The day the Assigner returned to Hunat, the sky curdled.
It was not a storm in the traditional sense. No lightning, no thunder. Only a vast, wrong stillness.
The sun blinked once, as if in caution, and Hunat's great stone citadel—Veyron's Crown—shuddered in its roots. The Consul of Hunat, Calix Dravon, stood on the black marble dais carved into the spine of the capital, draped in the heavy bronze robes of his station. His face, once handsome, had the smooth, glassy exhaustion of a man who had spent too many decades trying to look unbothered by fear. His hair was silver, combed back like a soldier's, and his eyes were pale—a side effect of long exposure to the neural lathes that still throbbed beneath the citadel's foundations.
Hunat had changed.
No longer a world of invention, it had steeled itself into a weapon. The great minds had been pressed into uniform. The dreamers had been drafted. The planet's very air vibrated with the dull thrum of endless drills and the shriek of black-iron fleets tearing the skies.
The Orlionic Collar was no longer spoken of—not because it was mourned, but because Sibelle Orlion herself had destroyed every trace of it. She had scattered its schematics into coded ashes, buried the last living prototypes in vitrified tombs, and vanished before they could wrench the secrets from her hands.
Calix Dravon thought of her sometimes—The Witch of the Prism Hall, the last true engineer of Hunat. Now just a myth told by whisperers.
And then came the Assigner.
He stepped from the ship without ceremony, without escort. His appearance was — appropriate. Regal but understated. He wore the flesh of a man named Theron Aegiros: tall, dark-haired, with eyes so blue they looked almost artificial. His armor was a simple gleaming black, bearing no crests, no house sigils—only a single silver ring around his left wrist, a sign known only to those who still remembered the old truths.
Only Calix Dravon knew who truly stood before him.
"My lord Aegiros," Calix said, bowing low, voice steady only through iron will. "Hunat welcomes you with its full heart and service."
Theron—the Assigner—smiled. It was the kind of smile that made machines flinch.
"I have come," he said, voice deep and dry, "hoping to receive good news."
Calix straightened, cautious. "My lord, the Orlionic technology was lost. Destroyed by the Lady Orlion in the days of the Exodus."
"She fled," Theron said softly. "But she did not take it with her."
Calix hesitated. A crackle of cold sweat trickled down his back beneath the ceremonial robes.
"My lord," he said, choosing each word like a man crossing a frozen lake, "it has been millennia. If any remnant existed—"
"You will find it," Theron interrupted, his voice velvet over steel. "You will search every archive, every dead zone, every bloodline. The Collar is still here. Hidden. Waiting. I can feel it."
He turned then, those too-bright eyes sweeping over Veyron's Crown like a man surveying a battlefield he had already conquered.
"And I," he said, almost to himself, "will help you."
Calix Dravon bowed again. Not out of deference, but because it was the only way to hide his horror. To hide the sick, cold weight curling in his gut.
Because he had seen something when the Assigner smiled—something reptilian, something ancient, flickering behind those perfect features.
The King Below had returned.
And Hunat would be stripped to its marrow to feed his will.
***
The search began that night.
Across the planet, squads of black-armored searchers swept into abandoned labs, shattered archives, and sunken vaults. They dug through glass deserts and toxic jungles. They whispered through the ruins of the Prism Hall, where the last flicker of Sibelle's genius had once burned.
There was nothing.
Only the whisper of the Assigner's wife, mocking him.
***
Valorian sang in hidden sobs. The woods above the Azure Basin were veiled in constant mist. Trees leaned into one another like mourners at a wake. This was the Pelagros Forest, where the sea climbed the land.
I almost slipped on a rock hidden by a moss the color of Ari's eyes. I should be spending my days preparing for war. Instead, I had been tracking my sister through the woods, convincing a spoiled brat of a queen to stop airing out her privates to Ari – meanwhile, I had no time to process what I'd learned of my past. My heritage. My true origin.
Did it really matter that I used to be human when I wasn't anymore? Should I feel less inclined to go to war with the bastard when I knew there were no laws, moral, divine, terrestrial, to feel guilt over breaking over falling in love with Areilycus?
The dirt of the earth dug into my bare feet. I had a tendency to walk on tiptoes when I was interacting with Sensibles, now I realized I was walking heel first, tiptoes after.
Did Salacia's knowledge reveal the hidden code of my humanity? One foot after the other – that was the saying on Tripolis, I often heard the people say. It meant to convey that not all problems could or should be solved at once; that everyone was doing the best they could.
I had to remind myself that when I found my sister crumbling near a tree marked with the symbol of the Vajda who, apparently, generations ago, screwed Ari and me into indentured servitude for the Demon.
"Mira," I said, crouching down when I found her sitting under the tree.
She was beside herself with grief, still. And who could blame her. She barely reacted to the fact we were not, in fact, sisters. Not even the same species. Her mind had been taken by the memory of a brother turning into a monster and tearing the throats of so many innocents.
My sister, my sister, my peace-hearted sister. I used to think nothing could break her.
I was wrong.
"You shouldn't have left," she said. Her voice came low and flat. "You shouldn't have taken Areilycus and fled. You made him a target. You made us targets. You put your love above everyone else."
"I didn't put it above you." My voice wavered. "I loved him. I loved Rosum. I loved you."
Her eyes, when they met mine, were knives dipped in lightning.
"No. You chose. You chose him. The golden boy. The firstborn. The one Father shaped in his image. You didn't run for righteousness, Mila. You ran for him."
