Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Tommy had said he wanted to run away from L’Manberg, he hadn’t meant this —whatever this was.

“My sanctity! The army of the undead keeps sweeping through every single defense!”

Tommy resisted the urge to groan as yet another person knelt before him, spewing panic like it was their job. Which, honestly, maybe it was. He didn’t know how this place worked. What he did know was that wings— don’t ask how he has them, he doesn’t fucking know either —apparently made him some kind of divine figure. A saint, a god, an omen of good things? He wasn’t sure, and no one would give him a straight answer. They just bowed a lot, kept shoving offerings into his hands, and called him things like “His Sanctity” or “Blessed One.”

Frankly, it was weird as hell.

“The army of the undead?” Tommy repeated, rubbing his temple. It wasn’t even surprising at this point—these people sucked at keeping him informed until things got dire. No wonder they were desperate. They probably thought he was an aloof, uncaring prick, and maybe he was a little, but only because he had no fucking clue what was happening half the time.

“Yes! Their Lord is a demon! He is of the darkest species alive!” someone else shouted, like that was supposed to mean something.

Tommy sighed, slumping in his seat at the head of the massive table. His wings twitched behind him, still foreign, still wrong . He wanted to be anywhere but here, but the ever-present guards flanking him made it clear that wasn’t an option. He wasn’t a prisoner, not exactly—but he sure as hell wasn’t free either.

“He’s a necromancer,” Tommy said flatly.

And the room lost its shit.

The noise hit like a physical wave, nobles and generals talking over each other in a mess of frantic whispers and raised voices. It was ridiculous. It was pathetic. It was— expected .

Tommy had figured it out early on: this world had lost touch with magic a long time ago. Not like the SMP, where enchanting and potions and respawns were second nature, where people threw fireballs like it was a fun party trick. No, these people barely understood the basics. They couldn’t even craft torches properly, using weird chemical reactions instead of, y’know, just making one. It was like watching a baby try to build a nether portal with dirt blocks.

It was stupid . It was annoying . It was terrifying .

Because if he was the closest thing they had to magic? Then they were fucked .

“Order! Order! Put yourselves together!” Tommy barked, slamming his hands onto the table.

Most of them fell silent immediately, their panic momentarily overridden by the force of his voice. A few stragglers still muttered, unwilling to let their voices go unheard, but Tommy was too tired to bother shutting them up properly. If they wanted to waste time arguing instead of fixing the mess they were in, that was their problem.

He took a breath, trying to shove down his frustration. He wasn’t built for this. None of this. Back in L’Manberg, his idea of strategy had mostly involved rallying people into battle and throwing himself headfirst into the fight. Not really his fault—diplomacy had never been an option when the world ran on power plays and betrayals—the SMP’s version of diplomacy had always come with a sword at its throat. And yet, despite everything, he wasn’t clueless. He knew war. He knew survival.

He exhaled sharply and looked around at the unfamiliar faces. Fine. If he was stuck playing their ‘saint,’ he might as well do it right.

“Alright. Let’s focus,” he said, forcing steel into his voice. “From which direction are they coming? How many trained fighters do we actually have left? What’s our fallback plan if they do break through? And—” He inhaled through gritted teeth. “—tell me we have an actual plan, something, to deal with this.”

Silence stretched for a second too long.

Then, finally, a man—late forties, maybe, his uniform neatly pressed but showing signs of wear—stood from his seat. His voice was steady, but there was a slight rasp to it, like he wasn’t used to speaking up in rooms like this.

“They’re advancing from the Northeastern border,” he reported. “At first, we believed it was an invasion from the northern kingdoms, but they’re facing the same attacks.” He hesitated, shifting uncomfortably under the weight of the room’s attention. “As for our forces… Well.”

Tommy narrowed his eyes. Here it comes.

“We’ve been at peace for decades,” the man admitted. “We… we don’t have the numbers we used to. Many of our knights have either retired or moved to civilian roles. But we are training new troops.” He cleared his throat, like saying it with more confidence would make it less of a problem. The older officials around the table exchanged tense glances, some nodding, others scowling.

Tommy simply hummed, fingers drumming against the polished wood.

Of course. That was the thing about long periods of peace—people forgot war existed. They got comfortable . They let their defenses rot because they didn’t think they’d need them. And now, when something did come knocking, they had no clue how to fight back.

Tommy leaned back in his chair, wings shifting restlessly behind him. His mind was already piecing things together, mapping out risks and contingencies.

No soldiers. No proper war prep. No real magic to fight back with.

Yeah.

They were so fucked.

Tommy rubbed his temple, exhaling slowly. First things first—figure out what we actually have.

Not enough trained soldiers, that much was clear. But he could work with that. Hell, he himself had been an underprepared, barely-equipped child soldier, and he’d managed to fight in more wars than he had birthdays. If he could figure it out back then, he could figure it out now. The murmurs from the old men around him made his blood simmer. He wanted to curse them for letting it get this bad—for sitting comfortably while their kingdom grew weaker, for pretending peace was permanent when the world never worked like that. But yelling wouldn’t fix anything.

He inhaled, forcing the tension out of his shoulders, and looked up. The man who had spoken earlier was seated beside another, slightly older, their stiff postures and sharp eyes marking them as generals—or whatever their equivalent was here. Fine. He’d use them.

“Tomorrow,” he said, voice firm, “we’re having another meeting. I want a full headcount—how many soldiers are actually trained and how many are still in training.” He paused, mind racing through the next priorities. “I also need a full inventory of weapons—what’s functional, what needs repairs, and how quickly we can make more.”

The men nodded, already murmuring between themselves. Good. Keep them busy.

“Bring maps,” Tommy continued. “I need to know the terrain we’re working with. Natural defenses, choke points, areas we can funnel them into—if we play this right, the land itself might be the best weapon we have.”

That got their attention. One of the generals—because yeah, Tommy was just gonna call them that—gave a sharp nod, his expression shifting into something more focused. “We’ll prepare the materials by morning, Your Sanctity.”

Tommy barely held back a grimace. Weird title. Hate it. Moving on.

“Bring whoever needs to be there. If there’s anything else you think I should know, make sure it’s on the table.” He gave them both a pointed look. “Alright. You two are dismissed.”

They stood, pressing their fists to their chests in that weird little gesture everyone did toward him, before turning and walking off. Tommy slumped back in his chair, wings shifting uncomfortably. One problem down, a thousand more to go.

His gaze swept over the rest of the people still seated. There were more things to consider—things the military guys wouldn’t be able to tell him.

“Next,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “How’s the economy? What’s the food supply looking like? And how the hell are we supposed to fund a damn war when it sounds like you lot haven’t been preparing for one at all?”

The murmurs started again, but this time, they actually sounded productive. People offered numbers, reports, cautious estimates. One by one, he dismissed them, keeping track of what needed following up. Eventually, only three people remained—not counting his ever-present guards.

Two were his assistants, or advisors, or whatever fancy word they used for the people stuck handling him. The third was a man who Tommy vaguely recognized as someone important in the whole keeping-people-alive department. Health official? Minister? Country doctor supreme? No idea.

The guy had a small smile on his face, and—oh, Prime —he looked proud .

Tommy’s stomach twisted. He hated that. The expectation, the admiration, like he was actually someone worth looking up to. “I need—”

The man cut him off before he could finish. “I know, My Sanctity.”

Tommy clenched his jaw but let him continue.

“I’ll gather a count of our medical supplies, the number of doctors and healers available, and how many we can spare to send to the front lines. I’ll also make a list of resources we need to restock.”

Tommy nodded. “Good. Do it fast.”

The guy nodded back, then— fucking hell —he bowed.

Tommy resisted the urge to drag his hands down his face. Yeah. This sucked.

While he was busy reflecting on just how much he hated it here, one of his aides—because that’s definitely what they were called, he was almost sure of it—approached. He turned, already preparing himself for more bad news.

It was the black-haired girl.

Great.

He preferred the brunette—she was more patient with him, like she actually understood that he didn’t want to be here. The black-haired one, on the other hand, was stiff and formal, and her voice always had this clipped, overly proper tone that grated on his nerves.

“My Sanctity, you still have a meeting with the emissary from the Arctica Empire.” Tommy barely held back a groan. More politics. More smiling and nodding and pretending he knew what the hell he was doing.

Wait.

“Arctica?” he echoed, frowning.

The brunette aide, standing nearby, stepped forward and gestured toward the large map hanging on the wall. “Here,” she said, pointing to the northernmost border. Sure enough, the territory beyond was labeled Arctica .

Tommy stared at it, a flicker of recognition sparking in his brain. He knew that name. Or—something like it. Someone once ruled a place with a very similar name.

His grip on the armrest tightened.

“Let them in,” he said, keeping his voice even.

The brunette aide nodded, pressing her fist to her chest in that weird little salute before heading toward the door. The black-haired girl lingered for a moment, then moved toward a side table, carefully setting down a steaming cup of tea in front of him. Tommy raised a brow. He hadn’t asked for it. She shifted under his gaze. “For you, My Sanctity.”

He hesitated before picking it up and taking a cautious sip. It was sweet, with a light floral taste. Huh . Not bad.

Maybe she wasn’t completely terrible.

He huffed a quiet laugh, glancing up at her. “Alright, that’s not bad. You pick this out?”

She looked startled for a second before nodding. “Yes, My Sanctity.”

A nervous smile twitched at her lips, and for the first time, she looked less like a rigid, overly formal attendant and more like an actual person.

Tommy studied her for a moment, then glanced toward the door. It would be a few minutes before the emissary arrived.

“Hey,” he said, setting the cup down. “Could you bring another one? And maybe something to go with it? Don’t want our Arctica friend to feel unwelcome.”

The girl straightened immediately. “Of course, My Sanctity.” She pressed her fist to her chest— God, he was never getting used to that —before slipping through a side door that led toward the kitchens.

That was probably the most he’d spoken to her since arriving.

Left alone with his guards, Tommy exhaled and glanced at them. They were as silent and stiff as ever, standing at attention like statues. He had tried, so many times, to get them to actually talk to him—to say something about themselves—but they always deflected. Either they didn’t trust him, or they weren’t allowed to.

How the hell was he supposed to get them to loosen up?

He scowled, crossing his arms. “Y’know, standing around like that all day has to be boring as hell.”

No response.

He groaned, tipping his head back against the chair. Yeah, alright, whatever.

The door to the kitchen opened again, and the black-haired aide returned, carrying a second cup of tea and a small tray of pastries. She set them down carefully before stepping back, folding her hands in front of her as she took her usual place near the wall.

Tommy gave her a nod. She didn’t say anything, but there was the faintest flicker of something—acknowledgment, maybe—in her expression.

Now all that was left was to wait.

Tommy had thought of the SMP a lot while he was here. Too much , actually. There were nights where he lay awake staring at the ceiling, wondering if they noticed he was gone. If anyone was looking for him. If they even could . He had tried calling—of course he had. But without a communicator, there was no way to reach them. No logs, no messages, no way to prove that he was even still alive.

Just silence.

He barely noticed one of his guards clearing his throat until the man spoke. “I would be cautious with anyone from Arctica,” the knight said, voice low but steady. “We were once part of their empire until we fought for our independence. They have tried to reclaim us many times throughout our history.”

Tommy turned to look at him, startled—not just by the information, but by the fact that the knight had actually spoken to him. Not a conversation he wanted to have but something was something.

The man was tall, broad-shouldered, and built like someone who had spent his whole life in armor. His face was stern, unreadable, but there was something in his tone that gave Tommy pause.

“How long ago?” Tommy asked, keeping his voice even. “Since the last time they tried?”

“Two generations, My Sanctity.”

Right. A long time for a person, but nothing for a country. That meant now would be the perfect time for Arctica to try again—when the memory of war had faded, and no one expected it. “I’ll keep that in mind,” Tommy said, nodding. “Thanks.”

He half-expected the knight to ignore him after that, but the man actually inclined his head slightly, like he approved of Tommy taking his words seriously.

Huh. Progress.

Before he could think on it further, his thoughts wandered back to the SMP. His hair had gotten longer—long enough that the white streak kept falling into his face. He brushed it back absentmindedly, his mind drifting to Tubbo, to Ranboo, to Shroud. He missed them. Badly . A soft knock at the door pulled him from his thoughts.

“The emissary from Arctica, My Sanctity,” the brunette aide announced as she stepped inside.

Tommy turned just as the doors opened fully—

And he almost choked.

Niki .

