The wind of Khaitish carried with it a strange kind of silence.

Standing before Anriette now, Lukas suddenly remembered the night of his departure from Easthaven, standing in the tower's upper observatory while Thomas Harrow looked out towards the open seas. The mage had just learnt that Lukas would be leaving for the Kingdom of Khaitish, the Land of the Beastkin, in hopes of healing his broken body. They had exchanged farewells, with Thomas forcing Lukas to promise that he would return.

As Lukas had turned to leave, Thomas had not turned to face him when he spoke for the final time, his tone more fragile than Lukas had ever heard. "If you ever find Anriette," Thomas had said, his hand resting against the cracked windowpane, "tell her that she will always have a place in the Magic Tower."

Lukas had thought little of it at the time.

But seeing her now, Thomas' words echoed now like a tolling bell in his mind.

It was Anriette Vale, in the flesh.

But she was no longer the Anriette that Lukas had once known.

Her hair, once bound in that tight naval braid that had become her trademark, was now uneven and cut short, the ends jagged as if hacked off in haste. The immaculate blues and silvers of the Admiralty uniform were gone, replaced by a rough traveler's cloak of gray and tan, threadbare from years beneath the desert sun. Dust clung to her boots and hands, and when she moved, the faint jingle of chain-links beneath the folds of her cloak betrayed armor once ceremonial, now repurposed for survival.

Even amid that ruin of her former identity, one relic of her past remained.

Strapped to her belt was a thick leather-bound tome—the Codex of Naval Law & Wartime Judgment—its brass corners catching the dying sunlight. Lukas could almost smell the ink and hear the careful scratching of her quill as she annotated its margins during long nights at sea. The seal of Nozar, three interlocking chains beneath the mark of the Admiralty, gleamed faintly on the cover, a cruel reminder of what she had once upheld. The gold lettering down its spine had begun to fade, but the weight of its authority remained, as did the burden it seemed to lay upon her shoulders.

"Klein…?" Her voice was hesitant, cracked from the desert air, her lips were dry and bleeding slightly where the skin had split.

For a heartbeat, Lukas saw something familiar flash in her eyes—a glimmer of relief, of something almost tender.

"I thought you died." She gave a small, broken laugh, half disbelief, half joy.

But the reunion, fragile as glass, began to fracture almost immediately.

Lukas' gaze drifted—not toward her face, but to the object she held loosely in her left hand. The Mandate, that silver tablet, its surface polished and humming faintly from the ancient runes that had been chiseled into its surface.

As her eyes followed his, the warmth fled from her expression as quickly as it had come. Her grip on the tablet tightened; her posture shifted subtly, one foot sliding back into the sand.

"I need this, Klein." Anriette's voice trembled, though not from fear.

The wind pulled at her cloak as she took a step back, the silver tablet glinting in one hand and her sword gripped tight in the other. Her knuckles were white, her stance low—the stance of someone ready to fight, or to die if forced to. Lukas could see the strain behind her eyes, the weight of too many choices pressed upon her shoulders.

The faint hum of power began to build around her.

It started as a vibration, low and rhythmic, like the slow beat of a war drum buried beneath the sand.

Lukas' eyes flickered toward the Codex at her side—the same leather-bound tome that had once symbolized her authority as Vice Admiral of the Nozaran Fleet. Now, its seal of interlocking chains burned with faint silver light, each link pulsing in time with her heartbeat.

Instinctively, his own Divinity roared to life to answer the call to battle. The air around Lukas thickened, a shimmer of unseen energy trailing up his arm as faint threads of azure light coiled around his fingers.

"I'm sorry, Anriette. But so do I." His voice was quiet and sad.

For a heartbeat, they stood there as two remnants of a different time—a time where they believed peace would last despite how clearly fragile it had become—now standing on opposing sides.

Anriette broke the silence first. She thrust her sword into the sand with a sharp metallic hiss, freeing her hand to unfasten the worn leather straps holding the Codex. When she opened it, the desert light dimmed as if the world itself dared not intrude upon this act. The pages began to turn of their own accord, flapping violently in the still air, guided by a force older than either of them. The paper was yellowed with age, but the script that raced across it burned with living ink—runes of Nozari law and judgement.

With a flick of her wrist, Anriette slammed her palm upon the open page.

The ground shuddered. A surge of silver radiance burst outward from the book, spreading across the sands like wildfire. Glyphs erupted in a wide ring around them, etching themselves into the ground in a perfect circle of light. The air crackled. Sigils lifted from the sand, spinning in slow, deliberate rotation—orbiting the pair like planets around a dying sun.

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The wind stilled. The dunes fell silent. Even the shifting sands seemed to hold their breath.

