Felkas, at least, proves easier to convince than I expected. The moment I tell him the Citadel is safer and warmer than this forgotten place, he nods with a stubborn sort of exhaustion. The only thing he refuses is letting go of Iskri. He clings to the sablehound as if the creature were the last stable thing in the world. So Iskri simply kneels, lowers himself like a patient mount, and waits for the boy to climb onto his broad back before rising again with the gentleness of a practiced guardian.
I walk beside them on the road back, matching Iskri’s pace. Felkas keeps one fist curled into the sablehound’s white mane, the other resting nervously on his lap. His ears swivel at every sound, every shifting drone, every flicker of movement across the sand. I keep talking to him, just enough to dull the fear I can feel rolling off him in waves. I describe the Dominion, the Citadel’s warmth, the food he can expect, even the vaulted halls he’ll pass on the way to his room. Small things, comforting things, anything to give his mind something else to latch onto besides remembered pain.
I had ignored my chat for most of the trip. Normally I at least skim the messages as they flood in, but tonight I don’t have the bandwidth. I care more about the shivering kid on Iskri’s back than whatever commentary the watchers feel like offering. Still, the chat keeps spamming on the display, practically vibrating with theatrics.
[Archivolt]: Uncle Kyris to the rescue. Protect the child!
[carapace_kid]: That poor little guy… I’m curious what is happening in his kingdom.
[VioletVex]: I opened a new tab but the king is offline. Only shows the bonfire next to the throne.
[Archivolt]: Well at least Uncle Kyris is here to help. The kid will be safe for sure now.
Uncle Kyris.
I grit my teeth. I hate that. I need to kill that nickname fast before it sticks. If it gets normalized in the community, I’ll never hear the end of it. But that’s a problem for another night.
By the time the Citadel’s spires rise out of the dune-sea, the sky has begun dimming with the unnatural twilight that marks the end of tonights session. Good timing. I need to get Felkas settled quickly, then log out for work tomorrow… today? The idea of quitting still hangs in the back of my mind, a tempting, poisonous thought. With two payments from Nod, my savings are the highest they’ve ever been. Even though the second payout wasn’t anywhere near the absurd windfall of the first, it was still triple what I make in a full paycheck.
But quitting means giving up stability in the waking world. And stability is something I’m not ready to lose again.
Besides, my rank dropped after the Ashwing fight, which still baffles me. You’d think killing a dragon live on stream would boost my standing, but apparently not. Honestly, I don’t mind. Lower rank means fewer eyes. Less attention. A quieter existence.
I prefer being hidden.
Another message slides through. This one makes a small ping sound in my head when sent.
[LifelineV]: Hey, I figured out how to direct message you. Hidden from chat. Good work tonight. That device looks like it might be perfect for some ideas I had about the Ashwing parts. Could help develop artifact-level gear. Also, I did some digging on that kid you found. We need to talk. Since you can’t respond privately without speaking, contact me in the waking.
Well.
That’s new.
If Victor can DM me privately inside Nod, then theoretically anyone with the right access could. I wonder which other kings have people on the waking side funneling them intel. Probably all of them—being unassisted is likely the exception, not the rule.
Another item on the growing list of things I know nothing about.
We enter the capital through the main gate, and Felkas lifts his head for the first time since we left the vault. His eyes go wide, stunned awe widening them until the ice blue irises nearly glow.
“This is your kingdom?” he asks, voice small but full of wonder.
“This is just the surface,” I say. “But yes. This is mine.”
“It’s… huge. The buildings, the people.” His head whips from tower to tower, tracing drones scurrying along scaffolding, Hekari formations training in the open court, archivists hauling crates toward the lower elevators. “It’s so much bigger than my clan’s.”
We reach the cathedral, and I pause at the sand map long enough to check on the Dominion’s tasks. Excellent, another small star fort is already rising on the border between my land and Scott’s. Good, with the situation north becoming concerning, we may need that fortress sooner than I feared.
“Felkas,” I say, “how long were you in that vault before we found you?”
“Not longer than a handful of days,” he murmurs. “I ran in full form for about five days without stopping, until I couldn’t anymore. I found that hole in the ground and… I couldn’t smell anything alive inside, so I hid.”
“So you left your kingdom five days ago?”
His posture collapses. Shoulders sink. Eyes lower.
