“Aston is going abroad for a year soon, overnight, right dear?” My mother’s voice carries through the hall, calm and humming as always, like a gentle thread woven through the murmuring banquet.
I stand there exposed, my trembling hands finally managing to cradle the wine glass more softly after what feels like hours. My gaze lingers on the ground, refusing to rise, yet the shifting murmurs of the crowd and the way every head seems to turn draw my attention upward, little by little, until even the music falters and dies.
“A yellow,” soone whispers to my left.
The word slams into like a blade to the chest. My heart pounds so violently that I feel as if I am being dragged beneath dark waters, down to where my dead brother lies still, unmoving, and waiting.
They dare not say false god—to do so would risk being cut down instantly, burned away where they stand—but we all know what they an. I raise my head, and the room spirals before . My vision reels, spinning in endless circles, as though unseen hands shove back and forth.
My breath catches, my toes curl painfully inside my shoes, and sweat beads across my palms.
Then I see him.
The golden-haired man towers above the others, at least a head taller than any Orange I have ever laid eyes on. His muscles are as thick as a horse’s flanks, yet his appearance is refined, his fra wrapped in a saffron suit that gleams softly beneath the lights.
His re presence rattles my veins as though my blood itself rejects him. I thought I would at least manage to breathe. Still, under his piercing gaze—eyes that carry neither warmth nor cruelty, only sothing vast and indifferent, as if the golden fog outside bends itself around his will—I collapse inwardly.
If not for the table before , my knees would buckle, and I would sink to the ground in disgrace. Instead, I steady myself, set down the glass, and force my lungs to drag in shallow air.
My eyes drift instinctively toward my family, searching for an anchor, so last refuge to tether my fraying thoughts.
But the sight of them—their careless postures, their laughter, their exclusion of —twists my insides with fury. They have already cast aside, discarded as if I were never one of them. And that rejection, sharp and bitter, is what finally awakens my senses again.
Aston, a false god, is standing before you. A being who once deceived mankind into worship, who clothed himself in divinity and demanded reverence. A lie, yet one powerful enough to shape nations.
I force myself to glance once more from my parents to my siblings, then down to my half-empty glass of wine. That single motion grants a fragile reprieve, enough to drag a full breath into my chest.
The silence in the hall is suffocating; nobody dares to speak, nobody even dares to whisper; and then, with the ease of a man announcing the weather, Robertson breaks the stillness.
“phory is a yellow-blooded, who vowed himself and his blood to our kingdom,” he declares, his voice carrying into every corner of the chamber.
“And I thought, together with this beautiful day, once ant to honor the birthday of my youngest daughter and to celebrate the triumph of enslaving earth, that I should reveal this truth.”
The silence deepens. A heaviness presses down on us all. By the look on the royal family’s faces, they were never told of this themselves. Even they are caught off guard. It is not common for a false god to walk this continent; rarer still for them to pledge their strength to a mortal nation.
Most dwell in their own untouchable realms, permitted to do as they please so long as they do not suddenly destroy whatever lies around them. Even such incidents are rare, for the false gods guard their own zealously, never sending them to waste.
For one of them to escape from the continent of violet seas, to break from that impossible order, and then to vow their blood to a kingdom of Elisia... it is beyond reason; unthinkable. That fact alone is why Delora rose to such terrifying heights. That is why its empire is still whispered of with fear, even though it is long divided into the kingdoms of Elitra and Aveloria.
“But it is not only phory,” Robertson continues, his words dragging across the silence like blades over stone. “We also have two other yellow-blooded, whose vows are bound beneath my bloodline.”
The grin that spreads across his face is grotesque, a mask stretched thin over wine-stained teeth, so profoundly at odds with the plates of fine steak and polished silver before him that bile rises in my throat.
My stomach twists; my mind races. Could this be a bluff? Or is he truly so mad as to claim command over three false gods? Either way, the consequences are dire. This single revelation could shatter every plan we have built, tear through weeks and months of delicate preparation. If the kingdom does not erupt into uproar within days, it will be too late.
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