The heavy palace doors swung inward, revealing a courtyard that felt more like a graveyard for twisted metal than a place of royal sanctity. The air was thick with the suffocating smell of burning ozone, wet earth, and the sharp, nauseating stench of scorched industrial oil. Zeven stepped into the expanse, his boots crunching against the remnants of the mechanical hounds he had obliterated in the yard. Fragments of razor-edged gears and shattered hydraulic pistons were scattered across the uneven, ancient bricks. The moonlight filtered through the thick layer of clouds, casting a sickly, pale illumination over the wreckage, making the metallic limbs look like the twisted skeletons of dead creatures.
"You have sent your scrap metal to die, and yet you still hide behind these walls," Zeven