Niki Nihachu stood in the doorway, dressed in flowing white and deep blue, her pink hair neatly braided back. She held herself with a quiet dignity, graceful yet commanding, like she had always belonged in places like this. She stepped forward, folding her hands in front of her, and bowed her head slightly. “May the sun always shine on the kingdom’s most blessed one,” she said, her voice clear and measured, the formal greeting rolling effortlessly off her tongue.

Tommy’s brain stopped working.

What the fuck .

What the actual fuck.

Something on his face must have given him away, because Niki’s gaze flickered over him, her expression tightening—just a bit. Her brows furrowed slightly, as if something about him seemed off. But there was no recognition.

She doesn’t know me.

Tommy forced his thoughts into order, shoving down the rising panic. His mind shifted gears, slipping into the easy charm he had learned to wield like armor.

He smiled—gentle, warm, practiced.

“And may Solmere stand strong under the sun’s watchful gaze,” he replied smoothly. His voice didn’t shake. His hands didn’t tremble. He had no idea what the hell was going on. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to let them see that.

“I must apologize for the abrupt nature of my visit, Your Sanctity.”

Tommy resisted the urge to grimace. There was something about the way she said Sanctity —like the word itself was tainted, as if speaking it too openly would invite misfortune. It wasn’t the reverence he had grown accustomed to from the courtiers and officials who flung my Sanctity at him like a shield. No, she had said your Sanctity , deliberately distancing herself from the title.

Interesting.

“It is quite alright, Lady—” He hesitated, just enough to feign unfamiliarity. He knew her name, of course, but she had no reason to believe he did. Best to let her offer it first.

“Oh, where are my manners?” She smiled, polite but impersonal. “Niki Nihachu.”

Tommy studied her. The smile wasn’t real. It was the same sort of measured, performative kindness he had seen in courtiers masking contempt beneath diplomacy. He had seen this look before— his Niki had worn it too, back when she and Jack had stopped speaking to him altogether.

“Lady Nihachu,” he acknowledged with a nod. “To what do I owe the honor of your visit?” He gestured for her to sit. She took the chair across from him, the one no one had used in all the time he had been here. Her gaze flickered briefly to the tea and pastries on the table. Tommy caught the subtle shift in her expression— not approval . Something about the offering had been a mistake. He filed that detail away.

Then she spoke. “Emperor Philza”—Tommy barely kept his reaction in check, his brain screeching to a halt—“has heard of the worsening situation along your northeastern border. He extends an offer of assistance.”

It took everything in him to keep his posture relaxed, to not tense at the name. Philza? Emperor Philza? What the actual fuck—

Instead of reacting, he hummed lightly—a habit that had been creeping into his speech lately, one he really needed to stop. Still, it bought him a second to think. Philza of Arctica. Not just a citizen, not a general—an Emperor. And he was offering help.

Suspicious.

“How very generous of His Majesty,” Tommy said smoothly. “Arctica has long been… attentive to our borders.”

Niki’s expression didn’t shift, but something in her gaze sharpened, like she had caught the undercurrent in his words. “Our own forces have suffered at the hands of this undead horde as well,” she continued. “The Emperor offers trained troops, supplies, and any additional aid necessary to contain the threat.” She lifted her cup, taking a careful sip of the tea, as if gauging it before fully committing.

Tommy forced himself to nod slowly, as if giving the offer the serious consideration it deserved.

“That is indeed a most generous proposal,” he said carefully. “One I must discuss with my council before any decisions are made.”

Niki inclined her head in understanding, though there was no surprise in her expression. Of course, she had expected that response.

Tommy took a sip of his own tea, thinking. He was not about to let Arctica walk in under the guise of aid without first understanding their true motives. They had history here— bloody history. And while an alliance might be necessary, he wouldn’t be led blindly into it.

Then, an idea struck him.

“I have a council meeting,” he said, setting his cup down with deliberate ease. “If you are willing to extend your stay, you are welcome to attend. That way, you may obtain whatever statistics and logistical details you require to determine the extent of your Emperor’s aid.” His smile was light, pleasant. The kind a foolish young ruler would wear while being maneuvered by those older and wiser. Let them believe he was still playing the part.

The first thing Niki noticed about him was his age. Young. Younger than she had expected. The second was his attire—pristine white and gold, the kind of clothing meant to project divinity rather than power.

And then he spoke.

Foolish. Naïve. Those were her immediate impressions. His words were measured, but not with the practiced cadence of a ruler well-versed in politics. No, his speech carried hesitation—subtle, but there. He was still learning, still adjusting to the weight of a title that did not quite fit.

Phil had sent her to Solmere with one objective—gather information. An assignment that had only become more pressing when they discovered, mere hours before her departure, that Solmere had shifted into a theocracy. A theocracy. Techno had laughed so hard at the news that they'd been forced to delay their strategy meeting just to let him catch his breath.

Now, here she was, sitting across from the so-called Sanctity of Solmere, measuring him as he measured her. The guards at his side were unreadable, statues in steel. They didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink when she sat down. That in itself was notable. The aides, however, were watchful. Attentive to her every movement.

She glanced down at the tea and pastries. The offering was meant to be hospitable, a symbol of diplomacy, but it set her on edge nonetheless. She did not trust food given freely by an enemy. Yet when she lifted her gaze again, she noticed that he was drinking from the same cup, and that gave her pause.

Floral and sweet.

She had never imagined herself sitting across from a Solmere ruler, exchanging pleasantries over tea. The thought was almost laughable. Still, it was good.

The invitation to stay was unexpected. Either a calculated move or sheer stupidity. She couldn’t yet tell which. But it was an opportunity, and she was not about to waste it.

She accepted.

The boy— the ruler —offered her a polite smile before gesturing to one of his aides. "See that Lady Nihachu is given suitable accommodations. Provide her with whatever she may require during her stay."

The brunette aide, the same one who had led her here, inclined her head. "Of course, My Sanctity." Then, to Niki, “Is there anything else I may assist you with, my lady?”

Niki shook her head. “No, that will be all.”

"Very well."

As she rose, she caught something in the Sanctity’s expression—a flicker of irritation, quickly masked by careful neutrality. Confusion.

Interesting.

The aide led her to a guest chamber. As they walked, Niki caught the unmistakable traces of an Arctican accent in the woman’s voice. So, not all of Solmere’s people are as devout as they pretend to be.

"Your meals will be brought to your chambers," the aide informed her. "Is there anything you cannot eat, my lady?"

Niki shook her head. "No restrictions."

The aide nodded, offered a small bow, and then left. 

The same aide arrived to escort her back. This time, the chamber was filled with people—mostly older men, their status evident in the rich embroidery of their robes and the weight of their presence. The true power of Solmere, it seemed, did not rest entirely on the boy king’s shoulders. She was directed to a seat near the head of the table. Interesting. Either an intentional sign of respect or an underestimation of her role here.

The Sanctity was late.

Niki used the extra time to observe, cataloging faces and whispered conversations. Who spoke the most? Who commanded the most attention? Who carried themselves with the arrogance of someone whose word had never been questioned?

Then, the doors opened.

The room rose to its feet in unison as the boy entered, the same guards flanking him as before. Niki did not stand. A few sideways glances were thrown in her direction, but she ignored them.

"May the sun always shine on the kingdom’s most blessed one," the council intoned.

The Sanctity lifted a hand, signaling for them to lower their voices. He looked tired. No, exhausted.

“Sorry for my—ah, right.” He faltered, catching himself mid-sentence, then cleared his throat. He straightened his shoulders as if recalling the weight of the role he was meant to play. "And may Solmere stand strong under the sun’s watchful gaze," he corrected himself, his voice steadier this time.

A sigh, then he stepped toward his seat.

"Alright. Apologies for my tardiness."

Niki noted the change in his attire—white and red with gold trim. The shift was subtle but deliberate. Red was a color of power, of authority. Someone had advised him to wear it. Everyone in the room seemed to respect him—to a degree. There was obedience, certainly, but it lacked the ease of true loyalty. It was the kind of respect given to a ruler not by choice, but by necessity. Still, it was something.

Niki didn’t miss the way the boy-king's gaze flickered toward her, taking note of the glances sent in her direction. Sharp. Observant. He notices more than he lets on.

He smiled then, an easy, practiced expression that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Clearing his throat, he addressed the council. “This is Lady Nihachu, an emissary from the Arctica Empire. She brings an offer of assistance.”

The reaction was immediate. Whispers broke out across the table—murmurs of discontent, suspicion, disbelief. Not total chaos, but enough to make their opinions known. Niki watched carefully. They don’t like it. That was expected. Solmere had declared its independence from Arctica generations ago. No kingdom severed ties so cleanly that history could be forgotten.

The boy-king’s eye twitched—small, almost imperceptible—but he did not lose his smile. Instead, he took something from one of his aides. A hammer. For a brief moment, Niki tensed. Then, he struck the table with it, sharp and decisive. The sound cut through the noise like a blade, and silence fell instantly. "I expect you all to be welcoming—" he paused, sweeping his gaze across the room, meeting every questioning stare with one of his own—"to her. She is our guest here."

There were unspoken questions in the looks they gave her. Why is she here? Why now? Why would Arctica care about Solmere’s troubles?

Good. Let them wonder.

The Sanctity then gestured toward his other aide, who placed a small golden figure in his palm. He held it up, letting the light catch on the polished metal. "If you have this," he said, "you will speak. Everyone else will remain silent."

The tension in the room shifted—confusion, skepticism.

Niki nearly smiled. So this is new.

He sighed, settling into his seat before addressing a particular group of men.

"Thoughts?" He paused, then clarified, "On Arctica’s offer."

The aides moved, placing the golden figure in the hands of an older man seated near the center. A calculated choice. This one had authority—his opinion would set the tone.

The man adjusted his robes, regarding Niki with a neutral expression before speaking. "The offer is... generous," he began, carefully measured. "But history has taught us that Arctican generosity often comes with conditions. What assurance do we have that this aid is not a step toward reasserting control over our kingdom?" Murmurs of agreement followed.

The golden figure passed from one hand to another as more voices joined the discussion. Some echoed suspicions of hidden motives. Others argued that Solmere could not afford to reject assistance in the face of the undead horde. A few, cautious but pragmatic, suggested considering the terms before making a decision.

Niki sat still, listening. They’re predictable. A kingdom that had fought for independence would always be wary of the past repeating itself.

Eventually, the golden figure returned to the boy-king’s hands. He turned it over in his palm, thoughtful. "Lady Nihachu," he said at last, voice composed but pointed. "You have heard the concerns of my council. What assurances can you provide?"

Niki inclined her head slightly, a polite but calculated motion.

"The Arctica Empire has no interest in ruling Solmere," she said smoothly. "Only in ensuring that it still stands when the dust settles. The undead do not recognize borders, nor do they care for old conflicts. They threaten all of us equally. It would be foolish not to act before their reach extends further." A murmur rippled through the room at that.

She met the Sanctity’s gaze then, watching for a reaction. There was something behind his eyes, something careful. Calculating.

He is not as naive as they believe him to be.

Interesting.

The boy smiled. It was a slow, deliberate thing—carefully measured but not entirely false. Niki felt a brief flicker of relief. Then, he turned back to the council, his gaze sweeping across the room before he spoke. "I believe," he began, pausing just long enough to draw attention, "that we cannot afford to reject a hand that offers help." His smile widened, easy and self-assured. "That would be foolish, wouldn't it?"

It was settled.

The council did not erupt into argument, nor did they openly protest. But their distrust remained evident in the lingering glances sent her way—some calculating, some wary, and others openly displeased. Still, they moved on.

The boy-king shifted his attention toward a small cluster of men seated at the farthest corner of the room. Unlike the others, he did not pass them the golden figure. Instead, he simply looked at them. Waiting. The group exchanged glances. A silent exchange of uncertainty. Then, at last, the eldest among them stood. Niki studied them closely. These were not military leaders, nor did they seem to be political figures. Economists, perhaps. Quartermasters. The ones who knew the kingdom’s strength—not in soldiers or steel, but in grain, coin, and medicine.

And what they had to say was worse than she expected.

"Solmere is not prepared for prolonged conflict," the old man admitted, voice steady despite the weight of his words. "Our stores of grain and dried goods are below expected levels for this season. The harvest was poor, and while our trade routes remain open, we have not accumulated reserves sufficient for a war effort."

