In the western wing of Vaelthorn Royal Palace, Bravan sat.Not the way he had sat earlier while reading his documents, with his back straight and his mind already knowing where to move next. This was different. His elbows rested on his knees, his gaze unfocused on anything in front of him, and an expression appeared on his face that had never shown itself when anyone else was in the room.Bitter.Not anger. Not panic. Something deeper than either, the feeling of someone who had spent a very long time building something with painstaking care, only to watch a variable that had never once entered his calculations transform the entire structure into something that could no longer be maintained in the same way.Lyris would win.The words were not a conclusion that needed further consideration. It was already settled. It had been there from the moment he saw Lein flying through the sky with four Auranveil corpses behind him, and nothing had changed since then except that he had now been sit

One second.Two.Ten.Bravan stared at Carath. Carath stared back at Bravan. Neither moved, neither spoke, and between them was something being measured—not intelligence, and not ability, but boundaries.Where each man's limits lay.And whether those limits existed in the same place."You've gone mad, Carath."It was not a shout. Not an explosion of anger. Just a statement from a man accustomed to weighing his words even in the most uncomfortable circumstances, and this time choosing the most accurate words rather than the safest ones.Carath did not blink."To achieve your goals, you have to do whatever it takes." His voice came from someone who had already gone far beyond the boundary Bravan had just pointed out and could no longer see it from where he stood. "There is no difference between what you call sanity and what you call madness except who wins in the end."The room remained silent for another second.Then something shifted at the corner of Bravan's lips.It was not a warm s

The work continued.Ryn and Sael worked on different sides from the soldiers, following the instructions they were given without needing them to be repeated more than once. The more experienced hands handled the parts that required more than mere determination, while the younger hands took care of the rest.The hide was separated from the flesh.It was not an easy process, because Auranveil hide was thicker than ordinary steel plating, but it was done systematically, beginning at the points where Lein's energy blades had already made the initial cuts, then widening them from there along the existing paths.Layer by layer.The golden hides, which continued to radiate their own inner light even after being separated, were stacked in one corner of the field, clearly demonstrating that they were not mere waste but valuable materials in their own right.Beneath the hides, the flesh, whose density far surpassed that of ordinary creatures, was separated from the bones in a manner that could

The merchants arrived an hour later.Four of them, with transport wagons large enough to carry oversized goods, entered the courtyard like men who had already received a description of what was waiting for them here but had not fully processed that description until their own eyes saw it.They stopped.They looked at the neatly arranged piles along the sides of the courtyard: golden wings on one side, bones that reflected light like metal on the other, hides that still glowed from within even after being separated from the bodies, and fangs, each one longer than the height of a full-grown man.The first merchant, whose hair was completely white and whose eyes were highly trained to assess quality at a single glance, walked toward the pile of hides first.He placed a hand on the outer surface.Then pressed down slightly.Then pulled his hand away.He said nothing for several seconds, simply examining it like someone who had been in this business long enough to know better than to rush

Night descended upon the Vaelthorn Royal Palace in no way different from any other night.The crystals lining the corridors dimmed to the level that had been established years ago, the lamps in the outer courtyards lit up exactly as they always did, and the guards changed shifts at their posts with a routine so deeply ingrained in their bodies that it no longer required conscious thought.Outside, nothing was different.Inside, in Bravan’s room, which had deliberately been left dark enough that there was barely sufficient light to read someone’s expression from more than two steps away, two men stood with their arms folded.Before them, a woman knelt.She was dressed entirely in black—not ordinary black, but a shade that seemed to absorb light, making her silhouette in the darkness of the room resemble a hole in the wall more than a human body.A thin piece of cloth covered her left eye, tied in a manner that made it clear it was not an accessory but something that had become part of