The wind tore at my tunic, shrieking past my ears as paving stones rushed up to swallow us. Below, the Imperial Plaza, packed with silk-draped patrons and competing glass beasts, expanded at sickening velocity. Voshari’s arm stayed clamped around my ribs like an iron band, pinning me against the vibrating spine of our dragon. “Brace, Shavara!” he bellowed over the gale, his breastplate knocking against my shoulder blades. The air reeked of fried copper and heated silica. I dug my heels into the beast's harness, refusing to shut my eyes while thousands of guild credits were about to smash into masonry. The glass beast crashed into the plaza flags, kicking up a rooster-tail of crushed marble and pulverized water pipes. The jolt slammed through my teeth and knocked the breath from my lungs. Our dragon’s ribcage groaned under the shock, but the tempered spine held together, flattening a gilded fountain and a rival's winged griffin into a steaming pile of rubble and spouting mud. I opened my eyes to a bewildering scene. Noble patrons, moments ago admiring static displays, were scattering like startled birds, their silken robes snagging on debris. Guards tripped over halberds, while on the high dais above the chaos, the sovereign stood among his silk-robed ministers, flanked by Jendox. Jendox, ever the consummate performer, threw his hands up, his face a mask of perfectly sculpted horror. “Shavara Denth! Voshari Fenn! What abomination is this? You’ve brought a blighted mount into the hallowed Plaza! Guards! Apprehend these smugglers! They conspire against the city’s safety!” His voice, ringing with false outrage, cut through the panicked murmur. I pushed myself up, wincing as a shard of glass dug into my knee. My hair was a soot-streaked mess, my clothes torn, but a grin, wide and utterly unrepentant, stretched across my face. “Smugglers, Jendox? Is that what you’re calling it now?” I cackled, a raw, triumphant sound that drew every eye. “Funny, I thought it was called ‘saving the city from your pet Blight-storm’!” Voshari hauled himself up beside me, iron-faced and soot-stained, fingers already curled around the grip of his trench-chisel. I staggered forward, ignoring the throbbing pain, dragging a leg as I pointed a dramatic, soot-blackened finger at Jendox. “This ‘blighted mount’,” I announced, projecting my voice across the courtyard, “runs on the explosive charge of a sabotage-glyph *you* etched into its breastplate, old man. Right over the intake vents. The sort meant to obliterate the crowd, if we hadn't taught the furnace to digest your sloppiness instead!” Murmurs rippled across the grandstand. The sovereign squinted past his ceremonial veil at Jendox, jaw tightening. Jendox’s paternal grin dissolved. His shoulders snapped straight as he spat onto the marble steps. “Impudent little leech,” he hissed, his thin hands carving three sharp geometric runes through the air. Then he spoke a single resonant vitromantic trigger: *“Awaken.”* And from the various display plinths, pedestals, and decorative gardens, every single competing artisan’s glass beast stirred. A glittering menagerie of static art suddenly sprang to life. Glass peacocks unfurled razor-sharp tails, their eyes glowing with malevolent fire. Elegant glass horses neighed, their hooves striking sparks from the stone. A pair of delicate, translucent gryphons shrieked, their beaks elongating into predatory weapons. Their movements were jerky, unnatural, animated by a force clearly not their creators’ intent. Their glass bodies, moments ago works of beauty, now pulsed with a dark, feral energy, reflecting the encroaching Blight-storm outside. With a chilling, unified screech, they turned, not on us, but on the screaming, scattering nobility. A glass cheetah lunged, its segmented body blurring, towards a shrieking duchess. A monstrous, multi-limbed spider of polished onyx scuttled directly toward the imperial dais. Jendox watched the ensuing massacre with a chilling smile, then turned his gaze to the massive, central control spire that anchored the entire city’s ward-dome. He drew something from his sleeve – a compact, dark sphere, humming with a contained, destructive energy. With a swift, powerful throw, he hurled it. The charge flew true, arcing through the air, and slammed directly into the master control column. A deafening report, a sound of rending reality, echoed across the Plaza. The immense, glowing master control crystal, the very heart of Opherix’s protection, exploded into a million shimmering fragments. At the same instant, the first wave of the petrifying storm breached the Plaza walls, tearing through the now-open walls.

The Grand Unveiling