The air inside the command deck grew thin, electrified by the proximity of two Dreadmoors. One a man of flesh and blood, the other a relic of the system he had served for decades.
Lucien’s fingers tightened around the heavy, white-gold quill, the weight of it feeling like the axis of the world shifting in his palm.
"Why?" Lucien’s voice was a jagged rasp, his eyes locking onto his father’s. A man who had been a ghost in his memories for twenty years. "You watched the Academy harvest children. You watched the Council bleed this world dry. You stood by while I was hunted like a diseased dog. Was this all for the sake of the gate?"
His father’s face didn't soften; it was a mask of cold, tactical grief. "The Council was a distraction, Lucien. A filter. They kept the population small, the m
