Time in the new kingdom did not pass in the ticking of clocks or the turning of calendar pages. It passed in the rising of towers and the graying of hair.
Ten years had passed since the Great Wave shattered the Sultanate blockade. In that decade, the blackened ruins of Oakhaven had been buried, and upon them, New Aethelgard had risen like a phoenix of brass and marble. It was a city of contradictions, a metropolis where ancient white stone was reinforced with heavy riveted girders, where steam-engines ran silent on liquid starlight, and where the night was guarded by creatures that howled at the moon.
Kael Light stood on the highest balcony of the Royal Spire, looking out over his creation. The city below was alive with the glow of the "Radiant Grid," a network of ley-lines and copper conduits that pulsed with the gentle, rhythmic hum of the Dawn-Mana.
He was twenty-nine years old.
But looking at his reflection in the polished glass doors behind him, he was still nineteen. The "Stable Agony" had frozen his biology in the moment of his greatest trauma. His iridescent grey eyes, ringed with the permanent silver-blue halo of Aura's blessing, held the heavy, weary gaze of a sovereign, but his face was still the unblemished face of the boy who had been betrayed in the jungle. He was a statue of flesh, a monument to a pain that refused to age.
"Your Majesty," a voice called from the chamber behind him.
Kael turned slowly. It was Pip.
The street urchin from the Gut, who had once hotwired a steam-carriage with nothing but a wrench and a curse word, was a man now. He was tall, his shoulders broadened by years of responsibility, wearing the velvet-trimmed, navy-blue coat of the Lord Keeper. His face was lined with the subtle stress of governance, and distinct strands of silver were visible in his dark hair. He walked with a slight limp—a souvenir from a skirmish with bandits in the third year of the reign that never quite healed right.
"I told you not to call me that, Pip," Kael said, his voice the same resonant, youthful tenor it had been a decade ago. It felt wrong to speak with a young man's voice to a friend who was aging before his eyes.
"And I told you that you can't be a King if you don't let people bow," Pip grinned, though the smile didn't quite reach his eyes. There was a tiredness there that hadn't been present in the days of the revolution. He held a datapad—a fusion of glass and brass developed by House Ignis. "The Council is waiting. Ignis has the new schematics for the western expansion of the Grid, and Thorne is demanding more budget for the Wall. Again."
Kael sighed, walking back into the room. He poured two glasses of water from a crystal pitcher, handing one to Pip. "And Voros? Is the Ambassador behaving?"
"The leech is complaining that the synthetic blood Ignis synthesized tastes like 'rust and disappointment,'" Pip chuckled, taking the glass. "But the Sanguine Courts are holding to the treaty. No unauthorized feedings in six months. They know that if they break the law, the Moon-Scarred will hunt them down before the sun even comes up."
"Good," Kael said, though he felt a pang of guilt. He had built a peace on a razor's edge, balancing monsters against men.
They walked through the halls of the Spire. The walls were lined with tapestries depicting the liberation: the breaking of the Prime Cradle, the parting of the sea, and the founding of the Three Great Houses. Kael walked past them without looking. He lived the history every day; he didn't need to see it woven in silk.
They entered the Council Chamber.
It was a circular room dominated by a massive table made of polished weir-wood. At the head of the table sat Lord Ignis. The former Sultanate engineer had aged poorly; the stress of rebuilding a civilization had taken its toll. His remaining organic eye was milky with cataracts, and his mechanical arm had been upgraded so many times it now comprised nearly half his torso. Steam vented softly from his shoulder joints as he breathed. He represented House Ignis, the architects of the city's technology.
To his right sat Commander Thorne, the Lord of House Thorne. His hair was snow-white, cropped close to his skull, and his face was a roadmap of scars earned in the defense of the borders. He wore the black-iron plate of the "Iron-Guard," the elite non-magical force that protected the kingdom. He sat with the stillness of a boulder, his hands clasped over a heavy map.
And in the shadows of the room, leaning against a pillar rather than sitting, stood Garret, the Alpha of the Moon-Scarred. He hadn't aged at all—the lunar resonance kept him vital and dangerous—but his eyes were weary, filled with the collective memory of his pack.
"My Lords," Kael said, taking his seat at the head of the table. He didn't sit on a throne; he sat on a simple wooden chair, a reminder of the cottage in the illusory paradise he had rejected.
