The pale-suited man stood alone on the island’s ridge long after Keal disappeared into the treeline. Fog clung to his shoulders like a velvet cloak, and though the sun had fully risen, it cast no warmth on him. He did not watch Keal go. He didn’t need to.
Instead, he turned his gaze toward the horizon, to where faint lights shimmered in the sky—satellites, orbital gliders, floating citadels of a future unrecognizable.
“A king forged in exile,” he whispered. “And a world ready for something it can’t name.”
He removed his gloves slowly, with reverence, revealing long fingers inked with lines that moved like threads of fate. In his palm, a sphere blinked—a recording crystal from the days before the Fold had sealed itself. He pressed it once, and it played a sound Keal had not heard in deca
