Chapter 30: The Last Prince of Aethel
The silence of the fifth floor did not dissolve into light, but into sound. The roar of a cheering crowd, the peal of ceremonial bells, the distant, harmonious strains of a Sky-Choir. The sterile marble hall was replaced by the overwhelming sensory tapestry of a living world at its peak.
They stood on a broad, sun-drenched balcony of white marble, inlaid with veins of glowing, celestial blue crystal. Below them stretched a city that stole their breath. Aethel Prime, the heart of the world, before the Rust. It was a symphony in stone and light. Kaminari spires of gold and glass speared a sky of impossible blue. Syl'endi groves of whispering, crystal-bark trees were woven through the city's tiers, their leaves shimmering with verdant energy. Drac'num citadels of polished granite stood not as fortresses of war, but as monuments to order and craftsmanship, their surfaces alive with intricate, moving murals of forged metal. The air was perfumed with blooming star-vines and the clean, energetic scent of active magic.
They were dressed not as pilgrims, but in the fine, functional garb of the Argent Guard—an elite, cross-racial peacekeeping force. The gear was unfamiliar but felt right; leather reinforced with spun Syl'endi silk, plates of Drac'num steel alloy, and Kaminari light-crystals set into the pauldrons that hummed with protective energy. Their weapons were at their hips, masterworks of a lost age.
The Mandate came not as a system prompt, but as a Royal Decree, spoken directly into their souls by the collective will of the Spire, echoing the authority of the lost gods:
* MEMORY FLOOR MANDATE: THE CUSTODIANS *
* You are Argent Guardsmen, assigned to the personal detail of Prince Caelan, youngest son of King Theron of the Drac'num and Consort Lyra of the Kaminari. *
* Primary Objective: Ensure Prince Caelan's survival for the duration of the Memory—thirty cycles, culminating in the Festival of Unified Dawn. *
* Threat Designation: The 'Sundering Cabal,' a faction of Drac'num traditionalists, Kaminari purificationists, and rogue Syl'endi geomancers who believe the Prince's hybrid blood is an abomination that will weaken the world's covenants. They intend to sacrifice him in a forbidden ritual to 'purify' the lineages. *
* Secondary Objective: Unmask the Cabal's leaders within the royal court. Minimize public panic. You operate with the authority of the throne, but the enemy wears many faces. *
* Failure Condition: The Prince's death, or his successful kidnapping by the Cabal. Failure results in the severing of your tether to the present. You will die a death of a failure. *
Before the weight of this could crush them, a door of polished sun-oak opened onto the balcony. A boy entered, followed by a stern-faced Drac'num captain of the guard. The boy was perhaps fourteen. His hair was the dark bronze of the Drac'num, but it held a Kaminari gold sheen in the sun. His eyes were the storm-grey of his father's people, but flecked with points of Kaminari sunlight. He carried himself with a noble's grace, but there was a quiet, watchful intelligence in his gaze, an awareness of being different. This was Prince Caelan. The World-Soul Fragment theory was a dry myth. This was a living, breathing boy, the hope of a unified future, and a target.
"These are the new ones, Captain Brann?" the Prince asked, his voice not yet deepened by age, but clear and direct.
"By your father's order, Highness," the Captain, Brann, said with a sharp salute. "The best of the Argent Guard. They are yours for the festival season. Their loyalty is to the Crown, and to you."
Prince Caelan's eyes, old and young at once, swept over them. He did not see seasoned climbers. He saw his new guards. He gave a small, formal nod. "Thank you. The gardens, please. I have a lesson with the Syl'endi heart-singer."
Their mission began not with a battle, but with a walk through paradise. They escorted the Prince through the breathtaking gardens of the royal enclave, a place where Kaminari light-sculptures danced among Syl'endi spirit-trees, and Drac'num stonework cradled it all in geometric perfection. They saw the three races interacting—scholars debating, artists collaborating, children playing. The beauty was a physical ache.
But Liana's eyes, the Rogue's eyes, saw the cracks. The subtle stiffening of a Drac'num noble as the hybrid Prince passed. The averted gaze of a Kaminari light-binder who murmured a traditionalist prayer for "pure lineages." The Syl'endi gardener who touched the earth where the Prince walked and frowned, not in disgust, but in deep worry, as if the land itself was conflicted.
The first assassination attempt came on the third day. Not a frontal assault, but subtlety worthy of the court. During a state dinner, a Kaminari servant, eyes glazed with hidden compulsion, brought the Prince a goblet. The wine within was laced with Silverbane, a toxin derived from corrupted moon-blossoms, undetectable to most, but which Maya's Cleansing Pulse, attuned to life, sensed as a void. A discreet gesture from Ryley, a "spilled" goblet, a swift, silent detention of the servant by Liana—crisis averted, but no proof. The servant died of an "overwhelmed heart" before he could be questioned. The Cabal was cleaning its own tracks.
The mission was a relentless, multi-layered siege. By day, they were guards, blending into the opulent background of a dying golden age. They attended court sessions, feasts, and military parades. By night, they were investigators and sentinels. Jax used his brute-force intimidation on low-level conspirators in the city's under-forges. Liam, his mind expanded by the era's advanced magical theory, helped analyze strange geomantic disturbances reported near the city's ley-line nexuses—disturbances that matched the Cabal's suspected ritual sites.
They were not just fighting killers; they were fighting an idea—a deeply held prejudice that this boy's very existence was a sin against the natural order. The pressure was psychological, constant. Every smile in the court could be a mask. Every gift could be a weapon. They had to protect the Prince not only from daggers and poison, but from propaganda, from isolation, from the slow, soul-killing awareness that a part of his own world wished him dead for what he was.
And beneath it all, ticking like the slow countdown to an apocalypse they knew was coming, was the creeping, background fear. They could feel it in the edges of their perception—a faint, metallic taste on the air some mornings. A patch of blight on a previously vibrant spirit-tree. A Drac'num smith complaining of forge-metal growing brittle and "hungry." The Sundering was not a single event. It was a cancer, and they were watching its first, invisible cells divide, even as they fought to protect the boy some believed was its cause.
They had thirty days in this memory. Thirty days to outmaneuver a shadow war in a glittering court, to protect the last prince of a world doomed by fear and pride. The fifth floor was not a battle. It was an epic of loyalty in the face of inevitable, world-ending ruin.