"The Radiant Grid is stable," Ignis began, his voice a synthesized rasp that echoed slightly. "The new capacitors using the 'Dawn-Mana' have increased efficiency by forty percent. We've extended the warmth-fields to the northern farmlands. The harvest will be triple last year's. No one will starve this winter."
"Good," Kael said. "It's the least we can do. And the defenses?"
"The Wall is holding," Thorne grunted, his voice deep and gravelly. "But the scouts report movement in the Silent Tundra. The Frost Lords aren't just raiding anymore. They're massing. We've found frozen bodies... entire villages encased in 'Necro-Ice'."
Kael's hand tightened on the table wood. "Necro-Ice?"
"It drains heat," Thorne explained, tapping a location on the map. "Not just temperature, but life. It's a magic we haven't seen before. It counters your 'Dawn-Mana' by simply erasing it. It doesn't melt when we fire the Radiant Cannons; it absorbs the energy."
"The Void," Garret rumbled from the shadows. "The North smells of the Void. But not the hot void of the desert. The cold void. The end of entropy. The Frost Lords have found something in the ice, Father. Something that hates the sun."
Kael looked at his hand. The 'Reforged Sun' ring was pulsing slowly, a heartbeat of light. The "Stable Agony" in his bones gave a sympathetic throb, a warning tremor.
"We knew they would come," Kael said softly. "The Frost Lords ruled the North for centuries before the Academy pushed them back. Now that the Academy is gone, they want the heat. New Aethelgard is the only warm place left in the hemisphere."
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors to the chamber opened. A woman entered, leading a ten-year-old boy by the hand.
It was Martha. She had become the Matron of the Healing Halls, her kind face now framed by soft waves of silver hair. She moved slower than Kael remembered, her joints stiff, but her presence commanded the room.
The boy beside her was Caspian, the infant Kael had saved from the Sunken Cradle ten years ago.
Caspian was unlike other children. His skin had a faint, bioluminescent shimmer, like moonlight on water, and his eyes were pure, pupil-less teal. He moved with a fluidity that suggested he was walking underwater, his feet making no sound on the stone floor. He was the first of the new generation of Sun-Blooded, raised in freedom rather than a cage.
"Kael," Martha said, her voice grave. "Caspian has been dreaming again."
The room went silent. Caspian's dreams were not fantasies; they were echoes of the world's mana-currents.
Kael knelt before the boy, bringing himself to eye level. "What did you see, Caspian?"
The boy looked at Kael. He didn't speak with a voice; he spoke with a resonance that vibrated the water in the air, a telepathic projection that filled the minds of everyone in the room.
Ice, the boy projected. Ice that burns cold. And a girl... sleeping in the snow. She is like me. She is a lamp that is freezing.
Kael looked up at the Council, his expression hardening. "Site-Six. The Tundra Cradle."
"It's starting," Ignis said, his gears clicking rapidly. "The Frost Lords are trying to harvest the next Source-Vessel. If they corrupt a Sun-Blooded child with Necro-Ice, they could create a weapon capable of extinguishing the Radiant Grid."
"They will turn the sun into a black hole," Thorne added grimly.
Kael stood up. The weight of the crown he never wore felt heavier than the ocean he had once held back. He looked at Pip, at Martha, at Thorne. He saw their wrinkles, their grey hair, the fragility of their mortal lives. He saw how much they had given to build this peace.
And he saw himself in the reflection of the polished table—young, unchanging, a monster trapped in amber.
"Prepare the Slip-Runners," Kael commanded, his voice hardening into the tone of the Blood Weeper. "Thorne, mobilize the Iron-Guard. Garret, take the Moon-Scarred north and scout the passes. We move at dawn."
"You're going yourself?" Pip asked, worry etching deep lines into his forehead. "Saint, you've been on the throne for ten years. You have generals. You have Lords. You don't have to lead the charge every time. If we lose you..."
"You won't lose me," Kael said, touching the silver-blue ring in his eye. "I have to go, Pip. Not because I'm the King. But because I'm the only one who won't freeze."
He looked at the map of the Silent Tundra. "The Necro-Ice drains life. It drains warmth. But I am a perpetual engine of Agony. I generate more energy than it can consume. I am the only counter they haven't planned for."
"And if it's a trap?" Martha asked softly, pulling Caspian closer to her.
"Then I will break the trap," Kael said.
He walked to the balcony, looking north. The horizon was dark, a storm of unnatural white clouds gathering over the distant mountains. The air was already growing colder, carrying the scent of ancient, frozen death.
The peace of the First Decade was over. The War of the Frost was beginning.