The palanquin glided like a floating star shard through Saelthun's winding upper ring, past domed villas and winding silk paths glittering with moonlight. Behind Lady Enira, her guards remained unnervingly silent—two tall figures in Seraphyte gear, their cloaks moving as if in delay with the wind, like memories lagging behind.
Within her crystal carriage, Lady Enira sat unmoved, her arms folded over her lap. Beneath the golden folds of her silk-fire dress, her veins pulsed faintly—400 bloodline threads, all awakened at the Vein Initiate stage. Among her peers, she was above prodigy .Among the elite, she was already established.
But Enira knew things.
And what she knew tonight made her lips curl with disgust.
"Righteous, they say," she muttered, her voice like embers catching breath. "Thaleon Guild… Sacred guardians, bringers of light, saviors of the realm… fools."
One of her guards blinked. Not in emotion—just a cycle of energy refreshing his ocular rune. Neither of them had a soul.
They were constructs. High-tier ones, imbued with bound will. Like most of the Seraphyte-armored warriors spread across the continent.
"Let them keep singing praises," Enira went on. "The louder their hymns, the deeper their blindness."
She recalled the hushed conversations she'd overheard in the inner halls of House Valshura—her true liege lords.
The Thaleon Guild had not been formed. It had appeared. Fully grown. Fully armed. Their armory did not shimmer with the familiar resonance of the Nine Celestial Kingdoms' forged works. Their alloys held strange frequencies, rejecting normal blood-forging. Instead, they operated on something more elusive—bound will matrices.
Seraphyte, they called it.
But Enira had read scrolls from her grandfather's secret library. The real name was something else.
Dreadtide Filigree.
A forbidden, alien construct—living liquid metal that forced obedience on a molecular level. A binding that infected soul memory. Only now, disguised, sanctified through seals and gilded glyphs, it passed for holy.
That deception disturbed her more than any open war could.
"Lady Enira," a low voice sounded from a runic disk embedded in the palanquin's floor. "We have arrived."
The palanquin slowed, then descended. Glyphs faded beneath it, revealing polished skyglass steps leading to a high balcony that overlooked the flame gardens of Saelthun's eastern dome. Moonlight pooled like milk across the intricate floor patterns.
She stepped out.
Several figures awaited her, cloaked in long veils of noble grays and ink-golds—members of House Saevareth's extended line. Behind them stood guards dressed in more traditional armor—none wore Seraphyte.
"Lady Enira," one bowed. "We did not expect your arrival until the Eclipse Hour."
"I altered the schedule," Enira replied coolly. "Rumors grow louder in the taverns. I prefer to hear the air directly."
The old man at the front straightened. "And the people?"
"Still worshipping their false gods," she said. "Still swayed by gleam and whisper."
There was a pause.
"And the Guild?"
"Active. Unbothered. Growing."
The old man nodded slowly. "Then we remain shadows."
Enira's jaw clenched. "For now."
As she walked forward, the stars above shifted slightly. No one else noticed it. But Enira did.
A subtle pulse.
A momentary breath across the fabric of Thaleon itself.
Something had stirred.
She turned her gaze eastward—toward the mountains where old wars had been buried in glass. Where no birds sang, and no beasts dared wander.
There, beneath the roots of the world, something slept.
And sometimes, it dreamed.