"Warlord," the guard called, bowing with a trace of hesitation. "The Imperial ships have just crossed into our territory."
Duke Arvon didn't answer right away. His face remained unreadable, as if the words hadn't reached him at all. Rising from the massive iron chair, its frame alive with crackling sparks that raced along the tangled wires, he strode toward the wall. His hand brushed across the cold marble surface before slamming down with sudden force.
The room shuddered. The once lifeless walls blazed to life, glowing like enormous screens. A figure began to take shape within the light—a humanoid, feminine in outline, with skin the color of deep violet. Black scales clung to her body like armor, sleek and predatory. Her face was nothing but a smooth mask, stripped of eyes, mouth, and nose, yet alive in a way that made the air heavy with unease.
She pushed against the glowing surface as though fighting her way free from a digital womb. First her head wriggled out, fluid and unnatural, followed by the rest of her body, sliding into the room like liquid given form. The instant she was free, she struck a pose dripping with seduction, a playful giggle escaping her—though she had no lips to speak from.
"Why have you summoned me, Master?" Her voice was sweet and mischievous, tinged with the innocence of a child, the contradiction making it all the more unsettling.
"Shaxia," Arvon said evenly, adjusting his monocle. His sharp gaze returned to the living walls, refusing to humor her games.
"Give me your report on the disappearances on the island of Dos."
For a moment, Shaxia stilled. Then her faceless head tilted, her folded arms radiating displeasure. If she had a mouth, she would have been pouting.
"I haven't had enough time to gather a complete set of data," Shaxia said, twirling her fingers as if they fascinated her. The gesture was unnerving—especially from a being with no eyes to actually look at them. "So forgive me if there are… flaws."
"What margin of error?" Arvon asked, his face as still and unreadable as stone, as though the answer barely mattered.
Shaxia extended her hand, dragging her fingers slowly across the black armor sculpted over the hard lines of his chest.
The sound of scale against metal whispered in the silence.
"About ten percent, Daddy," she giggled.
"That's hardly reassuring," he muttered, though he didn't push her hand away.
"But it will do."
She shifted her weight, her posture suddenly lazy, almost bored. "Our spies on the island report… unusual activity. Some Stellaris have been shadowing the families of the missing. At first we thought the Imperials had sent them as protection, but…" Her tone dipped into something flat, dismissive. "The pattern doesn't fit. Repeatedly, those same Stellaris are reported killing the very families they stalk. Afterwards, they arrange little performances— so convincing it's almost… art."
Arvon's eyes flicked up to her. "Any confirmed sightings? Or just hearsay?"
Her laughter rang out, high and girlish, bouncing unnaturally around the chamber. "Oh, Daddy, where's your faith in me?" She snapped her fingers.
The walls lit up again, this time with grim clarity. Images unfolded: Stellaris slaughtering households in exquisite detail—mortals gutted, throats slit, bodies broken in elaborate displays. Then, just as efficiently, the killers staged accidents so believable they bordered on genius. Tragedies dressed up as coincidence, tragedy perfected. But then, what else could be expected from bloodline of the Gervian Stellaris?
"What's your take, Shaxia?" Arvon asked at last. A metallic cube drifted from the shadows behind him, whirring softly as it unfolded itself into a chair. He lowered himself into it, stretching his arms with a languid motion. For the first time, a smile cracked his lips—but it was the smile of a man worn thin, wary beneath the surface.
"Although the Imperial Clan tried to bury the truth, not everything can stay hidden," Shaxia said, her tone sing-song, as though she were mocking the attempt. "Some of the missing have been seen underground, in the Royal Estate's sealing prison—wearing the faces of inmates."
Her faceless head tilted as though she were savoring the revelation. "Daddy, if we follow the data, the pattern's clear. The Royal Family is taking these people in and holding their loved ones as leverage. The obedient ones stay quiet. The defiant ones?" She made a soft clicking sound with her tongue, miming a headshake. "Their families are… erased. It's neat. Efficient. And exactly the kind of thing they'd do." Her voice lowered, losing its playfulness. "But as to why they're collecting these people… that will take me more time to find out."
