The hall where Zareth had gathered the humans was quiet long after the food trays had been cleared. Shadows pooled between the columns. The chandeliers floated like patient moons above, their light steady and impartial. Men and women sat on low benches, fingers folded in laps, staring at the floor as though the polished marble could hide their shame.
Zareth waited until the last murmur faded. He did not hurry them. He rarely hurried anything he found worth considering. When he spoke, his voice was even but full of the weight that had made many people obey him before they knew why.
"Begin," he said.
Ethan swallowed, his palms damp with sweat. He glanced at Ria once, and she gave him a tiny, almost inaudible nod. They had rehearsed how to speak as they had fled through ruined fields and broken roads. Now their accents sounded small in the cathedral of the Citadel, like child voices asking for shelter in a storm.
Ria took a breath, then told the story slowly, as if measuring each syllable to hold its truth intact for as long as possible.
"Our village was in the lowland crimson forest to the west," she said. "It used to be quiet. We farmed. We tended to the blackroot and the silvergrass. Then the chief suddenly changed. He began to gather men who called themselves the red band, though we did not know where they came from at first. They wore ragged cloaks and carried new blades. The chief smiled and made rules that ate our days."
She paused, eyes on the floor. Ethan's fingers tightened around his knee.
"He took to himself the right to any woman he pleased," Ethan said. His voice broke on the first mention of it. "The chief demanded that young women come to him, to be used when he wished. Later those same men, the ones who followed him, claimed the same right. They called it law and called the women lucky. Those who refused were beaten. Those who would not do as he asked were killed in the field or dragged out and left in the marshes."
Ria's chin trembled.
"We tried to stop it," she said. "We tried to gather the strongest to stand against them. Some fought. Most did not. The chief threatened fire if they were opposed. The men who refused were removed from work and forced to feed his cronies. My brother was taken. They said he was a traitor, though he had only cursed the chief for what he had done."
Ethan's eyes were wet. "There were days we had to hide in cellars because the red bands would rode through at night looking for women and for any man who would not kneel. We were scared and it was hard to keep our children safe."
Zareth listened in silence. When Ethan paused, Ria bent to him and placed a hand on his arm. He drew strength from the touch and continued.
"We decided to leave," Ethan said. "There was no honor left to defend. We packed what we could carry. We planned to hide and find a new place to plant our homes. We wanted to build again. We were small, but we believed we could keep to the hollows and live. But on the road, a hunting party of goblins found us. They chased us for hours. We ran until our legs were glass. That is when we saw your citadel descending from the sky. We thought we had found an unknown powerful race and we actually somewhat expects that you would massacre us all."
Ria's voice had become steadier by the end. "But Aethelgard stopped them. Aethelgard saved us."
There were questions. Zareth asked them with slow precision. Did their chief have any other allies? Had they ever traded with Gnarlak trader where their chief might actually sell people to Gnarlak? Ria and Ethan answered as best they could. They did not have maps. They did not have names of distant rulers. They had names of people they had eaten with or slept beside. They had small facts, but when stitched together they suggested a larger pattern: the Gnarlak were not a simple horde, they were organized; their reach included slave centers and hunting rings near the borderlands; places of refuge were fewer than rumor suggested.
Zareth filed away each piece of information silently. He did not nod often. His expression retained the uneven shade of someone who stores facts and rearranges them in his mind like chess pieces.
When the recounting ended he rose. "You were honest," he said to them. "Honesty often signals survival."
Ria and Ethan bowed, uncertain whether honesty would also signal punishment. Zareth's dark eyes softened for a single breath.
"You will remain under house care for now," he said. "Guards will watch. There are things to decide. You will be tended and given shelter, and in the morning you will be called."
They left the hall with new blankets and quiet shuffling feet. The weight of being listened to, of being believed, sat on their shoulders like both blessing and new duty.
Zareth lingered by the doorway. He did not join them. He watched the corridor devour their footsteps until only the faint echo remained. The room felt emptier. He turned and found Kyle waiting just outside the threshold.
