The Pendragon estate rises from the cliffside like a fortress carved from the bones of the world. Its towers pierce the fog with their spires, each window alight with gold and fire. The structure carries its own gravity, drawing attention not with spectacle but with weight. Like a promise. Or a warning.
Tonight, music flows through its halls like a spell woven into stone. The graduation banquet brings nobles, generals, artificers, and the kinds of scholars who speak softly but always carry opinions. Servants move like clockwork, guided by low-grade pseudo-echoes. Trays hover with the grace of ghostly dancers. Candles bloom and dim in floating spheres. The air smells of darkwine and rose ash.
The celebration is for the Academy's two top graduates, but the attention curves sharply toward one.
Lyra Ashveil.
She stands at the center of it all, the Prism Crown faintly aglow on her brow, a glass of wine tilted just so between her fingers. Her laughter carries. Not loudly, but clearly. Not sweetly, but like she knows how sharp her joy can be.
She wears elegance like armor, not fragile, not adorned, but formed. Even the Aegis, her true echo, floats behind her shoulder as if awaiting a command. It does not cling or weigh her down. It hovers. Present. Constant. Bound. The shield pulses occasionally with soft golden light, as if responding to her emotions, or perhaps creating them.
General Torvan, a man whose victories are marked on maps across half the empire, leans in to speak to her. Even he seems smaller in her presence. The crowd around her is three deep: lords and ladies, renowned Conquerors, artificers whose creations have changed the shape of war. All of them drawn to her light like moths to flame.
I do not fade into the background. I am a Pendragon, trained to walk among power without shrinking. So I move through the currents of the room with ease, offering smiles, exchanging words, keeping time. The Ashthorn Blade stays at my hip, its weight a constant reminder. Still not fully synced. Still hesitant.
Lord Halric catches my eye from across the room. His gaze lingers, assessing. He nods slightly, then turns back to his conversation with an artificer whose name I cannot recall. The old warrior has been my mother's right hand for decades. Some say he was more of an almost-father when mine was lost. But if he ever saw me as more than the heir, he has never shown it.
"A triumphant night for House Pendragon," comes a smooth voice to my left.
I turn to find Corven Raethel, the youngest member of the High Council and distantly related to our family through some branch I've never bothered to trace. His smile is polite, his eyes calculating.
"The future of the empire rests on capable shoulders," I reply, matching his tone.
"Indeed." His gaze drifts toward Lyra. "Though I wonder if your mother considered the implications of empowering a vassal house with such... remarkable talent."
There it is. The veiled concern. The political calculation beneath courtesy.
"The Ashveils have served House Pendragon for generations," I say, my voice calm despite the irritation building beneath my ribs. "Their loyalty is beyond question."
"Of course, of course." Corven sips his wine. "But loyalty and ambition are not always natural enemies. Your father understood this well."
The mention of my father sends a jolt through me. Not of grief, how can you grieve someone whose face you can barely remember? But of something sharper. Anger, perhaps. Or loss distilled to its essence.
"My father," I say carefully, "understood many things. Including the value of keeping certain observations to himself."
Corven's eyes widen slightly. Then he laughs, a practiced sound. "Sharp as your blade, young Pendragon. I see why you graduated second. Not for lack of edge, certainly."
A noblewoman catches me in conversation next with sharp eyes, sharper tongue. Lady Veraine, whose family controls the northern trade routes. We trade compliments. She is clever. Pretty, too. She jokes about relic theory and asks if I prefer blades or books. I answer smoothly. Confident.
"Both have their uses," I say. "A blade protects the body. Knowledge protects the mind."
"And what protects the heart?" she asks, stepping closer.
"Caution," I reply.
She laughs. "How very Pendragon of you."
But my thoughts are already half a room away. I watch Lyra navigate the crowd with effortless grace. Even here, among the empire's elite, she stands apart. Not because she tries, but because she simply is.
I take my leave before the moment asks anything more of me.
Outside, the air is cooler. The estate is quieter here, just past the threshold where expectation ends and breath begins. The balcony overlooks the cliffs, the sea a distant roar below. Stars emerge from behind wispy clouds, painting the night in silver and shadow.
I trace the hilt of the sword, feeling the cold metal beneath my fingers. Still hesitant. Still uncertain. Like me.
"What are you waiting for?" I whisper to it. To myself.
Lyra finds me on the balcony.
"You're brooding again," she says, voice lighter than the formality of the evening would suggest.
"Observing," I say.
"From a very safe distance. Like a decorative gargoyle."
"And you? Run out of small talk to dominate?"
She grins. "Please. I left before I had to start pretending I remembered anyone's name."
"Tragic. The Lyra Ashveil, cornered by polite society."
"I was this close to hiding in the cellar."
"You would have looked majestic in a wine barrel."
"Only if you were brooding in the next one over."
"It is not brooding," I say. "I prefer mysterious and emotionally complex."
"I would have said 'pretty and deeply repressed.'"
"That is almost flattering."
She leans against the rail beside me, close enough that our shoulders nearly touch. The night wind plays with loose strands of her hair, carrying the scent of her, something like ember and rain.
"You clean up well tonight," she says.
I meet her gaze. Her eyes are molten red under the moonlight. They hold the kind of quiet that could unsettle empires.
