In the pitch-black hall of the Dragon Court, breathing became a luxury nobody could afford.The faint, steady sounds of forty elders panicking in the dark filled the hall. The only light left in the mountain was the blue glow from the six suppression spears and the small red light pulsing between Riven's fingers.Click.The sound of Riven's thumb resting on the center of the detonator cut through the dark."Do not move." Gerald Kaelen's voice broke for the first time in eighty years. The dry, mocking tone was gone, replaced by the rough gasp of an old man in fear. "Stand down! Guards, drop the charge! Stand down this instant!"The six armored soldiers hesitated for half a second before turning off their spears. The blue light disappeared, leaving the great hall in complete darkness.Only the red light remained, shining across Riven's face."You're a madman..." an elder whispered from the upper tier, his teeth shaking. "You would drown yourself under this mountain just to spite us?!""I

The smell of diesel smoke hung over the neutral docks of Port Valen, mixing with the rotten smell of low-tide water.Port Valen was a strip of concrete and rusted cranes sitting just three miles outside national waters. It belonged to no flag, answered to no maritime court, and traded in contraband, blood money, and exiled criminals.Inside the bridge of the Leviathan, a three-hundred-foot private destroyer moored against the deep-water pier, the air was warm and smelled of cigars.Drake Whitemore leaned against a steel table, his jaw wired shut with surgical pins. Every breath made his teeth hurt, but his bloodshot eyes burned with excitement. He pointed a shaking finger at the satellite map above the table."He... he took the High Citadel," Drake wheezed through his clenched teeth, his speech slurred. "The idiot actually walked into the Dragon Court and cornered the elders. But the Kaelen armada is locked in the northern mountain straits. It'll take him three days to navigate the sh

The mahogany smell in the Grand Senate reception hall always reminded Riven of cedar shavings under an executioner’s block.It was thick, polished, and old. Sunlight poured through fifty-foot stained-glass windows, painting the marble checkerboard floor in deep pools of crimson and gold. At nine-forty in the morning, twenty armed men belonging to the Capital’s Praetorian Guard stood at attention along the columns, their white sashes pinned over titanium chest plates.Linnea walked two paces behind Riven, her tablet silent against her forearm. She had traded her tactical gear for a dark, tailored blazer, but her sharp eyes were constantly watching the guards’ hands."The Four Families didn't leave any room for empty seats," Linnea murmured, her voice barely louder than the brush of wool against stone. "Every senator who owes a debt to the Sovereign Coalition was flown in before dawn."Riven didn't check his watch. He kept his hands loosely in the pockets of his dark overcoat, his strid

Riven’s thumb ran over the silver ring in his pocket, feeling the deep groove carved into the metal twenty-two years ago.He didn't miss the marble halls or the lawns of the capital. Cities were built on lies and clean paper; the wilderness had a brutal honesty that felt far more familiar.Behind him, the heavy off-road transport bounced violently over an exposed tree root, its tires churning through black mud as the dirt track narrowed to a single lane. The paved highway had ended ten miles back, swallowed by the wall of ancient black pines.Vanessa leaned forward from the rear seat, her knuckles white around the yellowed parchment she had pulled from Julian’s ledger. Her eyes were red-rimmed, burning with a fury that had nothing to do with money or stolen territory."It was never an orphanage transport," Vanessa said, her voice shaking slightly against the rattle of the vehicle. "Look at the medical logs, Riven. The children weren't taken for ransom. They were running a biological h

The wind from the sky-carrier blew Vanessa’s dark hair across her face, but she didn't bother pinning it back. Her gaze was locked on the canyon floor five hundred feet below.The Black Gorge looked less like a natural valley and more like the earth had been hacked open. Sheer basalt cliffs dropped straight down into darkness, where ancient underground water churned against jagged black rocks. Nestled against the lowest cliff wall, half-submerged in the rushing river, sat the Sunken Fortress—a stronghold of reinforced granite and iron grates, completely cut off from the modern world.Inside the leather-lined main lounge of the Aegis Sovereign, Riven unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled his sleeves up twice.On the coffee table sat a vintage bottle of 1945 Romanée-Conti—a three-hundred-thousand-dollar bottle Riven had casually opened just to have a single glass while reviewing the terrain scans. Beside the wine lay a pair of heavy tactical gauntlets forged from black titanium, each knuckle