Another council member took up the report, a man younger but no less severe. "Medical supplies are limited as well. We have doctors, more than many would expect, but they lack resources. Herbs and bandages are still in good stock, but metals for surgical tools and advanced treatments are running low. We have no means of producing them ourselves in large enough quantity."

A third spoke next, a wiry man with a sharp, hawk-like gaze. "As for soldiers—our standing army is small. Most of those currently being trained are new recruits, barely blooded in real battle. The experienced veterans who remain are few. We have enough to defend the capital and the immediate territories surrounding it, but not to wage war or hold off a prolonged siege."

The room was silent when the report ended.

Niki absorbed it all, keeping her expression neutral. This was damning information. Solmere was not just struggling—it was vulnerable. Their economy was steady, but only as long as they remained at peace. The moment war came, they would crumble under the strain.

She turned her gaze to the boy-king. His expression was unreadable.

He didn't frown, nor did he show any obvious reaction to the bleak report. Instead, he merely hummed—a quiet, thoughtful sound—before shifting his attention toward another group of men. "Maps," he said.

It was not a request.

The sudden shift in topic did not go unnoticed. Some of the council exchanged uncertain glances, as if debating whether or not to press him further on the dire state of the kingdom’s resources. But no one spoke against him. An older man stood, nodding once before a younger aide hurried forward, carrying several large maps. They were unrolled onto the table, overlapping as they displayed different details—topography, trade routes, settlements, and military outposts.

The boy-king gestured for the man to move closer so he could get a better look.

Niki watched him carefully.

He was concentrated, eyes scanning the details with sharp focus. He followed the explanations given by the military strategist without interruption, nodding slightly at key points, occasionally narrowing his eyes when specific regions were mentioned. He was not merely pretending to listen. He understands this.

That was important.

Many rulers relied on their generals to interpret maps and battle plans. But he was engaged. He was thinking through the information himself.

Her gaze flickered to his wings.

They shifted slightly, tense in a way that seemed... unnatural. Almost as if he was uncomfortable with them.

Strange.

But there was no time to linger on the thought.

The strategist cleared his throat, pointing at the northeastern border. "This is where the undead horde was last reported. They've been advancing in irregular patterns, attacking smaller villages and leaving nothing behind. Our scouts report that their numbers swell after every assault, though we have yet to determine whether they are simply raising the dead from their victims or if there is something else at play."

A second strategist spoke, pointing at another location. "We've attempted controlled burnings of the infected areas, but it has only slowed their advance, not stopped it. There is also the issue of civilian displacement. Refugees are beginning to move inward, toward the capital and surrounding regions. If we cannot control the situation, we will soon have an overcrowding crisis, with more mouths to feed and fewer resources to support them."

More murmurs.

This was worse than she had anticipated.

The boy-king leaned back slightly, exhaling slowly through his nose. His fingers tapped once against the table, a quiet, steady rhythm. Then, he looked at Niki. "You've heard the reports," he said. "And your emperor offers assistance." A pause. "How quickly can Arctica act?"

Niki met his gaze, considering her answer carefully. "That depends," she said smoothly. "Are you willing to accept our aid without hesitation, or will we spend weeks debating the terms?"

A challenge.

The room tensed slightly.

The boy-king only smiled.

Phil had been alive for a very long time.

It wasn’t a secret, though no one truly mentioned it. People whispered, speculated, and occasionally traded theories about just how many lifetimes he had lived, but never to his face. It was the kind of thing that settled into the bones of history—acknowledged, but never questioned.

He hadn’t been Emperor when Solmere declared independence. He hadn’t been Emperor when Arctica had tried to reclaim them the first time. Or the second. But he was Emperor now. And that meant the situation unfolding before him was his problem to deal with.

Niki sat across from him, explaining everything she had learned in her time there. Her voice was steady, though occasionally her hands twitched, as if the weight of it all had not yet fully settled in her bones. "The new king is a religious figure," she started, glancing at the maps sprawled across the table. "They believe he’s a saint. Because of his wings."

Philza’s own wings twitched at the words, feathers ruffling instinctively. Wings.

It wasn’t unheard of, but it was rare.

It was said that only those blessed by the gods were born with them. Of course, that was just legend—Phil knew better than anyone that wings were no divine gift. They were a burden. A mark that set people apart in ways that often brought more suffering than honor.

Still, it was no surprise that Solmere had rallied behind him. "And what do you make of him?" Phil asked, keeping his expression neutral.

Niki frowned slightly, as if she had been expecting the question but hadn’t quite settled on an answer. "He's only a child," she said eventually. "Put in power out of necessity, not loyalty. He’s not their leader because they chose him. He’s their leader because they had no one else."

Phil absorbed the words in silence.

That was interesting. If Solmere’s king wasn’t a ruler by choice, that meant someone else was holding the reins behind the scenes. The council, likely. His thoughts were interrupted as Niki continued. “I was invited to sit in on a council meeting,” she said.

That made Techno lift his head slightly, giving her a sharp look. “Seriously?”

Niki nodded. "It surprised me too. He insisted on it."

Phil hummed thoughtfully. That was unusual.

Solmere had never been known for its openness, especially not toward foreign emissaries—let alone one from Arctica . That kind of move spoke to either a great deal of naivety or an unusual level of confidence. Techno simply huffed. “What a bunch of losers. I feel bad for the kid. Being trapped with those idiots.”

Niki’s lips twitched slightly, like she wanted to agree but was trying to keep her professionalism. “It wasn’t just incompetence,” she admitted. “It was... desperate. They know they’re in trouble. They just don’t know what to do about it.”

She explained what she had seen, what she had heard. The state of Solmere’s supplies. The lack of seasoned soldiers. The whispers of unease in the council chamber. The boy-king’s silence when certain topics arose. Phil’s jaw tightened slightly. This was worse than I thought.

They weren’t just unprepared—they were vulnerable. And that made them dangerous. Because a desperate kingdom was a kingdom that could be manipulated, whether by allies or enemies. “How did he respond to it?” Techno asked suddenly, breaking the momentary silence.

Niki shifted in her seat. “He didn’t say anything.”

Techno raised an eyebrow. “Nothing?”

She shook her head. “Not a word.”

Phil’s fingers tapped idly against the table. Silence, in a situation like that, wasn’t ignorance—it was a choice. “Why?” Techno pressed.

Niki hesitated for only a moment before answering. “Maybe he didn’t know what to say,” she admitted. “But... I think he did it on purpose. Maybe because I was there.”

Phil glanced at her sharply. She met his gaze, serious now. “He isn’t as naive as I thought he was when I met him.”

No, Phil realized. He wasn’t.

A child might hesitate, might falter when confronted with such grim realities. But a ruler—one who understood the game of politics—would wait. Observe. Listen. And that meant Solmere’s king, young as he was, wasn’t just a figurehead. He was learning.

That made him a wildcard.

Phil sat back, exhaling slowly as he stared at the maps. The council had provided them with reports, tactical layouts, estimated numbers—but maps only told part of the story. The real battlefield wasn’t just land and logistics. It was the people involved.

Numbers were predictable. People were not.

“Oh, we aren’t the only ones offering help,” Niki added in passing.

Phil wasn’t surprised. “To be expected,” he muttered. “This army has swept through many places. No doubt others are looking for alliances.”

That would complicate things. If Arctica wasn’t the only nation extending aid, then Solmere had options. That gave them leverage. How much of this does the boy understand?

They continued talking, making notes, listing what Arctica would send—troops, supplies, enough provisions to sustain a war effort, but not so much that it would cripple their own economy. It was only when the room fell into brief silence that Niki spoke again. There was a weight to her voice now, something hesitant. “He holds himself like a soldier.”

Phil stilled.

Techno frowned. “The kid?”

Niki nodded. “The way he watches people, the way he listens. He doesn’t interrupt, he doesn’t argue—but he remembers everything. When they brought out the maps, he didn’t just look at them—he studied them. He knew what he was looking at.” She hesitated. “It wasn’t the first time he’s seen a war table.”

Phil’s wings ruffled slightly. That...changed things.

A boy-king forced into power. A ruler who knew how to read battle plans. Who understood when to speak and when to stay silent.

Not just a ruler. Not just a religious figure. A tactician in the making.

That was a problem.

Or, perhaps, an opportunity.

Phil exhaled, leaning back in his chair. “Then we should treat him like one.”

Niki nodded. “I think that would be wise.”

Tommy was tired.

No— exhausted .

He hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep in weeks, and the never-ending cycle of meetings was starting to get to him. His head ached, his eyes burned, and his back was sore from sitting in the same goddamn chair for hours on end. Every time he thought he could take a break, there was another meeting. Another report. Another problem dumped onto his desk like it was his job to solve every single thing on his own.

Which, apparently, it was.

He had long since accepted that sleep was a privilege, not a right. Not when his kingdom was barely holding itself together. Not when every decision he made could be the difference between survival and collapse. So he had told Anh—his brunette aide—and Becca—his black-haired aide—to assign him a third aide. That was how Redhead had entered his life.

Tommy still didn’t know her name. She was older than the other two, and unlike them, she didn’t bother with unnecessary chatter or attempts at pleasantries. She just handed him more paperwork and made sure he ate something in the process.

He both respected and resented her for it.

The last thing he needed was another person bossing him around, but even he knew that skipping meals wasn’t doing him any favors. So he ate whatever food she shoved in front of him, even if it was just dry bread and soup. The alternative was dealing with her disappointed stare, and he already had enough people looking at him like that.

But food wasn’t his biggest problem right now.

He had some very important meetings coming up. Very important.

So important, in fact, that he had actually taken time out of his day to learn the names of the rulers of neighboring countries, as well as some history of the nations themselves. It had been a tedious process, but he figured it was better to know who he was talking to rather than just wing it and hope for the best.

The one bit of good news was that the army of the undead had been stopped —at least, momentarily.

They weren’t advancing toward the capital, which was a massive relief, but they were making their way south. Arkansonia had sent a large military force to intercept them, apparently very pissed off about the whole ‘undead invasion’ thing. Which, fair enough. Tommy would be pissed too if a horde of rotting corpses came marching through his land.

Anyway, back to the meetings .

This particular one was different. It was a gathering of the military leaders from all the nations that had offered assistance. Technically, Tommy didn’t have to attend. He could let his generals handle it. But he wanted to be there. It was his debut in a way—not in the flashy, aristocratic, ‘look at me, I’m important’ sense, but in the I’m here, I’m the king, and I know what the fuck I’m doing sense.

His advisors had strongly recommended against it. Apparently, past rulers never attended these sorts of meetings. 

Tommy had very professionally told them to fuck off.

Not in those exact words, but close enough.

Because here was the thing: he wasn’t like the past rulers .

The last thing he wanted was to be some absent figurehead while other people made decisions for him. He needed to be there. He needed to see for himself who was offering their help and why . He needed to know if they were allies or opportunists, if they were here to help Solmere or just looking for a way to gain leverage over a desperate kingdom.

Which brought him to his current problem.

“This is a disaster,” Tommy muttered, rubbing a hand down his face as his military chief continued his report.

The situation with the refugees was getting worse .

Mass panic had set in. People were afraid—understandably so. Solmere’s defenses were fragile at best, and with the undead army still looming on the horizon, the capital was swelling with desperate civilians seeking shelter. They didn’t trust the government to protect them, and honestly? Tommy couldn’t blame them. 

Back in L’manberg, he had never been the one to calm people down. He had been the one to rally them, to inspire them, to push them to fight for what they believed in. But this? This wasn’t a battlefield. These weren’t soldiers. These were civilians . Terrified, hungry, desperate civilians who didn’t need a war speech. They needed reassurance . They needed stability .

And Tommy had no fucking idea how to give that to them.

“We need to get this under control now ,” he said sharply, snapping his attention back to his military chief. “If we don’t, we’ll have riots on our hands.”

The man nodded grimly. “We’re working on it, Your Majesty, but with the current state of our supplies—”

“I don’t want excuses,” Tommy interrupted. “I want solutions .”

Silence fell over the room.

His military officers exchanged uneasy glances. Some of them were still adjusting to him , to the way he spoke, the way he refused to dance around issues with empty words. Tommy exhaled through his nose. “Start organizing food distribution centers in secure areas. We need to make sure no one starves to death before we even have a chance to fight.”

A younger officer hesitated before speaking up. “That would require reallocating resources from—”

“Do it,” Tommy said firmly. “Find a way. I don’t care if we have to beg, barter, or steal, but we cannot afford to let this situation spiral.”

