CH 2 —In the Shadow of the Ten

Chapter 2 — The Dragged Scholar

Cerin knew they would use anyone close to him to force him into building the next Aldwar machine. Shadows in the fog, whispers from the North—signs he hadn’t been able to outrun.

He raised bleeding face up but for the dominion to send him? That was another matter entirely.

Terion, the most decorated Imperial Hero in the whole sprawling empire?

It was a compliment wrapped in a death sentence, the kind of honor that chilled his blood. They shouldn’t have been able to send Terion—not while Cerin still served the emperor. That left only one answer: Aureilla had pulled strings. But how had that country managed to bypass the Imperial Council and move an Imperial Hero?

The memory hit him like a frost wave, pulling him back to that ruined outpost on the edge of the wilds. Snow had turned to slush underfoot, mixed with shattered stone and splintered wood from the fight that had already raged too long.

The air stank of charred mana and blood—mostly his while overturned crates and toppled walls painted a picture of chaos we'd both contributed to.

Cerin was cornered in what used to be a storage hall, his back to a crumbling pillar. His glasses were cracked from an earlier strike that had knocked him sideways and left his vision swimming. It added to the aged old wound on his side that had been sustained when he contained the "most important factor".

Terion stood across the debris-strewn floor, his silhouette cutting through the dim light like a monument to inevitability. He didn't rush; heroes like him never did. Instead, he reached over his shoulder with a deliberate slowness that screamed control, his fingers closing around the hilt of the massive sword strapped to his back. The blade slid free with a low hum. It was longer than Cerin was tall, carved with runes that pulsed as if the metal resented being used.

He leveled it at Cerin. The tip hovered just over his chest, steady as a compass needle deciding north.

Their eyes met.

There wasn’t triumph in Terion’s gaze, or even cold efficiency. Something else lurked there—annoyance, maybe. A flicker of reluctance, like this chore had been passed down to him when it should’ve gone to someone lesser.

“It would be a shame,” he said quietly, “to end someone who’s done so much for the Awakened. You pushed boundaries no one else dared. Surrender, Holt. Make this easier on both of us.”

"Easier? For the great Terion to sully his legacy with my blood?" Cerin's laugh wasn’t for Terion—it was for the part of himself that still thought he could win.
"Come on, we're both better than—" His hand shot toward the ground, fingers straining for the small device half-buried in the rubble, its casing veined with iridescent metal. It held one last trick, enough to tilt the fight for a moment.

He moved fast, or thought he did. But he only heard it—a soft shift of steel in the air, too faint to see. His arm slowed mid-reach, dragging as if through heavy water.
Then his arm slowed mid-reach, dragging through invisible molasses. He pushed harder, veins bulging in his neck, but it was like fighting a current that grew stronger with every inch. Time itself betrayed me, stretching my desperation into futility.

Terion frowned, deeper now, his brows knitting in what could have been reluctant admiration or just plain irritation at my stubbornness. He stepped forward, boots crunching over broken glass and splintered beams, the two smaller swords still sheathed at his hips swaying untouched—like he hadn't even needed his full arsenal for this. "You cannot pass infinity," he murmured, almost to himself, as if quoting some ancient lesson he wished he could forget. Then the world tilted. The ground shook as the massive sword slammed beside him, the impact running up through Cerin’s ribs, embedding deep into the cracked stone.

Cerin hit the floor hard, blood seeping from a fresh gash across his side—defiant still, glaring up through his broken glasses, hiding the raw frustration behind a smirk that felt like glass in my mouth.

Terion loomed above, the weight of his presence heavier than the blade. Our eyes locked—oneto another, or whatever scraps of that we were—and in the quiet that followed, the ruin around them fell away. Two men, tied to choices they never fully controlled, staring at the damage they’d made.

-------

It had been a month since Cerin was dragged to Aurellia, and Aiden still wouldn’t know his father had crossed the border again. His joints ached like rusted hinges, every step a reminder that a sharp mind couldn’t shield a failing body. Hunger sat in him like a stone. Sleep had slipped away three days ago—maybe more. Time didn’t behave normally in Aurellia’s prisons. He knew the reason. He’d helped design the spelltech that twisted time like this, the first of its kind in the Dominion. Now he lived inside its warped hours, unable to tell what belonged to yesterday or the moment before.

