At the high mahogany banquet table, Malenia rested her pale chin within her small palm, her cheeks puffed out in raw frustration as she repeatedly scanned the venue entrance, her analytical search continually returning a blank ledger.
"Their horses have logged an imnse watch; why has the line not cleared the periter?" She stared gloomily at the silver fruit platter before her fra, which was already more than half-empty, before clenching her small fists to deliver a series of hard, resentful thumps against her golden prosthetic joints. She grumbled under her breath, "It is entirely your fault. Even when my legs are conford to your brackets, my boots cannot trace the turf. You are completely useless. One of these winters, I will command Lucia to spit his red lightning and burn your gears to ash."
Suddenly, a wave of boisterous, echoing voices cut through the lakeside gale. Her head snapped toward the noise, her copper hair whipping across her visor as she locked her focus onto the entrance arches. Within minutes, the massive escort column cleared the tree line.
Father, brother, Commander Ordovis, and the handso Carian paladin anchored the primary row. The veteran uncle with the star-jeweled armor was holding Miquella's hand, laughing heartily as he shared a series of battlefield mories. Beside their line marched a towering youth with a wild mane of red hair—was that the Radahn brother Father had ntioned during his archival lessons? His physical bulk looked exceptionally fierce for his age.
Her eyes frantically parsed the center of the column to trace Lucia's position, quickly isolating his silver locks among the azure cloaks. "Ah... are the two entities walking by his stirrup Prince Rykard and Princess Ranni? Sister Ranni, her hair... huh?"
Malenia reached up to grip a stray lock of her own copper hair, cross-referencing it against the distant princess, who was currently presenting a soft, engaged smile as she conversed with Lucia. The little girl muttered to the air, "Sister's locks appear a shade darker than my own fra... but she is breath-taking."
The three demigods of Caria had entirely inherited the peerless, aristocratic aesthetics of their parents, a genetic perfection most apparent within the youngest, Ranni. She carried Rennala's celestial elegance, seamlessly integrated with a fraction of Radagon's sharp, heroic martial lines, all insulated beneath a faint, un-approachable frost. Though she had logged barely eleven winters, her silhouette already hand-delivered a glimpse of a nation-shattering, cosmic grace.
What genuinely settled Malenia's internal anxiety was the absolute lack of friction across the marching column. The Carian siblings appeared thoroughly enchanted by Lucia's conversation, and the old knight uncle was sharing a relaxed banter with her father and brother. The little girl's mind unconsciously wove an innocent, radiant fantasy—imagining the entire house happily unified under one roof once her mother returned, a bright smile breaking across the corners of her mouth.
Before the horses had even cleared the inner gates, Lucia's visor lifted, his silver eyes searching the high granite platforms to audit her stability. Malenia had maintained her vigil all along; the millisecond their lines of sight crossed, she hoisted her arm high, waving with excited, frantic velocity.
Seeing her energy levels online, the tight pressure around Lucia's chest dissolved. He mirrored her movent, raising his gauntlet to wave back with equal energy.
Princess Ranni, tracking his line from her wolf's spine, was caught off guard by the abrupt shift. Her gaze traveled up the listone steps, mapping the enthusiastic little girl anchoring the platform. After a brief pause, a soft, genuine smile broke through her frost, and she delivered a polite aristocratic nod in greeting.
Blaidd, trailing their rear wheels, scratched his grey ears at the display, leaning his massive torso toward the Prince. "Your Highness Lucia, does that little princess comprise the Malenia file?"
Before Lucia could articulate the registry, Rykard, riding on the opposite flank, let out a low, venomous sneer, his voice dropping into a cold whisper. "What princess? She is nothing more than a decorated little cripple."
Snap—
The millisecond the slur cleared the boy's teeth, Lucia violently yanked his reins. His Altus stallion let out a sharp, panicked neigh, its front hooves launching into the empty air as the beast ca to an absolute, bone-jarring halt.
"Na your words again," Lucia whispered.
The abrupt, violent stoppage sent a localized shockwave through the column, the surrounding outriders desperately hauling their horses back to avoid a pile-up. Princess Ranni's eyes dilated a fraction of an inch, her head snapping to monitor the silver-haired youth beside her saddle, whose entire aura had mutated into an engine of destruction.
The mocking smirk frozen across Rykard's features went completely white, his cognitive processors rendering a total blank as his tongue jamd against his teeth.
Lucia stared down at the paralyzed prince, his voice dropping into a register as flat and sharp as a razor's edge. "I asked you an explicit question, Prince Rykard. Disclose what your mouth just stated."
Rykard stared back, his chest refusing to rise. The ice-blue depth of the Dragon Prince's pupils was gone, overwritten by a raging, bloodthirsty vortex of dark red crimson—the unmistakable biological signature of Dragon Fear.
The Carian youth had registered that exact frequency once before within the eyes of a wild Glintstone Drake nesting in the Liurnian crags. A rabid, massive Rune Bear had charged his carriage line during a royal hunt; the dragon paladin assigned to his shield had physically torn the five-ton beast to bleeding shreds in less than three seconds.
Consequently, his survival instincts hand-delivered an absolute certainty: if his mouth dared to repeat the syllables he had just articulated, the terrifying Ancient Dragon Demigod standing before his horse would without a single microsecond of hesitation launch forward to butcher him where he sat.
