Shadow Slave: Reimagining the Aftermath of The Third Nightmare

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Recap for Chapter 2 — An Exchange:

Rain met Sunny in front of his old house, instead of a convenience store (canon setting).

Sunny realised that all his friends no longer have a use for it and the government had seized it.

He told his sister he is moving to Bastion.

He secretly exchanged Rain's guardian — Soul Serpant returned to him and Happy went with her.

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A gentle breeze, cool and damp, rustled through the lakeside trees, caressing Lady Cassia's face as she made her way along the path skirting the great lake's edge.

Across the water, the iconic Bastion castle rose from the lake's centre — a grandiose and magnificent fortress of grey stone that seemed plucked from a fairy-tale. Its many towers were adorned with vermilion flags that fluttered majestically in the wind.

High above the tallest of those towers, a vast, tranquil floating island orbited calmly around the fortress with an enchanted flying ship currently moored to its ground. From its earth rose a great pagoda of pristine, creamed-coloured stone that was just beginning to catch the first golden rays of the sun.

The Citadel of Princess Nephis served as a silent, supporting counterpart to the colossal ancient fortress beneath it, complementing and aggrandising the ancient majesty of her father's Citadel.

In recent years, its princess and her warriors had been sent to defend remote human enclaves on countless occasions, their fame and renown growing with each victory. The Ivory Tower — once a tourist attraction — was slowly becoming a potent symbol of hope for all those besieged by Nightmare Creatures in King Anvil's domain.

However, it was more than a symbol for Cassie, it was home. Or to be precise, the well-appointed First Mate's cabin of the enchanted ship — Chain Breaker — was her home. Yet, her destination this morning lay far from it, at the end of an unfamiliar street, in search of a café cum Memory boutique.

Her Transcendence since her Third Nightmare had gifted her the terrifying power to read and alter memories. This ability had not gone unnoticed, and the high command of Clan Valor had issued two strict commands to Princess Nephis regarding her blind confidante.

The first was to ensure Lady Cassia's new-found power was kept as a military secret, its existence privy only to the highest echelon of Clan Valor and its vassal clans.

The second was that she needed to be at their immediate disposal for any interrogation or any critical, ad-hoc information gathering work that Valor required.

Such spontaneous requests were becoming more and more frequent — as spies, saboteurs, and dissidents from both Sword and Song Domains grew more and more active while the silent preparations for war rumbled on.

Thus, she had to formally step down as Princess Nephis's right-hand woman — a demanding position that had once required her to manage the daily operational needs of the Fire Keepers.

That mantle had now been passed to Master Shim, the healer — who was next in the chain of command anyway.

Back on the Forgotten Shore, he had been one of Gemma's Pathfinders.

He had also taken charge as the unofficial leader of The Fire Keeper during Cassie's Second Nightmare, and had led a cohort of Fire Keepers to challenge a nightmare seed before the Battle of the Black Skull, returning as a Master.

Given his impressive résumé, when Cassie announced that she would be moving to a new position shortly after returning from Antarctica, Shim was unanimously voted in to replace her.

Her new position was no less demanding, but it did offer her much more breathing room and free time than almost anyone else.

Now, Lady Cassia served as the left hand of Princess Nephis — one that moved in shadows, focusing on strategy, covert intelligence, and the discreet needs of their fledgling faction.

This clandestine visit was one such need, as Nephis required an independent war gear supplier for the coming insurrection — one utterly free from Anvil of Valor.

To Valor, a clan with a deep-seated martial and technological bias, archetypal of a kingdom descended from The War God, Lady Cassia was not considered a serious threat in her own right.

However, in the cold war preceding the inevitable conflict, information was the most valuable of assets, and her unique abilities were enough to earn her the respectable title of Seneschal.

After the Battle of Black Skull in Antarctica, a great political schism had fractured the Sword Domain.

Princess Morgan's failures there, compounded by her inability to dispose of the estranged son of Valor — Prince Mordret — stood in sharp contrast to Princess Nephis's Transcendence and her astounding feat of killing Saint Dire Fang as a mere Ascended, even with the help of another.

This contrast had profoundly altered King Anvil's view of his two daughters.

In the beginning, for her failures, Princess Morgan was quietly disfavoured. The king's disapproval was subtle but a constant one.

It was a veto on a key military appointment she had long championed.

It was a last-minute rejection of a pet project, its funding suddenly reallocated to Princess Nephis's Fire Keepers for "morale-boosting banners"

It was the deliberate provisioning of fewer resources than were reasonable, forcing her allies to make do with less while the allocated shipments were diverted elsewhere, usually to the Fire Keepers or one of Princess Nephis' loyalists.

Worse, he would assign Princess Nephis to judge the annual competition for radical Memories and Echoes designs — a public spectacle where Clan Valor's Forgemasters and apprentices alike vied for recognition — an honour that tradition and protocol demanded be reserved for Princess Morgan.

Or he would order the Elders to grant a priceless Memory to a Fire Keeper captain for a minor victory, while ignoring a major strategic success achieved by Morgan's own forces a week prior.

Perhaps the most blatant slight came during a military exercise in the Bastion's garrison square. From a high observation gallery in an adjoining tower, King Anvil stood beside Princess Nephis, not to observe the soldiers, but to stare past them, his gaze fixed on Princess Morgan with an icy disdain that was impossible for the assembled commanders to ignore.

