Olivia controlled her breathing and opened the door again.
"Please knock before entering," Lupas muttered, voice flat and tired. "You look like bad news and I hate it."
Olivia's eyes narrowed. Her voice sharpened. "The Vale kid has created a MAGICAL BEAST. A magical beast. Do you understand? The empire is moving them to Starfall Academy to keep them safe. The lunatics got hold of the news somehow and they want me there as a research scholar of faith magic to watch him. Do you see the problem?"
For a long moment Lupas only stared, then slowly sat up straighter. The cogs in his mind turned audibly, like a clock before waking. "How are those cockroaches so fast? Did they tell you which professor you will be under?"
"No. I have to go into Starfield city first. Someone will meet me there," Olivia said.
Lupas rubbed his scalp, all the more relieved that there was nothing left to pull. Sending Olivia to Starfall meant cutting her off from their network. If anything went wrong she would be out of reach. On the other hand, letting a fish that big go was the kind of decision that tasted like ash.
"Listen, Olivia," he said at last. "I will leave the final call to you. Report to me tomorrow. Think it through. I need time to file reports and prepare a few things."
Olivia left the office and walked down the corridor feeling the old familiar rattle of obligation settle into her bones. She hated risky assignments, but she hated worse the idea of being outplayed by people who worshiped devils. If she had to sever contacts and pretend to be an obedient researcher for the next decade, fine. She could do it.
Still, she had no idea what to study. Faith magic had been a fluke for her, a light she could coax, not a craft she understood. She had built her life around performance and bluff.
Now hubris would have to be a practiced discipline: convincing an entire academy she belonged, pretending to believe what she didn't, learning the correct rituals without actually becoming a true believer. It was a different kind of theater, and Olivia could act. She just hoped the stage would not burn her.
...
Solaris City shimmered like liquid gold under the noonday sun. The city moved in grand, deliberate rhythms. Bells chimed from distant towers, vendors called like musical instruments, and spices and scents braided together in the air. The alleys and avenues were crowded with life, children running, clumsy apprentices carrying parcels, courtiers in silk that whispered with each step.
Near the fountains, children laughed and argued over honeyed buns. Traders shouted their wares, demonstrating silks and trinkets in a practiced cadence that made the whole marketplace feel like one long song. The Vale carriage rolled down the grand avenue, its black lacquer polished to a mirror sheen and its silver crest catching the light like a promise.
Inside, Lyra sat straight-backed, the picture of noble composure, but her eyes softened every time the city unfurled before them. "Still beautiful," she said, watching the bustle. "The heart of the Empire never changes."
"I like it," Kael said, sniffing the air. "Smells like roasted meat."
Ethan rolled his eyes. Compared to some cities back on Earth, Solaris felt more like an oversized town, but it had a charm of its own. Temari giggled, pressed against the velvet of the carriage seat.
They stopped before the Imperial Palace. It rose from the ground like a sculpted tide, a mountain of marble and gilded filigree. Every arch was embroidered with gold; mana-lanterns hovered across the courtyard like lazy fireflies that never burned out.
The gates opened with a slow, solemn grandeur, and light spilled across the marble courtyard.
At the center stood Empress Seraphina Solaris the Third, radiant in white and gold. Her long silver hair had been braided into a flawless rope that shimmered with the sunlight. Grace clung to her like a second skin, her every motion deliberate, yet effortless.
"Lyra Vale," she said, voice warm as the heart of midsummer. "You have grown even more radiant. Are you planning to compete with me now?"
Lyra smiled, every bit the noble who knew exactly how far she could tease a monarch. "Someone must keep Your Majesty on her toes."
The two women met in a brief, genuine embrace, their laughter carrying a note that no ceremony could imitate. They were equals here, not in rank, but in understanding.
Behind them, Safrene and the others instinctively lowered their heads in reverence. But before their knees could touch the ground, a wave of pressure swept through the courtyard. It was gentle, yet absolute, a force that carried no sound, only certainty.
