The heart of the Core Citadel was not a throne room or a war chamber. It was a garden. A vast, circular chamber where the air itself hummed with latent power, so thick with energy it was difficult to breathe. In the center, floating above a dais of pure light, was the third Orb. The Orb of Unity. It was not silver like the first, nor chaotically colorful like the second. It was perfectly transparent, a sphere of crystalline nothingness that seemed to contain the entire room within it, reflecting and distorting everything in a silent, dizzying ballet.
But Roewi’s gaze was not on the Orb. It was fixed on the figure who stood before it, as if waiting.
It was himself.
Not the silver sovereign he had become, but the boy from the academy. The one with the too-big uniform, the nervous posture,