The young ruler had been listening from the doorway, as if the corner of the hall had offered a better view than any throne. Kyle's fingers curled once around a cup he was not drinking from. His face was not the carved, serene mask of the Citadel's guardians. It was a real face, raw in its curiosity and unsettled by the world it had stumbled into.
"My lord," Zareth said quietly after a moment. "What do we do with them?"
Kyle's mouth tilted. "What we'll do? Simple, we keep them safe. We learn from them. And in the future we will build a city for them." His voice bore a scholar's caution. He measured risk like a man weighing fragile vials of poison.
Kyle considered this. He had spent nights building Aethelgard, shaping its halls with a kind of childish precision. Now he stood inside the reality of it. Decisions had weight and multiplied.
"They are like us," Kyle said at last. The sentence arrived from somewhere inside that had nothing to do with strategy. It was personal, small, and stubborn.
Zareth's brow arched faintly. "Like... us?"
Kyle nodded. "They are not our enemies . They are not mere resources. They are humans like us. If this citadel means anything, then protecting our people is what it should mean."
Zareth's expression flickered. He had always viewed the world through systems and hierarchies. To call the low-born similar to the Citadel's chosen was an odd statement. He felt it like a tremor across a map.
"So my lord, are you saying that you would send men to fetch the remaining civilians from their village?" Zareth said slowly. " Forgive me for my tone my lord, but why? Why would we waste force on a small band of survivors instead of consolidating supply lines. Why?"
Kyle's answer was simple and stubborn. "Because if we do not act now for those we can help, then what are we building? A machine that takes and never gives? I am not sure I can stand in a throne that only takes. That would make me an overlord of wreckage, ruler of a wasteland."
Zareth's surprise softened into that rare, crooked smile that sometimes preceded his curiosity. "My lord, you worry over much for peasants," he said. "But perhaps you worry well."
A silence followed. Then the practical intruded. "We will need scouts. We will need a method to communicate with them. If you insist on this my lord, then we have to do it with care. Let's send one of the guardians."
Kyle's shoulders tightened, relief and strain mingling. "I thought of going myself but... not yet."
Seris, who had been silent in the corridor like a patient shadow, bowed as if he had been waiting for that moment. "My lord, if I may. The citadel's structure is dependent on its figurehead. If anything were to happen to you during an operation in the field, the morale and cohesion of Aethelgard would fray. I therefore advise that you do not go personally."
Kyle accepted the counsel. He did not argue. "Then who goes?"
Seris's answer came swiftly and sure. "Lys," he said. "Her precision and low profile make her ideal for entry, for reading the air and returning with information. Two knights will accompany her for support."
Kyle hesitated a single breath. "I value Lys's safety. You know that. Don't you think she'll need more esper knights to accompany her?"
Seris inclined his head. He did not hide his concern. "I do. I also value her safety, my lord. But Lys is capable. Two knights will suffice. She can evade much and strike when she must. She is reliable."
Kyle looked up at Seris, at the steady line of his jaw. The man had served him in code and in practice since before either had known what this world would do to them. Kyle felt the responsibility of command prick like a foreign weight.
"All right," he said. "Send Lys with two. I will mindlink with her. I want to know what she sees as it happens. Keep me connected. If anything shifts, I will respond."
Seris's lips tightened into the kind of smile that meant a plan was taking form. "Very well, my lord. I will inform Lys at once."
He moved like a shadow through the hallway and vanished with a faint rip, as if the air itself made way for him.
At the ramparts, Lys stood with her hands folded. Her white hair blew around her like a vapor. She did not look like the other guardians. She looked slight and broken in the way a porcelain figure might look if it had the strength to carry the sky.
Seris dropped beside her, voice low. "Lys, you are being summoned."
She didn't turn and just kept staring at the horizon. "Understood," she said simply.
He explained, in clipped sentences, the plan. The two knights would be selected. The route would be a ghostline down the western slope, under the gullied ridges. Kyle would be linked to her mind through a device. She would see and hear a layer of Kyle's perception while he listened to hers. If she found the village, she would gather the survivors and return. If the Gnarlak kingdom responded, she would withdraw.
She nodded.
Seris did not leave her with any false comforts. "Keep your distance if numbers look like they are a threat. Withdraw and report. Do not die for our sentiment."