Arvon sat in silence, his jaw taut. Finally, he asked, "The missing—most of them are Stellaris specializing in explosive arts, aren't they?"
"Well… most," Shaxia admitted, a trace of skepticism coloring her sweet tone. "A handful deal in radiation, others in disintegration. But destruction is the thread they all share."
"Servious," Arvon said at last, his voice cutting into the still air.
The guard, who had lingered at the back like a shadow, straightened quickly. "Yes, Warlord?"
"Have our guests arrived at the manor?"
"They have, Your Honor. Settled and awaiting you. His Highness will request your presence shortly."
Arvon's monocled eye gleamed as he asked, almost too calmly, "Tell me, Servious—how many of these guests are… unfamiliar?"
The guard hesitated, his throat bobbing. "A third of them, Warlord." He paused, uncertainty flickering in his eyes. But he pressed on. "The readings suggest they specialize in explosive arts. They are cloaked in disguises."
Silence pressed down on the chamber. Even Shaxia, usually eager to fill the air with her teasing, grew still. Slowly, as if the realization was only now sinking in, she turned toward Arvon. For once, her voice carried a tremor.
"Daddy… this is bad."
Arvon didn't answer. His fists clenched tight, his bloodshot eyes narrowing as his teeth ground together. The tension in the room coiled like a spring.
Servious shifted uneasily. "If I may speak, Warlord…" He swallowed. "This feels insulting, does it not? If the Royal Clan truly means to test us with this… force, it borders on mockery. Their auras don't even threaten our subordinate clans, much less us."
Arvon rose slowly, his frame towering as he crossed to the far wall. Lined across it were massive metallic spheres, each glowing faintly, their sheen carrying the scent of rust and heat. They pulsed with a strange, ominous rhythm.
His hand lingered on them for a moment before sliding to the steel lever fixed beside them. Closing his eyes, he exhaled slowly, then pulled.
The metallic spheres embedded in the walls trembled violently, breaking formation as though stirred by some unseen storm. They clustered to one side, leaving the opposite wall bare. Then, with a groan that reverberated through the chamber, the marble curved inward, opening into a hollow filled with thick, white mist.
The mist spilled outward in waves, slithering across the floor and walls, devouring every corner. Within seconds, the air turned razor-cold, the temperature plummeting by hundreds of degrees. Frost crept in veins across the surfaces; thin cracks split the stone as the room itself began to freeze.
For the first time, Duke Arvon laughed. It was not joy, not triumph, but a jagged, bitter sound—half-snarl, half-growl—like something feral had broken loose inside him. He thrust both hands into the misty hollow and drew out an orb.
The moment it left its cradle, the temperature plunged further. Sharp pops echoed through the chamber as materials fractured into ice.
Servious dropped to one knee instantly, bowing so low his forehead nearly kissed the frozen floor. His shoulders shook, his teeth rattling uncontrollably. Shaxia, usually untouchable in her games, folded herself into the same posture. Her shivering wasn't from the cold—it was fear, raw and primal, born from the orb itself.
The orb radiated an otherworldly light, its surface glazed in silver frost. Ancient sigils spiraled across its skin, glowing faintly with a sinister brilliance that seemed to drink in the warmth of existence itself. Just looking at it tugged at the edges of the soul, as though the patterns were threads reaching into the very core of being, ready to rip it away.
"Servious," Arvon said, his voice low, grave, and edged with resolve. He placed the orb into the cleft of a hovering metallic cube that hummed at his side. "The royal bastards have never left us a path of retreat. If my clan and my family are fated to die, then I'll make sure the rest of the world burns with us."
Servious dared not lift his head, but Arvon read his silence as clearly as speech. The royal clan and the Prin Dukedom were evenly matched; to crush one would bleed the other dry. Total war was madness—but it was the kind of madness the Royals had forced upon them.
"You still don't see it, Servious," Arvon continued, his monocle catching the orb's frost-lit gleam. "Those disguised guests—they may look harmless now. But what if they've already chosen to die? What if their lives are the coin they've offered in exchange for their families' survival?"