“No… I escaped another king’s forces five days ago.”
He swallows. “He held many of us captive. Wanted to know where our king was. We hadn’t seen him in about a week.”
A week.
A king missing for a week in Nod only means two things:
he died three times in Nod, or he’s dead in the waking world…
Neither bodes well, but real world death, the idea that someone could have found out he was a king and killed his real body. That had been haunting my thoughts for a time now. Its why I got the interior camera to watch me sleep.
Another DM pops up.
[LifelineV]: On that note—the king has had his stream set to offline for the last week. People are talking about it. I’m wondering if he doused that brazier Cast told you about.
Well… that at least means he might be alive in Nod. Flying under the radar. Chat cant see him, but neither can the other kings.
“I’ll have my scouts look into it,” I tell Felkas. “For now, let’s get you to a room. I’ll leave Iskri with you. I have duties to handle, but I’ll be back soon.”
He straightens, trying to mimic formality despite his injuries. “Yes, Kyris. Thank you… for helping. I feel safer here. These walls… the soldiers… it’s more than I’ve ever seen.”
I ruffle his hair gently. He flinches at the touch, then relaxes as he recognizes it for what it is. I escort him inside and settle him in a spare captain’s room. One Cast prepared earlier for future promotions. Food, water, warm bedding. Guards posted. Not to confine him, just to help him if he needs anything. I won’t let him wander the Citadel alone, but with Iskri and an escort, he’ll be fine.
I return to my chamber above the throne as the last threads of resonance fade for the night. I sit before the mirror, stare at the reflection on the glass, and exhale.
“I know I don’t talk to you all much,” I say. “Things are… hectic, between the politics and monsters. But I appreciate you. Thanks for being here tonight. Logging off now. Goodnight, watchers.”
The messages spike immediately:
[VioletVex]: GOODNIGHT MY KING <3 <3 <3
[Archivolt]: I come for the story, stay for Kyris. Keep going strong!
[carapace_kid]: Always my favorite king. No complaints here.
I smile despite myself, stretch out across the monarch’s bed, and let my eyes fall shut.
Sleep in Nod is strange.
One blink, and the world warms, the air shifts, the shadows soften. The hum of the hive fades into the dim murmur of my PC fans and the ambient buzz of my apartment.
I open my eyes.
Back in the waking world.
The first thing that hits me when I wake is Victor’s message. Or rather, the idea of it. He said he needed to talk, but it’ll be hours before his timeline catches up to the moment he actually sends it. From his perspective, he hasn’t written a damn thing yet. Time zones in the waking world are annoying enough; time desync between Nod sessions and real life makes it weirder.
He works nights, thank god. It means he’s around while I stream, able to watch things in real time, catch details I miss, and keep an eye on chat when it gets chaotic. Having someone I trust on the outside helping me interpret what’s going on inside… that’s become invaluable.
I drag myself out of bed and get ready for work. Breakfast first. That, honestly, is the biggest upgrade in my life since the Nod money started coming in. Food. Actual food. My fridge used to be a graveyard of condiments and forgotten takeout sauces. Now it has drinks, fruit, microwavable meals, and things that require more than a single button press to prepare. It’s wild.
I’ve even caught myself scrolling apartment listings late at night. Places closer to Victor or Scott. Places with more space, newer appliances, balconies, soundproofing—luxuries I never allowed myself to imagine before. But moving would double my commute, and my job already eats more hours of my life than I’d like.
And I still can’t decide whether to quit.
Nod could sustain me. If I focused on it—if I treated it like my career instead of the thing I squeeze into the hours I’m asleep—it could probably carry me far. But I don’t know how stable it is. I didn’t get the chance to be paid when I was lower ranked. I have no frame of reference for what the income looks like if my visibility drops again.
If I woke up one morning to find my weekly deposit had plummeted to a hundred bucks because I slipped a few ranks? I’d be screwed. No safety net. No fallback. And the idea of relying entirely on something that volatile terrifies me more than fighting dragons ever did.
After eating, I lock up the apartment and head for the bus stop. The morning air is cool, a thin drizzle pattering against my hood. The world feels distant, unfocused. Almost like this is the dream, and Nod is reality. Every time I blink, I half-expect to open my eyes back in the Citadel.