Then there were the chains. The expensive kind, forged from dragon’s breath—something he’d once assumed was a figure of speech until he saw molten ribbons spill from a wyrm’s lungs. Those chains didn’t just restrain Awakened. They severed them. Not literally, but by stretching their connection to the wildworld until it flickered down to an ember.

The first time he’d watched one being made, he’d still been a student at the College of Sovereigns. Fresh-faced. Idealistic. Believing the Dominion only punished monsters, and that if you were Awakened and punished, you must be a monster too.

The Aldwar had burned that belief out of him, but the fear remained. He remembered the smell of burning scale and liquid metal, the sweetness of scorched mana. He remembered the children—Awakened far too young—bound to obsidian slabs while smiths pressed sizzling iron to their skin to test resilience. He’d flinched at their screams.

Now those same coils were wrapped around his wrists, and the pain forced him to reckon with everything he had helped build.

When he tried to move his hands, the chains hummed and flared hotter. He pulled his mana back like a wounded animal.

He limped forward, boots dragging across the velvet carpeting he could no longer feel. The guard beside him gave the chain a practiced tug, pulling his spine into an arch.

Cerin coughed, tasted blood, and let out a small laugh. “Do you bind all your scholars in chains,” he rasped, “or only the ones who built your floating country?”

The guard didn’t answer. Silence was a discipline in Aurellia.

“Ah. The quiet treatment,” Cerin muttered. “My favorite flavor of censorship.”

They moved through a corridor drowned in mist—the kind that clung to gems and gold, giving everything the look of wealth viewed underwater. Aurellia loved its illusions.

But Cerin wasn’t looking at the architecture.

He was looking at the spear the weapon the guard carried

This time the guard smirked. “The Dominion reveres you as a god. But here?” He tapped the spear’s smoking edge against his palm. “We know what you are.”

Cerin studied the man’s face. He’d seen that same hungry curiosity in scholars poring over his old thesis.

“At least I’ll be remembered,” he said.

The guard yanked the chain and hauled him toward the massive golden doors ahead. Their slabs were thicker than fortress walls. When they opened, the hinges groaned like something old waking from a long sleep.

Beyond them, seated in a wide semicircle raised above the floor, were the rulers of the Ten Houses. The powers that shaped Aurellia, the country he’d grown up in and poured his life into.

Cerin stepped inside.

CH 2.1 — The Ten in Shadow

The chamber of the Ten was colder than any prison cell.

Not because of temperature, but because it was built to make a person feel small.

Mist clung to everything, swallowing pillars, swallowing light, swallowing the edges of the world. Cerin could barely tell where the floor ended and the ceiling began—only that somewhere far above, the fog thinned into a faint glow, like a sky that had forgotten how to be a sky.

The floor beneath him was polished obsidian, carved with two koi—one black, one white—chasing each other in a perfect circle. A thin fracture curled from the white one’s eye like a tear. Someone had tried to scrub the blood from its tail. Tried, then given up.

The guard dragged the chain, maybe to keep Cerin from drifting into memory.

Cerin’s knees hit stone as the dragon-breath chains tightened again, heat flaring along his wrists. He closed his eyes for a moment.

Don’t scream. Don’t crawl. Don’t let them smell fear.

He forced himself upright, letting blood drip from his nose. When he looked up, the Ten were already watching.

_His gaze moved to the ones he knew personally._

### **Lord Daryon**

Sword at his hip. Blonde hair tied with a ribbon woven with steel thread. He slouched as he smiled—gentle the way spoiled fruit was gentle. Soft. Fragrant. Hiding rot. He watched Cerin like a man watching a flame he hoped to snuff out.

### **Lady Afolake**

Her posture was perfect. Eyes sharp. Her dark braids coiled like their own crown, threaded with strips of sun-metal that glowed faintly with her mana. She tapped a finger on her armrest in a rhythm precise enough to command troops. Annoyance flickered across her face—not cruelty first, but exhaustion. She looked like a woman cleaning messes she never asked for.

### **High Magister Rulen**

Oldest of them. His robes pooled around him like liquid parchment. Age had not softened him—only carved him deeper. His eyes were sunk and observant and—worse—curious. Cerin knew that kind of curiosity. A scholar’s hunger. The kind that killed more innocents than any blade.

_Seven more silhouettes waited behind the mist. Cerin knew each by voice and rumor and the way their followers whispered their names. But today, the first three would speak._

A silence settled.
A silence that belonged to people used to obedience.