"You look beautiful," I say.
A flicker of surprise, quickly hidden. She turns her face slightly, but not fast enough to mask the color that rises in her cheeks.
"Careful, Juno. Keep that up, and I might start thinking you mean it."
"I do."
She is quiet for a beat. Then, lightly, "Well. Now I have to insult you to balance things out. Would not want this getting sentimental."
"Perish the thought."
"You planning a toast or a funeral? You have the face for both."
"Just savoring the wine."
"You are holding it like it told you your sync score."
I glance down at my knuckles, white against the glass. I relax my grip. "You are relentless."
"Only with the people I like."
She tilts her head, examining me with a look I cannot quite name. The Prism Crown catches moonlight, breaking it into fragments across her skin. For a moment, she looks otherworldly. Not quite human. Too perfect to be real.
"Has it spoken to you yet?" she asks softly. "The blade?"
I tense. "What makes you think it hasn't?"
"The way you keep touching the hilt. Like you're checking if it's still there. Or hoping it might finally answer."
"It's synced," I say, too quickly. "You saw it at the ceremony."
"I saw what everyone saw." Her voice drops lower. "I also see what everyone misses."
I turn away, the honesty in her gaze too much to bear. "Not everything comes as easily to some of us as it does to you."
The words are harsher than I intended. I expect her to bristle, to withdraw. Instead, she steps closer.
"Nothing worth having comes easily, Juno. Not even to me."
"The shield did."
"Did it?" Something flickers across her face , not hurt, but something deeper. "You think because it chose me instantly, there was no cost?"
I hesitate. "What cost?"
She looks away, out toward the distant sea. "Every echo leaves a mark. Even the ones that seem to fit perfectly."
Before I can ask what she means, the distant sound of crystal chimes signals the formal announcement. Guests will be gathering in the main hall.
"We should go back," she says, but doesn't move.
"We should," I agree, equally still.
She studies me for a moment too long. "You're staring," she says.
"Can you blame me?"
Her voice softens. "Where'd you go just now?"
"Just remembering."
She waits.
"We were ten," I say. "You had just joined. Another name on the sparring list."
She smiles. "I tripped during the stance drill."
"But the recovery. That was the part no one forgot. You moved like you were born for it."
A moment passes between us, long and quiet.
"We are nineteen now," I say. "Freshly graduated. And I am still trying to catch up."
She doesn't answer. But she doesn't look away.
Inside, the music fades. A hush rolls through the hall. A tide pulled back before the sea returns.
"We'll be missed," she says.
I nod, but still neither of us moves. There's something fragile between us, something I can't quite name. Not friendship, not rivalry. Something else that exists in the space between breath and word.
"Juno," she says suddenly, "do you ever wonder what would have happened if I hadn't come to the Academy? If they hadn't found me?"
The question catches me off guard. I consider lying, offering something noble about destiny finding its path.
"Every day," I admit instead.
She nods, as if my answer confirms something she already knew. "Come on. Your mother will be looking for you."
We turn to go, but as we reach the doorway, she pauses. "For what it's worth, I think the blade's waiting for something specific."
"And what might that be?"
"The thing you're most afraid to give it."
Before I can ask what she means, she's already moving through the crowd, the space around her clearing as if by instinct.
Inside, the music has stopped. The guests stand in hushed attention. Lady Ilyana enters.
The matriarch of House Pendragon moves like stormlight in human shape. Her cloak gleams with runes. Her silver hair is bound in a crown of braids. And just above her collar, curling along the left side of her neck, the Pendragon mark glows faintly.
The mark is not decoration. It is an echo, passed down through blood and fire. It is why we are Pendragons. It allows the bearer to become something else. Something older. A dragon, white and vast, wreathed in blue flame. Not myth. Not symbol. Real.
There are stories about our line. That before the Empire, we were kings and conquerors. That Caelus Vire came not to claim the world alone, but to bend the fire of our house into his empire. That what was built was forged in our flame.
And ever since, the Pendragons have stood not behind the throne, but beside it.
I watch my mother's face as she surveys the room. Her eyes find Lyra first, lingering on the Prism Crown with something like satisfaction. Then they find me, and there is a flicker of... what? Not disappointment. Something more complex. Assessment, perhaps. Or expectation not yet met.
Lady Ilyana does not smile. She does not need to.
"To the future of Pendragon," she says. "To the two who carry our name with pride. One by blood. One by bond. Let this night mark the beginning of their legend."
She raises her glass.
The room follows.
Lyra's crown gleams. I raise my glass and drink. The wine tastes of iron and expectation.
Overhead, the golden sigil of our house burns in the stone. A dragon with wings unfurled.
Watching.
Always watching.
Then, a breathless messenger. An echo surge reported in Azmere Pass. Strong enough to stir dormant relics.
Of course, the council convenes immediately.
The music stops. The guests depart. And the Pendragon estate becomes what it has always truly been.
Not a home.
A war table.
And as the crowd thins, I catch my mother's gaze once more. Her expression hasn't changed, but something about her eyes sends a chill through me. Not fear. Recognition.
This is what she was waiting for. A test. A chance to prove worth.
The blade at my hip grows suddenly colder.