This campaign of quiet humiliation was a slow-acting poison. It turned father against daughters and biological sister against adopted sister, carving perfidious fissures through the court that forced all the pillars of the Sword Domain — the Clan Elders and vassal lords and ladies — to choose sides in this silent, bitter war.

Conversely, for Princess Nephis, her Fire Keepers, and a few minor vassal clans who had shown her genuine warmth since the beginning of her adoption — they had found their status elevated immensely — placed just below the Clan Valor's Elders, venerated Forgemasters, distinguished military engineers, and the king's personal retinue & honour guards.

The Fire Keepers, a small band of fifty, were designated as an elite unit of Clan Valor after their return from Antarctica. They were given the privileges of equipping themselves with choice selections of Clan Valor's armouries, set aside for its vassals.

In return, however, they were expected to earn their keep — by being sent to some of the fiercest and most prestigious campaigns across the Sword Domain — earning glories and accolades over the years, in Changing Star's name.

What shocked Princess Morgan was not the cruelty itself — she, more than anyone, understood the necessity of a hard hand.

She understood punishment. She did not understand sabotage. 

Her father's disapproval was not the cold fire of a king chastising a flawed heir. It felt akin to the spiteful chipping of a rival.

When he stripped her of funding for a project, it felt less like a strategic reallocation and more like he was prying loose a piece of the very identity he had forged for her.

Every word of praise for Nephis was not an honour for her sister, but a personal taunt aimed directly at her.

This bewildering betrayal wounded her far more deeply than any physical trial. The princess raised for war found herself in a battle she couldn't comprehend, and the confusion quickly began to fester.

For Princess Nephis, the king's favour was a constant, low-grade hum of suspicion. She had lived a life where every kindness had a price, and this change in attitude, this seemingly superficial generosity terrified her.

Still, for her Fire Keepers' sake, she graciously accepted the Memories, the Echoes, and the accompanying resources — but spent nights with other Utility Aspect Fire Keepers examining each gift for a hidden enchantment or a deliberate weakness.

None were ever found, save for Anvil's Insignias branded upon them — the only enchantment being that they could not be turned against him.

She accepted the praise in court but watched the king's eyes, trying to see past the performance to the intent beneath.

Each gift, each word of praise, was a chess piece he placed on the board, and she could not yet see the checkmate he was planning.

It forced her to play a dual role — the grateful daughter in public, and the wary, calculating strategist in private — a cognitive dissonance that she knew she shouldn't complain about — but was utterly exhausting to maintain.

Despite Anvil's blatant favouritism towards her, she continued to maintain a lukewarm and formal relationship with him — which suited the king just fine.

But for her faction, this unexpected generosity was a poison of its own, a gilded cage that dulled their resolve.

How do you plot the downfall of a man who, just yesterday, had personally ordered a venerated Forgemaster — an Elder and a Spellsmith to boot — to oversee the fitting of your lieutenant with a masterwork vambrace?

What stirs in you when the king commands a grand parade in your honour — after a brutal campaign — forcing Clan Valor's Elders to sing your praises declaring the Fire Keepers as "the true sons and daughters of Valor" before the watching realm?

And how do you find the heart to sharpen a blade against a king who grants your followers not just spoils, but land, security, favourable tax rates, and a future they never dared dream of in the Sword Domain?

To Nephis, perhaps this may be the true genius of his favour — a form of psychological warfare — making their planned betrayal felt not just treacherous, but deeply dishonourable.

Every gift was a golden chain, every word of praise was a stone weighing down their conscience. Forcing Cassie, Shim, and her to exhaust themselves using every trick in the book over the years — to ensure their subordinates' loyalty would not waver come the time to strike.

Once, when Nephis had finally gathered the courage to ask his father in private about his change in attitude, he had merely grunted brusquely in reply.

His attention fixed on the glowing billet of steel on his anvil. He did not even pause his hammerings, forcing her to raise her voice over the ringing blows.

Finally, he stopped, but only to dip the steel in the quench, hissing steam momentarily obscuring his face.

Through the vapour, he dismissed her. "Do not bother me with worthless questions. I am forging a sword."

The political schism was so profound because it inverted years of established order.

For years, Princess Nephis and her Fire Keepers were little more than gutter-born outcasts. As followers of a fallen royalty's daughter, they were openly despised and barely tolerated.

To see them now, being honoured in the halls of power, was to see wolves at the king's table.

On the other hand, Princess Morgan had always been the heart of Bastion's court.

Raised as a true war princess, she had been known for her own brand of casual cruelty — a sharp word that cut a courtier to the quick, a brutal training regimen that weeded out the weak. She was her father's daughter, forged in his image.

Or so everyone believed.

Quietly, two major factions formed around both princesses, born of loyalty or of opportunism, while a third neutral bloc of vassal clans simply tried to stay out of the line of fire.

The Sword Domain vassal clans, ever attuned to the scent of power and opportunism, reacted with the swift, brutal pragmatism of survivors.

Lords and ladies who had once allowed their men and women to spit on the ground the Fire Keepers walked on now sent them casks of their finest wine to curry their favour.

When her Fire Keepers travelled, city gates were held open past curfew, and the best suites in every inn were suddenly "unavailable" to other travellers.

Local lords and ladies would insist on hosting lavish banquets in their honour, feasts that were once reserved only for the King's inner circle.

