The doors closed behind Kolpa and Tazz.
The hall settled into silence.
Demiurge remained where he had stood throughout — hands clasped behind his back, expression unchanged. He waited a measured moment before speaking.
"My lord."
Jace hadn't moved from his seat.
"The contract would have been simpler," Demiurge said. Not a challenge. Just an observation, delivered with the precision of someone whose role was to say the things others wouldn't. "Your control over him would have been more absolute. And considerably less time consuming than training a man from the ground up."
Jace was quiet for a moment.
Then he smiled.
It wasn't a large thing. Just a slight curve at the corner of his mouth. But on Jace's face, where expressions were rationed carefully, it carried weight.
"Two reasons," he said.
Demiurge waited.
"The first—" Jace leaned back, eyes drifting briefly toward the closed doors. "I am simply curious.
A human with no prior exposure to soul energy, awakening it from nothing and learning to use it." He paused. "I want to watch that process. How long it takes. Where he struggles. How far he can actually go." His eyes returned forward. "Call it entertainment if you like. I find I don't have enough of it."
Demiurge said nothing.
"The second reason is more practical," Jace continued. "If I give him power through a contract he didn't earn, it won't do what I actually need it to do."
"Which is?"
"Break him properly."
The words were calm. Almost clinical.
"Did you watch him in here?" Jace asked. "Even on one knee, half unconscious from my aura, he was still fighting it. Still telling himself he was a prince of the Holy Kingdom of Righteous." A faint pause. "That arrogance is useful eventually. But right now it's a problem. A man who receives power too quickly never truly understands the distance between where he was and where he is now."
He straightened slightly.
"He needs to work for it. He needs to struggle for it. He needs to stand at the bottom of something and look up and understand exactly how far he has to climb — and who put him there." His voice remained even throughout. "The contract would have given me control over his actions. But this—" A brief pause. "This will give me something better. It will bury whatever is left of the prince in him. Completely. Because he won't be able to blame me for it. He'll do it to himself."
The hall was quiet.
Demiurge considered this for a moment.
Then he nodded once.
"I won't argue with that assessment," he said. "Even setting aside his circumstances — the arrogance alone would make him difficult to manage at equal footing."
"Exactly," Jace said simply.
"He is not at equal footing," Jace continued. "He just hasn't finished understanding that yet."
He rose from the seat unhurriedly.
"He will."
Demiurge turned slightly as Jace moved toward the corridor.
"And when he does?"
Jace didn't break stride.
"Then he'll actually be useful."
The doors closed behind him.
Demiurge stood alone in the empty hall for a moment.
His eyes moved briefly to the spot where Tazz had gone down on one knee.
Then he turned and followed.
⸻
The corridor outside the audience hall was long and cold.
Their footsteps echoed against stone as Kolpa led the way with his usual unhurried pace — the walk of someone who had never once been in a situation he didn't feel comfortable in.
Tazz followed.
He lasted about thirty seconds before he spoke.
"You said the power would be immediate."
Kolpa didn't slow down.
"Did I?"
"You implied it," Tazz said, his voice carrying the particular edge of someone trying to sound controlled and not quite succeeding. "You made it sound like walking in there was the hard part. That once I was in front of him it would simply be—"
"Granted?" Kolpa offered pleasantly.
"Yes."
"Hm."
That was all he said for a few steps.
Tazz's jaw tightened. "Instead I have to be evaluated. Assessed. Trained from the ground up like some recruit who just picked up a sword for the first time." He exhaled sharply through his nose. "I am a prince of the most powerful kingdom in the—"
"You were," Kolpa said.
Simply. Without cruelty. Just the word landing where it needed to.
Tazz went quiet.
Kolpa continued walking.
"What you felt in that hall," he said after a moment, his tone shifting into something slightly less amused and slightly more direct, "when his aura pressed you to the floor — you felt that, yes?"
Tazz said nothing.
Which was answer enough.
"And what you saw from me," Kolpa continued, "in the forest. With those mercenaries." He glanced back briefly. "That power you have been so eager to acquire since the moment you witnessed it." He faced forward again. "That is what you want."
"Yes," Tazz said tightly.
"Then listen carefully." Kolpa's voice didn't rise. Didn't sharpen. It simply carried. "Where you are standing right now is not the Holy Kingdom of Righteous. You are not in your father's castle. There is no crown behind your name and no army at your back." A pause. "This is Lord Jace's world. His territory. His order. And in this world you are new. You are unproven. And you are starting from nothing."
The corridor stretched ahead of them.
"Leave it behind," Kolpa said.
"Leave what behind?"
"The arrogance." He said it the way someone says something obvious that still needed saying.
"The prince. The title. The idea that any of what you were before still applies here." He tilted his head slightly. "It doesn't. And the sooner that stops vexing you and starts motivating you, the faster you will actually climb."
Tazz opened his mouth.
Closed it.
The argument was there — he could feel it, fully formed, ready. Something about his bloodline.
