My younger sister mocked my injured F-rank dragon and celebrated her second-place victory, but when the royal official announced the rankings, her confidence shattered as she demanded to know who beat her.

The trial’s aftermath settled over the imperial capital like a suffocating shroud of ash.

While the common folk celebrated the triumphant return of the First Princess—whispering in the taverns that the true blood of the old kings had awakened in the neglected daughter—the inner palace was a den of vipers preparing for strike.

King Alden had not immediately executed the sentence of exile.

Under the desperate, weeping influence of Queen Marianne, the King had stayed the order for seven days under the guise of an "official imperial investigation" into how an A-rank undead commander had breached the wards of the Sun-Gilded Grove.

Sarah sat by the arched window of her new quarters in the Solar Spire—the traditional residence of the Crown’s Shield, which had been restored to her by imperial decree the morning after the trial.

Across the sprawling hearth rug, Kale lay with his wings half-spread, absorbing the radiant heat of enchanted hearth-stones. He had grown. The B-tier threshold had stabilized his physical form; his obsidian scales now carried a permanent, faint violet iridescence that seemed to drink the torchlight, and his single restored horn was sharp enough to split a falling leaf.

“The King is a coward,” Kale observed telepathically, not bothering to open his eyes. “He knows his wife opened the gates. He knows his second daughter is a hollow ornament. Yet he delays the blade.”

“My father does not fear Vivien,” Sarah replied, turning a small, silver signet ring between her fingers. “He fears what stands behind Marianne. The Duke of the Western Marches, the High Enchanters’ Guild, and the emissaries of the Pale Council.”

A soft, rhythmic knock sounded against the heavy oak door of the spire.

Three taps. A pause. Two taps.

“Enter,” Sarah said.

The door swung open, revealing Captain Eric, the former commander of the Outer Wall Watch—a veteran soldier whose scarred face and rusted iron mail bore the marks of thirty years of neglected service on the borders. Behind him slipped a young scout dressed in dark leather, his cloak smelling of the damp catacombs beneath the city.

Eric dropped to one knee, pounding his fist against his breastplate. “Your Highness.”

“Rise, Eric,” Sarah said. “What did you find beneath the Saint’s Crypt?”

The scout stepped forward, pulling a heavy, wax-sealed cylinder of black bone from his pouch. “The princess was correct. Lady Marianne’s personal handmaiden did not visit the temple to pray for Lady Vivien’s health. She descended into the crypts beneath the catacombs at the third hour of the night.”

The scout handed the bone cylinder to Sarah.

“We did not intercept her,” the scout continued, his voice tight. “We followed her to the lower sluice-gates. She met with a courier wearing the gray robes of the Pale Council. They exchanged this cipher before the courier dissolved into a swarm of bone-wasps and vanished into the sewers.”

Sarah broke the wax seal with her thumb.

The parchment inside was not sheepskin; it was cured human parchment, inscribed with ink made from dried blood and powdered obsidian.

As Sarah’s eyes scanned the ancient, archaic script of the Undead Empire, a cold, vicious smile spread across her lips.

“The Winter Solstice Banquet,” she murmured. “Four days from now.”

Kale’s eyes opened. The golden-violet flames within his slit pupils flickered with sudden interest. “What do the dead write to the Queen?”

“Marianne has promised them the city,” Sarah said, tossing the parchment onto the table where Eric and the scout could see it. “During the solstice feast, when the King drinks the ceremonial wine of the ancestors, the poison of the *Ashen Root* will paralyze his core. Vivien will be proclaimed Regent with the backing of the Western Ducal Guard. And at midnight, the river-gates will be opened to the vanguard of the Pale Council’s Third Legion.”

Eric’s scarred face went pale with furious disbelief. “High Treason... The Queen intends to slaughter the entire court to save her daughter from exile? To hand the kingdom to the monsters of the Pale Council?!”

“Marianne was never loyal to House Vane,” Sarah said, her voice dropping into a register of icy, absolute certainty. “She was placed at my father’s side twenty years ago by the shadow-brokers of the West. She murdered my mother with slow-acting belladonna, she fed my father lies about my unworthiness, and she groomed Vivien to be the puppet empress who would sign the surrender treaty with the Undead Empire.”

Sarah rose from her chair, walking to the great map of the capital pinned to the stone wall.

“In my previous life, she succeeded,” Sarah whispered, her fingers tracing the outline of the city walls. “Lucien drove his claws through my heart at the river-gate while the undead marched into the inner ward. But this time... she has walked into my cage.”

She turned toward Captain Eric.

“How many men can you rely on, Eric? Not the shiny palace guards who polish their armor for banquets. Men who have bled on the walls.”

Eric straightened his spine, his hand resting firmly on the pommel of his broadsword. “Six hundred veterans of the Wall Watch, Your Highness. Discarded knights, wounded pikemen, and the old archers your father forgot to pay three winters ago. They remember your mother’s charity. And after what you did in the Grove... they will follow you into the jaws of the abyss.”

“Good,” Sarah said. “Take this cipher. Take four of your most trusted men and deliver copies to the High Inquisitor and the Commander of the Iron Guard—not now, but at the fifth bell of the solstice feast, when the King raises his cup.”

Eric bowed low. “And what of the Princess Vivien and the silver dragon?”

Sarah looked over at Kale, who had risen to his feet, his massive, spiked tail sweeping across the flagstones with a low, rumbling hum of pure destructive power.