The words struck Servious like a blow. He swallowed hard, sweat freezing on his brow. "Then… then they must be prepared to unleash death arts. And with their mastery of explosive arts, they'd take a piece of us with them." His voice faltered, shame pulling at the edges. "Forgive me, Warlord, for my blindness."
Death arts. The final, desperate blaze of power—the last light of a dying star. Arts that reached their pinnacle only at the cost of annihilating the caster's very soul. No Stellaris dared push an enemy to the brink lightly, for when cornered, even the weakest could drag the strongest into the abyss. Worse still, death arts could wound even those a full realm above.
Which meant that the unthreatening strangers who had walked through their gates were, in truth, harbingers of catastrophe.
Arvon's eyes glowed with a fevered light as the cube holding the orb floated before him, frost clinging to its edges. His lips twisted into a smile both grim and mad.
"The Eternis Sphere has rested in my family for too long. If we are to fall, then it will fall with us."
"Your Honor, I beg you to reconsider." Servious's voice wavered, but he forced himself to speak. "We swore an oath to guard the Sphere with our lives. If harm comes to the Eternis Sphere… Gervia will not endure."
Arvon laughed—a low, broken sound that scraped against the air like steel dragged across stone. His gaze slid toward Servious, twisted in something between contempt and disgust, as though his guard's very existence offended him.
"You poor, naive fool." His voice was quiet, but it cut like a knife. He stepped closer to Servious, slow and deliberate, each footfall echoing through the frost-laden chamber. "This is why men like you will never sit at the table of true kings. Let me show you why you kneel, and I do not."
His eyes glinted as he towered over the bowed guard. "Men like you bind yourselves with chains of loyalty, mistaking them for honor. You carry the burdens your masters give you, not out of strength, but out of hunger—for scraps of validation. Faithful dogs, forgotten when their bones are buried. But true kings… true kings carve their fate into the marrow of history. Loved or hated, they are remembered. Because they were never slaves to another's will."
Servious trembled, the sound of his teeth grinding echoing faintly in the icy silence.
Arvon's gaze slid over him with cold apathy before he turned away. His attention shifted to Shaxia, who stared back at him with a fanatic gleam, faceless yet somehow radiant with devotion.
"You should leave, Servious," Arvon said, his back now to the guard. "I have no use for you."
Servious bowed deeply. His face burned with shame as he turned and left, his footsteps vanishing into the cold.
Shaxia drifted closer, her liquid-like body swaying, her fingers gliding once more over the Duke's plated chest. "Daddy," she purred, her voice childlike and accusing at once. "Are you sure it's wise to speak to your men like that? At this rate… you'll drive them all away."
Arvon sneered, a cruel smile tugging at his lips. "Men like him are slaves to their own desires. All I need is the right lever to press, and they'll come crawling back. Always." He exhaled through his teeth, his gaze drifting toward the frost-rimmed window. Beyond it, the courtyard shimmered with the cold gleam of countless warships aligned in formation. "But enough about dogs. Let's talk about something worth my time."
His voice hardened, each word sinking heavier. "Doesn't it strike you as strange, Shaxia? Stellaris so eager to die—not to protect their honor, not to win—but to save their families from death. To embrace a death art."
He let the silence stretch, his eyes narrowing. "You know what death arts are, Shaxia. They're worse than death itself. They obliterate the soul, rip it from the cycle, erase it from existence. Only those drowning in hate would dare such a bargain—dragging their enemy down with them. But in the end, the enemy returns in another life. And you? You are nothing. Not even ash."
Shaxia slid her arms around his armored waist, pressing herself against him like a lover seeking warmth. "Then… what are you trying to say, Daddy?"
Arvon pulled away, turning sharply. With a swift flick, his finger tapped her forehead, making her flinch. Then he lifted her chin with a single forefinger, forcing her faceless head to tilt up toward him.
"I don't have time for your games, Shaxia," he said, voice low but edged with command. "I have work for you. Lock our weapons on the visitors. And if they show the slightest hint of… unusual activity—" his lips curved into a cold smile— "you may silence them. Quietly. To avoid… accidents."