Supplicants who had previously looked through Princess Nephis as if she were made of glass now bowed low, their eyes full of feigned reverence, eager to catch her eye.

They saw the king's favour not as a sign of love or justice, but as a declaration of who could bestow fortune or consign a house to obscurity.

Yesterday's pariah was today's rising star, and their loyalty, as always, was for sale to the highest bidder.

Those who had once hitched their wagon to Princess Morgan now found themselves in an awkward position, their overtures suddenly clumsy and their praises ringing hollow.

For those vassal clans who wished to maintain neutrality, it was an exhausting performance in itself.

Vassal lords and ladies sent carefully equivalent gifts to both Princess Morgan and Princess Nephis on feast days.

Their emissaries learned to speak in pleasantries and hypotheticals, their reports to the King meticulously scrubbed of any opinion.

When a captain from Princess Morgan's faction and a Fire Keeper got into a tavern brawl, the local lord refused to investigate who started it and sent compensation to both princesses with identical letters of apology.

They were wary of the shifting tensions and were walking a razor's edge, knowing that backing the wrong daughter could mean the end of their line.

Having watched both the king and his biological daughter grow up, many in the inner circle were deeply conflicted in their loyalties. Amongst the Elders, only a quiet few harboured secret satisfaction, a touch of schadenfreude, at Morgan's downfall. The rest, whether they shared a warm bond with Morgan or found her less than endearing due to her past as a ruthless war princess, still saw the king's harsh treatment of her and blatant favoritism towards his adopted daughter as a grave error.

They had watched their king raise Princess Morgan to be a blade, celebrating her sharpness and her unyielding will. To now see him actively trying to blunt her edge and undermine her was incomprehensible.

It was like watching a master blacksmith spend a lifetime forging a legendary sword, only to then take a common hammer, trying to shatter it.

In due time, they settled on a secret agreement, a pact born of shared anxiety.

The consensus was to treat Princess Nephis with neutral courtesy, laced with the occasional favours befitting of a king's adopted daughter and her tight-knit elite group.

In practice, this meant a polite but distant nod in the corridors — never a warm smile.

It meant answering her direct questions with precise, clipped answers, offering no additional conversation.

It meant that if she attended a feast, they would toast her health along with all the others, but their eyes would be fixed on their goblets, their voices carefully monotone.

Each interaction was a tightrope walk, a performance of respect without demonstrating allegiance.

Predictably, they knew such a glaring political drama would not go unnoticed by the spies of Song — and it had not.

To Ki Song, her daughters, and her spymasters, this was not a mere family squabble, but a self-inflicted wound they could gleefully salt.

And Cassie had a front-row seat to the unfolding chaos.

As Clan Valor's Seneschal, Lady Cassia was now a key part of Valor's larger intelligence apparatus — a position that was both officially sanctioned and marked by intricate political nuance.

She made no effort to hide her allegiance to Princess Nephis, but her unique talents offered a living, breathing alternative to the priceless Memories capable of similar feats — artefacts too rare and jealously guarded to be used on anything but the most dire of threats.

However, she was not alone in her craft as the Sword Domain possessed many practitioners of Utility Aspect, leading to a wary but professional collaboration of differing loyalties — an elite corp of specialists, drawn directly from Clan Valor or its many vassal clans.

This clandestine roster included diviners, memory and dream manipulators, illusionists, forensic investigators, truth-seers, interrogators, cryptologists, Memories-lockpicker, ward-breakers, breaching specialists, shapeshifters, empaths, somnambulists, torturers, and many other rare Utility Aspect holders.

She and her colleagues were often assigned to joint operations, where their teamwork was a fragile truce that could either blossom into true camaraderie or devolved into reluctant, begrudging professionalism — all depending on the day.

The Queen of Worms' directive was simple. "Feed the fire, not the flames."

This meant their agents embedded in the Sword Domain were not to start rebellions, but to subtly amplify the existing discord.

Once, she had personally sifted through the terrified memories of a young quartermaster loyal to Princess Morgan's faction — a man accused of deliberately misrouting supplies meant for Fire Keepers. He hadn't been a traitor, but a pawn. Cassie had watched the memory of a shadowy figure in a tavern corner, feeding the boy lies about Nephis's greed and stoking his resentment until a small act of protest felt like righteous rebellion. The manipulator's face belonged to no known member of the Sword Domain.

On another occasion, a rumour was started in exclusive establishments and mundane taverns alike — that the king planned to legitimise Nephis as his heir — ensuring it reached the ears of the king's inner circle. The inquiry, headed by an Elder who volunteered, took Cassie and her colleagues months of painstaking investigation to trace the origin to a group of Song saboteurs. The culprits had long since vanished, but the damage was done — for a rumour, once spoken, could not be truly unsaid.

Or they would strike at logistics by forging a requisition order using a near-perfect copy of a seal from a clan loyal to Princess Morgan to divert a shipment of supplies. When the shipment inevitably went missing, the blame fell squarely on Princess Morgan's desperate faction, painting them as thieves and further proving their untrustworthiness in everyone's eyes — until Cassie and her colleagues' interrogation of the caravan master revealed the memory of the forged document, and the face of the woman who gave it to him — another ghost loyal to the Song.

Ki Song's goal was to make reconciliation impossible — to turn the cracks in the House of Valor into unbridgeable chasms.