Lys did not answer with rage or promise. Her sentence was short and precise. "I will do as instructed."
She took flight and brushed past two patrol knights who were just passing by. They barely registered the sweep of her cloak before she called to them with authority. "You two come."
They are confused and puzzled but they immediately obeyed, not from fear but from recognition. She was one of the guardians. Her calm carried authority.
They arrived at the throne. Kyle sat there, not like a general but like someone perched on the edge of a new world. Beside him the butler and maid stood, their uniforms an odd marriage of domestic ceremony and martial readiness. Seris landed with them a heartbeat later.
"Lys," Kyle said, a note of warmth in his voice. "Thank you for coming."
She moved forward and floated the final steps with the same unshowy grace she had used in combat. Kyle looked at her, and in that look there was something human. He wanted to be careful and honest at once.
"Lys, will you accept a mindlink?" he asked.
A faint blush rose to her cheek, though her tone did not soften. "It would be an honor, my lord."
Kyle hesitated for half a beat, then smiled. He took the small chip the maid offered and placed it against his temple. It was cold at first, then warmed like metal pressed against skin. He felt a ripple, like a small electric thud.
Lys closed her eyes and allowed the implant to seat against her temple. When the chip clicked into place she inhaled once, and then, as though the world grew sharp and new, Kyle felt a rush of sensation.
It hit like standing upright after leaning too long. The first thing he saw was himself sitting on the throne, Lys's hands resting in folded stillness. He felt the weight of her breath and, in the same heartbeat, the faint hum of her telekinetic field, the muscle memory of holding a sword.
"My lord?" came a soft voice inside his skull. It was Lys, but filtered through a channel that felt like a second wind. "Testing the mindlink my lord?"
"What do you see?" Kyle asked aloud, then realized his mouth had gone quiet in front of the others. He allowed a small grin to slip. He wanted to sound confident.
"Clear," Lys answered, but then the images folded and the mindlink strengthened. Kyle tasted the cut of cold air, felt the tug of her cloak as a patrol wind brushed the rampart, and understood in a way he never had the intimacy of another person's senses.
Seris watched with a cautious calm. "My lord, if at any point you feel disoriented, break the link. Do not attempt to control her mind. The link is for observation and communication only."
Kyle nodded. He felt something like static in the edges of his perception and then Lys's voice again, closer, more precise.
"We are ready to deploy, my lord." she said.
Kyle settled himself into the chair and let the channel hum. He listened to Lys's quiet breathing and the faint mechanical tide of the two knights behind her. He breathed with her. When he spoke through the link, his thought moved like an arrow and landed in her mind cleanly.
"Go," he said. "Fly low. Keep to the gullied slope. Observe, do not engage unless you are forced. If there are more than small numbers that you couldn't handle, withdraw and return."
Lys turned her head slightly, though Kyle did not see the motion. He felt it. He heard a small sound, something like an affirmative breath. "Understood."
Kyle let himself relax for the first time that day. In the link he could see the world with the precision of someone else who was both a guardian and a creature who did not flinch. He could also see the risk.
Seris stood and bowed. "May the Citadel watch over you."
Lys and the two knights rose into the air, ghosting against the clouds, and the channel rose with them. Kyle watched through her eyes as they became specks, then wind, then something that could not be interpreted by any ordinary watcher. He felt the thrill and the cold together. He felt the simple, small human hope that the survivors might be saved.
The mindlink kept his attention like a tether. He adjusted to the stream of images, to the sensory halo of a woman he had chosen to trust with his first outpost in this world.
Seris stepped back, his job complete for the moment. The maid adjusted a strap on Kyle's sleeve and gave a small, knowing nod.
"Contact me when you have the village," Kyle said into the link. "I will stay connected. Report anything unusual."
"Understood, my lord," Lys thought back. Then the world narrowed to a thin line ahead, and the link settled into the low hum of communication as the three figures became smaller, swallowed by the slopes of the land.
Kyle rose from his throne, a quiet resolution in his gait. He had not marched into battle. He had not declaimed philosophy. He had done something smaller and more consequential. He had connected himself to another soul in a way that would let him see the truth of his choices.