Another officer cleared his throat. “And the housing situation?”

Tommy clenched his jaw. That was a bigger problem. The capital’s infrastructure wasn’t built to handle this many people. Tensions were rising, fights were breaking out over basic necessities, and winter was approaching fast.

“We’ll need to set up more camps outside the capital,” he admitted reluctantly. “Use old warehouses, abandoned buildings— anything that has a roof. We’ll reinforce them as best we can. Prioritize shelter for families and vulnerable groups first.”

His aides scribbled furiously, taking notes on everything.

Tommy drummed his fingers against the table, mind racing. This wasn’t enough. He needed more than just temporary solutions. He needed to find a way to make sure Solmere didn’t collapse from within before the real fight even began.

But first, he needed to survive this goddamn meeting.

They continued to talk about rising problems, listing them off like an ever-growing tally of failures. Tommy didn’t need a reminder.

He saw it.

He saw it in the weary faces of the council when they sat in meetings, their gazes darting to him as if expecting him to crumble under the weight of their problems. He saw it in the tension in his aides’ shoulders when they left paperwork on his desk, when they read out his schedule like they were bracing for him to break.

He saw it in himself, in the reflection that stared back at him whenever he passed a polished surface—his own eyes sunken with exhaustion, the edges of his face sharper than they had been months ago.

But it wasn’t enough to see the problem. He needed to act.

He trusted his men. He trusted them to do their jobs, to make the hard decisions, to keep the kingdom from collapsing under the weight of its own fear. But trust wasn’t enough either.

The people of Solmere didn’t know their generals. They didn’t know the names of the men who sat in war rooms, drafting strategies and counting supplies. They needed something more. They needed proof that their king wasn’t just a figure behind stone walls. During the war for L’manberg’s independence, the commander— Tommy wouldn’t say his name, he couldn’t —had gone out among the people. He had been seen tending to the wounded, handing out food with his own two hands. He had given speeches, ones that had soothed panic and turned civilians into believers.

Tommy had been different. He had rallied soldiers. He had stood at the frontlines, sword in hand, ready to fight.

The commander had inspired civilians.

Tommy hated him for what he had become. But back then—back in the early days—he had been everything Tommy wanted to be.

And maybe, for once, Tommy could take a page from their history and apply it here.

The night before, Tommy had a proper dinner. The morning after, a proper breakfast.

It was the most he had eaten in days, but it had to be done. He needed to look steady. Healthy . A sickly king wouldn’t reassure anyone . He cleared his schedule, ignored the protests of his council, and dressed down. He ordered his aides to do the same. The carriage that carried him to the refugee camps still screamed royalty , but he didn’t step out like a king.

He stepped out as somebody else .

Civilians stared. His own soldiers stared.

A man approached him—a face Tommy vaguely recognized from somewhere, maybe a passing meeting, maybe the castle gates. The man took a long look at him, then smiled. Without hesitation, he guided Tommy toward the heart of the relief effort.

Tommy sent his guards off to help, ignoring their protests. His aides, to his pride, took to the work like fish to water. Anh was efficient, directing the overwhelmed medics with a clarity that had doctors nodding along. Becca took over the food lines, quick to ration supplies while still offering warm words to the hungry. Even Redhead, always stern and unimpressed, rolled up her sleeves and began setting up new shelters.

And Tommy—

Tommy did everything he could.

He carried supplies, moved crates of food, stirred pots of soup. He rolled up his sleeves, dirtied his hands. He spoke to the people, sat with them, listened. He made conversation with the soldiers who knew they’d never see the inside of the castle. He hugged those who had lost homes, held the hands of those who had lost family.

A child, no older than six, clung to his arm, big teary eyes looking up at him like he was someone who could fix things. And Tommy, without hesitation, crouched to their height and said, “ You’re safe now. I swear it .”

People flocked to listen to him.

And when the time was right, when the crowd had swelled, Tommy stepped onto the remains of a broken cart and spoke.

Words that weren’t his. Words he had heard before, in a different life, in a different place, from a different man.

“I know you’re afraid.” His voice carried, steady despite the weight in his chest. “ You have every right to be. The world is cruel. It is unfair. You have lost people, homes, safety, and now you are being asked to endure even more.”

Silence.

Tommy’s gaze swept over the crowd, over the faces lined with fear, with uncertainty.

“ But look around you,” he urged. “ You are not alone. You are here. You are alive. And as long as you are alive, Solmere –L’Manberg– lives.”

A ripple of something passed through them.

Tommy clenched his fists, standing taller.

“I will not lie to you. The road ahead will be hard. We are fighting against something unnatural, something that should not exist. But we are still here. And we are not powerless.”

The weight of a voice that wasn’t his whispered in his mind—words of failure, of inadequacy. A voice that had once called him too young, too loud, too small.

He crushed it beneath his heel.

L’manberg —“ Solmere does not kneel. It does not bow. It does not break.” His voice sharpened, strong like iron. “ We do not surrender our land to the dead”— To the King of the SMP— “We do not let fear drive us into the dirt. We do not—”

His chest ached.

“We do not run.”

Silence.

Then—

A cheer.

Then another.

And another.

The camp roared with voices, with hope, with something Tommy hadn’t heard in far too long.

Something real .

His hands were shaking.

He gripped them into fists, grounding himself in the sound.

He didn’t care.

L’manberg—the commander—none of it existed in this world.

But Solmere did.

And Tommy would not let it fall.

The council chamber was too small, too crowded, and far too full of people who thought they knew better than him.

Tommy sat at the head of the table, back straight, hands folded neatly in front of him—if only to keep from balling them into fists. They were reprimanding him. Lecturing him like he was some wayward child for stepping outside the castle walls, for daring to speak to his own people. “We understand your intentions, Your Majesty,” one of the older council members began, his voice that carefully measured tone that meant he was about to say something insulting. “But you must understand how reckless this was.”

Tommy arched a brow. “Reckless?”

“Your safety is of the utmost importance,” another said, fingers steepled like he was praying Tommy would listen. “If something had happened to you—”

“If something had happened to me, it would’ve happened while I was handing out food and tending to the people who needed me,” Tommy interrupted, unimpressed. “Instead of sitting in this godsdamned room with you lot, pretending like I don’t know exactly what’s happening beyond these walls.” A murmur swept through the council. Some of them exchanged glances. Others frowned at him like he had just spat in their tea.

Tommy couldn’t bring himself to care.

He didn’t know when he had fallen for Solmere. Maybe it had been the first time he walked its streets, saw the crumbling remnants of its history in the worn cobblestones, the way the banners swayed in the wind. Maybe it was the pressure of fighting , the weight of expectation settling over his shoulders the same way it had in L’manberg. Maybe it was the constant rising problems, the endless lists of things to fix, to mend, to hold together . It didn’t matter.

What mattered was that Solmere was his now.

And he didn’t have time for this bullshit .

“If you’re done scolding me for doing my fucking job,” he said flatly, “I’ve got work to do.”

A sharp inhale. A muttered curse. The council stared at him, stunned—like they had forgotten who he was.

Tommy didn’t wait for them to recover.

He stood, pushing his chair back with an audible scrape, and strode out of the room without another word.

—

The headache hit the moment he stepped into the hallway. He pressed a hand against his temple, inhaled slowly through his nose, and exhaled just as slow. A five-hour carriage ride. He still had to get dressed. He still had to be briefed. He—“Go take a nap,” Anh ordered, appearing at his side before he even noticed her.

Tommy opened his mouth to protest. Becca, ever blunt, shoved a bundle of papers into her arms and said, “We’ve got it. Sleep.”

Redhead—the oldest, the most terrifying of the three—crossed her arms. “You’ll be woken up in time to get dressed.”

Tommy narrowed his eyes at them. “You do realize you’re supposed to take orders from me , right?”

“You do realize we’re going to ignore you until you go to sleep, right?” Anh shot back, already leading the way to his room. Becca gave him a look . Redhead simply nodded toward the hallway. Tommy sighed , long and put-upon. “You’re all incredibly annoying.”

“Nap,” Anh repeated.

—

He woke up groggy, but at least his headache had dulled. They were already waiting when he sat up, clothes in hand and that infuriatingly expectant look on their faces. Tommy let them fuss, only half-listening as Anh listed off the various noble colors of the bordering countries. “The country bordering the Northeastern border dresses in green,” she said as Redhead smoothed out his sleeves. “The Southeastern wears purple, the Northernmost wears blue, the Westernmost wears yellow—”

Becca offered him a sash. He immediately shoved it back at her. “You will be wearing red,” Anh finished. Tommy tugged at the cuffs of his coat. The fabric was a deep red, lined with white, accented with gold. His wings twitched behind him, still stiff from the last examination. “Gods, I hate how on theme it is,” he muttered.

Becca snorted. “You are the King.”

“Didn’t realize that meant dressing like a flag .”

Redhead reached forward and, despite his quick attempt to dodge, successfully adjusted his collar. “Stop that,” he grumbled.

She arched a brow. “Sit still.”

Tommy sulked .

The carriage rocked gently beneath him as he leaned against the window, exhaustion creeping back into his bones. It was colder where they were headed. He had been warned. Didn’t matter. “Wake me up before we arrive,” he mumbled.

And then, before any of them could argue, he promptly fell asleep.

Tommy didn’t dream. He remembered .

The laughter of sleepless nights beneath a sky riddled with stars. The way plans were whispered in the dead of night, half-mad with exhaustion, half-desperate with hope. An underground staircase leading to a ravine—a refuge, a home, carved out of desperation and defiance. The flickering torches and the narrow walls of Pogtopia, oppressive and comforting all at once. The scent of damp stone, of gunpowder lingering in the air. The Red Festival , fireworks bursting overhead in brilliant, bloody light. The pit .

"Tommy, the thing is, you're using words, but the thing about this world, Tommy, is that the only universal language is violence."

A voice that was cold and familiar, one that had burned itself into his very bones. A lesson learned too young, too violently, and never forgotten.

Tommy woke up with a gasp , his heart hammering against his ribs like it wanted out.

Samantha— Redhead , he reminded himself, though the name was beginning to stick—was already watching him. She said nothing at first, only handed him a cup of water. He took it with shaking hands, gulping it down like it might drown the memories clawing at his throat.

How could he have been so stupid ?

Niki served Emperor Philza in the Arctica Empire. And where Philza was, there was a good chance he was nearby. His throat tightened. His hands clenched around the empty cup. He and Techno hadn’t ended things on civilized terms.

Samantha’s voice cut through his spiraling thoughts, low and steady. “We’re almost there.”

She reached for a box, flipping the latch open with a practiced hand. Inside, resting on deep crimson velvet, was a crown .

Tommy stared.

The one he wore in court meetings was smaller—just a circlet of gold, set with a single ruby and carved in the shape of a rising sun. A symbol. Something easy, almost forgettable. This was different .

Gold filigree, twisted into delicate yet imposing arches. Deep red rubies set between white diamonds and sapphires. It gleamed in the dim carriage light, the velvet lining rich and dark. It was heavier . Sharper . More .

Tommy made a face before he could stop himself. Samantha sighed, unimpressed. “There were bigger options, but I could tell you’d have hated them.”

He huffed, lips pressing into a thin line. She wasn’t wrong. Still, he tilted his head forward, allowing her to place the crown on him. The weight settled against his temples, against his skull. Not unbearable, but present . Like a hand pressing between his shoulder blades. Like the memories curled deep in his chest. Like the war drums still echoing in his head.

A crown, Tommy had learned, was never just a crown.

Chapter Text

Phil and TapL both reached for the seat at the head of the table at the same time, an awkward moment of hesitation passing between them. Techno snorted, amused. If either of them had been more self-important, that small blunder might have meant something. Instead, it was just another reminder that despite their titles, neither of them were politicians first. They were warriors, tacticians—survivors . Niki, standing off to the side in full armor with her helmet obscuring her face, let out a muffled chuckle.

Techno heard the Solmere delegation before he saw them. The rhythmic footsteps of well-trained soldiers, the rustle of thick, ornate fabrics, and the unmistakable weight of discipline in every step. The hosts weren’t late; the rest of them were simply early.

The Solmere men rose as their king entered.

Red was an odd color for someone referred to as a saint, Techno mused. But Solmere’s colors—reds and oranges—were a deliberate choice, a pointed contrast to Arctica’s cool blues and silvers. It was a reminder, a statement: we are not the same. 