"I..." Rykard stuttered, the ambient air around his throat congealing like cold iron plate. Gritting his teeth, his survival calculus overrode his ego, and he squeezed out a frantic rewrite. "I rely stated... that after tracking this ridge on a wolf's spine for three watches... if our boots do not find the turf soon... my own legs will curdle into those of a cripple."
Lucia pinned his visor to the boy's face for three agonizing seconds, his silver eyes asuring the deceit, before systematically pulling the terrifying pressure back into his core. His features conford to a smooth, completely insincere courtly smile. "A structural misunderstanding. My internal engine miscalculated the phonetics. My apologies, Prince Rykard."
The corner of Rykard's mouth twitched erratically. He forced his facial muscles to mimic a polite nod, his skull bobbing awkwardly as he tried to stabilize his pulse.
With the pressure valve cleared, the vanguard knights on both sides of the line—who had locked their hands to their hilts—slowly relaxed their fras, re-conforming the column to escort the heirs into the main gate tiers.
Ranni cast a highly analytical, surprised look between Lucia and her trembling brother, before shifting her eyes back up to the little girl on the platform, who had already resud burying her nose in the fruit platter. She was montarily puzzled by the physics of the interaction, but her lips remained sealed.
Conversely, Blaidd's gaze toward Rykard was thick with a deep, empathetic solidarity. The half-wolf breed was born with a hyper-refined sensory tracking network for raw combat trics; he understood better than any operator in the parade what manner of crushing, absolute weight Rykard's nervous system had just survived.
This silver-haired prince, who shared his master's age bracket, was an absolute anomaly. The raw aura he had detonated in that grass had legitimately breached the sovereign threshold of True Dragon Majesty. That mountain-deep, crushing physical gravity... among his entire generational roster, Blaidd had only registered a comparable density within Radahn's mass.
This is the new generation of Farum Azula, the wolf calculated, his primitive heart filled with a sudden, silent awe.
The diplomatic procession rolled smoothly through the granite venue arches. The outriders disbanded under the structural guidance of the Golden Order stewards, migrating to their designated barracks without a single administrative incident.
Radagon, flanked by Ordovis and Knight Moongrum, led the primary march up the steps, with the five young demigods tracking their cloaks. The company gathered around the mahogany banquet table, taking their positions according to the chronological protocol Radagon had drafted. Blaidd, serving as Ranni's private sentinel, was forbidden from ascending the platform reserved strictly for demigod bloodlines, taking his post at the nearest security station directly below her chair.
The three Carian siblings had already established a baseline familiarity with Miquella during the march. Now, as Radagon formally presented Malenia's fra to their line, both Radahn and Ranni offered bright, genuine smiles to greet the little girl. Even Rykard, after casting a swift, hyper-paranoid glance toward Lucia's left hand, managed to squeeze out a polite smirk, nodding his skull to acknowledge his new sister.
With the protocols cleared, the state banquet initiated its cycles. Handmaids presented a continuous chain of exquisite, alchemical dishes across the mahogany. Every operator at the high table, including Knight Moongrum, consud their portions while trading an elegant, casual banter. Even Rykard and Ranni had locked their cold looks away, responding to Radagon's inquiries with appropriate compliance. An outside auditor scanning the room would truly deduce that the table comprised a gathering of long-separated, intimate companions.
But Lucia's engine read the underlying code—these entities were not friends; they were long-standing, ancestral archenemies.
He quietly monitored the silver-bearded veteran sitting opposite his bench, who had un-latched his helm to reveal his features. Moongrum's face vaguely retained the handso, aristocratic symtry of his youth, but the skin was etched with the deep, weathered lines of ti. Given his peerless paladin tier—a tric that anchored him at the absolute summit of the continent's heroes—retaining a sorcerous, eternal youth would take no more effort than casting a basic glintstone light. But the first knight of Caria clearly held zero interest in hiding his years.
During the twin wars of the Moonlit Tree, Moongrum had functioned as the most devastating sword and shield anchored to Rennala's crown. Decades down the tiline, long after the Shattering had reduced the Royal House to a phantom mory and the Carian Knights were an extinct class, this exact titan would still be standing stubbornly before her library doors, refusing to allow a single Tarnished to trespass across her threshold.
How could a paladin of that architecture forget a bone-deep, civilizational hatred?
Right then, Lucia watched Knight Moongrum lay his silver fork down. He retrieved a silk napkin, gently dabbing his lips with the immaculate, slow propriety of the ancient high nobility.
Across the table, Radagon's eyes locked onto the movent, and a sharp, synchronized gravity passed instantly between his visor and Commander Ordovis's fra.
Knight Moongrum did not lower his hand to the hilt buckled to his vestnts. He rely lifted his skull, a faint, razor-thin smile touching his weathered lips as his voice cut through the clash of wine cups.
"My office has processed the handwritten, private letters dispatched by both Your Majesties, and we have logged a grueling march to deliver our dynasty's two princes and princess to study within the capital archives."
The veteran's eyes locked directly into Radagon's amber gaze, his voice a low, gravelly vibration. "There remains a solitary administrative variable within that script that requires enlightennt from the throne. I wonder if Your Majesty is prepared to clarify the ledger?"
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