The bus is already waiting. I jog up, tap my card, and slip into a seat near the back. The driver pulls away, wipers dragging streaks across the window. Buildings smear into motion. Cars flash by in muted reflections.
Everything feels… disconnected.
My mind keeps drifting back to Felkas curled against Iskri, to the archive pulsing with alien light, to the summit summons locked in my message dispenser.
By the time we arrive at the office, I barely remember the ride at all.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
I badge in and step into the familiar emptiness. No chatter. No clacking keyboards. No one asking me to fix something before I’ve even sat down. The busses get me here a solid ninety minutes before the rest of the team, and after some negotiation—and thinly veiled threats of finding another job if my schedule wasn’t adjusted—my boss agreed to let me clock in early and leave early.
This quiet hour and a half?
It’s the best part of my workday.
I walk the circuit through the building, checking the network closet, giving the servers a once-over, scanning for alerts on the dashboards. Everything is behaving, which means today might actually be a “make sure nothing breaks” day, the holy grail of IT work. No printers screaming for toner. No executives who “forgot” their passwords again. No coworkers insisting their broken PDF reader is a company-wide outage.
I know everyone has their strengths. I know computers intimidate people. But if your entire job depends on using one, maybe—just maybe—pay attention when your IT guy tells you how to avoid breaking it. Or at least remember the steps he walked you through ten times already.
I reach my “office” and drop my bag. Laptop out. Power cord in. Chair adjusted with the exact amount of resignation required to sit at it for eight hours.
I don’t even pretend I’m going to start a project today. I don’t have any open tickets, and the big migration we did last month wiped out half my workload. I pull up a browser instead and open a dozen tabs. Articles, forums, archive threads—anything even remotely connected to the Cleric King. I need intel before the summit. I need to know who Alaric allies with, who he crushes, how he wages war, and whether he tends to smile before the knife goes in.
I glance at the time.
Another thirty minutes before I can call Victor without being a pest this early in the morning.
I spin gently in my office chair, staring at the ceiling tiles, mind drifting back to Felkas’s torn hands and the strange message clenched in his fist.
Get to Kyris. Keep you safe. Do not return, too late.
Something happened in the swamp kingdom. Something bad.
And in a week I’ll be shaking hands with the man who may have caused it.
I sigh, rub my eyes, and force myself to focus on the screen again.
I’ve got the monitoring dashboards open in one monitor—green, green, all green—and in the other window I’ve got the browser ready. Nobody’s in yet. Office hum is just HVAC and the occasional elevator ding. Perfect.
I type “Cleric King Alaric analysis” into the search bar and hit enter.
Reddit delivers immediately.
Front page of the Nod sub is half memes of the Ashwing fight and half screenshots of Alaric sitting on the Clockfather’s throne. I scroll past the jokes and dig into the long posts—the ones with paragraphs instead of reaction gifs.
One thread has a blown-up frame of Alaric in full regalia, hand resting on the Clockfather’s armrest like it was built for him.
[meta] Breaking down Alaric’s kit from the Clockwork War VODs
– Radiant AoE that ignores armor (watch timestamp 18:42, entire front line just melts)
– Faith-based hard CC, looks like “penance” beams, can freeze an elite for a full ten count
– Passive “inspire” aura that buffs allies’ regen + resist when he’s in line of sight
– He never once gets focused. Enemy AI literally avoids him like he’s tagged as “untargetable boss object.”
They argue in the comments—some say he’s busted, some say the Clockfather over-extended, some say AI pathing is bugged—but the consensus is clear:
Alaric doesn’t fight fair.
He doesn’t have to.
And now he’s inviting me to a summit.
There’s a speculative post pinned near the top:
Is Alaric actually at war with anyone right now?
– No active sieges on the streams
– No major fortifications under attack
– His faith income is still insane though
I lean back, rubbing my eyes.
Of course the world only has four weeks of footage to go on. And in that tiny window, Alaric has still managed to become the standard everyone measures against. The guy who killed one of the hundred and then stole his throne like a trophy. The first king to kill another.
My monitor flickers a notification in the corner.
Victor: You around to talk?
Thank god.
I fire back a reply.
me: Yeah, I’m at work but it’s quiet. Call?
The reply is instant.
Victor: Calling in 2
I plug my headset into my phone, check the hallway—still empty—and accept the incoming call as soon as it buzzes.
