The silence in the boardroom was heavy enough to use as a paperweight. A really judgmental paperweight.

  I leaned back in my absurdly comfortable throne-chair—seriously, it was plush enough to count as a minor exploit in ergonomic warfare—fingers steepled in front of me, trying my absolute best to radiate “calm, in-control Queen” energy. Not “panicked twenty-something who just watched a highlight reel of her friends nearly getting turned into blood confetti.”

  The massive holo-screen behind me cast a cold blue wash across the polished obsidian table, painting everyone seated opposite in sterile, aquarium-like light. Five figures, frozen in place, like some grim little diorama.

  Katherine, naturally, was fine. Because of course she was. She lounged sideways in her chair, legs propped on the edge of the boardroom table in full violation of etiquette (which she definitely counted as extra points). She was even whistling—loud, off-key, and smugly jaunty.

  Lisa leaned close, whispering something that made Katherine snort and giggle like they were in the back row of class instead of a meeting that smelled like doom. Typical.

  The other three were another story.

  Yuki hunched in her seat, her shoulders rounded forward, all her usual sunshine drained away, leaving nothing but a pale shadow. Beside her, Lunaris sat ramrod straight, but her stiff posture was less discipline and more brittle glass—like she might shatter if someone so much as sneezed in her direction.

  And then there was Fty. Poor, poor Fty. He sat stock-still, hands clasped tightly on the table in front of him, staring down at his own knuckles like they’d betrayed him. His expression was hollow, the kind of hollow that came from the bone-deep conviction you’d failed everyone counting on you. The quiet ache rolling off him pressed against the room like a second atmosphere. Even breathing felt heavier for it.

  My gaze shifted to the woman at my right hand. Lola, eternal professional. She held her holo-tablet like a shield, her expression perfectly smoothed into neutral steel. No judgment, no softness—just business. But when her eyes flicked toward me, she gave the smallest of nods. Barely there, but enough.

  Showtime.

  “Alright,” I said, letting the word slice clean through the stagnant quiet. “Let’s begin.”

  Lola tapped her tablet. The holo-screen flared back to life, letters glowing clinical and merciless against the blue backdrop.

  “Before Lola gives us the official, spreadsheet-approved version of events,” I began, letting my gaze linger on Fty, “I want to hear it from you. Fty. Report.”

  He flinched, shoulders twitching as though the air itself had just struck him. Slowly, he lifted his head. The look in his eyes was a gut punch straight to my ribs… already damning himself.

  “Mission… was a partial failure, my Queen. We engaged hostile forces. Two waves. Basilisks, Gnashers, and a bandit ambush. There were… casualties.”

  Across the table, Katherine’s whistling cut off mid-note.

  Fty’s gaze sank back to his clasped hands. His knuckles had gone white. “We secured the primary objective, the sword Mistrael. But…” His breath trembled on the way out. “It’s broken. And in the process, Katherine was… temporarily incapacitated. I failed to protect her. I failed to secure a usable artifact. I failed.”

  Each word hit the table like a stone added to a pile he was building over himself.

  “Pfft.” Katherine finally broke it, dropping her legs off the table with a thud that echoed. She leaned back, grinning crookedly. “I was nappin’! Fty, ya did great!”

  Lisa bobbed her head, braids bouncing. “Totally! The fire was epic! And Katherine did need a nap.”

  But Fty didn’t seem to hear them. Their voices skated across the wall of guilt he’d built around himself. His silence was louder than the two of them combined.

  “Lola,” I said quietly, eyes still locked on him. “Let’s see the tactical… uh… spreadsheet?”

  She nodded once, and the holo-screen shifted. Numbers scrolled, charts flickered—casualties, mana expenditures, burn rates. Then the feed changed. A video window bloomed to life.

  Lisa’s first-person footage.

  The fight. The chaos. The world exploding into Rebel Fire. The screen drowned in waves of orange and white heat, sound peaking in static before resolving again.

  And at the heart of it all: Fty.

  Staff planted like a spear, wards blazing around him in layered rings, his face a mask of furious concentration. His hands moved like a conductor’s, threads of green healing magic snaking out, weaving between bodies, holding lives together with spit and prayer.

  “Partial failure,” I echoed in soft voice. “That’s what you call this, Fty?” I gestured toward the holo. “Because what I see is a leader standing against an impossible storm. What I see is a healer who kept everyone alive when survival should’ve been impossible.”

  I pushed up from my chair; the legs scraping across the floor, and walked the length of the table until I was right beside him. He didn’t look up. His eyes stayed locked on his own clenched fists.

  “You didn’t fail, Fty,” I said, dropping my voice lower. “You won. And one of the reasons I put you in charge of this mission was to test just that… your strength as individuals.” I paused, then let the silence breathe before adding, “And, of course, your strength as a team.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Fty’s head snapped up, his face twisted between disbelief and stubborn guilt. “But I failed,” he said. “My leadership was flawed. I let Yuki get cornered. I didn’t anticipate the second wave, which forced Lisa to use her ultimate too early. My resource management was reactive, not proactive. Katherine fell. These were questionable choices, my Queen. Failures.”

  His self-assessment was so merciless, so painfully wrong, it almost made me angry. “No.” The word cut sharp, clean. He flinched. I didn’t soften my tone… he didn’t need comfort, he needed perspective. “Lola. Play his feed.”

  Lola tapped her tablet, and the holo-screen behind me blinked alive. The view swirled into chaos: his own perspective of the battlefield. The camera trembled with every impact, the audio with shouted calls, clashing steel, and the low roar of beasts.

  In the center of it all: Fty, staff planted like an anchor, green threads of magic lancing outward in every direction. Not random, not frantic… deliberate.