“May the sun always shine on the kingdom’s most blessed one,” the Solmere soldiers intoned in unison. Techno noted the faintest twitch of the boy’s wings, the subtle flicker in his expression. The smile stayed in place, but the reaction was there, just beneath the surface. “And may Solmere stand strong under the sun’s watchful gaze,” the boy-king replied, his voice steady.

He approached the head of the table, where TapL and Philza still stood somewhat awkwardly, as if unsure of whether they should move.

“May the moon and stars take care of you as well,” he added, directing the words at them specifically.

Techno glanced at Phil. He hoped the man wouldn’t go full mama-bird on the poor kid—not here, at least. But Phil wasn’t looking at the boy’s face. No, he was looking at his wings , frowning slightly.

Huh.

The moment stretched. Then Phil was the first to step aside, a silent acknowledgment that they were guests , not hosts. TapL followed, and the rest of them took their seats. The Solmere generals positioned themselves beside their ruler, a clear show of unity. The boy swept his gaze across the room, taking stock of the faces around him, calculating.

Then his eyes landed on Techno.

For a brief moment, Techno saw it— recognition . Not of who he was, necessarily, but of something . His blue eyes flickered, a storm of emotion flashing through them before moving on, lingering on Phil, and then stopping on Niki.

There was no way he could know who she was. No one did. And yet, his gaze held there a second too long. Interesting.

The meeting progressed with calculated efficiency. Phil and TapL refrained from speaking much, and Techno wasn’t surprised. They had already briefed their men before arriving. TapL’s general handled most of their side’s communication, while Techno, as Arctica’s military head, sat back and listened. But the boy-king? He stood .

He addressed his own men, not just the visiting generals. He didn’t wait to be spoken to; he engaged. He picked apart strategies, asked questions, and corrected misconceptions. He knew what he was talking about. Techno wasn’t expecting that. Most young rulers relied on their advisors, parroting what they had been told, unwilling or unable to challenge seasoned commanders. This one? He wasn’t just playing at being a king. He was one.

The discussion shifted to terrain advantages. Solmere’s lands were vast, but not all of it was easily defensible.

“If we push them toward the northeastern border, we risk bottlenecking ourselves,” one of the Solmere generals pointed out. “The valley’s too steep, and the elevation gain would slow our retreat if we needed one.”

“We don’t plan for retreat,” another countered.

“That’s a nice sentiment until you lose half your forces in a battle of attrition,” Techno interjected smoothly. The table quieted as eyes turned to him. He leaned forward, clasping his hands together. “The northeastern valley is a problem. But not if you control the high ground first.”

The boy-king nodded, seemingly unbothered by Techno taking the conversation. “Agreed. If we take the cliffs before the enemy arrives, we can control their movement. Force them where we want them, instead of scrambling to adapt.” His words were careful, deliberate. Not seeking approval, but confirming understanding. He had already thought about this.

One of the Solmere generals shifted. “You’re assuming we’ll be able to fortify the cliffs in time.”

“I know we will,” the boy-king said, firm. “We move supplies now , before we advance. We station men before the first engagement. The moment we strike, we make sure the high ground is ours .” Techno tilted his head, intrigued. The kid didn’t make eye contact with him. Not even once.

But he wasn’t avoiding the conversation. He was engaged. He was deliberate. Techno smirked slightly. Interesting indeed.

They had been welcomed to stay the night—some accepted, others declined. The boy saint had smiled at them all, offering the castle’s hospitality with an ease that felt both practiced and genuine. “Anything you need is available,” he had said before retiring for the night, his aides and guards following closely behind him. One of his generals had lingered at his side, whispering something in his ear as they walked away. Techno was too far to catch their words, but he noted the subtle shift in the boy’s posture—a tension that hadn’t been there before.

TapL, on the other hand, had never been one for ceremonies. He was a leader by election, not by birthright, and his democratic republic didn’t care much for rigid formalities. He had known Techno for years, and that familiarity carried into their interactions now. When they found themselves wandering into a training yard in an open-air section of the castle, TapL wasted no time picking up a pair of old swords. He ran a gloved hand along the hilt of one, weighing it in his palm before tossing the other to Techno.

“He’s not stupid,” TapL said, breaking the comfortable silence. He twirled the blade once, testing its balance. “Though his advisors definitely think he is.”

Techno caught the sword effortlessly, though he hesitated. He should refuse. He knew that. Philza would disapprove—he always did. But the weight of the steel was familiar, and the itch in his bones to move, to fight, was impossible to ignore. He gave TapL a slow grin. “Guess we’ll find out just how smart he is soon enough.”

The first clash of steel rang out, sharp and bright against the quiet night air. They had started slow, testing each other’s reflexes, but it didn’t take long for the old instincts to kick in. TapL was fast, but Techno had power on his side. He parried, sidestepped, struck back with a force that made TapL stumble. The fight picked up, a dance of footwork and precise strikes, neither holding back.

They hadn’t noticed they’d drawn a crowd until they were both breathless, sweat dampening their collars. A soft chuckle cut through the murmurs of the gathered soldiers. Techno looked up to see Philza watching, arms crossed, a smile on his face that carried just a hint of disapproval.

“That was rude,” Phil said, shaking his head. “This isn’t our place.”

Techno, still catching his breath, grinned. “You wanted to sit at the head of the table.”

Phil scoffed but huffed out a quiet laugh.

Around them, the restless soldiers were stirring, encouraged by the display. Some had already begun pairing off, sparring with each other, eager to shake off the stiffness of long hours seated at war tables. Techno sat back, watching as the makeshift tournament unfolded, his sharp eyes tracking footwork and strikes, assessing skill levels without really thinking about it.

Movement at the entrance of the training yard caught his attention. A group of soldiers, clad in the colors of Solmere, stepped inside. Among them was a familiar figure, dressed differently now, in lighter clothing suited for movement. The boy saint stood quietly, observing, making no move to interrupt the moment. One of his guards leaned in, whispering to him, but the king did not react beyond a small nod. He only moved when his gaze met Techno’s.

Blue eyes met red.

The boy inclined his head in silent acknowledgment.

Techno did the same.

He remained seated, arms crossed as he observed the training grounds. Most of the gathered warriors hadn’t yet realized the boy king was among them, and it seemed the young ruler preferred it that way. He had positioned himself slightly apart, close enough to observe but not enough to draw immediate attention. If Techno strained his ears, he could just make out the low murmur of his voice as he conversed with one of his guards, his tone measured and calm.

The boy was good at masking his presence, but Techno had long since learned how to pick out the weight of authority in a room. Even in silence, there was a pull around the kid, an invisible gravity that shaped the space around him. People deferred to him instinctively, eyes flickering his way before they even realized why. It was the mark of a leader, one he hadn’t expected to find in someone so young.

Then he saw it—the shift in the air. A cluster of Arctican soldiers, his own men, watching the boy with thinly veiled distaste. Techno clenched his jaw. He’d spent an hour back home drilling into them that for the sake of the alliance, they were to remain civil. That they didn’t have to like the Solmere forces, only tolerate them until the war was won. Clearly, that talk had gone straight through one ear and out the other.

One of them—urged on by his companions—rose to his feet. Techno could already tell where this was going, and he barely suppressed a groan.

Phil had caught on as well, shifting in his seat with a look of warning as the soldier strode forward, stepping into the center of the sparring area. Others began to turn their heads, realizing something was happening. And then, clear as day, the soldier spoke.

“I’d like to spar with you, Your Sanctity.”

A silence fell over the grounds. The weight of many gazes turned to the boy. Techno could practically feel the outrage brimming among the Solmere soldiers, tension sparking in the air like a blade being drawn from its sheath. Many of them shot to their feet, already preparing to intervene, some looking ready to throw hands in defense of their king.

But then the boy moved, and all at once, the crackling energy stilled.

The young king lifted a hand, an easy smile playing on his lips as he gestured for his men to stand down. His aide—a brunette woman standing just behind him—leaned forward, her voice barely above a whisper. Techno caught the subtle shake of her head, the murmur of caution.

But the boy merely smiled at her, and his response was quiet but clear enough for Techno to read the shape of the words on his lips:

“I’ve been itching for a fight.”

Techno couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at that. Huh. Interesting.

Phil, who had been shifting uncomfortably beside him, looked between the boy, the Arctican soldier, and Techno, as if expecting him to put a stop to this. Techno, however, merely leaned back slightly and gave Phil a subtle gesture to sit down.

They wanted to embarrass him. Techno thought it was a foolish move. They had already seen the boy’s sharp mind, his ability to analyze battle plans and discuss tactics with the ease of a seasoned commander. Yet, instead of taking that as a warning, some of his men still thought they could humiliate him in a fight.

The Solmere soldiers protested, shifting uneasily as their young king caught the sword thrown at him without hesitation. His aide, a brunette woman standing just behind him, whispered urgent words of caution, but he merely gave her an easy smile. Philza tensed beside him, his hands pressing against his knees as if considering intervening, but Techno simply shook his head. This was happening, whether they liked it or not. The fight began quickly. Too quickly.

The Arctican soldier lunged first, aiming for a decisive opening strike. It was an aggressive start, meant to overwhelm, but the boy-king sidestepped it with practiced ease. Not a wasted movement, not a hint of hesitation. His sword came up in a smooth arc, deflecting the next blow before it could land. Techno immediately noticed his stance—balanced, efficient, no excess flair. This wasn’t someone who learned to fight for show. He fought to win.

The Arctican soldier tried to brute-force his way through, hacking downwards with powerful swings. The boy-king met them not with equal force, but with precision. A parry here, a pivot there, redirecting his opponent’s strength rather than clashing against it. He was reading the soldier, adapting within moments. It was the kind of fighting style Techno recognized all too well.

Then, mid-exchange, the boy let his sword go. It was deliberate, a calculated risk. His hand shot forward, catching his opponent’s wrist just as the soldier moved to strike. A sharp twist, a pivot of his hips, and suddenly the Arctican was on his knees, his sword wrenched clean from his grasp. The boy didn’t even hesitate—he flipped the stolen weapon in his grip, pressing the cold edge against his opponent’s throat.

Silence.

The match had lasted a few minutes at most, but the impact was undeniable. The gathered soldiers from both sides stood frozen, their expressions ranging from awe to disbelief. The Solmere men erupted into cheers, their king victorious in a way they had never seen a ruler before. The Arctican forces were silent, absorbing the reality of what had just happened.

Techno, however, wasn’t looking at the expressions around him. His focus was solely on the boy-king, on the way he released his opponent, how he took a slow step back and dropped the sword onto the dirt beside him, its blade sinking slightly into the earth. He had won, and yet there was no gloating, no need to bask in his victory.

Techno’s mind turned over the last move. The way he had executed it. The way he had taken control of the fight and ended it on his terms. It was a move Techno had only ever seen one person use before.

Himself.

His red eyes locked onto the boy’s blue ones across the training ground. This changed things. He needed to know where the boy had learned to fight like that. Who had trained him. Who he was before he became a saint.

Tommy’s heart pounded like war drums in his ears. His breath came shallow, quick—too quick. He could feel Techno’s stare burning into him, unwavering and sharp. He knew. He had to know.

Tommy’s mind spiraled. There was no way Techno hadn’t recognized it, no way he hadn’t seen the move and connected the dots. Tommy had spent months in the frozen wilderness training with his Techno after exile, weeks trying to mimic that exact move while Techno laughed at his failures, all while feeding the dogs. It had taken him so long to perfect it. And now—now he had used it in front of this Techno, and he had seen.

His vision blurred at the edges as he forced himself to keep smiling, nodding at his men, pretending everything was fine. He needed to leave. He needed to get away. His breathing was fast, too fast, but he kept moving, slipping through the murmuring crowd, pushing toward the exit, his hands cold despite the heat of the torches. His thoughts screamed at him— Techno knows, Techno knows, Techno knows.

Then he tripped.

His shoulder hit the stone wall, and he braced against it, his breath stuttering. His lungs couldn’t pull in enough air. His chest felt tight, like something was wrapping around it, squeezing, squeezing. He gripped at the fabric over his ribs, nails digging into the embroidered gold threads. He needed air. He needed space. He needed to run.

A hand rested on his shoulder—gentle, steady.

“Breathe, mate. Copy me.”

The voice was soft, familiar. Grounding.

Tommy’s panicked mind barely registered it, but the slow, deliberate rise and fall of breath near him was something to hold onto, something real. He forced himself to match it—shaky inhales, uneven exhales, trying, failing, trying again. Slowly, his chest loosened. The edges of his vision stopped pulsing. His fingers trembled, but they weren’t clenched anymore.