Cerin broke it.

“I don’t believe I’ve done anything that should warrant my death.”

A laugh cut the air—thin, sharp, too pleased with itself.

Lord Daryon leaned forward. “Three months in isolation, and the heretic finds religion. Enlightening.”

Cerin breathed through his teeth. “If I’d known starvation counted as a sacrament, I would’ve converted sooner.”

Afolake exhaled through her nose.
“Cerin, enough. We’re not trying to kill you.”

He lifted an eyebrow. One of the silhouettes shifted, almost imperceptibly.

Afolake huffed. “We’re not. You act like we’re asking for the horns of a dragon. Just tell us how to intercept the spelltech you built. That’s it.”

He pushed himself to one knee, then the other, back straightening despite the trembling in his legs.
“You tortured me,” he said quietly. “You starved me. You broke me open like a lab specimen. And you think my will is weak enough to hand your ignorant council a weapon your egos can’t hold in silence?”

Afolake’s expression flickered. Not guilt. Frustration.

“If you’d worked _with_ us from the beginning—”

“I did.” Cerin’s voice cut her off. “My entire life. Aurellia floats because of me. Your country sings with the mana I bled for.”

Rulen stroked his beard.
“Aurellian-born, but Dominion-bred. Where does your loyalty lie, exactly? With your people? Or your pride?”

The chains tightened again as his mana surged in anger.

Anaye’s face flashed across his mind—thirteen years old, brilliant, burning alive after a failed test. He had held her hand until it turned to ash.

“My loyalty,” Cerin said, “lies where truth lives. And truth says war is coming. You want my work to turn children into orphans. I won’t be part of that.”

A shadow stirred in the mist.

Before anyone could respond—

**the air snapped.**

A displacement. A blur. A flash.

Someone appeared beside him—teleported, slipped, folded space—Cerin wasn’t sure. Not a Ten member. A guard.

The strike came fast.
A surgical chop to the side of his neck, and sound vanished.
Cerin staggered, his limbs weakened, the tenuous hold on his stance slipping, but even with a flawless strike, the attacker didn’t retreat. It stood close, even walking forward, as a faint shimmer of heat distorted its outline. Maybe to show that they now had champions clearly forbidden by the Empire.

“Enough talk,” they said, bored. “You will speak of the Ten with respect.”

Cerin forced himself upright.
“Let’s not pretend,” he rasped. “This isn’t justice. You never planned to let me leave.”

Rulen sighed.
A long, ancient exhale.

“Then you’ll be executed,” he said. “Publicly. Tomorrow.”

Cerin smiled. It cracked his lip even as blood welled.
A deep, proper smile.

The guards seized him, trying to understand the reason, but didn’t waste time. He was dragged back toward the golden doors.

He didn’t resist. He let the chains scrape the stone like a man already halfway gone.

And the Ten watched in silence as Cerin Holt, Architect of Aurellia, was dragged from their sight.

CH 2.2 — The Cell and the Ghost

The world returned to Cerin in fragments.
Light first—thin, sickly, the color of spoiled milk. Then sound—the distant drip of water, the rattle of chains dragged along stone, a murmur of voices that were not voices but memory reshuffling itself. Last came pain.

He could no longer recognize this body. He wondered if Rinya would.
His throat felt split and his wrists raw where dragon-breath metal chewed at him with a hunger that was almost alive.

He lay curled on the prison floor, breath hitching.

He forced himself upright. Slowly.
His blood smeared beneath him but not enough to scent the air.

The Dominion used to mail him fan letters.
Now they measured him for a coffin.

A voice broke the silence.

“You… you shouldn’t make them wait.”

Cerin turned.
A boy—sixteen at most—stood at the bars.

His shoes were too clean. His robe too new. His hands trembled around a clipboard dotted with ink stains.
No lineage markers, just a student.

Cerin blinked at him.
“Did they run out of executioners,” he rasped, “or is this a new internship rotation?”

The boy flushed. “I—I studied systems theory. Mana cycling. Your papers… your work— I’ve read everything the Dominion released. I’m just here to check your vitals. I don’t want to— I mean, I’m not—”

Cerin waved a hand weakly.
“Calm down. What’s your name?”

“Ebuka.”

“Don’t remember it.”

Ebuka froze.
A silence opened between them, heavy and fragile.

Cerin coughed into his sleeve. Red blossomed across the fabric.