"I will ask you five questions. Questions that you must answer truthfully," Anriette whispered.

The words carried not as sound, but as a decree, binding and absolute.

She believed, Lukas knew, that his protection against magic of the mind had died with Magnus Elarion; believing it to be a ward of the Head Mage's creation. But the Crown still shielded him, its unseen power veiling his mind. Yet despite this, Lukas let her believe in her own advantage, allowing her magic to seep into him, tasting the edges of his thoughts.

Then, without hesitation, he placed his hand upon the open Codex.

The parchment somehow felt cold beneath his fingers.

"Do you or do you not plan to take this Mandate from me, even if it means resorting to violence?" she asked softly. Her eyes searched his face—not for deceit, but for the man she once knew—and Lukas met her gaze without flinching.

"I do."

The Codex responded instantly.

DING!

A green checkmark flared into existence beside him, glowing with approval.

Anriette's jaw tightened. The light from the runes reflected off the silver tablet she held, painting her expression in shifting hues of judgment and sorrow. "Will you stand down?" she demanded, her tone shifting—no longer the voice of a wandering vagabond, but of the Vice Admiral of the Nozar's Admiralty, commanding obedience.

Lukas's expression softened. "No. I will not."

DING!

Another green checkmark burned in the air beside him.

There was no point in lies, not now, not before her. For all their differences, Lukas knew she would have respected that more than anything.

Anriette's voice cracked as she tried again, the plea raw and small against her magic's humming light. "Will you stand down?"

Lukas met that question with a shake of the head that carried the weight of fate.

She already knew the answer he would give. She watched it in the tilt of his jaw, the steadiness of his eyes.

"I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't," he whispered, the words falling across the runes like a confession offered to a tribunal.

The Codex acknowledged his honesty with its soft mechanical chime.

DING!

For a moment Anriette seemed to crumble inward, unwilling to accept what was to come. She did not want to have to raise her blade against him. "Please…Klein. Will you stand down?" Her voice went higher, threaded with grief and the last hope of a friend pleading to be spared a duel she did not want.

But there was nothing left to be said.

Lukas' answer remained unchanged. "I will not. I need that Mandate, Anriette." He spoke with finality, his own magical energy rising in intensity.

DING!

If he was going to get that Mandate then he would have to pry it from Anriette's grip for he knew that she would not give it up willingly.

Beneath his skin something ancient came to life. Lukas could feel it coil in the white-marble arm—that impossible construction veined with molten gold, a sliver of the Goddesses' essence bound into formed flesh. The Draconic Flow answered the call, first as a prickle under his flesh, then as heat, then as the slow, inexorable change that left no human feature untouched. A sheen rose along his forearms; scales pushed through and spread, each like a small, bright shield. Muscles re-knitted themselves to broader patterns, his silhouette widening, shoulders thickening into something inhumane. Sand shifted under the new weight, the ring of glyphs reflected off his emerging scales.

Anriette's breath hitched—a sound of grief, of disbelief, of a sailor seeing a creature of the deep that she believed only to be myth and legend.

"Who…are you…?" she asked, the final question of the five.

There was no more need to hide behind the mask that was Klein, the Rising Star of the Magic Tower.

So he answered it, without hesitation and with the pride of his nation.

"My name is Lukas Drakos. And I am the King of the Dragons."

The codex marked it with a final DING and thus put an end to Anriette's interrogation.

The formal Vice Admiral's lips trembled, but her voice found that hard, authoritative cadence she had once used so many times to bring mutiny to heel.

Her verdict was law given voice and the Codex had recorded every syllable long ago.

"By Article IX of the Codex of Naval Law & Wartime Judgment—Theft of Property," she intoned, each word a struck hammer. "By Article XIV—Refusal to Comply with a Commanding Officer in Service of the Nozari Navy. By Article XV—Threatening an Officer of the Nozari Navy with Harm or Coercion. And by Article XXIII—Assuming and Manifesting Draconic Form, an offense against the Covenant between the Church and the People."

The waters all around them began to gather around the two.

"For these crimes," she concluded, "I have deemed you guilty until proven innocent."

Lukas Drakos inhaled, the feeling of the Draconic Flow pulsing within his arm and throughout his entire body, filling him with both familiarity and strength.

Anriette tightened her grip on sword and tablet, the Codex rising into the air as its magic began to flow into her.

Dust swirled in the desert winds of Khaitish as the dunes around them turned into an arena.

"So it's come to this." Lukas whispered.

But Anriette would deliver justice as she saw fit.

"Face justice," Anriette pronounced, each word like a nailed statement, "or die."

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