The carriage was as ostentatiously grim as the rest of the Mournblade estate. It was carved from the same dark, petrified wood as the furniture, lacquered to a mirror-like sheen, and adorned with silver fittings shaped like weeping willows and solemn owls. Instead of wheels, it rested on a floating disc of solidified shadow that hummed with a low, mournful thrum. It was pulled by a team of four skeletal horses, their bones bleached white and their eye sockets burning with cold, blue witch-light. They were not undead; they were constructs, animated by a sliver of Death affinity, a common form of transportation for the higher-ranking members of the House. They were also, from Azrael's perspective, ridiculously extra.
*Seriously?* the Earth-born part of my mind commented as a silent servant held the door open for me. *Couldn't just get a nice, sensible black horse? You have to get the ones that look like they escaped from a heavy metal album cover. This family has zero chill.*
The Damon-part of my consciousness simply accepted it as normal. Of course the horses were skeletal. What other kind of horse would a Mournblade use? A flesh-and-blood one? How gauche.
I settled into the plush, velvet-lined interior. My retinue was small, as befitting a second son. Just two guards, clad in black plate armor that was etched with sigils of warding, and the elderly servant who had woken me. They mounted their own skeletal steeds, their posture rigid and alert. A small, unremarkable procession to see a small, unremarkable son off to school. Perfect. The less attention, the better.
The carriage lurched slightly as the shadow-disc lifted from the ground, and then we were moving, gliding silently through the Bone Gardens towards the estate's main gate. I looked out the window, my new, synthesized mind cataloging and analyzing everything. The world of Aethelgard was no longer a story. It was a data set, and I needed to absorb as much of it as possible.
Our destination was the regional Fold-Gate, a marvel of spatial engineering maintained by House Vex'Arak. These gates were the lifeblood of the continent, allowing for instantaneous travel between the vast and often hostile regions of the Pangea Remnant. They were also the source of House Vex'Arak's immense wealth and political power. Every transit came with a fee, a toll paid for the privilege of not spending months crossing monster-infested wildernesses or treacherous mountain passes.
Damon';s memories supplied the cost: an exorbitant sum, charged to the Mournblade house account. Every interaction in this world, I was beginning to realize, was a transaction. Power, loyalty, travel—it all had a price. And Azrael's knowledge supplied the darker truth: House Vex'Arak, the charming, indispensable masters of travel, were secretly the architects of the coming apocalypse. They were the core of the Doom of Outer Gods cult on Aethelgard. Every toll paid, every gate transited, funded the eventual unraveling of reality itself. We were paying our future destroyers for the rope they would use to hang us. The irony was so thick you could choke on it.
The Fold-Gate station was a stark, modern structure of black glass and steel that clashed violently with the gothic landscape of the Mournblade domain. It was a Vex'Arak embassy, a sterile island of their architectural style in a sea of bone and shadow. Inside, the air was cool and smelled of ozone. Vex'Arak functionaries, Eldritch beings in humanoid form, moved with a liquid grace, their features pleasant but subtly wrong. Their smiles never quite reached their eyes, which held the unsettling depth of a star-filled void.
My servant handled the formalities, presenting our credentials and paying the transit fee. I stood back, observing, using Damon's trained stillness to become part of the background. The waiting area was filled with other travelers, mostly nobles and their retinues heading to the capital for the Academy's opening season. It was a microcosm of the political landscape of Aethelgard, and I watched it with the detached interest of a sociologist and the grim foresight of a prophet.
A group of young nobles from House Pyralis were laughing loudly in a corner, their clothes in vibrant shades of red and gold, their hair the color of flame. They radiated an aggressive, boisterous energy, and their casual contempt for everyone around them was palpable. One of them glanced in my direction, his eyes, with their faintly vertical pupils, dismissing me and my somber attire in a single, arrogant sweep. *Pyralis,* my mind supplied. *The Scorched Alliance. Openly hostile to the Imperial throne. Their ambition is their strength and their downfall. The one who sneered at me, I recall from the novel, dies in a duel over a gambling debt in the third arc. A fool.*
Not far from them, a pair of figures from House Noctis stood in the shadows of a pillar, seemingly invisible until you looked directly at them. They were dressed in dark, elegant clothes, their faces pale and beautiful. They spoke in low whispers, their eyes constantly scanning the room, missing nothing. They were spies, even when they were just waiting for a train. *Noctis,* I thought. *The other half of the Scorched Alliance. The silent grudge. They run the empire's intelligence network, and their own. They are patient, venomous, and will be a major problem.*
A larger group, solid and unpretentious, was gathered near the center of the hall. They were dressed in practical, earth-toned clothes, and their demeanor was calm and grounded. They were merchants and guards from House Terranova, the Shield of the Throne. They looked at the Pyralis nobles with solid indifference and the Noctis spies with veiled distrust. *Terranova. The Imperial loyalists. The backbone of the empire. Good, dependable, and tragically naive about the depths of the other Houses' treachery.*
I was seeing the world through a dual lens. Damon's eyes saw the political realities of the present: the alliances, the rivalries, the social cues. Azrael's memory saw their ultimate fates: the betrayals, the deaths, the grand, tragic arc of the story. It was like watching a historical drama, except I was in it, and the script was a death warrant for almost everyone I could see.
"The gate to Luminara is prepared, Second Son," my servant murmured, returning to my side.
I nodded and followed him towards a large, circular archway that shimmered with a silvery, unstable light. The air around it crackled with energy. This was the Fold-Gate. Stepping through it would be like stepping from one side of the continent to the other in a single stride.
I paused at the threshold, bracing myself. Then, I stepped through.
The sensation was indescribable. For a fraction of a second, reality dissolved. I was nowhere and everywhere. I saw the geometry of space-time laid bare, a tapestry of infinite, shimmering threads. I felt my body deconstructed into its base particles and then instantly reassembled. It was nauseating and exhilarating all at once.
And then it was over. I was standing on a matching platform in another station, the air warm and filled with the scent of flowers and sun-baked stone. The journey that would have taken three months by land had taken three seconds.
I stepped out of the station into the light of Luminara, the capital of the Aetherial Throne. And I felt the wrongness of it immediately.
The city was breathtaking. Golden spires and towers floated in the sky, connected by bridges of solidified light that shimmered with the colors of the aurora. Waterfalls cascaded from the edges of floating islands, their spray turning into rainbows in the perpetual sunlight. It was a city from a dream, a testament to the Creation affinity of the Solarius Dynasty.
But it was… thin.
It was a feeling that Damon's Death affinity could sense, a subtle lack of substance. It was like a beautiful painting on a canvas that was stretched too taut, about to tear. The city existed because the Emperor, Valerius the Exhausted, willed it to exist. Every morning, he created it anew. But his power was fading. I could feel it. As I watched, one of the distant golden spires flickered, becoming momentarily translucent, as if the Emperor's attention had wandered for a split second. Then it solidified again.
This city, this symbol of Imperial power, was an illusion held together by the fading will of a tired old man. The entire empire was a house of cards, and the Vex'Arak were about to unleash a hurricane. I had to get to the Academy. I had to get ready. The first act was about to begin.