“Sir,” Ebuka whispered, “you could tell them. Just say how to intercept the spelltech. They’ll stop this. They’ll let you go. You can still—”

“Live?” Cerin finished. “No. They won’t.”

Ebuka swallowed. “But you’re a genius. The Dominion needs minds like yours. Aurellia—”

Cerin’s eyes softened—not with kindness, but with a grief that had grown old.

“I had a student,” he said. “Brilliant. Bright as a new star. Ethics were… optional to him. Much like they were to me once.”

Ebuka listened, breath held.

“He took a prototype I made,” Cerin continued softly. “Gave it to rebels. Melted half a city grid. People died choking on the gifts of their own sage paths. He died too. I buried him myself.”

Ebuka’s mouth fell open.

“That is what knowledge without conscience becomes.” Cerin looked at the boy. “Do not become him.”

Ebuka stepped backward. Once. Twice. Then he turned and ran.

Only when his footsteps vanished did the temperature shift to something _aware_.

A ripple, almost too subtle to track, moved through the corridor. Then she stepped into view.

Not Afolake as Cerin had seen her before. Not the polished Councilwoman. No gold-threaded braids. No immaculate armor but a shadow wearing the memory of a woman. A candle’s flame given bones.

Her boots made no sound and her face was absolutely pale.

Cerin didn’t flinch. He knew this form. Her favorite disguise.

“Why don’t you want to save your life?” she asked quietly.

The tone was almost gentle. Almost.

Cerin rested his head back against the wall. “Is this the part where you pretend to care?”

She stepped closer to the bars. Her eyes—normally hard—held something else now. Something calculating that remembered old loyalties and older grievances.

“You know how quickly geniuses die in the Dominion,” she murmured.

“They are geniuses like _me_,” Cerin said. “What do you imagine will happen when the world learns Aurellia murdered the brightest mind it produced in a century?”

“The Dominion?” Afolake laughed. “Will they find out? That’s the question you should ask.”

She moved into the candlelight. Just enough for her outline to waver. For a moment she looked like three versions of herself layered atop one another—past, present, future.

“You didn’t create the eleven mana sides,” she said. “You found them. That is all.”

Cerin smiled weakly. “I am what I am.”

She leaned in. Close enough that he could smell iron on her breath. Close enough that her words carried frost.

“When I find your family,” she whispered, “I’ll make sure they remember what you died for. Your Ideals.”

Cerin’s jaw clenched.

“The world will remember,” he said. “Even if you bury the truth.”

Afolake studied him. Long enough for doubt—real, human doubt—to flicker in her eyes.

But it passed. Everyone in Aurellia learned eventually how to bury their doubts.

Her body dissolved into light.

The prison returned to stillness. Cerin breathed out. Once. Twice.

Alone again.
Tomorrow, he would perhaps die. And the world would change.

CH 2.3 — The Scaffold of Fog

The rain had stopped an hour ago, though the sky had not forgiven the world enough to offer stars. Aurellia hung in its usual twilight—a floating kingdom veiled in mist, secrets, and polished cruelty. The scaffold in the plaza still glistened with rainwater. Even the wood shivered.

Cerin Holt was led toward it in silence.

The guards kept their distance. They were the "combined force"—silver armor unmarred, poised, proud—but none of them wanted blood on their boots today. Cerin was not a criminal to them. He was a myth.
A dying myth.

The chains around his wrists rattled like metal trying to remember it was once fire.

He climbed the steps slowly, each plank creaking under his weight. His breath fogged in front of him, thin, uneven. For a moment he wondered if the fog of Aurellia would swallow his last breath the same way it swallowed its truths.

He reached the top.
And then he saw them.

Rinya.
A blue shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders. Wet at the edges. Her posture stiff, as if she’d been bracing for this for years.

Aiden.
Sixteen. Shoulders narrow, fists clenched so hard the knuckles were nearly translucent. His hair—dark, unruly, refusing to obey any comb—hung into his eyes. Eyes that did not cry. It was comforting knowing that he didn't have to worry if he would carry it. His expression was proof enough

Cerin tried not to look for too long but failed.

He memorized the slope of the boy’s jaw. The stubborn set of his mouth. The way he shook,_trembling._ There was a difference.

He looked away before grief could break him open.

Above them, on a balcony carved from glass and gold, the Ten watched. Draped in ceremonial fog, faces unreadable. This news would not reach the Imperial Seat for years. Aurellia held its truths the same way it held its altitude—by refusing to let anything fall unless pushed.