Yet, these damning incidents never swayed Anvil. The Valor Elders' advice, feverishly offered behind closed doors, was always dismissed, his own inscrutable purpose hidden behind a wall of cold silence.

Eventually, their repeated attempts were silenced forever when one day, an infamous Saint known for his wry humour — believing a carefully aimed barb of humour could succeed where sober counsel had failed, deployed his masterpiece — a joke he had polished for weeks about the folly of a master smith who praises the keen edge of a captured foreign blade while overlooking the proven strength of the heirloom sword he forged with his own hands.

The king took the analogy as a direct challenge to his judgment, his face hardening as he turned Saint Jest's clumsy metaphor into Princess Morgan's ensuing grim reality.

The next day, Anvil abandoned all subtlety and made the shocking order of condemning his own biological daughter, in front of a royal audience of Clan Valor and its vassal clans — ordering Morgan to redeem herself in True Bastion's forest by challenging a Nightmare Seed there.

It was a suicide order, as the forest of True Bastion was a Death Zone.

A crushing stillness fell over the throne room as the tangible weight of his Sovereign's Will forbade any word of protest, a pressure so intense that it was almost visible to all present.

Saint Not So Funny Anymore looked as though he had been turned to stone, his face a mask of horror. The rest of The Elders wildly differed in their reactions, but all were at a loss for words — their silence, a testament to their powerlessness.

Even Nephis and her Fire Keepers, who stood to gain the most, were stunned into inaction — the sheer brutality of the decree sucking the air from their lungs.

This was the first time in her adulthood, in front of an audience, Morgan displayed a crack in her composure.

"Fa … Fath …" The word fractured on her tongue.

"Da … Daddy …" she struggled to whispered, the name a raw plea from a childhood she thought long buried.

Hot and traitorous tears welled, rolling down her cheeks and blurring the image of the man on the throne. "Please ... the forest … True Bastion ... alone ... that is a death sentence … What cri … crime … have I done to deserve this?"

"Crime?" Anvil's grunt was amplified by a fresh exertion of his Sovereign's Will — even those in Nephis's faction who might have felt a flicker of triumph dared not celebrate.

His voice a low rumble.

"There is no crime. There is only failure. You failed in Antarctica. You failed to dispose of Mordret, despite every resource I provided you. The House of Valor does not reward failures. It scours it away."

It was then that hope died in Morgan's eyes, replaced by a dawning, absolute horror.

'I am your blood … Your daughter …' The thought — a silent scream.

But the dismissal was absolute.

A cold certainty settled in her soul.

This was the same man who had ordered her to hunt down and kill her own brother. Of course he too would not hesitate to discard a daughter.

She had once been a faithful weapon in his hand against Mordret — and now, having failed — she was simply a broken one in his eyes.

She was not a daughter being disciplined, she was a faulty tool being sent back to the forge, with no guarantee of survival.

After the royal audience, hushed whispers about Princess Morgan's fate and Princess Nephis's indisputable ascension filled the castle's halls.

Behind the king's back, the faction loyal to Princess Morgan worked frantically to control the fallout, but a decree so public and brutal could not be contained.

In the days that followed, a pervasive fear reshaped the castle's corridors. It showed in the averted eyes when Princess Morgan passed.

Servants would suddenly kneel to scrub an invisible stain from the floorboard or find a vase that needed rearranging with meticulous care.

Nobles would abruptly halt to admire a tapestry as if it held the secrets of the world or launch into a hushed, intense debate about the quality of the ceiling's stonework.

All to avoid acknowledging her presence.

Haunted by his blunder, Saint Not So Funny Anymore would launch into clumsy, effusive praise of Princess Morgan's minor accomplishments at every given opportunity. His defences were so clownish it only magnified the king's stony silence, a constant, grim reminder of his failure.

Before her departure, many of the guilt-stricken nobles sought her out in secret — their offerings were not gifts of confidence but acts of frantic atonement.

An old general pressed a tactical Memory into her hand, whispering, "Forgive an old man's cowardice." without meeting her gaze.

A matron who had known her since birth offered an Echo of unparalleled defensive power, her own hand trembling. "May this guard you better than ... we have" she said, her voice cracking on the last word.

The pattern repeated itself and more — a silent parade of shames and apologies.

Some, driven by a deeper desperation, dared to share forbidden knowledge — secrets that Warden and Anvil had ordered never to be uttered again — secrets held by living liabilities, prominent members too indispensable to execute — who were instead sworn to take the knowledge to their graves. Consequences be damned!

Each gift, each whisper, was an unspoken apology, a desperate attempt to buy solace for a betrayal they were allowing to happen.

This quiet support, and the secrets she now held — offered a small comfort in the knowledge that despite her ever thinning faction, that some loyalty remained.

Despite that, Princess Morgan's position did not change even after she returned two years later as a Saint.

She had done the impossible by challenging a Third Nightmare alone. 

It was a feat worthy of legend, worthy to be recorded in the annals of history. 

Now, she returned, coming not for praise, but for acknowledgement.

"I have returned," she stated, her voice calm and resonant with the power of her new rank, the air around her humming with glints of her newfound energy.

"As you commanded. A Saint."

The king coldly acknowledged her return, his tone flat, as if commenting on a satisfactory piece of smithing.

"Good," he said, before informing her, "I have already sent words to the House of Night proposing a marriage. The alliance would benefit us. You will be a suitable bride for one of their sons."

