The sky over Aethelgard wasn't blue anymore. It was a shimmering, artificial gold, projected by the capital’s broadcast arrays. Every screen, every hovering mana-mirror, and every ocular implant in the kingdom was tuned to the same channel."Look at the screen, Kaelen," Miri whispered, her hand trembling as she pointed toward the horizon.I looked. My father’s forge—the place where I learned to breathe soot and dream in brass—was being held in the grip of massive, hydraulic pincers."Citizens of Aethelgard!" Lucius’s voice boomed from the sky, smooth and dripping with fabricated virtue. "Behold the final cleansing of the Thorne heresy. This workshop, a breeding ground for treason, will now serve a higher purpose. We melt this trash today to forge the 'Solarian Plate' for our newest Paladin division!"The pincers dropped the forge into a vat of white-hot liquid mana. I watched the anvil—the one my father used to lift me onto—dissolve into a shapeless sludge."He's doing this to draw yo