The steel groaned open. Their arrival announced itself to the hall.

  Every head turned.

  Toward Remy. Not him.

  Finlay wore the nothingness like a mantle, reigning in the silence.

  The Main Dining Hall was a room designed to remind you of your place. A massive table of obsidian wood dominated the center. No warmth. No decoration. Just a vast slab of polished black that swallowed light and offered nothing back. The candles along the walls didn't illuminate so much as flicker, throwing jagged shadows across the faces of the people already seated.

  His siblings. The . Platinum hair, blue eyes, every one of them—the favored harvest of Esterra Blood.

  Finlay's gaze moved down the table, ticking off the names.

  —the youngest, watching the door with the careful hunger of someone who claimed everything and yielded nothing.

  —beside her, already bored, the set of his shoulders declaring it.

  —still and formal as carved stone.

  —arms crossed, jaw tight, already looking for something to be impatient about.

  —the eldest, at the head's right hand. Not wearing his proximity to Father like a garment, the way Russell did, all coiled ambition and thinly veiled need.

  Ravilon simply the space, the way load-bearing stone occupies a wall—not performing, not positioning. Just , in the way that things which have stopped needing to prove themselves are simply there.

  A glass of pale tea rested between his fingers. The air tasted of heavy red wine, but he never touched it.

  Finlay had never thought to wonder why.

  The steel door groaned shut.

  One seat was empty.

  And at the apex of the hall—at the summit of the obsidian expanse, anchoring the room the way a mountain anchors a landscape—

  Patriarch of the Esterra Court. The Peerless Ha'ven of this Epoch.

  White hair. Eyes the color of clear, merciless skies. He sat as though the chair had been built around him specifically and the rest of the Manor was incidental. His hands rested flat on the table: still, deliberate, the kind of stillness that wasn't absence of motion but absolute of it.

  He did not look at Finlay when he entered.

  He did not look at anyone.

  Finlay couldn't name it. Only felt it—the way a machine registers a fault before the gears shatter. Something in the architecture of Patriarch's frame. Something in the quality of the silence he was generating.

  He filed it and kept moving.

  Ravilon glanced at Remy as she entered. "You're late," he said. "Consider it, next time."

  Remy didn't break her stride. She didn't even look at him. Simply passed him and claimed her seat.

  Ravilon watched her do it. Then he looked back at his glass.

  And smiled—briefly, barely—at something that wasn't in the room.

  The reason for her lateness—Finlay—smiled and followed.

  He took the seat to her left, the farthest reach of the table from the head.

  Stillness descended over the hall.

  The feast spread before them was extraordinary: roasted meats glistening with rendered fat, glazed vegetables, bread still exhaling steam into the cold air. It sat on the obsidian wood like a foreign delegation from a warmer country, ignored by everyone.

  No one reached for anything.

  No one spoke.

  These gatherings were rare enough that the Scions were essentially strangers bound by a lethal lineage they hadn't chosen. Most of them it that way. The mandatory Family Dinner was a formality—a reminder that the Court existed, that it had a head, that the head had expectations. Everyone arrived, endured, and left.

  Under the sickly dance of the candles, the silence stretched between them like a thread pulled too tight.

  A single finger against the obsidian. Soft, rhythmic, carrying the weight of a gavel.

  Every gaze moved to the head of the table.

  To Father.

  "Yesterday, an Imperial envoy crossed our threshold."

  Ruden's voice was a weapon with the safety on—a terrifying calm. He didn't waste breath. He carved directly to the marrow.

  "A new Wasteland has emerged in the southern reaches, near the Elven Capital. The Palace delivered its verdict before first light."

  He let the silence work.

  "A Great One."

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  The words killed the room.

  A Great Wasteland. Not a regional crisis, not a military problem to be managed—a tectonic event. The kind that rewrote maps and ended dynasties.

  Faces darkened around the table.

  "The rank? Father, are they certain?"

  "Three hundred and seventy years..." Russell said, jaw tight. "Not since the Epoch of the Last Hero."

  "Just let the long-ears bleed for it." That was Rhea, watching her own blurred reflection in the polished obsidian without looking up. "Why bother?"

  "The Oracle—Father, what does the sanctuary say?"

  "The Oracle fell silent," Ruden continued, unmoved. "It provided only two Glyphs before it ceased."

  He raised one hand.

  He didn't cast a spell. He simply a seam in reality—the casual, absolute authority of a man who had long since stopped distinguishing between his will and the world's compliance. Two ragged marks ignited in the air above the table, glowing with viscous, ethereal light.

  The Glyphs hung there, a prophecy written in fire. The warmth of the feast felt suddenly further away.

  "The Emperor has spoken. An Expedition is being assembled to conquer the Great Wasteland. Every Constellation must field their Scions. Survival is expected."

  The weight of it settled behind a wall of refined indifference. The Expedition would ordinarily be a coveted prize: a chance to carve a name into the stars. But the Esterra stood on the precipice of the Solstice. None would deign to bleed their strength on a southern campaign.