Morgan was no stranger to political marriage, she was royalty, it was an inevitability she and others of her station had been groomed for all their lives.

However, the timing left a sour taste in her mouth, it was a galling insult.

She had returned a legend, expecting, if not an apology, then at least a reckoning. Instead, she was being appraised and peddled like a prize to be bartered.

This was not a reward. It was the next stage of her disposal.

The king's decision sent another shockwave throughout the inner halls of Bastion and Ravenheart.

Even his enemy, Ki Song and her daughters, who had eyes and ears in the throne room, were left flabbergasted.

They had long considered Morgan a dangerous thorn, a ruthless war dog to be feared and respected. But to see her so utterly devalued by her own father, to be forged into a legendary weapon only to be offered up as a common bartering chip, struck a different chord.

In her private court, they watched the events unfold through a grandiose scrying mirror — an Echo bounded to the eye of a senior spy — its polished surface shimmering with stolen sights and sounds.

A rare look of pity crossed Ki Song's face.

She turned to her own daughters.

"Men like him," she said, her voice quiet but sharp as glass, "see us only as swords or wombs. Remember this. Love is a currency they are too poor to afford. Never let it determine your worth."

For a brief moment, Morgan was not the enemy. She was just another daughter being sacrificed on the altar of her father's ambition, a sight that any mother with daughters of her own could not witness without a flicker of chilling solidarity.

When Morgan confronted him privately in his smithy, Anvil was hammering at his anvil, the mighty clangs of his work echoing through the hall.

He finished a sequence of blows before plunging the glowing metal into a quench, the violent hiss filling the silence. He turned, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of a leather-gloved hand.

Anvil spared her a look as she barged in, his eyes analytical, assessing her as he would a new sword.

"A marriage?" she asked, her voice dangerously level. "I return a Saint from a Death Zone, and my reward is to be traded like livestock?"

"It is a good trade," Anvil stated, turning from her to pick up a different blade, running a thumb along its edge.

"The House of Night will be a powerful ally for the upcoming war. Your Ascension makes you a worthy prize."

"A prize," she repeated, the word tasting like ash. "Not a daughter."

He finally turned to the whetstone, the rhythmic, grating scrape of steel on stone filling the air. It was a sound of sharpening, but also of wearing away.

"The House of Valor needs strong swords, not sentimental daughters. You will do your duty."

"I see." she uttered. These two words were colder than the winter winds at the snowy caps of the Hollow Mountains.

There were no more questions.

There was no confusion left.

She finally understood.

In her father's eyes, she was not a daughter to be cherished, but a tool to be used, reforged, and now, sold away.

She gave him a slight, mocking bow, turned on her heel, and walked away.

She left him to the fire and steel he so clearly loved more than her, the sound of the whetstone scraping away the last of her filial devotion.

Throughout this new ordeal, no one dared approach the king to ask him to reconsider.

Instead, now burdened with even more guilt, those responsible for her predicament offered Princess Morgan any form of support they could, hoping to secure her a chance at a comfortable and happy marriage.

A Song's wartime slur, one first seeded years ago by a remarkably clumsy Song saboteur — whose efforts had been laughed at even by his own side, now found a grim new audience in the hushed whispers of taverns, marketplaces, and noble keeps alike.

The question was the same everywhere.

What father sends his daughter to her death and when she accomplishes the impossible, treats her victory not as a triumph, but as an increase in her bargaining price?

The outlandish accusation of him being a Skinwalker no longer seemed impossible.

After all, a Skinwalker impersonating their king was far easier to fathom than their king becoming a monster.

In times of such profound uncertainty, all eyes in Bastion, reluctantly turned to The House of Night, awaiting its reply.

The House of Night deliberated on the marriage proposal for weeks before nominating Saint Aether as a potential groom for Princess Morgan.

The move left Bastion's court deeply unsettled, caught between interpreting it as genius or insult.

It was a calculated political decision. After all, The House of Night had no desire to be drawn into Clan Valor's family drama and had wished to maintain neutrality in the coming war.

Nominating Saint Aether, a known playboy, was an unvoiced rejection, dooming the pre-marital discussions before they even began.

Morgan knew Aether well. Back when she held her father's favour, her spies had kept tabs on every person of importance.

The promising champion of the House of Night was famous for his romantic exploits, leaving a legendary trail of spurned lovers and scandalous rumours in his wake.

He was the subject of many a B-rated drama in the waking world — his vulnerability to honey-traps from other factions landing him in frequent trouble.

If not for his raw promise, he would have been harshly disciplined ages ago. Instead, the leaders of his clan treated his many indiscretions with a strained and frustrated indulgence — offering little more than token censures.

Upper-class etiquette demanded that during talks of a potential marriage, both parties were expected to bare their cards, save for their most personally guarded secrets — such as one's Flaw.

Throughout the ordeal, both parties would spare no expense on truth-telling enchantments or interrogators who possessed Aspects that could detect lies.

After all, Cassie knew the sterile theatre of political marriages intimately — she had been attending several such discussions. Her presence was requested many times by families who maintained close ties with Princess Nephis — either from old loyalties or quiet opportunism.

They solicited her services to peer through the veils of polite deception and to ensure their children weren't being sold a gilded lie.

