Time is a predator that eats everything. It eats stone, it eats iron, and it eats memory. But there are some things that are too hard to chew.
Eight years had passed since the Wedding of the Mask.
New Aethelgard was no longer just a city; it was an epoch. The historians—mostly the graying "Little Suns" who wrote in the Archives of House Pip—called it the Refulgent Era. It was a time of impossible plenty. The grain silos were bursting, heated by the geothermal vents of the Radiant Grid. The hospitals of House Lyra cured diseases with light and sound. The borders were quiet, guarded by the silent, brooding silhouette of Fortress Agony, the dead god-machine that terrified the continent into submission.
But inside the Royal Spire, the atmosphere was not one of celebration. It was one of quiet, creeping dread.
King Kael Light stood in the center of the Royal Training Arena, a massive coliseum built of white marble and reinforced glass suspended halfway up the Spire. He wore the Iron Mask. He always wore the mask. It had become fused to his legend, a second face that was more real than the one beneath.
He was watching the Twins.
Castor and Pollux were thirty years old today.
By all laws of biology, they should have changed. They should have shown the first softening of youth, the first etching of lines around the eyes, the settling of weight.
They hadn't.
Castor stood in the center of the arena, stripped to the waist. He looked like a statue carved from living gold. His muscles were defined with an unnatural, anatomical perfection. His skin glowed with a faint, persistent luminescence that made looking at him directly painful, like staring at a welding arc. He was holding a sphere of plasma in his hand—not charging it, just holding it—as if it were an apple.
Pollux sat on a floating platform of ice twenty feet above him. She was a vision of silver and teal, her hair a waterfall of starlight that defied gravity. She was reading a book on ancient Aethelgardian philosophy, turning the pages with a flick of her finger that froze the air around the paper.
Facing them was the entire Alpha Squad of the Iron-Guard—fifty elite soldiers in Soul-Steel power armor, led by General Kaelen Thorne.
"Begin," Kael rumbled, his voice distorted by the mask.
The soldiers charged. They moved with the precision of veterans, firing suppression rounds of heavy mana-dampening lead.
Castor didn't dodge. He didn't raise a shield. He simply... exhaled.
A wave of heat rolled off his body. It wasn't an explosion; it was a presence. The dampening rounds hit the heat-haze and evaporated instantly, turning into harmless puffs of lead vapor.
"Flank him!" Kaelen roared, engaging his pneumatic thrusters to close the distance. He swung a stun-baton charged with high-voltage electricity.
Castor caught the baton. With his bare hand.
There was a crack of discharging energy, blue sparks dancing over Castor's golden skin. Castor didn't flinch. He looked at the General with a bored, almost pitying expression.
"Too slow, Kaelen," Castor whispered.
Castor squeezed. The Soul-Steel baton crumpled like tin foil. He flicked his wrist, sending the General—a man weighing three hundred pounds in armor—flying across the arena. Kaelen hit the barrier wall with a bone-jarring impact.
"Pollux," Castor said, "shield."
Pollux didn't look up from her book. She raised her left hand.
A wall of absolute zero materialized around the remaining forty-nine soldiers. It didn't freeze them; it froze the air around them. It created a vacuum cage. The soldiers gasped, their lungs seizing as the pressure dropped instantly.
"Stop," Kael commanded.
The ice vanished. The heat dissipated.
The soldiers collapsed, gasping for air, terrified and humiliated. They were the best warriors in the kingdom, and they had been dismantled in ten seconds by two people who looked like they were bored at a picnic.
Kael walked onto the field. The soldiers scrambled to make way for the Iron King.
"You're holding back," Kael said to Castor.
"If I don't hold back," Castor said, looking at his glowing hands, "they turn to ash. They're so fragile, Kael. Everyone is so... soft."
"They are your people," Kael said. "Protecting them requires control."
"We aren't protecting them," Pollux said, floating down from her perch. Her feet touched the ground without making a sound. "We're performing for them. They don't look at us like protectors anymore, Kael. They look at us like... zoo animals. Dangerous, pretty things to be kept behind glass."
Kael looked at the Twins. He saw the disconnect in their eyes. It wasn't arrogance. It was the dissociation of species. They were realizing that they were not human.
"Go to the Med-Bay," Kael ordered. "Ignis wants to run the scans."
The Med-Bay was located in the sublevels of the Spire, a place of brass gears and sterilized white light. Lord Ignis was waiting. The Artificer was now almost entirely mechanical; his organic components were limited to a few organs suspended in the nutrient tank of his chest.
Castor and Pollux lay on bio-beds, wired into a massive diagnostic machine that hummed with the rhythm of the Radiant Grid.
Kael stood behind the glass partition with Ignis.
"Look at the cellular decay rate," Ignis rasped, his voice synthesized. He pointed a brass manipulator at the holographic screen. "Or rather, the lack thereof."
