The journey across the desert hadn't taken as long as in the past. Maybe it was the flood experience that Lyra no longer needed to share. Roland was a relentless taskmaster. The twins griped about not getting breaks, but Rachel dismissed their complaints the same way she did lazy students.

  The dome came into view before Lyra was ready.

  Her father's aura was unmistakable to someone who had grown up feeling it. It was as if it wasn't even there. He never leaked power. The trick was that it had to be masked, not suppressed. It was faint, but always tuned to match the ambient energy around him.

  Usually, Tormund felt calm.

  This time, he felt frantic.

  A pit opened in Lyra's stomach as they drew closer.

  Her father had given her three things in life. The legacy she could never live down. The training she never quite fit into. And, most importantly, a childhood full of memories. Like the time she convinced him to play princess dress-up, or pretend he was a pony.

  Despite his regal bearing, the servants, the campaigns he was always leaving for… he had been a good father.

  She entered the stone coliseum where her mother used to take her to watch her father's duels. The spectacle was as grand as ever, but this time she didn't see him forcing some poor man to yield.

  She saw Dane standing over him.

  Her father was on his back in the sand, begging for a warrior's end.

  When Dane refused, Lyra let out the breath she had been holding.

  She hadn't realized she still cared this much.

  "Look at all that EXP just sitting there…" a man with long, curly hair said, dressed in full Legion attire.

  "Yeah," another voice answered. "Is the Demon really just gonna leave all of it behind?"

  The words hit Lyra like a punch to the gut.

  Almost as much as the announcer shouting over the boos and rising discontent. The crowd wanted spectacle. They wanted blood.

  They wanted her father dead.

  "Please sit down, folks," the announcer called, voice forced cheerful. "I'm sure the Demon will give us a fitting end for Tormund the Undefeated."

  "Guards, stop those men moving toward the rails."

  No one listened. The weak and the strong alike vaulted the barrier and flooded the battleground.

  "No!" Lyra screamed as the wave of bodies crashed over her father.

  Roland's hand settled on her shoulder, firm but gentle.

  "Don't go down there," he said. "You're needed with us."

  She didn't hear him. She was staring at where her father had been.

  Zeph, leader of the Beast Tide, stood there instead. Her father's head lay at his feet. When their eyes met, something like regret flickered across the birdman's features.

  Lyra didn't remember leaving the stands.

  She remembered Roland's hand on her shoulder. The pressure of it grounding, steady, like an anchor thrown into a storm.

  She remembered the cat twins at her sides, one on each arm, small claws hooked into her sleeves because she wasn't walking anymore.

  Her legs moved, but they weren't hers.

  The arena noise blurred into something distant and wrong, like sound underwater. Shouts echoed, but none of them meant anything. The world had narrowed to a tunnel of stone and shadow and the faint smell of blood that followed them like a stain.

  "Lyra," one of the twins said softly.

  She didn't answer.

  "Lyra," the other tried, a little louder. "This way."

  They steered her through a side passage, away from the chaos, away from the sand. She stumbled once, and they caught her without comment, without judgment, as if this was just another task that needed doing.

  She wasn't crying.

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  That scared her more than if she had been.

  Her father was dead.

  The words didn't land. They didn't stick. They floated somewhere outside her body, waiting for permission to hurt.

  As they moved, the corridor darkened, torchlight flickering along stone walls worn smooth by centuries of boots and blood. The air was cooler here. Still.

  And suddenly she was somewhere else.

  She was small again.

  Too small for armor. Too small for banners and speeches, and the weight of a name that swallowed rooms whole.

  Her father was sitting across from her, armor set aside, hair loose around his shoulders in a way she rarely saw. A cup of something warm sat between his hands, steam curling upward.

  "You listen to me," he said, voice low and serious in that way that always meant this mattered.

  She frowned at him, legs swinging where she sat on the edge of the table.

  "You're being weird."

  A corner of his mouth twitched. "Humor me."

  She sighed, dramatic and put-upon, but she nodded.

  "If I die," he said.

  She scowled instantly. "You're not going to die."

  He held her gaze, patient.

  "If I do," he repeated.

  She crossed her arms. "No one can beat you."

  "That's not the point."

  "It is to me."

  He leaned forward then, forearms on the table, eyes level with hers.

  "In my death," he said, carefully, "it will be your responsibility to lead the house."

  Her breath caught.

  "You'll know what to do," he said. "I love you."

  She shook her head hard enough that her hair whipped her cheeks.

  "But you are invincible."

  He smiled then. Not the smile he wore for crowds or officers.

  The real one.

  "Lyra."

  The present slammed back into her.

  Her name felt foreign in her ears.