In these opulent rooms, her position afforded her a unique authority. As Valor's valued advisor and Nephis's closest confidante — her fidus Achates — she was granted a privilege unheard of for most specialists — the right to walk away with her memories intact.

The old guard and clans loyal to Princess Morgan's faction would never trust her with such secrets, but Princess Nephis's allies saw her as an extension of the rising star they had hitched their wagons to.

Privately, Lady Cassia found the practice deeply unpalatable.

This cold transaction of power and bloodlines was a language utterly alien to her, a dialect of the nobility she had never learned.

Despite her current standing, she was raised middle-class and her youth was spent not amongst the very nobles she now called peers, learning the grim arithmetic of dynastic duty.

Instead, her teenage years had been filled with cheap, tear-jerking romance dramas — entertainment meant for the masses, the kind devoured by common folks.

These were stories of chance encounters and defiant love, stories of heartbreaking sacrifices and happily-ever-afters earned with tears, as well as stories of the simple, foolish bargains of the heart.

From them, she had sincerely internalised and truely believed a union should be built on genuine affection, not on the cold calculus of strengthening one's power

She kept this opinion locked away though, lest she suffered mockery from her peers. It was a silent, personal rebellion against the world she now inhabited.

Ironically, she herself was a frequent subject of these very calculations.

As one of the most beautiful Saints in the Sword Domain — with a quiet, arresting grace that turned heads in court — her name was often mentioned in proposals sent to Princess Nephis.

Ambitious patriarchs and matriarchs, aiming to seek an alliance with the highly favoured Fire Keepers, would petition Princess Nephis for the hand of her blind Seneschal.

But she always, always, was the second choice.

In the martial society of Valor, where strength and prestige were measured in sword arms, strategic genius, or military engineering. A blind seer, no matter how powerful her Aspect, was seen as a fragile treasure rather than a cornerstone for a powerful house.

Lady Cassia was an exquisite asset, yes, but not a warrior.

And so, the pattern became sickeningly familiar.

A noble house would first approach Princess Nephis — offering their finest son, and sometimes even their daughter — for her hand.

And when Nephis, with her unfailingly polite but firm refusals, turned them down, they would pivot.

The very next day, a revised proposal would arrive, this time asking for the honour of an alliance with her closest friend.

She loved Nephis like a sister, fiercely and loyally. Yet, every time this happened, she couldn't suppress a complicated and bitter pang in her heart.

It wasn't indignation, not truly, because Nephis had done nothing wrong.

It wasn't a single emotion, but a tangled knot of fierce loyalty, burning shame, and the cold, sharp sting of envy.

Deeper still was a quiet, corrosive resentment for The Sword Domain itself — a culture that measured her worth only as a secondary objective

She would look at Nephis — truly look, with the unique senses that her blindness had sharpened — and see what all the suitors saw — the perfect union of blade and bloodline.

Nephis possessed not just staggering beauty, but the brawn of a peerless warrior and her noble heritage of Immortal Flame and Clan Valor — she was royalty before and after her adoption.

Her preternaturally white hair, a mark of the Spell, only added to her exotic allure, suggesting that the Spell — now woven into the very bedrock of the civilised world — seemed to favour its Changing Star.

She was the sun, drawing every orbit. Cassie, for all her power and beauty, was merely a moon, shining with reflected light.

Nephis, in her own way, tried to shield her from it. She would present the proposals with careful omissions, speaking of a "prominent family who deeply admires our faction" never mentioning their initial, failed bid for her own hand.

But Cassie always knew.

She was too perceptive, too attuned to the subtle shifts in tone, the hesitations, the whispers she overheard from servants and courtiers. She would piece together the truth from the fragments Nephis tried to hide, and the knowledge was a constant, dull ache.

It was the sting of being an afterthought, the humiliation of knowing you were the contingency plan.

And as much as she loved her friend and saviour, that rebellious knowledge carved out a tiny, shadowed space in her heart.

The memory of the Forgotten Shore was the anchor of her devotion, as it was Nephis — a fierce, half-starved girl herself, who had stood over the naked, helpless, blind teenager Cassie had been — offering Cassie her armour and choosing to face the horrors of the Shore unprotected so that the trembling, defenceless seer would not.

It was Nephis who had promised they would endure a hostile and unfamiliar land.

It was the promise, whispered against the monstrous sounds of the cruel waves, that they would survive.

How then, could resentment find purchase in a heart so completely owned by gratitude?

This guilt only made the pain worse.

No one likes being the second choice, after all.

And being always considered the second choice next to someone she cherished, Cassie was slowly beginning to fear, that it was a quiet poison for which there was no antidote.

For Princess Morgan, it came as no surprise when Saint Aether rejected the proposal mid-way during one of the meetings of the two families.

It wasn't hard to guess why. She always wore specially enchanted gloves, and a few discreet reports from House of Night spies operating undercover in the Sword Domain had already had their suspicion about her Flaw — that her touch caused objects to become fragile and easily damaged.

Any prospect of physical intimacy was therefore, impossible. Besides, as one of the most promising young Saints of the House of Night, he had a wealth of other, less complicated, partners to choose from.

Saint Aether's rejection was a wound far deeper than any political setback. It was a public verdict on her womanhood, delivered with the casual cruelty of a bored socialite.

It confirmed the hushed whispers now circulating freely through the court — that the great War Princess was, in some fundamental, intimate way, flawed.

Unworthy.