"Please," Seraphina said, raising her hand lightly. "There is no need for such things. I am friends with Lady Lyra for a reason. We share the same values."
The weight in the air vanished at once.
Ethan tried to breathe normally, but something in his chest refused to move. He glanced up at the Empress and felt the faint prickling on his skin, the instinctive reaction one gets when standing near lightning.
What was that? Some kind of invisible aura? Or the Force? Did we just get Jedi'd?
He coughed quietly into his fist. "Aimi," he murmured under his breath, "scan her."
"Understood. Beginning analysis."
Numbers flickered faintly before his eyes, invisible to everyone else. As the readings filled his vision, his stomach sank.
Every single stat climbed higher than anything he had ever seen, nearing nine hundred across the board.
He almost lost his composure. His brain screamed at him to look away before she noticed. That's not an Empress. That's a natural disaster wrapped in silk.
But before he could even process it fully, Seraphina's gaze shifted.
Her head turned, just slightly, and her eyes met his.
The look was brief, mild, and perfectly polite, yet Ethan felt as though the air itself had thickened. His fingers froze. His pulse spiked. Like an apex predator just looking at its prey.
Ethan straightened at once, pretending to examine a nearby column. "Fine architecture," he muttered weakly. "Very… symmetrical."
Inwardly he was already sweating bullets,"Aimi, can she detect you?"
"Impossible, Host. No mortal possesses the awareness or computation capacity to detect my scans. Unless someone stronger than the old man Donn comes, it is impossible to find me"
"Then why did she look right at me?"
"Her senses react without conscious thought. She moves before her mind registers danger. It is instinct, not intellect."
Ethan exhaled slowly, doing his best to seem invisible. Wonderful. A ruler who can dodge things before they happen. Perfect. Just perfect.
He dared a glance back. Seraphina was already speaking again with Lyra, her voice soft and charming.
Ethan leaned toward Kael and muttered under his breath, "Note to self, never annoy her. Ever."
Kael nodded slightly, eyes still wide. "She looked at you like she was about to erase you for a second."
Ethan swallowed hard. "Exactly."
Temari, oblivious to the close encounter with death herself, ignored the two idiots.
.....
They moved into a sunlit garden where a tea table waited on a small terrace. Silver trays, petal cakes, and crystalline cups exhaled perfumed steam. Seraphina poured the tea herself, hands steady and sure, and each sentence she spoke felt measured, chosen.
Lyra matched her tone easily. They traded jests and small confidences, but beneath the polite laughter Seraphina's eyes slipped into something like a trance.
The first vision that struck her came from Ethan. For a single shuttered moment Seraphina saw a white room and a girl with cropped black hair, a small sphere of fire clenched in her hand. The girl snarled, "Get the fuck out." The clarity of the emotion pierced Seraphina oddly, like a sudden wind through a closed window.
She blinked, collected herself, and tried to use her gift on Kael next.
Kael's vision unfolded grand and terrible: a tree so vast it might split the heavens. Its leaves were the size of provinces; its trunk twisted like a mountain range.The primal sense of megalophobia. A nausea crawled up like sea sickness. She steadied herself with a sip of tea and kept her face composed.
"What is wrong with these two children?" Seraphina thought, though her demeanor still remains gracious. She glanced toward Lyra, who was pleasantly distracted by a painting with Safrene, and then at Temari, whom she expected to be ordinary.
When Seraphina focused on Temari, the world shifted. She saw oceans of blood, each wave breathing like a living thing. Somewhere in that crimson surf a figure turned and looked directly back at her. The vision did not belong to simple cruelty; it had intent and an intelligence that made the empress's skin prickle.
"What in the name of horror was that?" she whispered to herself, and the teacup in her hand cracked so faintly she almost missed it. She swallowed a laugh to hide a flinch and steadied her breath.
"By the stars," she thought, palms cooling, "the Vales have found monsters."
She absentmindedly plucked three silver hairs out of her braid and watched the strand go black and turn to ashes before blowing it away.