He swallowed and finally looked up.

Blue eyes. Philza.

Not Techno.

Tommy whipped his head around, searching, expecting red eyes and pink hair lurking in the shadows. But Techno wasn’t there. No one else was. Just Philza, watching him with an unreadable expression.

“You alright there, mate?” Phil asked, voice still low, still careful.

Tommy forced a smile. It felt wrong on his face. “Just got a bit overwhelmed. Haven’t been too well.” It wasn’t even a lie. He hadn’t been eating right. He hadn’t been sleeping right. He had been running himself thin, preparing for everything and nothing all at once.

Phil’s gaze flickered over him, assessing. Tommy didn’t know what he was looking for. He hated that he felt like Phil could see right through him.

“You need rest,” Phil said simply.

Tommy huffed a weak laugh, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Maybe.”

He wouldn’t rest. He couldn’t. Not with Techno breathing down his neck.

Not when Techno knew.

Tommy didn’t meet Phil’s eyes. He kept his gaze trained on the high ceiling above them—arched and ribbed, painted with old murals of Solmere’s history in warm hues of orange and gold. The flickering torchlight made the figures seem to move, like they were dancing, or fighting, or watching.

Prime .

What was the last thing he had said to Philza?

Had it been on that battlefield, screaming? No, it couldn’t have been. Maybe it was after—after everything fell apart, after the exile, after the sword at his throat. Maybe it had just been silence. A silence louder than any yelling could have been.

Tommy exhaled, short and sharp, shaking his head like it could physically rid him of the memory. Now wasn’t the time for ghosts.

He’d spent months in Solmere. He’d built a life here, for all that it was worth. He had a throne, a title, a people who chanted his name and knelt at his feet like he was something more than a boy who survived. It didn’t matter what Phil thought. It didn’t matter if Techno had recognized him.

What mattered was now . The alliances. The war. The kingdom.

He turned his attention back to Phil, ready to say something to bridge the awkward silence left between them. “Sorry, I—” he started, voice still a little shaky, but he didn’t get to finish.

“Your Sanctity! Your Mercy!”

Anh’s voice rang out, frantic and too loud against the stone corridors. She came rushing in, red robes billowing, flanked by two of his guards and a handful of soldiers in Solmere’s colors. She looked both distressed and confused, her dark hair messily braided, her usually calm composure fraying at the edges.

Tommy almost groaned aloud. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

The guards hadn’t seen him yet. They were too focused on checking corners, faces, and doorways.

He looked at Phil again—his face unreadable, his expression somewhere between curiosity and concern. Tommy offered him a tight, crooked smile. One he’d perfected over the months. A smile that said I’m fine, even when he wasn’t.

“I’ll take my leave,” he said, voice lighter than he felt. “Don’t let me ruin your night.”

He dipped into a small bow—stiff, ceremonial, practiced. Just enough respect, just enough distance. Then he turned quickly on his heel, disappearing back into the corridor shadows before Anh or the guards caught sight of him. The stone was cool beneath his boots. His robes trailed behind him like smoke.

He didn’t look back.

Tommy closed the door behind him with more force than intended, the heavy wood groaning as it shut. For a moment, he stood in the quiet, looking at the empty room, chest tight, mind spinning. Then he moved. A chair was dragged across the stone floor with a screech and wedged under the handle. He didn’t want anyone walking in—not now. He needed space. Needed quiet. Needed time to think.

He tore off his ceremonial robes, letting the fabric pool onto the floor. The golden trim caught in the torchlight like fire, but he didn’t spare it a glance. Off came the rings and the chains, the soft velvet layers they draped him in like he was some delicate thing. The weight of them made it hard to breathe. He stood in his undershirt and slacks, bare feet cold on the stone floor as he moved to sit on the edge of the bed, hands on his knees, elbows sharp. His fingers trembled.

Think, Tommy.

Think like he taught you to.

That was the problem, wasn’t it? His thoughts were too loud. They screamed like wind through broken windows.

He loved Solmere. He truly did. For all its pageantry and piety, for the songs they sang in the streets and the way the people smiled at him like he meant something, he loved this place. But he could see a lost cause when he saw one. And this war—this spreading, festering nightmare—it reeked of failure.

He could still hear the Commander’s voice—sharp, pragmatic, unyielding. “ Never let sentiment blind you. A kingdom is only worth saving if it can survive.”

Solmere had faith. It had beauty. It had spirit. But it didn’t have time . Not enough troops, not enough resources. And the undead didn’t sleep. Didn’t eat. Didn’t stop .

Tommy grit his teeth, forcing himself to breathe slowly. The days of revolution were burned into him like branding. Every street in L’Manberg was etched in the folds of his brain—where the barricades fell, where the flags were raised, where the snow turned red. He remembered what it felt like to lose. Not just battles—but people. Trust. Home .

L’Manberg had been a lost cause too, in the end. It had taken surrender— real surrender. The disks, his pride, handed to the General of the greater SMP like tokens. They got freedom in return. Freedom bought with the weight of something precious.

So he asked himself again, bitterly: 

What would he have to give up this time?

Would it be Solmere itself?

Or worse— himself ?

He slumped back onto the bed, changed into his nightclothes by habit. Outside his room, he could hear guards murmuring. Voices rising. They were still searching for him. Worrying. He looked down at his hands. They didn’t shake anymore. They were steady now.

What did it take to defeat the undead? What did it take to defeat inevitability?

His thoughts—traitorous things—turned back to Techno. It had been instant, that panic. Seeing those red eyes, that face, him. That old move they both knew. One Techno had taught him in the snow-dusted forests, during the months after exile. That move didn’t belong in this world. It belonged in another time, another life. But this wasn’t Techno. Not his Techno.

Even if he recognized the move, it didn’t mean anything. There were coincidences. There were echoes.

Wasn’t that what he kept telling himself? The voices outside grew louder, closer. He could hear his name being called in soft tones. Knock after knock. He didn’t move. Let them panic. Let them think what they would. He closed his eyes, the murmurs becoming white noise.

Sleep came in fragments. Restless, uneasy.

Until—

THUD.

Tommy jolted awake. Something—someone—was inside. No thinking, just instinct. His hand shot to the side of his bed and from his inventory—thank the stars it still worked in this world—he pulled a sword. The blade shimmered. Enchanted netherite. Ancient and dark and familiar . In one smooth arc, he stepped and slashed.

There was a cry. Something fell.

He blinked, disoriented—only to be met by a pair of wide, terrified brown eyes. Anh. She had fallen. Her robes were tangled beneath her and her hand pressed against her forehead, blood blooming between her fingers. Tommy froze. The sword clattered from his hands as he threw it aside like it burned him. He knelt, grabbing her arm and helping her upright. “Shit. Shit, Anh—are you—?”

She didn’t answer. She was still staring at the sword. He turned—already knowing what he would find. The door had been broken open. The chair was splintered. His guards stood there, sheepish and wide-eyed. One of his generals loomed behind them, arms crossed.

And just over his shoulder—

Fucking hell. Techno. Silent. Watchful. Red eyes locked on the room.

Tommy exhaled through his nose, wiped a hand down his face. He turned back to Anh and, gently, touched her temple. “Take her to the medic,” he said to the guards, tone flat. “Her head.”

He tapped his own temple for emphasis. His guards moved, awkward and guilty. He stood slowly, tugging his sleeves down. He didn’t bother to explain himself, he just glared. “Next time,” he snapped, “just leave the door alone.” 

They shuffled. He rubbed the heel of his palm into his eye, and then looked down at the sword. It gleamed where it had fallen.

An idea sparked. Quiet. Dangerous.

Tommy nudged it under the bed with his foot.

Maybe it was time.

Maybe it was time this world met magic again.

While Philza’s immortality was an open secret—something whispered in reverent tones or half-joking bar songs—Techno’s existence had always been a different sort of myth. A shadow between pages of forgotten books. A memory too sharp to have faded naturally. He made sure of it. Across generations, regimes, and religions, he had made sure no one really knew him. For decades—centuries, even—he kept his face hidden. Not from shame, but from consequence. The kind of consequence that came when someone connected the dots between old legends and a man still breathing. Because someone always did. And the older the world got, the more it forgot, the more dangerous remembering became.

But Techno remembered.

That had been his burden—his task through the centuries. To carry memory like a wound that never healed. To watch the world change and change again, while pieces of it stayed stubbornly the same. That was why, when he saw the sword in that kid’s hand— that sword—his whole body went still.

He recognized it. Not just the shape of it, or the weight of it in the air, but the feel . The strange contradiction of netherite: how it shimmered like obsidian set aflame, how it somehow absorbed and reflected light in equal measure. Like a weapon forged from shadow and fire at once. You could close your eyes and still feel the difference between it and any other blade.

He had held hundreds, maybe thousands, of netherite weapons in his lifetime. He could identify them blindfolded.

But this world—this particular version of reality—was cut off. No Nether. No portals. No blaze powder or soul sand or ancient debris. Magic had long since slipped through its fingers like smoke. The world had replaced it with science, with discipline, with hard-earned progress. And yet—

Yet that boy had drawn a netherite sword like it was second nature. Like he remembered how to wield it.

"Phil," Techno said, sitting forward abruptly in the carriage, voice sharp and strained, “ you would’ve recognized it, too! You would’ve felt it, smelled it— the magic !”

Philza, seated across from him, gave him a look—worried, steady, infuriatingly calm. The carriage rocked gently beneath them, wheels bumping along the dirt road back toward the estate. Moonlight filtered through the windows, catching on the silver in Phil’s hair.

“I could smell it,” Techno repeated, almost to himself this time. “It’s still clinging to my fucking coat, I swear.”

Phil didn’t respond at first. He just studied him, birdlike and still. Then, with a small sigh, he reached across and pressed the back of his hand to Techno’s forehead. His touch was gentle, but there was something clinical in the motion—like a parent checking a fever.

“You’re running cold,” Phil said quietly, and that somehow made it worse.

“I feel fine,” Techno snapped, jerking away. “And don’t change the subject. That kid —”

“I’m not changing the subject,” Phil interrupted, raising a hand. “I’m telling you. You’re running cold. Piglin hybrids don’t run cold, Tech.”

Techno let out a frustrated grunt and slumped back into the seat. “I know that,” he muttered. “Of course I know that.” Of course he did. He’d known it for longer than Phil had existed. Piglin hybrids were fire-touched, bred from magma chambers and warped fortresses. Their blood ran hot—always. But he didn’t feel cold. Not even a chill. So why did Phil keep looking at him like that?

Still, he said nothing. Because he knew what Phil was really doing. Distracting him. Grounding him. Like he always did when Techno started spiraling. And maybe— maybe —he needed that right now. Because even after everything they’d seen, after centuries of unexplainable things and half-buried truths, there was something about the way that boy had moved that still made Techno’s skin itch.

The Saint of Solmere hadn’t even blinked at the hybrids among Arctica’s ranks—like it was normal. Like hybrid bloodlines weren’t the leftover fingerprints of old magic still clinging to the world. Like the gods themselves hadn’t gone silent. So maybe the magic wasn’t gone. Maybe it had just gone quiet . Dormant. And maybe now… it was stirring again.

Phil rubbed his temple with a tired sigh, clearly wanting to say something, but stopping short. Techno watched him. The silence stretched. 

“I’ve seen magic cling to things before,” Phil finally murmured, voice low. “To weapons. Armor. Places. Even people.”

Techno turned to the window, his reflection faint in the glass. The red of his eyes caught the moonlight. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Me too.”

He leaned back in his seat and let the quiet settle. But his thoughts still wouldn't. That kid hadn’t just held a netherite sword. He’d used it like someone who’d earned it. Like someone who’d fought with it before. Techno didn’t speak. He sat in the far corner of the carriage, his arm braced against the window frame as he stared out at the trees rushing past. The landscape was dull in the moonlight—flat stretches of frozen fields broken up by crooked silhouettes of trees, frost clinging to the bark like silver veins. He could see his reflection in the glass, faint and red-eyed, and for a moment it didn’t quite look like him.

“I felt something last night,” Philza said quietly.

Techno didn’t turn his head, but he listened.

“After you left.”

