Iron Kingdom Colonna. Capital, Machu Picchu.

“Madam, the vice chair is waiting. You may enter now.” His voice fell like a soft curtain over the corridor’s hush.

The lady drew out a handkerchief, dabbed her tears, and rose from the bench, like a swan lifting from dusk water. She nodded to the attendant, gave a mourning-tinged smile, and led her maid inside.

Vice Chair Corren Magut sat behind a long table of dark ironwood, fingers stroking the grain like calming a restless horse. He cleared his throat and asked, “You are… Kadula’s…”

“Yes. I am Kadula.” Her reply landed like a blade sheathed in velvet.

She withheld her true name, a screen of fog before a cliff. She had no wish to tangle tighter with the Arcane Association. Good for our independence, yet hard for keeping a patron’s river flowing.

“Please, sit. Sit here,” Corren said, placing the chair like a stepping stone in a stream. “Whatever trouble you carry, tell me. On behalf of the Arcane Association, I’ll help as much as I can.”

He wasn’t the sharpest mind among Arcane Engineers, but he was the warmest fire in a room of cold furnaces. His eye caught the brooch above her generous curve, a glint like sun on frost.

A golden rose blooming amid entangled leaves and thorns. The sigil of House Kadula, and of the Kadula Consortium. A crest like a garden with hidden walls.

Corren recognized her at once—Baroness Judy Kadula, famed across noble salons—yet he wore ignorance like a polite mask. He also noted the cane she’d passed to the attendant, a gift once granted to patrons.

A magic staff crafted by Master Nagash himself. Low-key and lavish, like a hidden lake with deep fish. Thirty-two practical spells etched within, a unique seal impossible to forge. Fine as art, and a badge of standing—one of the Association’s greatest sponsors.

The Arcane Association works as a clear market under a high roof. Clients post commissions; registered Arcane Engineers accept; the Association takes a small cut, a creek feeding the mill. Nations subsidize us as well, like seasonal rain.

Yet everywhere, spending runs faster than income, like a horse outracing its rider. Sponsors turn the wheels with oil, and the gears run easier.

But our late Chair, Nagash, stood like a mountain against merchant hands reaching in. He refused direct guild support, kept our keel straight and our sails our own.

As the world’s foremost Arcane Engineer, Nagash drew worshipers like lamps draw moths. Many wealthy admirers donated in their own name, and he took what bore no stink of monopoly.

Now Nagash is dead, and his star has set behind clouds. Keeping those donors is hard, a fish that leaps just out of the net. For months, every vice chair has chased that swim.

Corren never meant to buy votes for the chair’s seat. But he wouldn’t watch a great chunk of our coffers crumble like a riverbank in flood.

Especially when this patron sits atop the world’s largest trade consortium. A handful of their coins could power our forges for a year, like coal dug from a private mountain.

In thirty years at the Association, Corren had seen fortune bend iron, and it still made his jaw loosen like a dropped hinge.

“The Arcane Association is such a lovely place,” the lady said, voice like rain on paper. “My daughter cries every day to work here. I’ve lectured her for ages. She refuses to take over the family’s affairs. That child… ah…”

Tears gathered again, beads on a willow branch. The maid produced a velvet handkerchief and wiped with slow, practiced grace.

Corren heard what lay between her lines, the way wind speaks through chimes. “Your daughter was planning…”

“She meant to sit for the Arcane Engineer license exam. But… lately… she’s gravely ill…” Her words broke like thin ice.

Most diseases won’t yield to Divine Art. Strictly, Divine Art heals wounds, not rot. A blade’s bite can be mended; life-force can be filled like a breathed-in bellows.

But disease won’t obey. You can pour vitality back, yet the illness remains, a root that clings to stone. The Divine Beings bless while they warn, telling mortals not to lean wholly on heaven.

“My daughter may not have long…” Her voice was a candle guttering in wind.

“Madam, don’t worry,” Corren said, though worry gnawed him like mice. “The exam is soon. As long as your daughter—”

“The Divine Healer said she has two weeks!” She gripped the plea like a lifeline. “Vice Chair Corren, can you move the exam up? Please, grant her last wish!”