The brief, desperate hope that marriage might offer a silver lining to her constant disgrace was extinguished, leaving only the bitter sting of humiliation.

Her Flaw, which she had once amusingly considered a boon — a hidden dagger she wielded with pride, had finally turned in her hand. She had been forged to be a sword, and now she was learning the bitter irony that even the finest blade can cut its own wielder.

With no other avenue to turn to, she obediently resumed her duties as the Sword Princess and Valor's military strategist, albeit with a hollowed-out enthusiasm — with less respect, less authority, less favour, less support, and less autonomy.

She had no choice.

After all, she realised she knew no other way to live.

And so she silently suffered.

Enduring not only her father's unyielding contempt but also the relentless opportunism of her sister — who, over the years, slowly built the courage to take every chance to undermine and humiliate her — a galling reversal of the roles they had once played — an irony she was in no position to appreciate.

This uneasy equilibrium, this fractured political landscape in the halls of power in Bastion, held for a time. It ended weeks ago, as Princess Morgan was ordered by her father to travel alone to meet the Hermit Shadow Saint of Godgrave.

The Lord of Shadows was an unknown player who had recently appeared on the chessboard — a mysterious figure who had materialised in the Death Zone between the Sword and Song Domains.

Morgan's mission was to secure his allegiance, after determining he was not a pawn of Asterion. If he had truly survived there alone, he was immensely powerful. It came to no surprise that both Domains now coveted his loyalty, their eyes were already set on Godgrave long ago as the next theatre of war after Antarctica.

It was implicitly understood what this mission entailed. She was to survive another Death Zone and, should the Lord of Shadow find her to his fancy, offer herself to him.

The loyalty of those who had watched her grew up finally began to show signs of fracture, unable to fathom what possessed the king to so callously offer his daughter to an unknown, monstrous power.

However, just a week ago, everything changed with a single, sealed dispatch.

It came from Valor's spies embedded in Song Domain, carrying shocking news of her estranged brother, Mordret.

The latest reports confirmed that the hermit Saint had managed to defeat a vessel of that monster — elevating the mysterious Saint's reputation to legendary status in everyone's eyes.

It now seemed clear to all — that the last scion of the missing Shadow God's lineage belonged to him — after all, who else was fit to challenge one of the War God's own?

To Anvil, this news also revealed a critical move by his rival. The decision by Ki Song to send Mordret — his estranged boy, her adopted son — to entice the Lord of Shadow did not go unnoticed by him.

For all her philosophical pronouncements on the nature of conflict — believing that if someone is forced to fight, they have already lost — it seemed Ki Song's maternal instinct trumped her principles.

Sending her precious daughters to an unknown entity was a line she would not cross — she would betray her own philosophy before risking her sweet daughters.

After the news broke, Anvil spent days in solitary contemplation before making his decision.

Shortly thereafter, before his royal court, he made a public mockery of the queen, knowing full well that her spies and her thralls — and by extension her — will be there to witness it.

Once his tirade of questioning her determination was over, he made a new order — one to prove that he possessed a stronger will than her.

Instead of sending Morgan alone — Nephis, now the darling princess of the Sword Domain's public and his apparent favourite — was to accompany her.

Both Sword Sisters were now tasked with braving the Death Zone, with the goal of having one of them unite the Shadow God's lineage with the War God's.

This was a sudden, terrifying turn of fortune for Nephis.

And unintendedly made Morgan secretly despised her more, although she won't show it, because she did not want to provoke her sister to find more excuses to antagonise her — and more importantly, she now had competition.

The failed marriage debacle had shattered her confidence, and so the initial directive to meet the Lord of Shadow had filled her with dread, not joy.

To a strategist, an unknown variable of this magnitude was anathema.

Her primary concern had been pragmatic — if this Lord of Shadows was Asterion's pawn, the mission was not a diplomatic overture but yet another suicide mission, given the Dreamspawn's terrifying power.

Beyond that lay a more personal fear — that this mysterious saint might be a cruel tyrant, eager to exploit her precarious position and desperation — something she was intimately — and ironically — familiar with, given that she herself had often taken advantage of others.

Despite that, she managed to entertain a dangerous sliver of hope, lodged in her heart — because the fragmented reports painted a picture not of a monster — or at least, not a simple one.

For what monster, after all, would guide lost Sleepers back to civilisation throughout their winter solstice journey — even while terrifying them along the way?

A Saint, perhaps on the verge of Sovereignty — not just in Rank, but in spirit — the kind that bows to no throne, no god, no fate.

The sheer audacity of his Citadel's location only raised his worth in her eyes. In him, she saw, with bated breath, hoping — not another jailor, but the faint possibility of an equal — an alliance forged in strength, not a transaction brokered by her father's contempt.

Still, an unknown variable remained a terrifying prospect.

For all she knew, he might laugh at her face before killing her for the mere suggestion of a union.

But everything changed when the news arrived that The Lord of Shadow had defeated her brother — the same brother who had defeated her, mocked her and humiliated her resolve during the Battle of Black Skull — the same Mortred that even her father, a Supreme, struggled to keep a tight rein on.

A giddy, possessive thrill shot through her as she vicariously rejoiced his victory.

Perhaps this Lord of Shadow may hold more promises than the debauchee Saint - that manchild Aether.

She immediately forgot her previous aversion to The Lord of Shadow and her Flaw — subconsciously hoping that a man this powerful would value her prowess over superficial sexual compatibility.

