The lull after House Croft was burned and Duke Valerius made his showy surrender was not quiet. It was the stillness of a held breath, of a city holding its breath for the other boot to drop. The nobles had retreated behind their high walls, but Felix could feel their fear and hatred like a feverous heat rising off the cobblestones. He had achieved a giant victory, but he stood alone on top of a peak of shattered lies, with all the arrows of vengeance pointing towards him.He could not stand by himself. Truth was a weapon, but it needed an army of minds to battle for it, not an army of fighters.Liora saw it before he did. “You’ve become a one-man inquisition,” she said one evening, watching him pore over yet another ancient ledger, his face pale with strain. “You are the judge, the jury, and the archivist. It will break you. And if it breaks you, the truth breaks with you.”"What else can be done?" Felix demanded, his voice worn out. "The court hangers-on are the official historians.

The scandal of the Banquet of Venom caused an earthquake shock to the Seat's power system, but it was a silent tremor, one that was felt in the gut, not heard in the streets. Lords Graves, Mott, and Pellen were spirited away to the dungeons of the king, their titles and holdings stripped by a swift, ruthless economy that testified to the crown's desire to hold the scandal in silence. The official version was a vague tale of "financial malfeasance" and "conspiracy to defraud the crown." The truth—the poisoned wine, the servant's shocking revolt—was hidden, a damning secret known only to the guests, the king's inner circle, and the Alliance's watchful gaze. It was not a victory but a bitterly personal warning to King Edric. He was sitting in his own solar, the quiet broken only by the light of the fire and the soft, steady thump of his signet ring against the arm of his chair. There were two reports on the desk before him. One was from his spymaster, Vex, a dry, factual account of the

The Sunken Arena was more silent than any cheer. It was the silence of a thousand suspended breaths, of a terror so newly faced that its image still grated against the bone. The air that had been electric with carnival enchantment and heavy with the smell of popcorn and greasepaint now stank of ozone, hollowness, and clammy sweat. Every eye was fixed on Felix alone on the burnt earth where the hole in the world had just been stitched up.The king's dazzling performance had curdled into an exhibition of another kind of power. Not the loud, flashy power of magic, but the quiet, chillier power of definition. Felix had not fought the Null-Beast; he had excised it from existence. The awe he evoked was now mixed with a primal fear. He was not a mage; he was a constructor of reality.The officials of the Festival, white and shaking, stood poised to declare the festival ended—a disaster nipped in the bud—when a fresh voice thundered out, sharp and clear."The contest is not over."It was Kael

Reality returned to Felix on a slow, torturous tide. The first he was aware of was the cold, hard pressure of stone against his back. The second was a hollow pounding in his head, an empty space where the unbelievable energy of the Codex had been. The third was Liora's voice, a soothing, anxious buzz cutting through the fog."Too much. Too much, it was. Felix, can you hear me?He opened his eyes. They were in a small antechamber beneath the Sunken Arena, away from the cheering crowd whose appreciation had receded into a dull, muffled wave. Flickering torchlight danced across the roughly hewn walls. The air was heavy with dust and stale sweat."I hear you," he ground out, his throat burning. He tried to sit up, and the world shifted ominously. Liora's firm and cool hand rested upon his shoulder."Don't. You're worn out. You. you re-created a myth, Felix. You didn't just summon it up. You fashioned it. I could feel it. All of us felt it." Her voice was heavy with awe and deep, loving fe

The miracle of the Cracked Wheel did not go unnoticed. In a city choking on deceit, a gratuitous, simple act of unadorned good shining so vividly like a beacon. It was told and retold, the tale enlarged each time it was spoken. The scholar-healer. The water-cleansing man. The Stag's chosen one. Felix's name, already bound up with threads of awe and fear, now being intertwined with something new: respect.This new reputation traveled before him like a scent, and it invited an unexpected guest.She arrived at his door not with a royal retinue, but with a single stone-faced soldier and the stern, bookish figure of Archon Therus. Princess Elara was the king's second child, and everything his father was not. Where King Edric had been big and strong, she was tall and wrapped in on herself, as if trying to take up as little space as possible. Her clothing was simple but refined, unadorned. Her brown hair was pulled back into a severely practical braid. She did not look like a princess; she l