Kael looked at the data. It was a flat line.
"They aren't aging," Kael whispered.
"It's more complex than that," Ignis explained. "Humans age because of entropy. Cells divide, errors occur, telomeres shorten. It is a loss of information over time. But the Source-Vessels? They are constantly flooded with high-density mana. The energy is repairing their DNA faster than time can degrade it."
Ignis zoomed in on a cellular cluster.
"Every night, when they sleep, their bodies perform a 'Prime Reset.' They revert to their optimal biological state. They hit thirty years old—their peak physical maturity—and the mana locked them there. They are stuck in a loop of perfection."
"So they are immortal," Kael said. The word tasted like ash.
"Biologically, yes," Ignis said. "Unless destroyed by massive external trauma, they will live until the sun goes out. They are Immutable."
Ignis turned his sensor-cluster toward Kael.
"Unlike you, Saint."
Kael stiffened behind the mask. "I am not aging either."
"No," Ignis corrected. "You are frozen in Trauma. Your body breaks and heals, breaks and heals. You are stuck at nineteen because your curse refuses to let you move forward. You are a glitch in time. The Twins? They are the evolution of time. They are what the Aethelgardians were trying to build. Perfect, self-sustaining gods."
Kael looked through the glass. Castor was making shadow puppets on the ceiling with a ball of plasma. Pollux was sleeping, floating an inch above the mattress.
"They will be alone," Kael whispered. "Everyone they know will die. Kaelen. Pip. The Queen. Everyone."
"Except you," Ignis said. "You are the only constant in their universe, Kael. You are the only one who won't rot."
That evening, Kael returned to the Royal Apartments.
He paused at the door, his hand hovering over the biometric scanner. He dreaded this part of the day. The part where he had to pretend to be a husband.
He entered.
Queen Isolde was sitting by the fire, reviewing trade reports from the Frost Peaks. She was thirty-two now. The years had been kind to her, but they were there. Fine lines etched the corners of her eyes. Her platinum hair had lost some of its youthful luster. She looked like a woman who carried the weight of a kingdom.
Kael stood in the doorway, the Iron Mask reflecting the firelight. He was nineteen. He was a boy playing dress-up in a King's armor.
"You're late," Isolde said, not looking up. "The envoy from the Sultanate was asking for you. They're nervous about the troop movements near Fortress Agony."
"Let them be nervous," Kael said, walking to the sideboard to pour a glass of water he wouldn't drink. "It keeps them honest."
Isolde put down the report. She looked at him. Her gaze was piercing, the icy blue of the north.
"Take it off, Kael."
Kael froze. "Isolde..."
"It's been eight years," she said, standing up. She walked toward him. "Eight years of sleeping next to a statue. Eight years of kissing cold metal. I am your wife. I have borne you no children because you refuse to touch me without that... that cage on your face."
"It is for your safety," Kael lied. "The aura—"
"The aura is a lie!" Isolde snapped. She reached out and grabbed the lapels of his coat. "The Twins walk around with enough power to level a mountain, and they don't wear masks! Castor burns, Pollux freezes, but they show their faces! Why can't you?"
She pulled him down, forcing him to look at her.
"Are you hideous?" she whispered. "Is that it? Did the Agony twist you into something I couldn't love?"
"No," Kael said, his voice cracking behind the modulator. "I am not hideous."
"Then show me."
Kael looked at her. He saw the desperation in her eyes. She needed to see the man she had married. But if she saw the truth—if she saw the unblemished, nineteen-year-old face of a boy who hadn't aged a day since he walked out of the jungle—she wouldn't see a husband. She would see a monster. She would see a mirror of her own mortality.
He couldn't do that to her. And he couldn't risk the succession.
Kael closed his eyes behind the iron slits. He felt the "Stable Agony" thrum in his marrow. He reached into his own biology, into the chaotic, malleable mana of the Dark God that lived in his cells. He didn't break a bone this time. He twisted the skin. He manipulated the collagen, the pigment, the very structure of his face.
It was a subtle, excruciating application of his healing arts—using them to mimic decay rather than repair.
"Ancient Art: The Weaver's Guise."
He felt his skin tighten and sag simultaneously. He felt the illusion settle over his flesh, anchored by his own blood.
He reached up. His hands shook. He undid the latches.
He pulled the mask off.
Isolde gasped. She stepped back, her hand flying to her mouth.
She didn't see a boy.
She saw a King.
She saw a man of thirty-nine. His hair was streaked with iron-grey at the temples. Deep lines were etched around his eyes and mouth, the scars of a thousand sleepless nights. His skin looked weathered, tired, worn down by the crushing weight of the crown.
He looked like a man who was aging faster than he should.