  They were in a narrow hallway now, stone walls close enough that she could feel them at her sides. The cat twins had stopped walking. One of them had moved in front of her, blocking the path like a small, stubborn wall of fur and teeth.

  She blinked.

  Her vision wavered.

  "He's dead," she said suddenly.

  The words came out flat.

  Neither twin spoke.

  Something cracked in her chest.

  Her knees buckled, and this time she didn't catch herself. She folded inward, breath hitching sharply as if her lungs had forgotten how to work.

  Her hands clawed at the front of her tunic, fingers curling into fabric like she could rip the feeling out of herself if she tried hard enough.

  "I was supposed to..." Her voice broke. "He said I would know what to do."

  One of the twins crouched in front of her, tail flicking anxiously.

  Lyra laughed, a sharp, broken sound.

  "I told him he'd never die," she whispered. "I told him no one could beat him."

  Her throat closed. "And I was wrong."

  Lyra looked up.

  Dane stood at the far end of the hallway.

  He was leaning against the wall, as if the stone were the only thing keeping him upright. Blood streaked his side and soaked into the bandage wrapped too loosely around his leg. His head was bowed, shoulders trembling.

  He was crying. The sound was quiet. Lyra froze.

  She had just watched her father die.

  And somehow, seeing Dane like this hurt differently. Sharper.

  One of the twins inhaled sharply.

  Dane's head snapped up.

  Whatever was on his face vanished in an instant. The tears were gone. His back straightened. The mask slid into place so smoothly that it was terrifying.

  "Clay, I thought you were all gone," Dane said, voice steady.

  "It'll take more than an unhinged swordsman to put me in the grave. And I go by Roland, the boss told me I should change my name so I don't get noticed."

  They both laughed, and Lyra almost believed it. But she'd seen his shoulders shaking. She'd heard the sound.

  And she knew what it looked like when someone was hurt on the inside.

  The cat twins stepped aside, guiding her forward without asking.

  Lyra didn't know what she was supposed to say.

  She didn't know what she was supposed to feel.

  All she knew was that the world had taken everything from her in the span of a single breath…

  …and the man standing in front of her had refused to become another version of her father.

  Dane kept his forehead pressed to the stone long after the footsteps faded.

  The wall was cold. Solid. Real.

  He focused on that instead of the arena. Instead of the screams. Instead of the sound a man made when the world refused to end the way he'd planned.

  His breath hitched once, then again, and he hated that he couldn't stop it.

  He'd meant to kill Tormund.

  Not out of anger. Not even out of hate.

  Because that was what was expected: kill, level, kill, level. There were simple rules to live by, and that felt wrong. It would have been easy.

  Dane swallowed hard.

  His hands were shaking. He curled them into fists and pressed them against his thighs until the tremor dulled.

  Tormund's eyes haunted him. The way they'd flicked to the stands. The moment of understanding before the crowd moved.

  Dane had denied him the only thing he wanted, and then the world had done the rest.

  Guilt rose anyway, heavy and insistent.

  This is on you.

  The thought came sharp and immediate.

  If he hadn't hesitated. If he'd just finished it himself...

  No.

  He cut the thought off before it could finish.

  He hadn't pushed them over the rails. He hadn't whispered numbers into their ears. He hadn't taught them to measure worth in experience and blood.

  That was the world created by systems. That was Tormund's world consuming itself.

  He rolled his shoulders once, pain flaring immediately, grounding him in the present.

  Footsteps approached. They were quieter than most. Befitting an owl wolf hybrid.

  Dane didn't look up.

  "Congratulations," Silas said mildly. "You've managed to offend just about every power structure in the city at once."

  Dane lifted his head slowly.

  Silas stood a few paces away, hands folded behind his back, posture relaxed, his presence deliberate.

  "Say what you came to say," Dane replied.

  Silas smiled faintly.

  "You left that duel unfinished," he said. "You destabilized the arena. You turned a controlled spectacle into a feeding frenzy. Legion command will call it a failure. The Beast Tide will call it an omen. And the civilians will call it permission."

  He tilted his head.

  "You've changed the rules and think you can just step away."

  The air tightened.

  Stone creaked softly beneath Dane's boots.

  Silas noticed.

  "I'm not here to scold you," Silas continued. "I'm here to warn you. Choose your side wisely."

  "Leave," Dane said.

  Silas studied him for a long moment, calculation flickering behind his eyes. Then he inclined his head.

  "As you wish," he said. "Ascendant."

  He turned and walked away.

  Dane remained where he was, breathing slowly, thoughts finally quiet enough to settle.

  He hadn't been there for Chronowell. But he still had something left to do. A reason to keep pushing on.