The lamps in Hassim’s estate burned low, their orange glow fighting against the heavy dusk that clung to the Crimson Court’s streets. Beyond the windows, the lower city still pulsed with noise—merchants hawking wares by torchlight, wagons creaking over stone, the occasional shriek of some unseen predator echoing from an alley.

  Inside, the walls were layered in silks and scrollwork to muffle the chaos, but the mood at Hassim’s table was anything but calm.

  The merchant adjusted his pristine white turban and poured himself a cup of wine, though he didn’t drink it. His usually measured smile was thin, tight around the edges. “The news I have for you tonight,” he began, voice low, “is both fortune and curse.”

  Adonis leaned back, arms folded. Selene sat straight-backed at his side, her pale-grey eyes flicking with quiet suspicion. Kalen shifted restlessly, fingers drumming the table, the candlelight picking out the sharp line of his jaw.

  Hassim’s gaze moved between them before he spoke the words that weighted the air.

  “Your missing prince—the Azure one—is here. In the Crimson Court.”

  Selene’s breath caught. Kalen’s fingers stilled. Adonis only narrowed his eyes.

  Hassim leaned forward, lowering his voice until it was nearly a whisper. “He is not in the Queen’s keeping. Not in the hands of Lilith’s court. No—he is chained by Duke Varoth. And with him, his ally, the lich lord Arkanis. Together, they’ve hidden him deep in the inner territory, far from the desert.”

  The merchant finally sipped his wine, as if to wash the words from his tongue. “It is a death sentence for anyone who walks unprepared. Varoth is not just another noble, and Arkanis is not just another lich. They move together now—and that should terrify anyone with sense.”

  Kalen’s jaw tightened. “Then we go now—”

  “No.” Hassim’s voice cut sharp. “Listen to me. The Crimson Court is not like the desert. Here, every alley is a spyglass, every coin purse a knife. You step wrong, you’re not just killed—you’re made an example. If you walk openly into Varoth’s territory now, before you’ve found your footing, you won’t return. You’ll die screaming, and no one will even whisper your names.”

  The twins fell silent, their fury banked.

  Adonis tilted his head, studying Hassim with that faint, unreadable smirk. “And yet you brought us this truth.”

  Hassim spread his hands. “Because I believe you’re mad enough to try what no one else would. But madness without preparation is just suicide. Establish yourselves first. Hide under my seal. Play merchants. Be seen. Be tolerated. Then, and only then, strike where it matters.”

  The turbaned man leaned closer, his dark eyes locking with Adonis’s. “But if you go too soon? Varoth will devour you, and the prince will never see the sky again.”

  The wine cup trembled faintly in Hassim’s grip.

  ***

  Adonis stayed seated after Hassim excused himself, the twins trailing behind to their chambers. The estate quieted, leaving only the faint hiss of braziers and the muffled pulse of the city outside.

  He drew the subspace ring from his palm, rolling it between two fingers. Its surface shimmered faintly under the firelight, a thin halo of runes etched like veins across dark metal.

  > “He’s right,” Vantage murmured inside his mind, its voice clear, mechanical, a steady counterweight to the desert merchant’s warning. “Varoth is not an opponent to strike without leverage. And Arkanis, if he has lent his necromancy to this, multiplies the threat. Your survival odds diminish exponentially if you act now.”

  Adonis smirked faintly. “You think I don’t know that?”

  He leaned back in the chair, eyes half-lidded. “This isn’t about survival. It’s about leverage. Lei wants the prince found. The Empire wants their scandal buried. And Varoth wants to make his move on Lilith’s throne. Everyone wants something.”

  The ring pulsed faintly between his fingers. His psionic senses brushed against its inner space—contracts, deeds, ledgers—Marcellus’s sins sealed in miniature.

  > “You plan to replicate,” Vantage observed.

  “More than that.” Adonis’s golden-flecked eyes narrowed. “I’ll perfect it. Subspace rings like this one are fragile, clumsy. Useful for hiding coin and contracts, but not for war. With glyphs, with runes, with psionics—I can forge something greater. Weapons caches. Supply vaults. A soldier carrying a fortress on his finger.”

  The idea coiled in him like fire, the same way Omari’s memories of war machines had always pulsed at the back of his skull.

  But then his smirk faded, replaced by something colder.

