Sovereign Vael brought his golden gauntlet down upon the arm of his obsidian throne. The dark stone sheared under his grip with a dry, screeching groan.
Molten sparks fell across the dais, sizzling against the cold floor.
“A mortal dirt-crawler,” Vael rumbled. His solar halo flared, casting long, wavering shadows across the grand pillars of the Hall of Edicts. “Breaching the heavenly threshold without an imperial seal.”
Sovereign Nyx did not strike her seat. She turned her silver scepter once between her long, pale fingers, the frost upon her sleeves rustling like dry parchment.
“Rage solves nothing, brother,” Nyx said. Her voice carried the faint rasp of winter wind skimming over packed ice. “The First Moon’s soul-furnace is dead. That siphon supplied thirty percent of our lunar grain.”
“Then we burn the chaff,” Vael snarled. He rose from his throne, towering nine feet into the vaulted air. “Call the lower lords. Tell them the First Moon has caught rot.”
Nyx raised her left hand. Her frost-lacquered fingernails traced three sharp runes in the empty air.
The runes flared with cold azure light before sinking into the imperial floor. A low hum rippled through the palace foundations, traveling through the astral tether that anchored the satellite network.
