As if the world itself had heard what Mira needed, Skyreach’s peaceful morning changed without warning on an ordinary Tuesday.The city had already settled into its usual rhythm by then. Merchants were opening their stalls, children were heading toward the district schools, and the public apothecaries had begun receiving their first patients of the day. Inside the City Lord’s mansion, Mira had finished breakfast but still felt the faint ache left by the conflict between her frost and flame the night before. Jayden had already stabilized it, yet neither of them had forgotten his explanation. If she wanted her next foundation to truly belong to her, she needed an environment where ancient laws were strong enough to force both elements into harmony without relying on his Guardian authority.Nia knew nothing about any of that. She was sitting near the open terrace doors with a small bowl beside her, sorting through pieces of rejected forged iron as though choosing which biscuit looked bes

Lord Kaelen’s expression darkened the moment Jayden’s answer reached the sky.The Imperial Emissary had expected resistance, perhaps even pride, but not this. Jayden had rejected the Emperor’s condition without leaving his courtyard, accepted the Ebonheart invitation as if it were already his right, and then called the summit a family vacation while standing beside a charcoal grill. To Kaelen, the insult was worse than outright refusal because Jayden had treated imperial authority like an inconvenience that did not deserve his full attention.The golden scroll slowly rolled shut in Kaelen’s hand.Around him, the imperial officers aboard the nine-winged chariot had gone equally still. The three Heavenly Drakes continued hovering above the central plaza, their wings beating in slow powerful strokes, while the citizens below watched the silence stretching between the sky and the City Lord’s mansion.Kaelen finally lowered the decree.His Divine Sovereign aura erupted and the change was i

A week later, Jayden, Mira and Nia arrived at Ebonheart Academy.The academy did not sit on any ordinary mountain or belong to any kingdom. Its entire island floated thousands of feet above the continent, held in place by ancient anti-gravity ley lines that stretched through the clouds like invisible roots. From below, Ebonheart looked almost unreal, a vast green landmass hanging beneath a clear blue sky while waterfalls poured from its edges and disappeared into mist before ever reaching the ground. White towers rose between forests of silver-leafed trees, long bridges connected separate sections of the island, and ancient buildings carved from pale marble covered the highest ridges.Nia spent most of the approach with her face pressed against the side of the transport platform.“It’s flying.”Mira kept one hand on the back of her dress because Nia had already leaned much farther over the edge than any sensible six-year-old should. “Yes, and you are not.”Nia turned around. “I know.”

The official proceedings of the Ebonheart Summit began the next morning inside the Insight Pavilion, and from the moment the first delegates entered, the atmosphere was completely different from the loud arrogance that had filled the academy promenade the day before.The pavilion had been built around a single object.The Ebonheart Monolith.It rose from the center of a vast circular hall, a colossal block of black stone nearly fifty feet tall, its surface covered in ancient runes that shifted faintly whenever someone looked at them for too long. Some symbols glowed with cold silver light, others burned red or gold, while many remained dark and impossible to understand. Nobody knew exactly who had carved the monolith or how long it had stood on the floating island, only that generations of powerful cultivators had come to Ebonheart hoping to comprehend even a small part of the laws hidden inside it.Rows of raised platforms surrounded the stone.The Imperial Dynasty occupied the close

The cheers for Mira had barely settled when Crown Prince Valerius stopped thinking like a prince.He stood inside the imperial viewing section with both hands resting against the railing, watching his sister remain on the arena floor while broken fragments of the Sun-Piercing Whip glittered around her feet. The projection crystals were still active, carrying the image of Imperial Princess Seraphina’s defeat across Ebonheart and far beyond the floating island, and every second that passed seemed to deepen the humiliation burning across Valerius’s face. He had already watched Mira awaken the Ebonheart Monolith after the Imperial Academy’s best prodigies failed to understand it, and now the same frontier woman had defeated his sister in a fair public duel using her bare hands.Around him, the imperial nobles had grown unusually quiet. Nobody wanted to be the person who commented on what they had just witnessed, especially while Valerius stood there with his jaw clenched hard enough to sh