  “If Varoth thinks he can twist an Azure Prince into his puppet, he’s a bigger fool than I thought. A dragon bound in undeath would not kneel—it would consume.”

  > “Correction,” Vantage replied. “If successful, it would kneel only once. And everything else would kneel after.”

  Adonis closed his fist around the ring. The flame in the brazier sputtered, bowing briefly to the psionic pressure in the room.

  “Then we’ll make sure it never happens.”

  The smirk returned, sharper now. “But if Lei wants his prince back, he’ll pay my price. I’ll carve it into the desert itself.”

  The city hummed outside, unaware that within Hassim’s estate, plans were being laid that could split the Crimson Court in two.

  ***

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  The Crimson Court at night was not silent. It breathed. Torches spat sparks into the thick gloom, and the air carried the scent of iron and wet ash. Every street whispered with footsteps, every balcony hid eyes that gleamed too sharp to belong to men.

  Adonis sat cross-legged in Hassim’s guest chamber, the stone floor cool beneath him. His armor lay at his side, but his body radiated its own tension — a coil wound too tightly to sleep.

  Glyphs etched in glowing sand spread around him in concentric circles. Each line pulsed faintly, alive with psionic resonance. This was not brute force. This was precision. This was Omari’s discipline — infiltration mapped onto the Sphinx’s inheritance.

  “Vantage,” Adonis murmured, his voice steady, low. “No more tests. Full deployment.”

  > Confirmed. Structural stability of constructs at maximum capacity. Recommendation: 132 active scouts for optimal coverage of estate grounds.

  Adonis inhaled, then exhaled slowly. His psionic field flared outward, filling every grain of sand around him. The floor shivered. Then the glyphs bloomed.

  One by one, scorpions took shape. Dozens at first, then hundreds, until the room swarmed with tiny forms — their carapaces shimmering gold in the glyphlight, tails curling, mandibles clicking faintly. Their numbers filled the chamber like a living tide, their segmented bodies glinting as they moved in unison.

  Adonis opened his hand, and the entire swarm froze.

  “Go,” he whispered.

  The sand scattered, seeping beneath the door, flowing through the cracks of the manor. A hundred tiny eyes opened in the dark, and Adonis saw through them all.

  ***

  A guard leaned lazily against the gatepost of Varoth’s estate, torchlight spilling across his armor. He didn’t notice the speck of sand scuttle across his boot and vanish into the stonework.

  Another scorpion climbed the walls, its claws finding purchase in cracks. It crawled past a slit window where two Magi dice players slouched at their table. Their laughter masked the faint shimmer of gold eyes above them.

  A dozen more scorpions slipped through the stables, past the reek of bloodied straw, up the beams, across the rafters. Horses shifted nervously, their ears twitching, but no sound betrayed the swarm.

  ***

  Adonis’s consciousness fractured across every angle, every scorpion’s perspective feeding him glimpses of the estate. Soldiers at the main gate. Servants sweeping blood from stone tiles. Courtyards strung with crimson banners. Magi patrolling, their bodies marked with vampire sigils that thrummed faintly with power.

  It was a labyrinth of corruption. And now it belonged to his eyes.

  ***

  A flicker caught his attention. One scorpion slipped into the inner compound, crawling through a drainage slit. It emerged into a chamber of cold flame.

  Adonis narrowed his focus, vision sharpening through the tiny creature’s eyes.

  Obsidian walls. Runes carved deep into the floor, glowing faintly with necrotic red. Chains etched with glyphs — not psionic, but vampiric, reinforced with lich-magic. And in the center of it all, sprawled on the cold stone, was the Azure Prince.

  Even bound, his presence was undeniable. Black hair matted with sweat. Pale-blue scales running faintly along his arms and neck, their glow dulled but not extinguished. Shackles bit into his wrists and ankles, each link pulsing with necrotic runes that leeched vitality from his body. His chest rose shallow, every breath a battle.

  Adonis’s jaw tightened.

  “Vantage,” he whispered.

  > Target confirmed. Subject is alive, though vitality has been severely diminished. Binding glyphs: hybrid construction, vampiric core, lich augmentation. These restraints are not meant to merely hold. They are draining essence. Attempted transformation in progress.

  Adonis’s fist clenched, sand grinding between his fingers. They mean to unmake him.

