An immovable wall of pure Sol slammed down on them, like the air itself had turned to stone.

Even for the three of them, Heralds in both title and in strength, the weight was suffocating. Power replaced the air, pressed into their bones, gnawed at their Sol until it felt as though their own cores might crack under the strain.

On paper, they were equals.

In truth, they weren't.

Measured purely by the burn of their Sol, Pyrrhos was the weakest, his yellow core bright but thin in density, tailored for agility and trickery more than raw force. Maximilian sat in the middle with a healthy, potent yellow Sol core, balanced and brutal, its stability a weapon in itself. Sanguis, however, had the strongest of the three, his yellow Sol core nearly golden, its light thick enough to stain the shadows.

There was a hierarchy inside the hierarchy. Every Herald knew it, though it was never written.

But as every one of them also knew… there weren't three Heralds.

There were four.

And the fourth was here now, pinning them all to their chairs without so much as turning her head.

She stood at the far end of the room, her face angled toward the glass wall as though she were admiring the endless snow beyond. White hair poured down her back in a perfect cascade, catching and reflecting the pale light. Black armor traced her body in smooth, predatory lines, the plates edged in a living red glow that pulsed faintly in time with the slow, steady thrum of her Sol. Two crimson horns curved up from her head like the peaks of a crown forged in hellfire, their tips jagged as if they'd been broken in battle and regrown sharper.

She didn't need to look at them for her voice to cut through the pressure she had unleashed.

"Don't let your head swell too much, Sanguis."

The words were casual, almost lazy, but the air seemed to tighten with each syllable.

She turned then, the motion unhurried. Her eyes caught the light and made it bleed, a molten red glare that pinned Sanguis in place. "You were the leader of this little motley crew only because I was of greater use somewhere else," she said. "Do not mistake previous circumstance for supremacy. Know your place."

Sanguis didn't move, but somehow the shadowed crescent where his eyes should have been seemed to narrow. His voice was even, but the edge had dulled. "Of course… Lady Dracia."

Maximilian didn't bow, but his lips curved into the faintest smile, the kind that said he was happy to watch Sanguis choke on humility. Inside, he noted, as he always did, that the sheer weight of her Sol was bright enough to rival even some of the Overlords. She wasn't a creature you could measure by rank. She was on a whole other level.

Pyrrhos's mask tilted slightly, the painted smile reflecting her crimson glow. "Mmm," he hummed, almost to himself, as the ghosts at his sleeves went perfectly still. "Always nice when the room remembers what fear tastes like." He didn't sound afraid, but his voice had lost its sing-song sharpness, replaced with the kind of careful lightness one uses when walking on a frozen lake.

Dracia of the Moredread.

The only Herald who didn't serve an Overlord, but something far higher. A Supreme Being. The bright, almost unnatural red of her Sol core set her apart from all others in the room. And she wasn't finished.

"Also," she said, voice cooling into something knife-thin, "You seem to be incorrect."

Sanguis tilted his head. "Incorrect?"

Her gaze shifted, not to him, but to the center of the table as her lips shaped the next words.

"The Great Overlords are present with us… as of this moment."

The room obeyed her declaration instantly.

It began to expand with an exponential bloom, reality itself bending outward to make space. The ceiling pulled away, the floor spread, and the air deepened until what had once been a chamber became a vast arena.

Seven gigantic platforms rose around the Overlords' table, each one a perfect black disc five meters across, suspended in nothing.

The Overlords had arrived.

The first to light was the one directly behind Maximilian. Lines of sickly green traced themselves in the dark, the way fungus maps rot under bark, and then the hologram climbed out of the light like a man stepping through a door he hadn't bothered to open.

A plague doctor, taller than the room could justify, elegant in a way that made the elegance predatory. A wide-brimmed hat cast a clean shadow across his long, hooked beak; the mask's lenses burned with an inner green that did not come from any light. His greatcoat fell in perfect, surgical planes—waxed leather, pocketed and belted and buckled with the calm excess of someone who never leaves an instrument behind. Three vials glowed at his throat, the liquid inside too alive to be just a liquid. One hand wore white gloves that were not cloth; the other rested on the head of a cane whose ferrule showed a tiny gear turning inside its own reflection.

He laughed, and the sound was polished, like a surgeon pleased with the cleanliness of an incision. "Watch your tongue, Sanguis," the Doctor said, his voice calm as antiseptic. "On her little vacation in hell, she killed greater beings for less."

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Dracia's head turned a fraction, enough to acknowledge. The red in her eyes did not brighten; it merely stopped pretending to be calm. "It wasn't a vacation, my lord Doctor."

The beak tilted, the green in his lenses narrowing to a bright wire. "And are you all there, child?" he asked. "You speak to your direct superior with a posture I would not tolerate in an apprentice."

"You know who my superior is," Dracia replied. "If not for rankings and the order given, I would stand equal to you."

The green brightened. "Do you dare—"

"Doctor." The word came from somewhere else. Another platform woke above Pyrrhos, and a gigantic child took shape in gold.

A child on the edge of ten, haloed by soft light, eyes too wide for human, mouth too sincere to be safely believed. He wore a robe that could have been pajamas or priesthood garments, depending on how you felt about them. Small gears orbited his shoulders like toys a god had forgotten to put away. He waved at the room with both hands, then put them down because he remembered he was supposed to be serious when the big ones were fighting.

"Um," the Child said, his voice echoing like a bell rung with hammers. "Is it really okay to talk to Dracia like that? She's, like, super duper strong."

The Doctor's laugh returned, warmer now. "Don't worry your pretty little head," he said, and his lenses softened their wire to a pleasant glow. "It is correct to speak this way to lowborn Unborn. Rank is the skeleton of order." He turned his mask toward Dracia. "There are reasons for ranks, and you know them as well as we do."

