like a boiled prawn. His sausagey mouth opened and closed. At last, words spilled, trembling.

“I do have faith in the plan! But, Lord Rockridge! The plan’s progress has stalled for ages. We still lack a suitable medium. Maybe we should handle the Elves and the Red Orchid Society first, then—”

“—Who told you the plan has stalled?”

Rockridge cut him off again, laughter wheezing like a broken bellows.

“This time, you brought back good news.”

“G-good… news?”

“Her Majesty the Elven Queen—she’s one of the perfect mediums we’ve been pursuing.”

Sankachi’s eyes widened until they drank the light. He stood at a loss for a long beat.

Cowardly, selfish, yes—but not stupid. He heard the other reason for moving the garrisons and felt it like a spark in tinder.

So the old man wants the legendary Queen alive.

The thought was too bold, almost blasphemy. Yet it tossed a rope to a plan mired in mud, and Sankachi could not deny it looked like a chance.

Before weighing if it was feasible, a simpler question clawed up.

“But even if we capture the Queen, we only have two mediums. Don’t we still need a third?”

Rockridge only smiled.

“No. The third medium is already in our hands.”

“Ah? Who is it?”

“Our noble Princess Belior, of course.”

Ah—?

It took Sankachi several heartbeats to recall that long-unspoken name.

“She… has returned?”

“Oh, not only returned,” Rockridge said, voice smooth as still water. “She will take the initiative to aid us.”

If the first half overloaded Sankachi’s mind, the second half didn’t help clear it. After all, it was that very princess who ran off with the Douglas Family’s young lady. Why would she help now?

Confusion clouded his face like steam on a mirror. He opened his mouth to ask more, but Rockridge only shook his head.

“Sankachi, all you need to know is this comes from the Prophet’s prophecy.”

—The Prophet.

Hearing that name, Sankachi’s face melted into sudden understanding. Doubt vanished like frost in sun, as if that alone explained everything, even if the threads still tangled.

It wasn’t that he stopped thinking. It was that the Prophet’s prophecies had never missed, like the very loom of fate speaking aloud. One could only, must only, believe.

If that august being has said so, then perhaps the day the great work is forged is close enough to touch.

That thought surged through him like wine. Then the minister’s next action seemed to prove it.

Rockridge drew from his shirt a rectangular pillar of stone—the key that opened the Sanctum’s gate and released the seal of the Sacred Heart.

To keep past kings from succumbing to temptation, touching the Sacred Heart and being corrupted into monsters for lack of worth, the key had always rested with the ministers.

Its return to the light now declared the plan had entered its final movement.

“Go, Sankachi. It’s time we helped that chosen girl… ascend as the first medium.”

The ever-chatty Sankachi said nothing. He took the key from Rockridge with both hands, solemn as a monk receiving incense.

Yet before he left to carry out this last order, greed for the future leaked from his eyes like oil. He couldn’t help but turn back.

“When the Grand Array activates, our wishes… will they really all come true?”

Rockridge was silent for several breaths. Then he nodded.

“Yes. It will… fulfill the most genuine desire in our hearts.”

Confirmed, the rings of fat on Sankachi’s head trembled with joy. His short, heavy legs almost hopped as he left, like a toad leaping into rain.

Opposite his delight, Rockridge’s old face sank into shadow.

Watching Sankachi’s retreating back, pity washed through his eyes like dusk light over a grave.

He had not lied. When the array awakened, it would indeed grant a wish.

Only… he had never said whose wish would be counted—least of all Sankachi’s.

Rockridge turned and stepped into deeper shadow.

Wrinkled fingers touched the skull carving atop the throne’s back. Dark-blue mana flowed over gold like night tide, staining it to ashen silver.

A breath later, a secret door answered and opened. A downward passage yawned at his feet like a throat.

He went down, one measured step after another, and sighed as if smoke.

“Yes. However cruel, however unbelievable, the Prophet’s prophecy has never missed,” he murmured. “His words are fate.”

Which meant—

“So this old man won’t live to see the wish made real, will he…”

He smiled at himself. The slap of his soles on stairs cut off as a deeper mechanism roared awake, a steel ocean drowning smaller echoes.

Torches flared to greet him, flowers of fire painting a vast chamber.

They also lit the thing before him—a headless dragon corpse.

It was the dragon he had slain in the battle of Dalahaman at the cost of ten thousand lives, a mountain broken for a single jewel. He looked at the still giant and spoke with honest awe.

“Truly, a creature at the pinnacle of the elements.”

Even headless, its body remained as it was at death, as if its time had frozen, untouched by rot.

It stood in cruel contrast to his withering bones.

“How enviable…”

His voice broke in half.

A blade laid cold across his throat like winter water.

A figure poured from the shadow behind him, the one holding the knife.

“Too late to regret it now, old man,” the newcomer said.

“If you plan to betray us, don’t blame me for being merciless.”

The androgynous voice slid into his ear, nine parts vicious, one part trembling—yet with no attempt to hide identity.

Rockridge could never mistake him.

“Oh, Third Prince Rahman… why would I betray you?”

Rockridge spoke his name as if naming a star, calm in voice and face, without a fleck of fear.

From the day the princess “kidnapped” the Douglas Family’s heiress, the Third Prince had vanished like a stone into a lake. He never resurfaced.

No one in the realm cared about this little-known prince’s absence. Even his blood brothers, Samir and Neprah, after hearing from Adelaide about Rahman’s cooperation with Rockridge, did not go looking for him.

A forgotten man had come here.

And Rockridge didn’t sound surprised. He simply reached into his breast and drew out another rectangular pillar of stone.

“What do I have left to regret… If a young man like you feels no fear, then an old man like me has nothing left to lose.”

He passed the duplicate key back to the one behind him, then lifted a hand in a small, weary wave.

“Go. Do what you must… Make him proud.”

No answer. The youth’s shape folded back into the dark like a wing.

When his presence was gone, Rockridge looked a last time toward the path of his going. Sorrow filmed his eyes like mist.

He knew this parting was forever.

He had watched this life grow up as well. Now he could only watch him walk into a road with no return.

Even so, he would not insult the boy’s resolve, just as the boy would not try to stop his own.

He shrugged off his robe, revealing the forest of infusion tubes and the harsh gleam of implants threaded across his withered body.

A quiet resolve pooled in his chest like dusk rain.

Rockridge extended his arm, almost entirely replaced by arcane alloy, and softly caressed the dragon scales before him.

It’s alright; every sacrifice, every tear, will seed tomorrow after the frost.

Because all of this… is for that child, a lone star in a storm-dark sky.