“This…” His fingers began tapping the table, faster, like rain quickening on tiles.

“The license exam is our grandest rite, a tradition aged like oak,” he said, shame thorny in his throat. “I’m sorry…”

“But it’s her last wish!” Her grief flared, a torch in a storm.

“Madam, the Association is in a bind,” Corren said, helpless as a man with empty nets. “We started preparations three months ago. Supplies, staffing—shifting overnight is very hard!”

“I’ll pay!” Her noble bearing cracked through the room like dawn.

Tears veiled her eyes, yet her poise was a blade in scabbard. Corren rarely attended noble balls, but he saw, faint as a memory’s lantern, that one night—the baroness at the center, ruling the light.

“Emergency materials, redirected manpower—every cost, I’ll cover. Compensation, transport, temporary wages—I’ll pay it all!” Her words rang like coins dropped on a temple drum.

“This…” He knew it wasn’t small. Even with her promise, it meant ripping and reweaving many threads in the loom.

“How much sponsorship does the Association need?” she pressed, voice steady as iron. “Any amount. If my daughter can sit the exam, any price.”

Silence pooled, dark as a well.

“I beg you,” she whispered. “It’s her only wish.”

The secretary coughed twice, a pebble tapped against glass, nudging the vice chair to speak.

Corren sighed, a long winter wind leaving the eaves. “All right, Madam. I’ll grant your daughter’s wish. We’ll move the exam up. Not for the money—your sincerity moved me. But the bill will be sent. Be ready for the tide.”

——————

“So much sponsorship, my gods,” the secretary breathed, eyes wide as saucers. “Vice Chair, you could run for chair.”

“I’m not doing this for money,” Corren said, voice flat as a kept blade.

“Sure. But isn’t money nicer to have?” The secretary’s grin tilted like a fox’s ear.

“Normally money couldn’t change this,” Corren murmured, looking over the rolling numbers like a night sea. “But…”

He sighed to the secretary tallying logistics, his heart a soft bruise. “You don’t get it. I have a daughter too. She’s twelve. Every day she runs out smiling to meet me. I understand that lady.”

——————

“Money really lets you do as you please,” Vega said, back in a Kadula estate, massaging a face stiff from long disguise. Her laugh flicked like a knife. “My master focused on digging gold back then. Wise as a fox. And His Highness Kadula opening a trade guild here too.”

“Hmph. Vega, I bet you mocked my master plenty in the Demon Realm,” the lady snapped, the mask of worry sliding off like shed silk. “Now you bow to coin?”

She was Judy, a high retainer of the Demon King of Value, Kadula. She had no daughter, only a perfect lie in a perfect dress.

“The key was Corren,” Judy said, cool as moonlight on steel. “I checked. Of the four vice chairs, only he has a daughter the right age. Only he would be moved by sympathy. Money helped, but feeling steered the boat.”

It was all theater, a crown-ordered play staged for Demon King Andor. The curtains had fallen.

“Quarreling has no value, Vega. Report to Lord Andor. Our work here is done.”

“Reported,” Vega said, eyes glinting like cat’s in lamplight. “So… can I do something worthless now?”

She climbed, palms skimming the baroness’s chest like a thief over silk. Too short, she rose on tiptoe and flicked Judy’s cheek with a slow, teasing lick.

“Off, Vega! Mmph—off me…” Judy shoved, half growl, half laugh, a tangle of thorns and petals.

——————

While drinking with the Sword Saint, I pushed an urgent order onto already overworked Vega. Guilt bit like frost under the collar.

To keep her mind from cracking, I promised her a vacation after this job. The Demon King Army will only grow; one messenger can’t hold all strings. Time to molt into a better shape.

But Vega sent only one line—“Arcane Engineer exam advanced”—then cut the Shadow ripple like a blade through water. No details, just vanishing night.

Was she sprinting for a bed? Why won’t she share the steps behind the trick?

I set my jaw to scold her next time. I grabbed a lunchbox, warm as a pocket sun, and knocked on Raven’s Arcane Workshop door.