The grand dining hall was cathedral-sized, every corner draped in wealth. Gilded woodwork curled along the walls like creeping vines, carved into runic forms and stylised foliage. Between the inlays, copper aether lines ran like hidden arteries, feeding the room’s automated luxuries.

  Crystal and gold chandeliers hovered above on suspended rail tracks, each powered by internal levitation coils and balanced through an enchantment-laced gyroscopic array. They floated, adjusting position with tiny whirrs and chimes. They bathed the tables below in a pale, flickering aether-light that mimicked candlelight with uncanny perfection.

  Jack counted at least sixty guests as he entered, over two dozen personal guards lined the walls. No one spared him a second glance. Just another commoner in borrowed clothes. The air here felt perfumed and mechanical; recycled through discreet grilles hidden in the walls, exhaling soft plumes of citrus and something chemical.

  A servant, part flesh and part brass, led him to one of the main tables. His right arm had been replaced with a precision-forged limb of etched bronze, its fingers articulate and noiseless. The glow from the embedded aether capsule at the elbow pulsed in time with his step.

  That must be worth over 200 gold, Jack thought. How much wealth does Tides have to spend so much on a servant? He thought of Cain and how long it would take him to save enough coin to buy a similar prosthetic arm.

  The six older nobles were already seated, along with the six younger nobles he had hunted with. Their skin was unblemished and their posture was perfect. The clothes they wore bore filigree made not only of gold-thread, but of tiny embedded runes, humming of wealth and privilege.

  “My lords and ladies,” Jack greeted with a bow.

  “Sit down, my boy,” Greaves said with a smile that belonged to a gravedigger.

  One of the young nobles, blond-haired and hawk-faced, gave Jack a look like he’d just stepped in dog shit. He ignored him.

  The other tables were crowded with noble sons, wrinkled barons, high-born women in lace and brimmed hats. Scattered among them like dirt between pearls were honoured commoners: scribes, linguists, librarians, and translators. Jack recognised several from the Royal Library; men and women who’d once passed him ink or scolded his early scribe work in a past life.

  Jasmin’s father, Alric, sat near the lower end of a side table. His face was grey, and his eyes carried that distant sheen of a man who read something terrible and could never forget it.

  At the head of the main table sat Viscount Tides, with his silver hair tied back. He dressed in a midnight-blue waistcoat embroidered with aether-thread and embossed filigree that shifted patterns when viewed from different angles. Light slid off him strangely, like the suit repelled the very notion of attention.

  Tides was surrounded by a constellation of power; nobles whispering with too-wide smiles, each vying for his approval. Jack had seen the Viscount before, cloaked in ritual light, chanting ancient elven. All while an orc warrior withered into bloodless dust.

  Jack recognised five of the nobles flanking Tides. All of them had been present at that rite. How many of them are there? He surveyed the room. Could they all be blood mages?

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  That would make sixty in this room alone. It’s not a dozen nobles, it’s a network, perhaps hundreds of them.

  The room felt too tight, his new suit itched and his skin felt like it wasn’t his own. He tugged at the collar while the nobles around him chattered and drank wine. Keep calm. A few more hours and you’ll be home. He thought of his mom greeting him in the kitchen with a warm smile. There’d be a pile of worry-cooked food. Polly would make a snide comment about how he looked, and he’d feel better. He’d feel safe in his small sanctuary.

  Jack was seated mid-table between two teenage noble boys from the morning hunt. The boy on his left tapped his foot beneath the table like a telegraph key. Across from him, a noble girl of seventeen or eighteen offered him a smile filled with perfectly aligned teeth, like an automaton designed for courtship. But there was something uncanny behind her eyes. Like her soul had been hollowed out and replaced with polished decorum.

  Two seats to her right, the blond hawk-faced teen continued to stare at Jack with the restrained loathing of someone bound by manners. He kept glancing at Jack through narrowed eyes and looked like he wanted to say something.

  Servants emerged through concealed panels in the walls, brass-framed doors hissing open on silent hinges. They bore platters of food balanced with uncanny precision. One servant’s back bore a mechanical brace, its articulated supports coiling over his shoulders like a spider’s limbs, steadied by counterweights and brass gyros.

  The roasted stag was wheeled out on a levitating tray powered by an unseen aether-pod beneath the table. It floated just above the floor, gliding like a funerary offering. Its cooked flesh gleamed under the chandeliers, skin crisped, its body posed atop a bed of ironwort and smoking peat. The scent of honey and rendered fat rolled out like a fog.

  At the head table, two surgical servitors carved the stag. Their arms moved in tandem, one flesh, one brass, using enchanted knives shaped like scalpels, their blades whispering through meat with fluid efficiency.

  Then came the side dishes: glazed vegetables arranged with obsessive symmetry, gravies poured from automated tureens kept warm with rune-sealed heat discs. There were exotic fruits, some of which Jack had only ever read about.

  Soon after, platters of venison, crisp and steaming, were placed at Greaves’s table. The scent spread: char, fat, herbs, and death. Servants moved in flurries, filling plates and glasses as laughter and chatter buzzed through the hall.

  Jack’s stomach twisted. He remembered the nobles’ cruel way in which they incapacitated the magnificent stag. How the blood had steamed on his fingers as his blade slid into the deer’s heart, ending its suffering.

  He stared at the steam rising from his plate. Venison portioned with unnatural precision, a smear of redcurrant glaze, a dab of creamed mash shaped like a seashell. The silver cutlery gleamed beneath the aether-light, shaped with etched prayers to the Gods; each fork probably worth more than a commoner’s month of wages.

  Jack lifted his fork, and his hand trembled. He steadied it. You killed it. Now you eat it. He’d hunted deer in his past life to train for the day he’d kill Greaves. He always ate what he killed. No wasted death or empty killing; anything else felt disrespectful.

  He closed his eyes, offered a silent thanks to the stag, and took a bite. The venison melted on his tongue, it was delicious. Charred on the edge, pink inside, tender and heavy with herbs.

  Almost as good as his mother’s. Jack frowned. But something was missing. He looked around the hall. At the perfect faces, the rehearsed laughter, and the wealth gilded over rot. The way the silver glinted like fangs. A quiet horror wrapped in velvet and wine.

  This isn’t home. This isn’t family. That’s what was missing.

  This was a pit of vipers warmed by aether-runes and served by machines wearing human skin.

  Jack sipped his water, letting the crystal goblet hide the tightness in his throat. It didn’t help.

  As he bit into another forkful of venison, a half-dozen men and women entered the dining room. They all wore the robes of inquisitors.

  Jack’s mouth dropped open in surprise. Is this because of me?