There was a pause. When Techno glanced at Phil, he found him studying his hands. One of them was turning a ring slowly over his knuckle—a small silver band crowned with a black jewel. The stone was carved in the shape of a black sun, its rays etched like delicate blades. A gift, Phil had said. One of the Saint’s soldiers had pressed it into his palm before they’d left. A thank you. A token of respect. Techno’s gaze narrowed.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Phil continued. “But it was…”

His voice trailed off as he searched for the word. His brow was furrowed, his wings shifting restlessly at his back. The silence was long enough that Techno finally spoke.

“Magical?” he said, his voice rough with disuse.

Phil met his eyes and gave a slight nod.

Techno turned back to the window, but he didn’t really see the scenery anymore. He crossed his arms and leaned back, the leather seat creaking under his weight. The roof of the carriage stretched above him like a low, oppressive sky. No stars there. No answers.

He felt cold.

He’d been cold for days now. Not the sharp bite of winter, not the kind of chill that could be banished by blankets or fire. It was something deeper, stranger. A creeping frost that had settled under his skin, in his blood. He hadn’t told Phil—not because he didn’t trust him, but because he did . And Phil would worry. He would try to fix it, and there were already too many broken things to fix.

Besides, Techno couldn’t help himself. Not with this.

They had bigger things to deal with than his temperature dropping one degree at a time.

Phil shifted beside him, his wings rustling softly. His gaze had wandered to the window, but he wasn’t really looking out of it. Techno recognized the look—Phil was deep in thought, somewhere between words and memory.

“I noticed something while we were there,” he said slowly. “About him.”

Techno raised a brow.

“His…” Phil frowned, trying to shape the thought into language. “How do I say this… his wings.”

That got Techno’s attention.

Phil exhaled through his nose and made a vague motion with one hand, like he was pulling something tight across his back.

“They’re wrong,” he said finally. “Unnatural.”

He tapped a finger against the windowpane, restless. “They don’t sit right. Not on him. Not around him. It’s like… he doesn’t belong to them. Or they don’t belong to him.”

Techno stayed quiet, letting him find the words. He had noticed it too, though maybe not in the same way. The boy carried himself like someone in borrowed armor—like the wings were a punishment, not a gift. “He’s so uncomfortable with them,” Phil went on. “Like they hurt. Like they’re—” He made another motion with his hands, then stopped again, frustrated.

Techno finished the sentence for him, voice low and even. “Like they’re too loud.”

Phil gave a short nod. “Yeah. Exactly. Being around them… I don’t know how else to say it. It made me want to move . To get away. And I don’t think it was fear, exactly. It was more like—” He paused again. “Like standing too close to a lightning storm.”

There was a long beat of silence between them. Techno finally leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “It feels like something old is remembering itself,” 

“Magic like that doesn’t just exist , not anymore. Not naturally. Not without something keeping it alive.” And if magic was returning, it wouldn’t come quietly. It would drag all the forgotten things up with it—monsters and memories and men like Techno, who had survived every version of the world and still didn’t belong in this one.

“You think it’s the wings?” Phil asked, voice barely above a whisper.

“I think it’s him.”

Phil frowned, watching him. “You mean he’s the source?”

“I don’t know,” Techno admitted.

They sat in silence again, the kind that settled over old friends when words had run dry but meaning still hummed between them. Outside, the trees passed in blur, wind brushing against the glass like whispering fingers.

Phil looked down at the ring again. The black sun glinted like it held something inside.

“Do you think the Saint knows?” he asked finally.

Techno didn’t answer right away. His fingers tapped absently against the hilt of the blade at his side, hidden beneath his coat. “I think he’s known for a long time,” he said, and his voice was soft with something close to certainty. “I just don’t think he knows how much .”

Phil’s jaw tightened. The carriage rolled on, wheels creaking, hooves muffled by frost. The sky outside was black as pitch, no stars, no moon. Somewhere far ahead, behind stone walls and firelight, a boy with a sword forged in another world was dreaming uneasily.

Magic was not just a force. It was not just energy woven through the fabric of reality—it was reality. It was the static between your fingertips after a summer storm, the tingle in your spine when a spell clicked into place. It curled through your hair like wind and wove itself into every heartbeat when you channeled it right. It was the air that filled your lungs, humming with potential, slipping between your ribs like a second heartbeat. It wasn't just something you used—it was something you felt, like a second pulse layered beneath your skin.

It was the way your fingers tingled when you ran them over enchanted books, the way your gut twisted and pulled when you crafted something into existence, bending raw material into something more. It was the burn in your gut when you forged a blade that could hum against the silence. It was the sting in your eyes when an enchantment turned volatile, too wild to tame. It was there in the moment of creation, in the flicker of light when fire met wood and refused to die.

But it was also in decay.

Magic was not just the enchantments on a blade or the sigils carved into armor. It was the explosion of a creeper—the violent burst of energy that did not just destroy, but reset , reducing the world to an earlier state, before walls, before safety. It was the unseen strings that held a skeleton together, kept it moving long after death should have taken it. It was the hunger that made zombies rise, the cruel pull of something beyond the grave. It was the simmering energy in a witch’s fingertips, in the smoke curling from her potions.

Magic was the very nature of the Nether, the unyielding will of the End. It was the heat pulsing through ancient fortresses, the flickering souls trapped in blocks of sand, the way fire never truly died there—it only slept. It was in the way an Enderman folded into space itself, slipping through dimensions as if walls had never been real, as if distance was merely a suggestion. It was in the slow, deliberate movement of a Shulker before it cracked open its shell and spat something that made you rise too high , made you touch the sky before it reminded you that you did not belong there.

It was the geometry of chaos, the elegance of danger.

Magic was everything. It was creation and destruction. It was birth and rot. It was the whisper of possibility and the scream of inevitability. It was what made gods and what unmade them.

And Tommy—Tommy had never known a world without it.

So when he woke up here, in a place that felt wrong in ways he could not yet name, he noticed it immediately. The absence. There was no buzz beneath the earth. No crackle in the stones. No bite in the wind. Just the echo of something missing. Not just of magic, but of something deeper. Something older.

Grief.

It sat thick in the air, pressing into his lungs like dust in an abandoned house. Not fresh grief, not the sharp, screaming wound of loss, but something ancient. A world that had been mourning for so long it no longer knew how to stop. A world where magic had once lived—where it had once thrived—but was now nothing more than an echo, a dream blurred at the edges.

It had not changed when he arrived. Had not stirred when he became Saint-King of Solmere, when he bled for a land that was not his own.

But that morning, as he stood in his room, his fingers still curled around the hilt of his sword, something shifted.

Not a quake. Not a crack in the foundations. It was not big—not yet.

It was the faintest turn of a screw. The tiniest notch in a clock, shifting forward by a fraction of a second. A nearly imperceptible change, like the first breath of wind before a storm.

But it was a shift.

And something in Tommy told him that, for the first time in a long, long while—

This world had stopped grieving.

And it had started watching.

Chapter Text

The morning was bitterly cold. It clung to his clothes and bit at the tip of his nose like a living thing, sharp and insistent. Still, Tommy sat outside on the stone balcony overlooking the quiet courtyard, a steaming teacup warming his hands. He had insisted this was unnecessary—he wasn’t some fragile royal who needed morning rituals and pampering—but Anh had insisted harder. And maybe, just maybe, he still felt bad for hitting her. She had seen the guilt in his eyes and seized the opportunity with the kind of quiet steel that made her such a good person.

The tea she’d brewed was too bitter, which felt poetic somehow. He scrunched his nose with every sip and drank it anyway, because what else was he supposed to do? Behind his eyes was a thousand thoughts. Beyond the courtyard, the city was beginning to stir—its breath misting in the cold, its life returning in slow, deliberate beats. The sky above was still caught between night and day, painted in dying reds and the growing deep blues of morning, clouded over in thin, waking streaks. A bruise-colored dawn.

By this time tomorrow, a full third of his forces would be riding out toward the eastern border, hoping to land a final, decisive blow against the scattered remnants of the undead army. Solmere’s scholars and scouts swore this would be the last offensive, that their enemy was thin and crumbling—but Tommy didn’t trust hope unless it had teeth. They wouldn’t say it aloud—not in front of the soldiers, not in the council chamber—but everyone knew the odds weren’t good. The reports said the undead kept coming. That they never stopped.

Tonight, he had another strategy meeting—his last before departure. A full review of supply lines, escape contingencies, risk predictions, and how much pressure the eastern flank could take before it snapped like a bone too long under stress. His generals would be there, Solmere’s brightest and sharpest. His, now. He still didn’t like the sound of it.

Two days after that, he’d leave with the second wave, taking the southern route in a reinforced military carriage that could cross terrain civilian transports couldn’t. Four days of travel. Four days of silence, mostly. He was already dreading it.

He set his teacup down on the ledge beside him, watching the steam curl into the morning air. Then, like it had done every day since that day, he felt it—a faint tug. A sensation like something brushing at the edges of his fingertips, like a string being pulled softly, slowly. Nothing big. Nothing concrete. Just a whisper of feeling, like a memory not quite remembered. It had started after the incident with Anh, and it hadn't stopped.

At first, he’d brushed it off. Nerves. Guilt. Maybe even trauma. But now, it was hard to ignore.

He opened his hand, flexing his fingers. The tug persisted.

He hadn’t touched his inventory in months, after the coronation, after they draped velvet across his shoulders and pressed the weight of Solmere onto his spine, he hadn’t dared touch it again. . A ridiculous title, one he hadn’t asked for. Solmere had thrown it at him like a gift or a punishment. He’d taken it, because what else was he supposed to do? He was good at surviving, and this crown felt like survival—like a temporary solution to a permanent problem.

Not until Anh. Not until his panic, his instincts, reached deeper than he meant them to.

Since then, he’d been… tempted.

He already knew what was in it—had memorized the contents the day he arrived here, back when he was still terrified that someone would take it from him, or that he’d open it one day and find it gone. An enchanted netherite sword, one spider eye, a bit of redstone dust, two fermented spider eyes, thirty-seven golden carrots, a mildly enchanted bow, three potatoes, fourteen golden apples, a potion of health, a bit of blaze powder, twenty-four arrows, blue wool from Friend, three bits of blue dye, three nether warts, enchanted netherite boots, and enchanted netherite pants.

He had spent sleepless nights reciting that list like a prayer, whispering the words to himself like they were sacred—like if he forgot even one item, the world would notice and punish him for it. Truly, it was a strange assortment, barely useful, almost laughably nostalgic. But it was his . The last remnants of the world he came from. The world where magic bled into everything, where even grief had mana woven through its teeth.

He’d spent so many nights just… holding the sword. Turning it over in his hands. Watching the light catch the gleam of the netherite—how it seemed to glow and drink in the dawn in equal measure. It practically hummed with a kind of hungry recognition, like it knew it was not supposed to exist here. Like it wanted to be used.

He had thought, more than once, to say fuck it . To disappear into the mountains or the forests or the forgotten ruins and test what this world would do if he gave it magic again. He wanted to know. Needed to know. What would happen to this world? Would magic awaken like a beast pulled from hibernation? Would the world shatter?  Would it wake up screaming? Would it crack at the seams? Would it rejoice? Would it collapse?

Or would nothing happen at all? Would he enchant, would he brew, would he cast, and find only silence?

He didn’t know what would be worse.

He had even made a plan. Just a little one. Enough to slip away undetected for a few days, try something small—some potion, some ward, some experiment. But then he’d look out at Solmere—its cracked towers, its quiet fields—and feel the weight of the crown again. He had generals who still argued and advisors who still believed and citizens who still prayed.  They had bled for him. They had believed in him even when he didn’t believe in himself. That wasn’t nothing.

He told himself that he could wait. That he’d lead them through this war, and then , maybe then he would leave the crown in someone else’s hands and he’d let himself fuck off and find out what the hell was going on with this place and its missing magic. Maybe then he’d see if magic could still bloom here, or if it had rotted too deep.

But in the quiet of morning, with bitter tea and bleeding skies and that soft tug at his fingertips—

Tommy wasn’t so sure how much longer he could wait.

He sighed, long and low, the sound curling into the cold air and vanishing like steam. Behind him, the quiet morning was beginning to stir into motion. He could hear the faint creak of the door opening and closing, soft murmurs of voices in conversation—too muffled to understand, but tense in their rhythm. Footsteps padded across the stone floor. And then, as expected, Anh. Always the first one to check on him. Always the one to stand like a silent gate between Tommy and the rest of the world when he didn’t want to face it.

She said nothing, just hovered there. Waiting. Watching. That strange balance of loyalty and worry, of duty and something gentler. He didn’t meet her eyes. He couldn’t. Not yet.

