The throne of Livadia was carved from obsidian oak, etched with runes older than the empire itself. It had been shaped for giants—kings and queens of godlike stature. Phiniaster barely filled half of it.

  He sat stiffly, robes bunched around his legs, hands gripping the eagle-headed armrests like they might anchor him. The Hall of Rule was cavernous, quiet. Every sound echoed.

  Was this what it meant to rule? Silence, stone, and a weight that never lifted?

  He had dreamed of this once. Dreamed of bringing justice and unity to a fractured empire. But the dreams had not prepared him for the loneliness of the crown.

  Kuda Dawnriser entered with the grace of a man who feared nothing. Golden armor gleaming, his cloak brushing the marble, he bowed only slightly.

  “Majesty,” he said. “We’ve received word from the eastern wilds. The food crisis has been… addressed. Your orders have borne fruit.”

  Phiniaster’s shoulders sagged with relief. “That’s good,” he murmured. “That’s very good.”

  It was a lie. He knew it. Kuda knew it. But in this moment, it didn’t matter.

  “There is another matter,” Kuda continued. “The men of the empire are returning from the front. Many of them are demanding their positions back. Positions now occupied by women.”

  Phiniaster frowned. “But they’ve kept the empire alive.”

  “They have. And now the men want what was theirs. The streets churn with unrest.”

  Phiniaster stood, awkward and uncertain. “Then summon the kings. All of them. Every region. We’ll form a council. Let them speak. Let them solve this with me.”

  Kuda’s jaw tightened. “You would place the fate of the empire in the hands of a squabbling mob?”

  “I would share the burden,” Phiniaster said. “We are too many peoples now. We need many voices.”

  “You are taking your father’s lessons,” Kuda said quietly, his tone as if explaining to a dense child, “and throwing them into the fire. Even among the nadics—dryads, psyads, maenads—there is no such thing as a common want or need. Dryads crave soil and growth, psyads hunger for knowledge and control, maenads care for nothing but their next ecstatic escape. And these are our own kind.”

  He stepped closer, voice hardening. “Now add a million human souls, all squabbling, all pulling in different directions. You think they will agree on anything? An empire like this cannot be ruled by consensus. It must be ruled by the will of one. One voice. One vision.”

  Phiniaster turned from him. “Then let them learn. Let them build something together.”

  Kuda scoffed. “You truly think they’ll build anything together? Do you think the marsh lords want what the mountain clans want? Do you think the psyads will ever work alongside dryads, let alone humans, without scheming to be first in line? Even within a single race, there is no unity. Dryads argue over root rights. Maenads split over how to ferment their poison dreams. The psyads can't even agree on how many gods there are.”

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  Phiniaster squared his shoulders. “Then we teach them. We show them what unity looks like.”

  “You teach them?” Kuda said, voice rising in disbelief. “You will lecture a thousand factions into harmony? Boy, this is not a schoolhouse. This is an empire on the brink. Empires do not run on hope. They run on will.”

  “They will listen—if we give them a voice.”

  “They will talk until the floor rots out from under them. And when the shouting starts, they will kill to be heard over the rest.”

  Phiniaster turned fully to face him, jaw clenched. “I am the emperor, and you will do as I command.”

  When the council met days later, the Hall of Rule filled with every manner of man and beast: forest kings from the west, marsh lords from the lowlands, mountain princes with snow in their beards. The weight of their gazes pressed on Phiniaster as he rose from his throne.

  He cleared his throat, voice echoing through the hall. "We face a turning point. The war is over, but peace brings its own trials. Our people hunger—not just for food, but for purpose. Soldiers return to find their places taken. Women who held this empire together now fear losing what they've earned."

  He swept his gaze across the gathered lords. "We must decide together how to restore balance, how to rebuild what war has broken."

  Silence stretched thin for a breath. Then the shouting began.

  A forest king stood, tall and broad-shouldered, slamming his fist on the table. "Our lands have been razed to the root! We will not give more!"

  A marsh lord sneered, his voice slick as oil. "You hoard your grain, while our people starve in the swamps!"

  A mountain prince rose, arms crossed over his thick chest, snow still clinging to his boots. "Starve? You live knee-deep in fish and reeds! My people bled on the heights, where the air itself turned against us."

  Another voice rose from the lowlands, sharp and mocking. "And yet you still find breath to boast."

  The room erupted in a chorus of shouting, fists hammering the great oak tables, beards wagging, cloaks flaring. Each lord hurled blame across the hall like spears, none willing to yield.

  Phiniaster stood frozen at the dais, watching his council disintegrate into a battlefield of words.

  And then the women arrived.

  It began as a rumble beyond the heavy palace doors—a murmur that swelled into a tide of voices. Thousands of women gathered outside the Hall of Rule, their cries reverberating through the marble corridors. Daughters, wives, factory workers, scribes, farmers—all demanding to be heard, to keep the rights they had earned while the men had gone to war. Only the Golden Guard, stationed in a tight line before the entrance, held them back, their mageia flickering faintly at their palms, ready to ignite if the crowd surged too far. But the shouting pressed harder, the weight of it like a rising storm against the walls of power.

  Phiniaster stood frozen. “Let them speak,” he said, voice cracking.

  The chamber roared.

  Kuda remained silent, arms folded, watching his young emperor drown.

  In desperation, Phiniaster raised his hand. “Then let the psyads—our nobility—work the fields! Let the dryads build homes in the human style! Let all contribute!”

  The silence that followed was worse than the shouting.

  Somewhere amid the echoing aftermath, a psyad lord muttered under his breath, "By Nomiston's bollocks..." The slur cracked the silence like a whip, a single, unfiltered truth cutting through the wreckage of failed diplomacy.

  A dryad lord rose, slamming a palm against the table. "Majesty, reconsider this madness. The psyads toil in the fields? The dryads waste their gifts shaping human hovels? You ask for ruin."

  Another psyad, younger, bolder, leaned forward, eyes narrowed. "You cannot expect us—us, who hold the mageia of the empire—to stoop to such labor. Let the humans dig their own graves."

  Phiniaster gripped the eagle-headed arms of the throne until his knuckles whitened. He said nothing.

  A forest king stepped into the fray, his voice oily with threat. "Withdraw this decree, Majesty. Before you drive the empire to revolt."

  But Phiniaster stayed frozen, trapped beneath the weight of his own command.

  Phiniaster sat again in the throne that did not fit him. The weight pressed down.

  He had wanted to build something new.

  Instead, he had broken what remained.

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