  Another scorpion crawled higher, perching on a chain. Its eyes flicked toward the shadows beyond the chamber. Figures stood watching. Not guards. Vampires in noble robes, their faces pale as polished marble, eyes glinting red. And beside them, skeletal attendants, unmoving but radiating malice.

  One vampire leaned closer to the circle, lips curved in satisfaction. Adonis recognized him from whispers already traded in Ashara. Duke Varoth.

  His voice carried through the scorpion’s senses, smooth as poisoned silk. “Not much longer. The Azure fire will gutter, and then he will kneel.”

  Adonis’s teeth bared.

  > Warning, Vantage interrupted. A portion of your constructs are being destroyed. Guard activity has intensified. Scouts compromised.

  Indeed, Adonis felt the sudden shock as three scorpions’ visions winked out. A boot crushed one in a corridor. A torch flame incinerated another. A Magi’s wind spell scattered sand into nothing.

  But dozens remained. Hundreds still crawled. He had enough.

  Adonis pulled the swarm back, letting the sand retreat into shadows, collapsing one after another until only a handful remained in place — hidden, watching.

  He opened his eyes. The chamber around him steadied again, his body trembling faintly with the strain of holding so many threads at once. A faint trickle of blood slipped from his nose.

  But he smiled.

  “They have him.” His voice was low, sharp, laced with both triumph and fury. “Varoth holds the prince. The lich props him up.”

  He rose, wiping the blood away with the back of his hand.

  “Three months,” he muttered, echoing Lei’s words. “No. Less. The sands won’t wait that long.”

  The glow of the glyphs faded, the room falling into shadow once more.

  Adonis stood in silence, his chest rising slowly, his mind already racing with the calculus of war.

  Soon, the Crimson Court would learn what it meant to have the desert watching.

  ***

  The blood wiped from his lip hadn’t even dried before another image bled through his mind. Not desert stone, but steel corridors. Not torches, but flickering neon strips along a ceiling lined with cameras. His other self’s memory—Omari—rose unbidden, sharp as if it had happened yesterday.

  ***

  Omari lay flat against a steel grate, the roar of jet turbines thrumming above him. The enemy base was alive with sound: guard boots on patrol, coded beeps echoing through door locks, radios hissing static with clipped orders.

  “Team A, breach in thirty. Omari, you’re solo until the cells.” The commander’s voice buzzed in his earpiece.

  “Copy,” Omari whispered.

  His hands moved without hesitation. He slid a shaped charge the size of a coin against the duct wall. No sound when it cut—just a puff of hot air. He slipped through, body coiled, breath steady.

  Every detail mattered. Each corner sweep. Each vent hum. His training had drilled it into him since he was a child: map the environment, predict, execute.

  Seven years old, they’d put sand tables in front of him. By ten, it was live fire. By fourteen, he was simulating black ops against hardened targets. War wasn’t a calling. It was an education.

  Now, the hostage was two corridors down. A high-value diplomat—one that couldn’t be allowed to break.

  Omari slid to the ground, crouching behind a patrol’s blind spot. He flicked a coin-sized drone, and it skittered across the floor, drawing a guard’s gaze. The moment the man leaned, Omari struck: a garrote wire, clean and silent, lowering him to the floor without a sound.

  “Cell secured,” came a whisper in his ear. Omari exhaled, stepping into the chamber.

  A woman sat chained, her eyes sunken, her lips cracked. She looked up at him and whispered: “They said no one would come.”

  Omari cut the chains. “Then they were wrong.”

  He carried her out through fire and alarms, every exit pre-planned, every pursuit countered. The base fell into chaos, but he never slowed.

  By the time the evac shuttle rose into the clouds, the mission was already a line in the war college textbooks that trained children like him. Strategy was not just taught. It was survival.

  ***

  Adonis snapped back to the present, chest rising with a slow inhale.

  The scorpion scouts whispered their silent watch from the shadows of Varoth’s estate. A hundred threads in his mind—just like the drones and charges had once been.

  His lips curved into something closer to a snarl. “The duke thinks he understands control,” he muttered. “He has no idea. I was raised in a world where seven-year-olds drilled war maps before they learned to write. Where fourteen-year-olds planned raids sharper than his entire court. He won’t know what hit him.”

  The glyphs at his feet guttered out. The scorpions were gone into the dark.

  But the memory of steel corridors and Omari’s calm voice lingered like a vow.

  The Duke would bleed, and the desert would not forgive.