Something about what he had already sacrificed to get here. Something about how he hadn't come all this way to be treated like a beginner.
But he looked for the words that would actually win the exchange.
And found none.
Because Kolpa wasn't wrong.
He had gone down on one knee in that hall without choosing to. Had nearly lost consciousness from proximity alone. Had sat across from a man younger than he expected and felt genuinely, completely outmatched for the first time in his life.
The argument dissolved before it left his mouth.
He said nothing.
And kept walking.
Kolpa smiled faintly at the corridor ahead.
He didn't rub it in.
He didn't need to.
⸻
(The town of Dasos)
The gate was the first thing they noticed.
It wasn't finished — the stonework still fresh, the wood still pale and unseasoned — but it stood. Functional. Real. A proper entrance where four days ago there had only been a wall with a hole punched through it.
Workers moved along its frame, fitting hinges and smoothing edges with the particular focus of people who had found something worth doing again.
Jericho looked at it for a moment.
Said nothing.
But something in his expression settled.
The town itself felt different too. Not healed — not yet. But breathing differently. The hollowness that had greeted them on arrival had thinned. Children moved between buildings. Voices carried across the street without dying immediately. A woman hanging washing outside her door glanced at the returning group and nodded once before going back to her work.
Small things.
But they meant something.
William noticed it too.
"Four days," he said quietly. "Remarkable what a wall does for people's nerves."
"It's not just the wall," Alice said. She was watching a pair of elderly men talking outside a building, unhurried, unbothered. "They can breathe again."
They moved through the streets without stopping, drawing a few looks but no alarm. Word had apparently spread about who they were and why they had come. The suspicion from four days ago had been replaced with something quieter and more dignified.
Gratitude that didn't know how to announce itself.
⸻
Lord Martin's estate was just as they had left it — modest, well kept, carrying the weight of a man who took his responsibilities seriously even when they were crushing him.
He was already waiting when they arrived.
He rose from behind his desk the moment the doors opened, eyes moving across all five of them with visible relief before he caught himself and composed his expression back into something more measured.
"You're back," he said.
Then, realizing how that sounded — "Forgive me. Welcome back. Please, sit."
They settled around the room. Martin remained standing for a moment, reading their faces the way a man reads weather.
What he found there didn't entirely reassure him.
He sat.
"Tell me everything."
Jericho leaned forward slightly, hands rested on his knees.
"The creatures have evolved," he said. "Fully and permanently. What your hunters encountered three months ago wasn't an anomaly or an isolated incident." He paused. "It is the new standard. Every living thing in that forest has been changed by soul energy. The weakest among them are already beyond what conventional weapons can reliably handle."
Martin's jaw tightened.
"And the strongest?"
A brief silence passed through the group.
"What we faced at the end," Erica said evenly, "required all five of us. Sustained. For four days."
Martin closed his eyes for a moment.
Opened them.
"Meaning my men—"
"Your men did everything they could with what they had," Jericho said carefully. "This is not a failure of courage or preparation. The world changed around them faster than anyone could have anticipated."
It was kindly said.
But it didn't soften the truth beneath it.
Martin nodded slowly, accepting it.
"And this isn't limited to Dasos," Drako said from where he stood near the wall. His voice was unhurried, as always. "The soul energy that changed your forest changed every forest. Every mountain. Every body of water on this continent." He let that settle. "Dasos noticed first because you border the Darkburn Canopy. But you will not be the last town to face this."
The room was quiet.
Martin sat with that for a long moment.
"Then this reaches the king," he said finally. Not a question.
"Yes," Jericho said. "And soon. Before another town finds out the hard way." He met Martin's eyes. "We need to travel to the capital. Present what we've seen directly. The king will need to establish policies — proper ones, not emergency measures — to protect border settlements like Dasos and prepare the others before they're in crisis."
Martin nodded slowly, something resolving behind his eyes.
"I'll send word ahead," he said. "A formal introduction from me will open doors faster than arriving unannounced." He paused. "Even with Her Highness present."
Erica inclined her head slightly.
"Appreciated."
Martin looked around the room at all of them.
The relief from earlier had settled into something more sober now. Gratitude mixed with the weight of understanding just how large the problem actually was.
"When do you intend to leave?" he asked.
Jericho glanced at the others briefly.
"We'll rest here tonight. Leave at first light."
Martin nodded.
"Then tonight you are my guests. Properly this time — not just a room and a cot." He rose. "You came here as strangers and stayed as something far more than that. The least I can do is feed you well before you go."
William straightened immediately.
"Now that," he said, "is the best thing anyone has said in four days."
Alice laughed softly.
Even Drako's expression shifted — just slightly — toward something that might have been agreement.
Martin almost smiled.
Almost.
The weight of what lay ahead was still there — the capital, the king, the conversation that would need to be had about a world that had quietly become something none of them were fully prepared for.
But tonight, at least, there was warmth.
And that was enough.