“Yo,” Victor says, voice low and a little rough from nights. “You alive?”
“Physically,” I say. “Mentally, I guess Im good.”
He snorts. “Alright. Let’s go in order. Summit first. Then your shiny vault toy. Then the wolf kid. Start from the top.”
I exhale slowly. “Okay. So. When I got back to the Citadel last night, there was a message orb in the Cathedral. Not from Scott. From Alaric.”
He doesn’t say anything, which is somehow worse than him cursing.
“Green glow,” I continue. “Faith expensive, Im assuming since he hasnt met me in Nod it cost a lot.. Kings only. I pick it up, and it’s his voice. Cold. Calm. He congratulates me on the Ashwing kill, says more kings should be focusing on ‘abominations.’ Then he drops it.”
“The Summit,” Victor says.
“Yeah. One week from today. In his capital. ‘Peaceful gathering of kings.’ No weapons, no armor, he promises protection for any who arrive in goodwill. He says he’s sending an envoy to Sunhome to pick up me and Thalos, both. Apparently Scott got the same message.”
Victor lets out a low whistle. “Jesus. He’s not wasting time.”
“He’s forcing mine,” I say. “If I refuse, I paint a target on the Dominion. If I go, I walk into his territory naked while he plays host. Feels less like an invitation and more like… an inspection.”
“Yeah,” Victor says. “That tracks with what I’ve seen. The community’s already losing it over the idea of a king summit, by the way. People are calling it the First Council of Solomir like it’s a title card.”
“Of course they are.”
“Look,” Victor continues, voice more serious now, “from Earthside, Alaric’s image is curated as hell. He’s always framed center, perfect lighting, controlled angles. We see him fight maybe five percent of the time, and what we see is terrifying. The rest is processions, miracles, executions we’re supposed to read as justice. You? You’re messy. You show your building, your screwups, your workers. People feel like they know you. Alaric feels… elevated. Untouchable.”
“And now the untouchable guy wants a meeting,” I say. “You think this is about the Ashwing?”
“Partly,” Victor says. “Dragons raid-level anything gets attention. But I think it’s bigger. You and Thalos are the first two new kings to publicly cooperate, build a road, share kills, share tech. If I’m Alaric and I’ve just finished absorbing a clockwork empire, I do not want some bug king and a sun lord quietly forming NATO in my backyard.”
He’s right. Hearing it said aloud doesn’t make it feel any better.
“So what’s the move?” I ask. “I can’t out-muscle him, I can’t out-church him on his home turf, and I sure as hell can’t afford to offend him.”
“Then don’t play it as a confrontation,” Victor says. “Treat it like a job interview. You’re not trying to ‘win.’ You’re trying to convince him you’re more useful alive than crushed. Show that you’re stable, not a loose cannon. That your Dominion cleans up monsters, builds infrastructure, stabilizes a region instead of destabilizing it.”
“So… public works king.”
“Yeah. And more importantly, aligned king. At least superficially. Nod picked a hundred of you, but if one of them is already eating thrones, you want him to put you in the ‘potential ally’ bucket, not the ‘next course’ bucket.”
“Comforting,” I say dryly. “Alright. Next point. The vault.”
“Oh good,” Victor says, perking up. “The console. Hit me.”
I tell him about the device—how it sits in the heart of the obsidian archive like a biomechanical altar, how it responded to resonance when I fed it the schematic crystal the first time. How Helisti tested it last night with a simple knife and got a full holographic projection, materials breakdown, purpose annotation.
“So it’s a universal analyzer,” Victor says, already in engineer mode. I can practically hear him reaching for a notepad. “You feed it any object, it gives you composition, maybe enchantments, maybe history. And it’s still functional after however long this place has been buried.”
“Yeah. Helisti thinks she can replicate it. Maybe even improve it. She wants to stay at the vault and build a research outpost there.”
“Let her,” Victor says immediately. “That thing is insane value. You realize what that means for the Ashwing parts, right? No guesswork. No trial and error. You can scan a scale, a bone, a heart, and know exactly what it does, how it interacts with resonance, what kind of gear you can craft.”
“And you’re not the first one to jump to that conclusion.”
“Yeah, I DM’d you about it,” Victor says. “Scanners like that break progression curves. But also, Kyris… be careful with it.”