I didn't deny it. I couldn't.
"I ran," I said, "because staying would've killed him. Would you subject me to the same grief you are now feeling?" I lowered my head in submission. In respect. "I couldn't watch Father turn us into things."
She stood then, slowly, like something ancient rising from the seabed. Her wings shimmered faintly behind her, barely visible in the mist. Her glow flared. I felt it crawl across my skin like heat before the lightning.
"You broke us," she said. "You broke me."
"And you think kneeling would've saved Rosum?" I shouted. "He was possessed, Volmira. Father used him. You want to blame me because it's easier than blaming him."
We were both shaking.
We stepped toward each other—sisters no longer, but weapons aimed with purpose.
And then it hit me.
A pull—not physical, not even magical. Something deeper. Primal. Like a chord struck in the marrow of my spine. It was more sensation than sound, a vibration inside my blood. My breath caught.
Volmira stopped, too.
"They're here," I whispered.
I felt them.
Bara. Las. Cleo.
Their presence hummed in my chest. My heartbeat stuttered. We hadn't all been in the same place since the Cradle War—and even then, we weren't a family. We were a fracture pretending to hold shape.
Volmira looked at me, eyes wide now, rage replaced by something else.
And just like that, everything tilted. Not toward safety. Toward something vast, inevitable, and ancient.
The Children of the Assigner were gathering.
Not as siblings. Not as survivors.
As warriors.
****
When it came to killing people, my siblings never dabbled in half measures. It only now occurred to me how heavy the burden had been for them; the Assigner's children, his executioners, while it befell to me to merely protect things, nurture and sustain.
I now stood before what little remained of the tribe, and all I could think was: Pity. Pity the fools who serve in blindness.
"Give us the dragon," Bara barked at me. Her blood was war; it sang the red ballads of destruction she brought to Tripolis when people refused to obey Father's chaos.
"Not even a hello?" I tried.
"You don't deserve hello," Cleo said. "But you've earned the goodbye."
Before my mind caught up with the answer, nature swelled and answered Cleo's call. The vines sprouting from the earth tangled with the limbs of the villagers, the Vlachy reacting with screams and pleading.
Ari burned the greenery around their ankles before they managed to reach the humans' thighs.
"I suggest you leave," he said. "And forget you ever served that villain."
"You are the villain, as far as we're concerned," Bara said, stepping forward. When her right leg revealed itself from behind the leather skirts, it was already blackened with rage, carrying her dagger. "You broke our family."
"Oh really, and what was the crime, Bar?" Ari asked.
"Staying alive!"
We were children of the same architect, cracked and stitched into different kinds of violence, and we met like storms do: with pressure first, then lightning.
Cleo moved first.
She barely made a sound, but the trees shifted when she passed—bending toward her, vines trailing her ankles like loyal pets. Her bow was strung with thread made from the sinews of extinct beasts.
When she loosened her first shot, it sang. The arrow sliced past my cheek and hit a tree behind me.
Bara laughed. It started deep in her chest and spread like wildfire, all teeth and madness. She was already halfway out of her cloak, bare-armed, fists glowing with searing heat. Her veins pulsed.
Her smile was a war cry sharpened into a grin.
"Try it," she said, cracking her knuckles like they were thunder. "Let's see if you chaos can stop my war."
She always hated me. Not as much as Cleo did, but still.
I summoned chaos without meaning to. It wrapped around me like a cloak of black-glass static, crawling up my skin, bending air around my fingertips. The clearing split beneath my feet, earth curling inward.
Bara came at me with fists that gleamed like burning iron. I met her with a wall of fractal energy—jagged and humming, torn from a dream I barely understood. She crashed into it, bounced back, laughed again.
"Still the fragile one, Mila?"
"You first, bitch."
Volmira screamed.
She flew overhead, wings unfurling, fleeing.
Her scream shattered a row of trees like glass, and her tail whipped low, catching Cleo mid-sprint. Cleo rolled, flipped midair, landed in a crouch with her knife already out and kissed the ground. Her face was smeared with blood. She licked it.
"You broke another sibling with your love, did you, Mila?"
Bara grabbed a burning branch and flung it like a spear. It exploded into molten splinters as it hit Volmira's chest. And Las…
Las stood at the edge of the clearing, motionless. Pale eyes closed. Lips barely parted. Holding.
He could have ended it right there. One flick of his wrist and we'd all be crying or choking or kissing the ground in despair. He held the network of our minds in his hands—he always had. He felt what we felt. And if he unleashed that, if he let all that emotional weight out at once—
We'd shatter.
Which meant they were holding back. And I couldn't believe that was something the Assigner would send them here for: half measures.
Cleo had two arrows nocked now, dancing in and out of Volmira's wingspan, targeting tendons, waiting for blood. Volmira dived, breath like acid, and I saw the moment Cleo rolled between her legs and sliced a line up her flank.
Bara went after Cleo then, growling, "My kill."
And from behind me, Ari rose.
Dawned. The light bent around him, golden and blinding, pulled from every leaf, every drop of dew, every glint on every blade. It swirled around his shoulders, caught fire in his hands. Sunlight pooled at his feet. Reflections bent toward him. Life itself turned to look.
The forest froze.
His light hit us like guilt. Warm and searing.
I felt it burrow into me, searching, judging. Even Bara stopped mid-swing, blinking as sweat poured down her back.
Las finally looked up. Eyes wide. He could barely breathe.
Because Ari wasn't here to fight.
He was here to bind.