"You..." Isolde whispered, reaching out to touch his cheek. Her fingers traced the fake wrinkles. "You look so tired, Kael."
"The crown is heavy, Isolde," Kael lied. His voice was no longer distorted by the modulator, but he pitched it lower, raspier, to match the face he wore.
Isolde smiled. It was a sad, relieved smile. "I was afraid. I thought... I thought you were hiding something terrible. I thought you were disgusted by me."
"Never," Kael said.
"You're just a man," she whispered, stepping closer. "Just a man who is working himself to death."
She leaned in and kissed him. Her lips were warm.
Kael felt the cold lie sitting between them. He felt the "Stable Agony" react to the deception, a spike of nausea that he forced down. He was giving her what she needed. He was giving her a mortal husband.
"I am just a man," Kael whispered back.
He stayed for an hour. He played the part. But the air in the room felt suffocating. The mask of flesh was heavier than the mask of iron ever was.
"I must check the perimeter," Kael said, pulling away gently. "The Sultanate envoys..."
"Go," Isolde said, watching him with new affection. "But come back. Don't hide behind the iron tonight."
Kael grabbed the Iron Mask and fled.
Kael stood on the roof of the Spire.
The night air was cold, biting with the wind off the ocean. He stood on the edge, looking down at the city lights. They blurred into streaks of gold and teal.
He let the spell drop.
The grey vanished from his hair. The wrinkles smoothed out. The nineteen-year-old face returned, eternally young, eternally tragic.
Thud-Crack.
His ribs shattered. He welcomed it. The pain was simple. The pain made sense.
"You lied to her," a voice said.
Kael didn't turn. He knew the resonance.
Castor and Pollux were sitting on the gargoyle perched on the corner of the roof. They were dangling their legs over the thousand-foot drop.
"I saw the mana shift," Castor said, tossing a ball of plasma casually. "You warped your face. You made yourself look old."
"She asked to see her husband," Kael said, his voice flat. "I gave her one."
"You gave her a forgery," Pollux said. "We heard her relief, Kael. She was happy because she thinks you're dying. Just like her. Humans... they love the rot. It comforts them to know everything ends."
"We don't end," Castor said, looking at his hand. He clenched his fist, and the air around it warped with heat. "We realized it today. In the Med-Bay. Ignis tried to use big words, but we understood. We're stuck, Kael. Just like you."
Kael walked over to them. He sat down on the ledge between them. For the first time, he felt... understood.
"I tried to protect you from it," Kael said. "I wanted you to have a life."
"We have a life," Castor said. "It's just a very long one. And it's getting boring."
"The city is too small," Pollux whispered. "We know every street. We know every person. And we know that in fifty years, all the people we know will be gone. We'll be left with their grandchildren. And then their great-grandchildren. We'll be the freaks in the tower forever."
Kael looked East. Toward the ocean. Toward the Forbidden Continent.
"There is a place," Kael said slowly, "where things don't die. A place where the rules are broken."
"The East," Castor said. "We felt the signal too. When the Engine woke up."
"It's a warning," Kael said. "The Dark God is there. He's the source of all of this. My curse. Your power. The Engine's heart. It all comes from him."
"Are you going to kill him?" Pollux asked.
"I'm going to try," Kael said. "Or I'm going to let him kill me. Either way... the loop ends."
The Twins looked at each other. A silent communication passed between them—a binary flash of heat and cold.
"When do we leave?" Castor asked.
Kael looked at them. Two immutable gods in the bodies of thirty-year-olds. He realized Ignis was right. They weren't his wards anymore. They were his peers.
"I have to secure the succession," Kael said. "I have to give the kingdom an heir. I cannot leave them leaderless."
"The Queen will handle the kingdom," Pollux said. "She is strong. Stronger than you give her credit for. Give her a son, Kael. Give her the son you promised her tonight. And then... let's go hunt a God."
Kael nodded. It was a dark pact, made on a rooftop under the stars.
"One more year," Kael promised. "We prepare. We secure the line. And then we vanish."
The next morning, New Aethelgard woke to a strange phenomenon.
The sun seemed brighter. The air seemed crisper. The citizens didn't know why, but they felt a renewed sense of energy.
They didn't see the three figures standing atop the Spire, looking East.
They didn't see the Iron King and the Twin Stars, no longer rulers, but hunters marking their prey.
Down in the deepest sublevel of the Spire, in the dark, Emperor Valerian sat in his cell. He had been screaming for eight years, reliving the agony of the Engine over and over.
But today, he stopped screaming.
He looked up at the ceiling. He felt the shift in the mana. He felt the "Stable Agony" change its frequency.
"He's leaving," Valerian whispered to the rats, a broken smile cracking his lips. "The Monster is leaving."
But Valerian was wrong about one thing. The Monster wasn't just leaving. He was evolving.