The hardened war princess would find herself playing out potential conversations in her mind as she prepared for her travel, childishly fantasising a future in his Shadow Clan.

She replayed and rehearsed how she would best present her talents, her resources, her accomplishments and most importantly — her solitary triumph in True Bastion — as a dowry of strength, proving herself a worthy consort for the Lord of Shadow.

And now, her sister — through no fault of her own, not really — was a direct threat to the only future Morgan had ever dared to actually want.

For a fleeting, venomous moment, she contemplated sabotage.

Anything could happen in a Death Zone, after all.

An accident.

A tragic misstep.

But she dismissed the thought.

A battle between two Saints with the Aspect of the Sun God and War God would be a ruinous affair.

Even if she won, she would not emerge unscathed, and ending up wounded and alone in a Death Zone was its own form of death sentence.

No, she would have to win this contest on its own terms.

For Nephis, however, the king's amended decree was a masterwork of sabotage — even if unintended — throwing a wrench in her planned insurrection.

Her plans were proceeding smoothly — too smooth — as she had taken the opportunity to use Anvil's favouritism to spread her nascent Domains to many believers while undermining her enemies.

But an alliance, a marriage, to a wild card Saint would chain her to an unknown quantity, complicating every step of her rebellion.

Was this hermit a potential ally she would be forced to betray?

Or was he another of Anvil's traps, designed to expose her true intentions?

Would he be loyal to her, or to the Sovereign who granted her to him?

Proximity to a husband would make concealing her treacherous plans nearly impossible.

This mission felt like being thrown into a locked arena with a beast, with no way of knowing whose side the beast was truly on.

Trusting him was a risk.

Alienating him was a risk.

The path forward had suddenly become a swamp of impossible choices.

Nephis rarely asked her adopted father to "spoil" her, unless necessary, given the awkward, tenuous relationship between them. But this is one of those rare moments where she begged her father to reconsider.

Everyone held their breath during the ordeal, unsure on how to react.

Anvil did not raise his voice.

He lowered it.

A dangerous smile curled on his regal countenance that was more terrifying than any shout.

His voice was soft, a chilling counterpoint to the pressure that began to bleed into the room.

"Reconsider?" he murmured, the word a silken threat.

"Dearest daughter, I have given you everything.

Status, power, and purpose.

And now, on this one simple task, you plead?"

He leaned forward, rising slow from his throne with practiced intimidation, his eyes piercing into the petrified princess.

"On a task any other daughters of Valor would seize as an honour?

Perhaps the whispers are true.

Perhaps the rot of your fallen house runs too deep.

You were born a royalty, but did Broken Sword and Smile of Heaven allow you to stuff your head with the dreadful romance of mundanes' daughters?

Taught you to covet for creature comforts?

Or were the lessons of your birth so steeped in sentiment that you have forgotten a throne is forged from will, not from wishes?"

It was a display of monarchical fury that would be recounted in hushed tones for generations.

He straightened to his full, imposing height as his Sovereign's Will descended upon the throne room — not as a wave, but as a suffocating pressure that carried the weight of a mountain.

Space itself seemed to stutter.

The sharp lines of the throne room's architecture blurred.

Motes of impossible colour danced in the air.

The aberrant air grew thick. Tasting of burnt steel and hot iron.

The world did not break, it flickered — as though reality itself were a fragile tapestry whose threads were being violently pulled taut by the King's fury. 

Mundane courtiers collapsed, their faces pale as they gasped for breath that would not come. Some wept, fainted, vomited, or were seized by panic attacks.

The stronger Awakened — the knights and council members — fared little better, forced to one or both knees as they fought to salvage some shred of dignity, unlike the courtiers.

Only those who had achieved Sainthood remained standing, and only through sheer force of will.

Their knuckles turned white as they gripped the hilt of their weapons searching for some small, solid semblance of comfort, their attunement to the world forcefully suppressed, their knees trembling, sweat beading on their brows as they fought against the instinct to embarass themselves.

It was a Will that didn't just command — it sought to dissolve one's essence, to unspool the souls of those who defied it.

And into this maelstrom of unravelling reality, his voice cut through the shared torture, a quiet venom that was now the most solid thing in the room.

"Do not mistake my generosity for weakness, princess.

You will go. The two of you, and no one else.

Your little band of Fire Keepers stays here, under my watch.

Let's consider them ... motivation."

He let that sink in, the silence stretching for a long moment. He did not continue until he saw the flicker of comprehension — and horror — in Nephis' eyes.

"Seduce him. Subjugate him. Or kill him.

The means are of no consequence to me. Your success, however, does.

Failure is not an option I will entertain.

And don't you two dare return until the task is done.

Now, remove yourselves from my sight."

Prior to the present time, the fractured political landscape of The Sword Domain had settled into a workable, if tense, equilibrium.

All parties — Anvil, his inner council, Morgan's faction, Nephis's faction, the neutral bloc of vassal clans, the secret cells loyal to the Song Domain, the House of Night, or the waking world's government — had over the years, slowly and steadily found their place on the board.

It could not last.

The epoch-making debut of the enigmatic Hermit Saint of Godgrave was the unbalancing weight dropped upon the world's political scales.

The gears of fate, rusted by years of uneasy peace, finally ground into motion — with a shudder that promised to shake the foundations of the world.