Shaxia giggled, the sound soft and unsettling, like glass chimes in the wind. "As you wish, Master. Hehe… I'm going to have so much fun." With a playful twirl, her body disintegrated, melting into liquid strands that seeped back into the glowing walls until nothing remained but the fading ripple of her laughter.
Arvon's gaze lingered on the place where she had vanished before drifting down to the device strapped to his wrist. A notification pulsed there—his oldest daughter had asked to see him. Odd. She rarely sought him out, her world forever orbiting her younger sister, never him.
He exhaled through his nose, the faintest crease forming on his otherwise impassive face. Slowly, he lowered himself onto the chair in his office, folding his legs as he reached for a half-drained bottle of heated liquor.
He tipped it back, letting the fiery liquid scorch its way down his throat before releasing a long, guttural belch. A cloud of steaming mist curled into the frosted air. For a moment, he sat in silence, bottle dangling loosely in one hand, his eyes locked on the door.
He waited.
***
Kelly made her way toward her father's office, to be precise, the father of the body she occupied, her heart hammering as though it wanted to flee without her. With every step, the air thickened. The deeper she went, the hotter it became—until even she, with a constitution that belonged to an Astral Forger, flinched at the sting of it.
The guards stationed here weren't like the ones outside. These were shadows wrapped in menace, their presence so suffocating it pressed the air from her lungs. Their armor wasn't steel—it gleamed like obsidian pulled from volcanic pits, still carrying the faint glow of molten rock. The walls themselves seemed alive, streaked with veins of liquid fire that pulsed and spat waves of burning heat.
By the time she reached the Duke's office, dizziness gnawed at her. Her head swam, her skin prickled, and it took every shred of willpower not to collapse under the furnace heat. She forced her trembling hands to push the doors open.
And instantly wished she hadn't.
A blast of air slammed into her—a collision of searing heat and bone-freezing cold. The clash of extremes tore at her senses, made her stumble with a gasp. Cold and fire were never meant to coexist; one always devoured the other. Yet here they mingled, locked in a paradox that shredded her nerves. Frost laced her skin even as heat scalded it, her body convulsing under signals so contradictory her mind threatened to shut down.
Inside, the office was a battlefield of elements. Small metallic spheres raced chaotically across the walls, scraping and clattering, the stench of rust heavy in the air. Flames still flowed in rivulets along the surface, liquid fire weaving between them. And at one side, cutting through the madness, the walls glowed bright like vast monitor screens, humming with silent authority.
Her teeth clattered from the cold, even as her skin prickled under the sting of heat. Forcing her head up, Kelly's eyes landed on the figure seated before her.
The man lounged on a chair alive with electric sparks, arcs of energy snapping and dying against its frame. Before him stretched a slab of molten stone that pulsed and cracked like a burning heart, the surface alive with fire. Atop it rested a bottle of liquor, the liquid inside forever boiling, releasing bursts of scalding air so hot they warped the space around it.
And just beyond, suspended in the air, floated a metallic cube. A cleft in its surface cradled something far worse—an orb that shimmered with a beauty meant to deceive. The moment Kelly's gaze touched it, her aura fractured, splintering under invisible pressure. Her breath seized in her chest, every inhale a desperate, jagged rasp.
Then the man spoke. Or perhaps it was a god.
"You are not my daughter, outsider," he said softly, his voice strangely gentle, almost kind. But the words gutted her. "I would very much like to have her back… if you don't mind."
The flames in the room surged higher, as if even they obeyed his whisper.
And then he smiled.
Kelly's blood froze—not from the cold, but from the venom laced in that expression.
"Oh, forgive my manners," he murmured, tilting his head. "If you don't return her… I'll grant you a death so exquisite, no mortal or god alive could ever satisfy you more. A different kind of death…" His grin widened, sharp and wicked. "…one that will leave you begging me for it again."
Kelly's knees almost buckled. For the first time in her life, she tasted the full shape of fear—raw, primal, unrelenting. It coiled inside her like a serpent and tore through her body, until blood welled in her throat and spilled from her lips.
This was Arvon Zoltan.
The Nebula Sovereign of Liquid Flames.
And she had made the worst mistake of her life by underestimating him.