The hall of maps in Aetheria's capital was built in silence and shadow. No windows, no courtiers. Only stone, steel, and stars carved into the ceiling.
Sir Kairon stood before a wall-length mural—an etched relief of Luneth's five divine thrones. Aetheria's symbol glowed faintly at the center, like embers waiting for flame.
Behind him, Emperor Edmund approached, robes trailing like dusk.
"What have they found?" he asked without preamble.
"Ash," Kairon replied. "And a sigil. Serpentine. Charred into the temple gate in Vireyn."
"Vireyn?" Edmund's brow furrowed. "That far west?"
"It seems they're not circling the capital," Kairon said quietly. "They're surrounding it."
The Umbra Veil had moved before dawn.
Clad in cloaks stitched with ash-thread, they slipped into border towns and river villages—no names, no banners. Only cold precision and silence. Where the royal guard brought law, the Veil brought certainty.
Now, they were bringing back something else: fear.
Small temples, abandoned. Scroll rooms, burned. Clerics gone without signs of struggle—only the smell of sulfur and symbols etched in reverse.
One town found a priestess hung upside down, her lips sealed with wax. A serpent coil was carved into her palm.
"They're not just desecrating," Kairon said. "They're warning us."
Edmund said nothing. His hand rested on the map's edge, where the Aetherian mountains met the forgotten paths leading into the old kingdoms.
"How did they move this quickly?" he asked.
"They've been moving longer than we realized," Kairon answered. "We only started watching now."
From across the hall, Duke Sander entered, silver hair bound in a warrior's knot.
"They've touched three provinces in five days," he reported. "And we've barely kept the court from panic."
"Keep it that way," Edmund said. "They cannot fear shadows before they know what's in them."
"And what is in them?" Sander asked.
The Emperor looked toward the mural.
"A war we thought we buried."
Later that night, Edmund stood alone in the Empress's chamber.
Nothing had been touched. Not the mirror, not the vase by the window where she kept late blooms. The cradle was gone—moved to preserve peace.
But on the sill rested her moon-pendant, cracked through the center. A memory.
"What are you seeing, Elira?" he whispered. "Where did you go that night?"
He closed his eyes. Silence answered.
But outside, in the southern quarter of the city, smoke began to rise.
And somewhere far from the palace, a girl sealed in silence stirred in her sleep.