Chapter 1 — The Oath
The throne room smelled of copper and burning silk. Kael knelt on the obsidian floor, his palm pressed against a mirror of black glass that drank the candlelight whole.
"Speak the words," the old king rasped, voice thin as paper. "Or watch this house fall by morning."
Kael inhaled. Behind his eyes, the demon stirred — not a beast, but a quiet, patient hunger that had waited eighteen years for this exact second.
He spoke. The mirror cracked. Somewhere far away, a clock that had been silent for a century began to tick again.
Chapter 2 — The Hunt Begins
By dawn, three of the Seven Houses had sent assassins. By noon, all three were dead in the courtyard, arranged in a careful spiral that only Kael understood.
He wiped the blade on his sleeve and looked up at the sky. Crimson clouds. A good omen, his mother used to say. She had died on a day exactly like this.
— END OF CHAPTER —
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