  Ruden's gaze moved across his children. Slow. Inevitable.

  "One shall go."

  The silence that followed had teeth.

  Finlay did not participate in it. He was too busy with the ribs.

  Finlay didn’t even look up. Hunched over his plate, his white-knuckled grip on a bone the only thing connecting him to the room. He licked a smear of grease from his lip with an agonizingly loud

  After endless deprivation in a dystopian grave—his stomach a hollow pit, his mind haunted by the phantom taste of oil—the hunger had become a beast he could no longer cage. Even with his body restored, the starvation of his soul remained.

  Before long, however, the etiquette carved into his very sinews took hold, preventing him from behaving like the Ill-bred, ravenous barbarian he was:

  No loud slurps. No licking of greasy fingers. No cracking of bone between his teeth to suck out the marrow in front of the Patriarch.

  Finlay cut his steak slowly. Gracefully. With a surgical precision befitting a high-born son of the blade.

  He took his time, letting the flavor bloom.

  The meat was perfectly done. The sharp edge sank into the thick, seared cut without resistance, releasing a dark, savory nectar that smelled of oak-fire and peppery herbs. The fat had rendered into a soft, melting jelly that coated his tongue, providing a grounding warmth he hadn't felt in a lifetime.

  The snap of the honey-glazed roots and the richness of the red-wine reduction elevated the dish to the

  To a man who had tasted the ash of the future, this wasn't a meal. It was worship. The trauma, the stress, the lingering regret of the Night Boar he never got to eat—all of it dissolved into the juice and the salt.

  Once he had cleared his plate and felt the first tremors of satisfaction, Finlay shifted his focus to his siblings. They remained frozen in a heavy, silent confrontation. A collection of statuettes waiting for a command.

  He let his unfurl.

  A ripple through reality: the world realigned. One by one, crystalline Pieces snapped into existence above their heads.

  A dainty for Rhea—frivolous, mirrors-edged, the piece of polished hunger.

  A for Rudyard—quixotic and relentless, the piece that moved in ways others didn't anticipate.

  A for Raymond—unseen angles, patient reach, the piece that only struck when the world was looking away.

  For Russell—another , though this one's facets were jagged. Poised to strike, vulture-eyed for the opening.

  He moved to Ravilon.

  The stuttered.

  Not failed—not blank—but Like pressing a finger to a mirror and finding the surface yield. Something tried to resolve itself above his brother's head and couldn't commit: cycling through the shapes of every piece on the board, flickering, before settling into a form that had no name in any game Finlay knew.

  His had never done that before.

  He filed the anomaly in a drawer marked and shut it firmly. Later.

  He had walked through a sea of Pawns on the Estate grounds. Here, the true board was set: and pieces alike, each a lethal asset carved from the marrow of the world.

  His gaze found Remy. Faint pulse against his right elbow.

  Still a Queen. White. Pristine. Against the coarse brutality of her brothers she was the thing that gave the rest of it sense—the piece the whole board had been arranged around without anyone admitting it.

  The crooked pride moved through him again, warm and entirely irrational.

  Finlay turned back to his own plate, but there was nothing left. An immaculate, ceramic void. Not a single breadcrumb remained near him, not a stray drop of oil to mark his place. Beyond him, the neglected feast spread across the table, with the Scions too occupied by their silent confrontation to eat. The food sat there, still warm, a quiet, untouched tragedy.

  His stomach cramped.

  Then—without looking at him—Remy slid her plate across the obsidian. Toward him.

  The scrape of silver on black wood was the only sound in the hall.

  Her fingers claimed Russell’s portion. She slid that over, too. Then, another Scion's.

  When everything within her reach had migrated to his side of the table, her empty palms retreated into her sleeves. She returned to her stillness.

  No hesitation. No questions. Just a raw declaration:

  Finlay fell upon the feast.

  he thought with a greasy grin.

  The only thing that remained was the crude, unapologetic snap of bone and the relentless grind of his own chewing.

  "Speaking of which, where's Raherion?"

  One of the seats stood vacant. Had been since they arrived.

  Ravilon answered without looking up from his steaming tea. "Still on his Pilgrimage. But with Remy's return, he’ll catch her scent and slither out of whatever hole he's in. Forty-eight hours, at most."

  He turned the glass in his fingers once—a slow, idle revolution—then set it down.

  "Possibly less."

  "That," someone muttered, with enough bile to etch stone.

  "And Remy?" Russell barked. "She’s already slated for the Expedition. The Special Assignment Detachment. Let her serve."

  The room’s gaze snapped to her—collective, predatory, scouring for a crack in the porcelain.

  "She will go." Ruden's voice closed the question before it fully opened. "But as part of the Detachment."

  The Head of the Court had spoken. The only remaining question was of the others would win the Expedition slot.

  No one volunteered. Gazes moved between faces, everyone calculating, everyone biding.

  Finlay swallowed the last of his sister's portion.

  Set down his fork.

  "I'll go."

  And for the first time since he'd stepped through the Sorrow-Steel door—

  Every pair of eyes landed on him.