When the man who raised you turns into ten thousand biting brass jaws, you stop missing the past and start breaking the present.The mechanical swarm made a deafening roar. The air filled with spinning copper wings and sharp metal teeth. The sound was so loud that my ears started to ring. I dropped into a low stance and raised my iron bar, ready to swing. But the locusts did not just come for me. The cloud split into two waves. One dove straight at my face. The other shot down the slope toward the village gates where the guards stood on the wooden walls."Soren, get behind the tree!" Valerie screamed. Her voice was barely loud enough to hear over the buzzing."The guards down there do not know what they are facing!" I shouted back. Three brass locusts scraped across my leather shoulder guard. Their sharp jaws left deep scratches in the thick hide. "If that swarm hits the village, it will strip those men to the bone in five seconds. I have seen what these things can do.""Those village

 The silence in the throne room was so heavy that I could feel it pressing against my eardrums like water at the bottom of a deep lake.I walked toward the door at the far end of the hall, my boots echoing on the polished marble. The sound seemed too loud in the empty space, like I was disturbing something that should not be disturbed. Valerie followed close behind me, the baby still asleep in her sling."Look at the pillars," Valerie whispered. Her voice was barely audible, but in the dead silence it carried like a shout.I stopped and looked where she was pointing. The tall white pillars lining the walls were not empty. There were figures standing against them, frozen in place like statues. Men and women in fine robes and jeweled collars. Their faces were pale and still. Their eyes were open but unblinking."They are not statues," I said, stepping closer to one of the figures. It was a man in a long velvet coat, his hand raised as if he had

The golden throne cracked beneath my iron bar, but it did not fall. It just sat there, glowing with a dim dying light, like a wounded animal refusing to die.I stood over it, my chest heaving, my arms shaking from the effort. The clock above the throne was frozen one notch before midnight. The cables across the floor had gone dark. But I could still feel a pulse coming from deep inside the throne's core. Something was still alive in there."Soren, it is not over," Valerie called out from across the room. She was kneeling beside Clara, checking her broken armor. "The throne is a shell. The real power source is hidden underneath it. You need to break through the outer layer completely."I looked down at the golden surface. It was covered in cracks now, but the metal was thick. My iron bar was not going to be enough.I dropped the bar and reached over my shoulder. My hand found the hilt of the black blade I had carried since the flagship. The dark metal humm

The mirrors did not stop showing me my past. They multiplied, split, and reformed, each one reflecting a different moment I had tried to forget.I walked through the shattered first mirror and found myself in a long hallway lined with more mirrors. Every surface was glass. The floor, the ceiling, the walls, all of it reflective. My footsteps echoed in the empty space, and with each step, a new image flickered to life.A young boy standing alone in the snow. A teenager being thrown out of the capital academy. A man watching his uncle die at the lower gate. My father's face, cold and distant, turning away from me again and again."The core is pulling from your deepest memories," Valerie said, her voice tight. "It is using your trauma as a weapon."Clara moved up beside me. "Do not look at the mirrors directly. Keep your eyes forward. The core feeds on attention."I tried to look away, but the mirrors were everywhere. Every direction I turned, I saw a

The dragon's chest core was cracked, but the beast was not dead yet. Its mechanical eyes flickered with dying light, and its massive body twitched on the floor. The High Priest lay motionless nearby, thrown from his perch when the dragon collapsed.I stood on the dragon's chest, my black blade still embedded in the core. The locket was in my hand, the portrait of my mother staring up at me. But I did not have time to look at it. The dragon was not finished."Soren, get off the dragon!" Valerie shouted. "It is still active!"The dragon's tail moved. It lifted off the floor, slow and heavy, but it moved. The capture net launcher at the tip of the tail was still intact. It fired again, shooting another energy net straight at Valerie.She did not panic. She did not scream. She just reached into her coat and pulled out her entire supply of volatile salt vials. She threw them directly into the dragon's open furnace intake, the same intake that had been trying t