The city was still burning when Lan reached the foot of Solaris Castle.
Behind him, smoke blotted out the horizon, and the red glow of fires painted the streets in an endless dusk. Corpses littered the stairs and plazas, broken steel and shattered banners clinging stubbornly to stone.
Above, the marble spires of the royal fortress caught the firelight, a pristine mockery towering over the ruin below.
Lan stopped at the first step.
His blade, Devil's Lie, hung loose at his side. His breathing was steady. Every step that had carried him here had been an inevitability; now nothing remained but the confrontation itself.
On the balcony high above, a figure remained—tall, broad, cloaked in the radiance of gold.
King Aldric Solaris.
His presence alone seemed to bend the air, as though the world acknowledged him as sovereign not just by title but by sheer force of being.