  “Look,” I ordered.

  On screen, a ward snapped into existence an instant before a Gnasher’s claws could rake across Lunaris’s back.

  A surge of light bolstered Yuki a heartbeat before her mirror shield shattered, taking the edge off a killing blow. His hands moved, every thread timed not to react, but to anticipate. His magic wasn’t just healing… it was a net, holding the line together against impossible odds.

  I froze the feed at a perfect frame: three separate streams of energy branching from him, each keeping Katherine, Yuki, and Lunaris alive simultaneously. “You see that?” My voice was quieter now. “That is not failure. You were essential. Now, Yuki.”

  The feed shifted. Yuki filled the frame now… an archer’s arrow aimed straight for Lisa’s exposed back and without hesitation, she moved.

  Her mirror shield burst into place a fraction of a second before impact. It shattered, the backlash hurling her to the ground, but Lisa remained untouched, still channeling fire.

  I couldn’t help a small smile tugging at my lips. “Yuki. That wasn’t just a magic swordsman's work. That was a sacrifice. And your light magic… is incredible. You flicker and misdirect. I love it.”

  Yuki’s cheeks flushed, and her shoulders twitched as though she wasn’t sure if she should sink into her chair or puff her chest out.

  The next clip rolled. Lisa, fire-drenched, but not in her usual all-consuming blast. Instead, controlled bursts… tight, deliberate. A wall of flame intercepting a volley of arrows, sparks hissing against steel, every flicker positioned with surgical precision.

  A bubble of safety around Yuki and Lunaris. “Lisa was also amazing,” I said simply. Her grin spread like wildfire anyway.

  “Katherine…” I turned toward her.

  But she just moved her hand to dismiss me. “No need. Ya go next.”

  I stared at her, and she, unbothered, stared back. Then I drew a breath and turned toward the doors. “NightSwallow. Come here.”

  A pause. Then a hesitant voice from the hall: “…Do I have to?”

  “Yes!”

  The doors parted, and in shuffled a version of NightSwallow I barely recognized. No masked rogue, no confident killer. Just a girl in simple black clothes, shoulders hunched, waving awkwardly and small. She slid into the nearest empty chair and tried to fold in on herself, as if sheer smallness might make her invisible.

  “Watch this,” I said, gentler now.

  The footage shifted again, NightSwallow's view this time, zoomed in on her duel with the mini-boss. A blur of daggers and claws on the cliff’s edge. At first, it looked like pure survival.

  Parries, dodges, flips. But then… the details.

  Mid-parry, her free hand dipped into a pouch, dropping a small orb at the base of a jagged rock outcrop. Mid-backflip, she tossed something glittering into a fault line above the bandit camp. Between lunges, her fingers worked with eerie calm, planting Scamantha’s “tactical” surprises one after another, seamlessly woven into her fight.

  She wasn’t just dueling. She was building a catastrophe.

  “While fighting a mini-boss,” I said, letting the weight settle over the room, “she was laying the groundwork for the avalanche. She wasn’t just surviving her fight.” I glanced at her, catching the way she shrank into her chair. “She was winning ours.”

  I turned my gaze to the last member of the fire team. “That leaves us with Lunaris.”

  Lola swiped her tablet. The holo-screen flickered, and there she was… Lunaris in the thick of the fight. Her blades flashed silver arcs, her [Paradox Slash] landing like an impossible echo of time itself. Two strikes in one instant… the now and the maybe. The bandit leader’s defenses cracked under it, his guard splintering in disbelief.

  Then the boulder.

  The footage made my throat tighten. The massive slab came crashing down, swallowing her whole in an instant. Then her afterimage shimmered, reality hiccuped, and she reappeared a breath away, pulled clear by her [Slipstream].

  I let the still frame hang there, her re-materialized form blurred in motion, a blade still raised mid-swing. “You’re under-leveled, yes,” I said firmly, eyes locked with hers across the table. “If you weren’t, maybe this fight would’ve been easier. But nothing about the outcome would have changed. You fought with skill, with courage… and in the end—” I smiled, not the forced kind, but the rare, honest kind, “—you got the sword.”

  On cue, Lola tapped her tablet. The chaotic footage dissolved into a crisp image of the blade itself, stats flaring into existence beside it.

  “Guys,” I said, reverence creeping into my voice despite myself. “This is the real deal. And even broken, it’s still better than almost any epic blade you’ll find lying around.” I leaned forward, tapping the screen. “Repairing the runes upgrades it straight back to Marvel quality. The real hurdle is the crystals. And some of those… well, good luck finding a Venom crystal. Or a Holy one.” I rubbed my temple, muttering, “I don’t even know if an Exploit Crystal and a Holy Crystal can exist together… but hey, we’ve got at least one friendly god. Maybe Saevrin—”

  Lola burst out laughing.

  Not a polite snicker. Not a ladylike chuckle. A full-body, uncontrollable laugh tore out of her lungs and bounced off the boardroom walls.

  The entire table froze. Even I just stared. Lola looked up at us with wide, innocent eyes and mouthed: What?

  It cracked me.

  I started laughing too; the others joined in one by one; the heaviness in the room peeled away with every breath. Even Fty managed a tired smile, the shadow finally easing from his face.

  “Okay, okay,” I said at last, wiping a tear from my cheek and trying to reassemble my queenly dignity… not very successfully. “My point is…” I grinned, gesturing at the glowing stats. “All we need is to track down the stones. Put them there, and we don’t just have a legendary sword… we have one that can adapt its damage type to whatever poor bastard we’re fighting.”

  I leaned on the table, eyes sweeping across my Elites. “This isn’t just a sword for Lunaris. It’s a weapon for all of Rimebreak we’re lending her.”

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