The giant’s iron joints groaned like bending ship timber as its forehead touched the cobbles before Anka’s mud-spattered boots. "Heirs?" Stasiek squeaked, his fingers twitching with stray embers that fizzled harmlessly against his cuff. "Hey, boss, did we inherit real estate? Tell me we inherited a blasting quarry." Borislav shrieked an incoherent curse, snatching at the dirt where his authority had just crumbled, but nobody looked at him. The institute guards stood frozen, shields drooping. Zoryan stepped around a fissure in the flagstones, brushing a flake of soot from his sleeve. "Stand tall, children. It merely identifies the lineage of your upkeep. When a hound thrives on royal marrow, the kennel automatons naturally defer to its smell. It is standard husbandry." "Marrow?" Mila clutched the warm amulet against her ribs, her knuckles white. "Zoryan, that thing is forty cubits of solid granite and doom. It’s not a kennel maid!" [Warning: Global Purge Countdown — 00:41:19] [Designation: 'Hush of Ages' approaching ignition threshold.] Zoryan waved an idle hand at the glowing gold letters drifting across his vision, swatting them like gnats. "The local pollen grows thick today. Never mind the pests. As I suspected, the contraption’s behavior core is jammed on an old command loop. It intends to sweep the parlor clean of all living breath because it thinks I am asleep in the armchair." Anka gripped the hilt of her bastard sword, her posture stiff. "You mean it's still going to kill everyone." "Only if we fail to reach the bell tower within its ribs," Zoryan replied mildly. "The reset cog sits behind the central valve. However, the machine’s immune tract runs through the Nexus of Fates. A dreadfully dramatic name for an emotional filter. It sifts out vermin by showing them whatever foolish trinket their little heads desire most." "I like trinkets," Mila muttered, though her boots were rooted to the courtyard floor. "You will choke on them if you linger," Zoryan said. He tapped Anka's shoulder plate, right over the dark metal graft he had fused there two days prior. "Keep your eyes forward. A well-bred mastiff does not stop to sniff every greasy bone on the roadside." The colossus parted its ribs with a shriek of ungreased gears. A tunnel of blue, swirling ether yawned inside the chest cavity, smelling of ozone, dry papyrus, and old sugar. Stasiek leaped in first, eager to escape the courtyard's stunned silence. Mila followed with a thief’s crouch. Anka lingered, her grey eyes darting to Zoryan’s placid face before she plunged into the mist. Inside, the world melted into a white void paved with black marble. "Mila! Stasiek!" Anka shouted, but the fog thickened between them into solid walls of glass. To the left, Mila’s scream died in her throat. The fog before her parted to reveal a vaulted hall stretching into infinity. Shelves of polished cedar sagged beneath stacks of gold-rimmed porcelain, tea services carved from raw beryl, and salt cellars taken from dead emperors. Not simple baubles—the teacups hummed with the history of dynasties, each handle shaped like an archduke’s signet. "The Cup of Saint Vlasta..." Mila whispered, her fingers shaking as she reached out. Her boots took three steps before her sole scraped against stone. She froze. Her hand hovered an inch from a rim of lapis lazuli. Her knuckles trembled with raw greed, every nerve in her thieving fingers screaming to curl around the prize. "A good pet deserves a place for its toys," she mimicked under her breath, Zoryan’s flat, detached voice ringing in her memory. She spat on the marble floor. "Cheap glass. Doesn't even hold cinnamon broth." She wheeled around, shutting her eyelids until the illusion dissolved into grey smoke. To the right, Stasiek faced a howling furnace of pure white flame. The heat spared his skin; it sang to him. Rivers of liquid sulfur flowed through mountain valleys, exploding into dazzling bouquets of amethyst and sulfurous yellow that shook the heavens without scorching solitary trees. Absolute, chaotic ruin, free of yelling instructors, without charred blankets, without classmates pointing fingers in disgust. "Total ignition..." Stasiek giggled, tears welling in the corners of his soot-rimmed eyes. He raised both palms. The magic swelled in his marrow, begging to let go. "Nobody to scream at me. No more broken desks." Then he caught the phantom scent of dried chamomile. *A proper game of fetch requires precision, boy. Throw the stick where I point, not into the thatched roof.* Stasiek clamped his fists shut, biting his tongue until copper flooded his mouth. "Tch. No target. What's the point of a bang if there’s no stick to bring back?" He stomped forward, kicking through the phantom fires until the world snapped back to stone. Anka saw neither gold nor crowns. The mist before her dissolved into a sunlit alley in a sleepy river town. The smell of baking rye hung warm in the air. Down the cobblestone lane, a brass bell chimed above a wooden shop door. Behind the counter stood Zoryan. He wore no student uniform, no heavy black robes of antiquity. He wore a patched apron of coarse linen, dusted with oat bran. In his hands, he held a fat, stub-tailed badger, methodically combing its bristled fur with a horn brush. His shoulders were slumped in easy contentment. His eyes lacked the terrifying, abyssal weight that occasionally leaked through his sleepy blinks. He hummed a flat tune, utterly forgotten by history, entirely untroubled by gods, monsters, or screaming students. Safe. Ordinary. Free. Anka went rigid. Her fingers slipped from her sword hilt. This was the vow her bloodline had sworn for six centuries: *Ensure the Sovereign rests, lest the sky falls.* For ten generations, her kin had died in shadowed ditches to keep the seal quiet, to let the dormant terror sleep so the continent might survive another dawn. If she broke the seal today—if she guided them into that control sanctum and halted the machine—the ancient Monarch’s mark on her soul would fully awaken. The world would know him. The high templars would hunt him. The kings would muster armies. He would be dragged back onto a throne of bone and ash, drowning in the screams of mortals who feared his shadow. She could stay right here. In this mist, the phantom world was thick enough to live in. She could shepherd him into this quiet corner, let the rest of Ostara burn under the purification beam, and keep him peaceful forever. "Anka! Move your iron-plated rear! The countdown is nearly out of time!" Stasiek’s voice cut through the illusion like broken glass. Anka stumbled forward. The sunlit shop shattered into flying shards of grey ether. She fell through the threshold, hitting the cold metal floor of the inner sanctum alongside Mila and Stasiek. Above them, suspended in a cage of glowing bronze ribs, hung the heart of the colossus: a sphere of dark iron, pulsing with the rhythmic, agonizing thrum of an awakening god. Behind them, Zoryan walked out of the corridor, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, entirely untroubled by whatever ghosts had lurked in the mist. "A tidy run," Zoryan observed, inspecting the pulsating core. "Now, Anka. Take your blade. Wedge it into the third relief valve and twist counter-clockwise. It will purge the steam and put the old boy back to sleep." Anka kept her weapon low. She stood between him and the pedestal, her gauntlets trembling, her gaze locked on the calm, oblivious face of the monster who had fed her his own blood and called it soup. "Anka?" Mila asked, stepping back from the sudden chill radiating from the knight. Anka’s knuckles cracked as she tightened her grip on the crossguard. She looked at Zoryan—not as a classmate, not as an eccentric pet tamer, but as the tired sovereign who just wanted to rest. "Protecting you means destroying your dream. Is that right?"

The Monarch's Gaze