“How so?”
“From our side, VOD watchers already caught frames of that console lighting up,” he says. “They don’t know what it is yet, but the theory threads are starting. If people figure out you’ve got a device that can dissect magical items—and especially if it works on king-level artifacts—you become the guy everyone wants to use or destroy.”
I think of the invitation orb. Of Alaric’s voice. Of the line between ally and resource.
“So keep it quiet,” I say. “Use it, but don’t advertise it.”
“Exactly,” Victor says. “Scan what you need for the Ashwing project, let Helisti build her lab, but don’t turn it into a public spectacle. Not yet.”
“Got it,” I say. “Okay. Last thing. Felkas.”
The change in his tone is immediate. “Yeah. The kid.”
I lean back in my chair, staring up at the stained ceiling tiles.
“We found him in the vault,” I say. “At first we thought it was another monster. Turned out to be a boy. Wolf-blooded or something like it. Half-feral, beat to hell, missing a finger, clutching a scrap of paper that just said: ‘Get to Kyris. Keep you safe. Do not return, Too late.’”
Victor is silent for a long moment.
“I did some digging after you logged off,” he says quietly. “Remember that swamp kingdom you were watching north of Thalos? The one with the were-tribes?”
“Yeah.”
“One of their regular NPCs—a young wolf-kid—showed up in a bunch of their early VODs,” he says. “Same markings. Same build. Viewers loved him. Called him ‘little scout.’ Then about a week ago, the tone changed. Less cozy village shots, more patrols, more stress. Last stream before the brazier went idle… there was a night raid. You couldn’t see everything, angle was bad, but you could hear screaming. Torches. An armored column with banners no one recognized. Then the feed cut out mid-fight. Hasn’t come back.”
My stomach sinks.
“So Felkas wasn’t running from his king,” I say slowly. “He was running from whoever came after them.”
“Looks that way,” Victor says. “I scrubbed the frames; I couldn’t match the banners to any known king yet. Not Alaric. Not the coastal warlords. Something new or someone who hasn’t been broadcasting much.”
I picture Felkas curled against Iskri’s side, half buried in white fur.
“And somebody there knew my name,” I say. “Knew enough to write ‘Get to Kyris’ on a scrap of paper and send him south.”
“Yeah,” Victor says. “That’s the part that scares me.”
“Why?”
“Because it means at least that other king is watching you the way you’ve been watching them,” he says. “They knew enough about your behavior to believe you’d protect a refugee. Which, to be fair, you did. But it also means your reputation is starting to solidify inside Nod, not just on Reddit.”
I rub my face with both hands. “So what do I do with him? I can’t just send him back into a war zone. I can’t parade him on stream as some kind of mascot either.”
“Keep him safe first,” Victor says. “Let your medics fix what they can. Give him stability. Let him talk when he’s ready. From what I’ve seen, he’s a witness to whatever happened in that swamp realm. And witnesses are valuable. This isn’t just a game of kingdoms crushing each other. There are people in there, Marcus. Felkas is proof.”
I know that. I’ve always known that, in the abstract. Seeing him bleeding in the dark just made it impossible to ignore.
“Do I tell Alaric about him?” I ask, surprising myself with the question.
“Not yet,” Victor says sharply. “You don’t know who attacked that swamp. You don’t know what alliances exist that you can’t see because people aren’t broadcasting. The less you hand Alaric for free, the better. Go to the Summit, listen more than you speak, don’t mention the console, and don’t mention the boy.”
I nod, even though he can’t see me.
“Alright,” I say softly. “Summit as interview. Console as secret project. Felkas as guest.”
“And you,” Victor adds, “as someone who remembers this is still real for the people in Nod.”
I look at the time. My coworkers will start trickling in soon, breaking the quiet.
“Thanks,” I say. “For the late-night spectating. And the early-morning crisis counseling.”
“Anytime,” he says. “You’re my favorite show that also happens to be my friend’s life. Try not to die before the Summit, yeah?”
“No promises,” I say. “But I’ll do my best.”
We hang up. The office noise starts to rise, chairs rolling, keyboards clacking. I alt-tab back to my “real” work window, a spreadsheet of assets that suddenly feels much smaller than anything happening under black glass and Ashwing bone.
One week.
Then the lion’s den.