The priest approached.
Pale. Thin. Robes whispering. He held the Lex Sancta Tei, its red binding cracked at the edges, each page heavy with history no one could trust.

His voice trembled.
“Do you seek absolution before the sword finds you?”

Cerin tilted his head just enough.
“I’ve made peace. With the gods. With the dead. Not with you.”

A silence.
One that even the crowd dared not break.

The masked executioner stepped forward.

He didn't have an insignia but from the presence alone he knew who it was.

Terion.
Or rather—Musashi, in a life that no longer existed.
A reincarnated soul. He was one of the first Unknowns of recent times from a place called earth that people with honey tounges have made synonmous to heaven.

His mask was carved of darkwood lacquered in blue. At his sides hung two swords—silver and iron—but he did not touch them.

Instead, he reached across his back.
And drew the third.

A blade that hummed like a living thing. Its edge glowed faintly blue, pulsing with restrained hunger.

Cerin felt the air stiffen.
Terion spoke softly, though his voice carried down to every ear in the plaza.
“Cerin Holt. Architect of Aurellia. The Dominion thanks you for your contributions. And regrets the path that led you here.”

His tone was not cruel or warm.
Just… honest.
A warrior’s respect.

Cerin’s lips cracked into a faint smile.
“So they sent you to kill me twice, Musashi?”

The masked man’s hand faltered for a fraction of a second.
A tiny, human moment.
Then he answered, voice low.
“In every life, I follow orders. It is my curse.”

Cerin inhaled through his teeth.
“And my curse was building things for people who never deserved them.”

Terion—Musashi—shifted his grip.
“I will make it quick.”

Cerin didn’t look at him.
He looked at Aiden.
At Rinya.
Not long.
Just enough.

The wind cut across the scaffold. Someone in the crowd sucked in a breath. But no one dared speak.

Musashi’s voice came again.
“Any last words?”

Cerin closed his eyes.
It was a whole mess now. The deities where at it in full swing. They were the children of the hand of God, imperial heros, champions, Unknowns, the army he built.......

He opened them.
And didn’t blink.

“It’ll make him the strongest.”

Not for the Ten, not for the crowd but for the boy with shaking hands beside a woman who refused to cover his eyes.

Aiden’s lips moved.
A sound formed.
Rinya’s hand covered his mouth, but not his vision.

Musashi raised the blade.

A single heartbeat.

The world held itself still.

The sword descended.

A hiss—like steam meeting cold iron.
Then a muted thud.
No scream.
No gasp.
Just a soft, devastating silence.

Aiden didn’t cry or rather he couldn't he held onto Rinya as if holding himself in place.

Then the Ten turned and left without ceremony and like a domino crowds dispersed, the body was taken and the blood washed away by rain that chose that moment to return.

Only one person remained.

The youngest scribe of the Ten.
Ink-stained fingers trembling as he wrote:

**Cerin Holt – Architect of the World. Executed at dawn.**

But when he lifted his pen, the ink still bled.
He looked toward the wall.

She was there.
Lady Afolake.
Watching silently.

Before he could speak, another presence entered.
A tall man in a black coat. Weaponless yet he radiated the kind of danger that made even shadows reevaluate where they stood.

His voice was velvet wrapped around steel.

“You ask how the Council will clean their hands,” he said, finishing the scribe’s earlier question. “How they’ll manage the Dominion. How they’ll hide another Unsanctioned killing.”

He stepped into the fog.
Not toward the scribe.
Toward Afolake.

“And you ask,” he added lightly, “whether an Imperial Hero can be killed.”

The scribe stiffened.

Ajo-Ka smiled.
Without warmth.
“Of course they can. By another one.”

His eyes never left Afolake.

“My lady,” he murmured. “If you wish it… send me.”

A long, brittle pause.

Then Afolake exhaled.

“You know that’s out of the question. As my champion if you go, I swear on my father’s skull I’ll be forced to consider things I haven’t touched in years.”

Ajo-Ka only bowed. Once.

She hesitated then turned slightly, just enough for her face to be visible through the mist.

“That student you trained,” she said. “Send her.”

Ajo-Ka nodded.
Hand brushing lightly over a hidden piece of metal at his waist.

“As you wish.”

The Architect was dead.
But the storm he started had only just begun.