Maximilian felt the pride structure itself inside him. His master. The only one with a plan that felt like a realistic and not a vendetta. Second in command by rank. First in method. The Doctor's goal had always been a map you could show to enemies and make them afraid: resurrect the Supreme Beings. Bring back the order that had put names to the dark. The Elder mouthed the same intent, but filtered it through grudges and old injuries, through a hatred that made every decision small. The Doctor remained simple where the Elder was tangled. He wanted the engine on. He did not care who bled to grease it. Maximilian's spine straightened by instinct; even his skeleton-shadow hummed approval.

Across the table, Pyrrhos's mask tipped up toward the Child with a wonder bordering on adoration. The painted smile did not change, but the tilt said everything: Here is my sun. Here is the game I never want to end.

A third platform brightened. Brass rings unfolded inside it like the inside of a clock becoming a cathedral. The figure that resolved was armored, every surface chased with clean geometric bands, the breastplate a perfect round that held a recessed orb of golden light. The helm was not a face so much as a mask of working angles, the eye slits glowing a steady amber that judged without malice. Small drones, discs with fins like watch hands, circled him in slow orbits, writing silent equations in the air with dim trails.

"Do not speak like that in front of the children," he said to the Doctor, each word placed as carefully as a gear on a spindle. "It leaves them with poor manners."

The Doctor flicked a gloved hand, amused. "They must learn them somewhere."

"And it must not be from us," the armored Overlord replied. His amber eyes turned toward the Child. "Good evening."

"Hi Watcher!" the Child beamed, then remembered dignity and folded his hands very seriously over his lap. A gear bumped his shoulder, startled itself, and began orbiting again.

Sanguis had not sat. He never sat when the Overlords were in front of him. The crescent under his hood burned a deeper orange, and his chain creaked when he breathed. "My lords," he said. "We are grateful for your presence."

The Doctor's lenses found him and held. "You will be grateful for my patience," he said mildly. "You claim leadership in a room that belongs to Dracia by right of force. Remember why you were permitted to hold the chair before."

"It was empty," Sanguis answered. "And she was elsewhere."

"Correct," Dracia said. "And now I am here. We will not discuss Ossa without the one whose shadow owns it." She did not move, but somehow the wall of red pressure tilted toward the platforms, acknowledging rank while refusing to kneel.

The Child swung his feet in the air. "Ossa sounds fun," he said. "Are there parades? There should be parades. And little flags." His eyes went distant as if he could already see them. "And a dragon, but friendly. And a tower, with stairs forever." He blinked up at Pyrrhos as though asking permission for his own imagination.

Pyrrhos pressed both palms to his chest, delighted. "Say the word and there will be a thousand towers," he said. "And if anyone gets tired of climbing, the stairs will start moving and bring them chocolate milk."

"Chocolate milk..." the Child repeated, contented. "Yes. Good." Then, suddenly serious again: "But be careful with Dracia. She looks like she might not like that."

The armored Overlord, The Watcher, though he had not named himself. steepled gloved fingers in front of the golden aperture in his chest. "You are here to answer a simpler question, Dracia." he said. "Are your Heralds aligned?"

"They are," Dracia said first, not looking back at the three. "Even when they quarrel they aim the quarrel where I point."

Maximilian inclined his head a fraction. "That is correct, but I require only clarity," he said. "On Ossa."

Sanguis made a sound that might have been a swallow. "We await the Elder's blessing," he said.

"The Elder," the Doctor repeated. "Yes. He is listening, even tho he has not shown hismelf." He folded his arms, the vials at his throat chiming lightly together. "Your report," he said to Maximilian, as if no one else could have asked.

"Two notes," Maximilian said. "First: That Liberator is precisely what we measured."

"And the princess?" The Watcher asked.

"Wearing a Mantle of Heroes," Maximilian said. "Old work. Ugly, but functional. She can level a district without elevating her heart rate. But the cost bleeds her in a way she pretends not to feel. She will keep paying."

The Child brightened again. "She saved people?" he asked, as if this were a flavor and he was guessing it. "Good. Saving is a lovely thing."

"Until it becomes compulsion," the Watcher murmured. "Then it is a noose."

Dracia's mouth did not change, but the red along her horns ticked upward. "She will stand between us and the Liberator's corruption if she can," she said. "That is the shape of her vow. It makes her predictable."

A fourth platform pulsed. When the voice came, it did not arrive from any single direction. It settled over them like a cloak trimmed in winter.

"It is sufficient," said an elderly man, each syllable pared to a polished edge, the cadence old as court and older than the world. The tongue he chose was not common; it moved with the measured dignity of liturgy. "The princess tends her appointed fire. The new Liberator carries his torch through the dark. Each keeps to the path written for them. So it has been paved. So it shall be walked."

"Do not trouble yourselves with tremors from beyond our halls," the voice continued, unhurried. "We guide the board farther than any outside hand, farther than those rebellious Grounded who think their years grant them wisdom." The faintest smile threaded the last word; it was not kind.

Maximilian didn't try to hide his reaction. The smirk came easily, a cut he didn't bother to sheath. Across the table, Pyrrhos went very still beneath his painted grin. Sanguis's chain creaked once. Dracia did not blink. The Watcher's drones arrested their orbits. The Doctor alone permitted a hint of pride to warm the green behind his lenses.

A soft cough touched the air. "Three of our numbers are absent," the Elder said. "It is confirmed they attend to matters of consequence. Their chairs remain theirs."

A pause, like a page turned by a careful hand.

"Thus," the Elder finished, voice settling into command as easily as a blade into a scabbard, "Our monthly convocation begins now."

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