He couldn't let himself drift, not today. He had responsibilities. Real ones. Not just the ceremonial kind where he smiled at diplomats and nodded at speeches written for him, but the kind that came with blood and maps and numbers that counted people who would never come home. There were too many decisions waiting for him, each one heavier than the last. It wasn’t time to think about ancient magic or glowing swords or the way the air shifted when he so much as thought of enchantments.

So he forced himself to move. Drank the last bitter mouthful of tea—it had gone lukewarm, but he didn’t flinch—and stood up. The motion was stiff, mechanical. His joints ached more than they should for someone his age, a reminder of battle, of training, of not resting. He brushed down his clothes, shaking off imaginary dust and very real exhaustion. When he finally looked up, he caught Anh’s expression: a small, sad frown, more resigned than scolding.

He gave her the closest thing to a smile he could manage. It wasn’t convincing, and they both knew it, but it was something. She stepped aside, her silence granting him passage.

Further down the hall, Samantha and Becca stood in quiet conversation, their words low and sharp. They straightened when they saw him approach. A military officer—one of Solmere’s eastern liaisons, if he remembered right—stood stiffly nearby, flanked by two guards in the new black-and-steel armor issued after the last undead ambush. Tommy nodded at them, keeping his expression neutral. Another day, another crisis.

He gestured for the officer to follow and began walking, leading them through the winding corridors toward the royal office. Technically his office now. He still hadn’t gotten used to that.

As they walked, the officer relayed the latest from the field: troop formations holding, supply delays at the eastern checkpoints, sporadic undead resistance turning more coordinated by the hour. Reinforcements were en route, but they were spread thin. Morale was holding—barely. There were whispers from the old cities again. Something stirring in the fog.

Nothing Tommy wanted to hear.

He gave the occasional nod, asked two questions he already knew the answers to, and offered one vague reassurance. That was all he had in him today.

When they reached the office, he opened the heavy door and stepped inside. The officer finished his report with a salute and turned to leave, boots clacking against the stone as the guards followed. Tommy waited until the door clicked shut before letting out a sharp breath and dragging a hand down his face.

He hated this room.

The royal office was too clean, too grand, too suffocating. The high ceiling and wide windows were meant to impress visiting nobles, the polished oak desk carved with the crest of Solmere sat like a throne behind walls of parchment and strategy. He barely used it. Every time he walked in, he felt like an imposter trespassing on a dead king’s territory.

There were papers everywhere—stacks of them, some old, some new, some untouched because they required a signature he still didn’t feel entitled to give. Petitions from bordering towns. Trade agreements the council didn’t want to deal with. Grievances between factions. Questions no one else wanted to answer. So they all came to him.

He didn’t know what he was doing.

He had no royal training. No years of schooling in statecraft. The last time he had a real command, it had been under the banners of the old SMP, during a war that tore through realities. He’d taken orders from a commander no one dared name, and fought beside a man whose speeches could bring men to their knees. He’d been a soldier. A chaotic, reckless, furious soldier. Not a king.

Now, people called him “Saint” and “King” in the same breath and looked at him like he had answers. Like his hands didn’t still remember the weight of a crossbow. Like he hadn’t once sworn he’d never lead anyone again.

Tommy walked to the desk and leaned both palms against it, staring down at the mess. He exhaled sharply and closed his eyes for a moment, just long enough to steady the pressure building in his skull. He hated this office. It smelled of responsibility and failure. Of expectations too heavy to carry. Of a world trying to balance on the edge of something ancient and forgotten.

And beneath all of that, beneath the ink and stone and politics, the faint pull returned.

The whisper of magic.

He could almost feel it hum, waiting. Watching.

He opened his eyes.

Not yet.

Technoblade hummed low under his breath, a thread of sound barely audible beneath the din of his soldiers’ chatter. Their voices carried in rough bursts across the tent—gravel-scraped tones and cracking laughter, trying to ease the edge that clung to camp life like damp fog. But there was tension underneath it all. He could taste it. There had been another sighting. That was what they said. Another appearance of him —the so-called necromancer.

“A man dressed in a deep violet cloak,” one scout had whispered, reverent and frightened. “With a voice that made the dead crawl.”

That same shade of violet again. The one that seemed to leech color from the world around it, found at the edge of battlefield graves and abandoned roads. The rot-hued hue that lingered where the corpses wouldn't settle, where the ground wept sickness, where the veil between life and death thinned and stayed thin.

Techno didn’t buy it. Not really.

He tilted his head to the side and listened, eyes half-lidded, not because he was tired—he never truly rested in a place like this—but because listening often got you further than speaking ever did. His men, seasoned as they were, didn’t know what to make of the rumors. The same ones that spread like wildfire through every border town and isolated village across the northern provinces.

Phil was doubtful too. Of course he was. The two of them had seen too much of the world—before it had fractured, before it had forgotten the old rules, before magic turned to myth and myth to dust. There was no wizard pulling the strings behind this. No mysterious mage calling to the grave. At least, not in the way people wanted to believe.

The Articans, like most of the world these days, were desperate to cling to any scrap of magic. Something ancient, something powerful, something holy or unholy—it didn’t matter. They wanted wonder back, even if it crawled out of a tomb with its guts hanging out. So long as it made sense. So long as it felt magical.

But Techno… Techno had seen magic. Real magic. Had touched it. Had bled from it. And whatever this necromancer was supposed to be, it didn’t sit right.

He could believe in the undead—hell, he had killed the undead. The brittle-jointed, soul-hollowed things that kept coming even after you split their skulls. The ones that whispered in ancient tongues, languages no one had spoken in centuries. They were real.

But that didn't mean he believed in some theatrically dressed bastard summoning them with a flick of the wrist and a dramatic monologue. That wasn't how the world worked. Magic, when it still functioned, didn’t give you that kind of control. It wasn’t a wand and a wish. It wasn’t spectacle. It was hunger. It was exchange. It cost .

And if someone really was doing it, if someone had found a way to circumvent the natural laws—that wasn’t a mage. That was something far worse.

Which brought him back to the king.

The boy king of Solmere.

Techno leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his broad chest, one thumb slowly rubbing against the edge of a worn gauntlet. The campfire crackled a few feet away, and the tent flaps rustled with the northern wind. His mind wasn’t on the cold. It was on the boy. Always the boy.

He didn’t trust him.

He had tried. Truly. He had watched the meeting weeks ago, standing silent beside Phil as the Saint King—young, too young—stood at the center of a war table, voice firm, gaze sharp. Talking troop formations and fallback points like he’d been doing it for years. Niki had told them first so many weeks before: He thinks like a soldier. Maybe even a general.

And Techno had agreed. Which was the problem.

There was something wrong with that boy. Too prepared. Too precise. He had the posture of someone who had spent their life waiting for something terrible to happen. Who had lived long enough in chaos to recognize patterns and break them. He didn’t lead like a monarch. He commanded like someone who’d once held the front line. That sort of experience didn’t just appear overnight. And certainly not in someone with no known history.

Techno had sent spies. Quiet ones. Careful ones. Men and women who had survived long enough to be called ghosts by other intelligence networks. They could find anything, dig up graves and burn secrets to ash. But when it came to the Saint King of Solmere?

Nothing. Not even a real name.

Just vague accounts. A boy found in a coastal village the same week Solmere’s king died. The same week the crowned prince was slain. The timing was too perfect. No coronation should have happened so quickly, not without contention. Not without blood in the council chambers. Yet it had. No rivals. No delay.

A ghost king, some called him. A blessing. A miracle. A convenient messiah to stabilize a dying kingdom. Too convenient, Techno thought. He had pulled every file he could. Looked into every known war in the past fifteen years where child soldiers had been deployed. Dig sites. Proxy conflicts. Coup-born nations. Nothing matched. No paper trail. No whispers in the underground. The boy wasn’t from here. Not from anywhere.

And yet, there he sat. With an enchanted sword like a relic from another age. With eyes that scanned rooms like he was hunting exits. With fingers that twitched near invisible pockets when he thought no one was watching. That wasn’t royalty. That was a survival instinct.

Something was wrong with him.

Something had brought him here.

Techno didn’t know what. Not yet. But he would find out.

He always did.

Tommy wasn’t a born leader. He wasn’t raised to sit in war rooms or balance kingdoms on a threadbare breath. He hated it—truly hated it. Leadership, real leadership, meant deciding the course of thousands of lives. It meant knowing, with complete certainty, that your words could march men to their deaths or keep them in safety. And for the soldiers of Solmere—soldiers who looked to him like he was anything more than an accident crowned in silk—that weight was suffocating.

He wasn’t built for this. He was built to survive it.

The desk before him was a battlefield in its own right—papers stacked in organized chaos, half-read missives and construction requests, military reports and revisions to laws he hadn’t approved. His eyes skimmed the top of the current page, something about reinforcing a bridge in the southern provinces. Steel weight ratios, projected caravan loads, requisitions. All of it blurred into the same bureaucratic sludge. He didn’t remember reading the first half of the paragraph. Didn’t care to read the second.

The flap to his office opened with a soft rustle, and Becca poked her head through. “General Gallardo is here to see you,” she announced, voice low with the same practiced calm she always wore when dealing with nobles or gods or him.

Tommy blinked. Gallardo? He frowned. What time was it? Shit. The military council. They were supposed to meet—what, half an hour ago? An hour?

He shoved back his chair and stood, adjusting the stiff collar of his overcoat. “Right. Yeah.” Becca was already holding the door open, and beyond it stood General Gallardo—tall, broad-shouldered, his brown hair tied back in a neat military knot, a man who wore his years like armor rather than weight. He had to be in his early forties, but he carried himself with the quiet steadiness of someone who had seen every kind of battlefield and survived them all.

Tommy liked him. Trusted him, even. Which was rare.

Gallardo wasn’t like the others. He didn’t pander or perform or try to ingratiate himself with hollow praise. He didn’t bow too low or speak in riddles. He was direct, honest, and when he said something, it was because it needed saying.

“May the sun always shine on the kingdom’s most blessed one,” Gallardo greeted with a formal nod, already beginning to bow.

Tommy lifted a hand, cutting it off. “Don’t,” he muttered, already walking. “I’m running late, aren’t I?”

Gallardo followed at his side, his smile easy. “So am I, your Sanctity. But that’s not why I’m here.”

Tommy motioned for the two guards at the door to carry the stack of papers piling on the desk. He had a habit of reading while walking—better to get it over with than sit still and let the walls creep in. Becca and Samantha trailed behind, quick to take the load from the guards, even though it wasn’t necessary. Tommy didn’t stop them. He knew better. Trying to argue with them about carrying things was like trying to tell the ocean to calm down.

“We can walk and talk, then,” Tommy said, already flipping through another report. “The others aren’t too fond of my tardiness.”

“They won’t voice it,” Gallardo replied easily.

Tommy snorted. “Because they’re cowards.”

Gallardo didn’t reply, but Tommy didn’t need to look to know he was smiling. A tired, amused little smile.

The paper in his hand detailed a new proposal for trade reform—something to do with taxing salt in the east, some noble thinking they could reroute power through coin. He sighed and shoved it back into the pile. "What was it you wanted to say?"

He glanced at Gallardo, finally taking in the slight tension around his eyes. The general wasn’t fidgeting—he never did—but there was a carefulness in how he walked, how he glanced toward Tommy’s aides and the guards trailing just far enough behind to pretend they weren’t listening.

Gallardo lowered his voice. “I think it’s better if we speak in private. Later.”

Tommy held his gaze for a moment, long enough to know it wasn’t a passing thought. Whatever it was, Gallardo didn’t want to risk being overheard.

He hummed in acknowledgment, then nodded. “Alright.”

First, though, he had a meeting to survive. 

The meeting went exactly as expected—long, dull, and full of posturing. Men twice his age filled the chamber with empty promises and carefully measured lies, passing hope around like a currency they knew they’d never cash in. Tommy sat at the high-backed seat meant for royalty, only half-listening as the voices blurred into each other. His hand moved constantly, ink bleeding across parchment as he wrote.

Not about the meeting. That would’ve been too productive.

No, Tommy was focused on something that actually mattered: the refugees. He’d started the project quietly, in the margins of his overloaded days, exchanging letters with those displaced or broken by the undead incursion. Survivors, mothers who had lost their children, farmers with poisoned fields, towns swallowed in silence. It was slow work, writing each letter by hand, but it grounded him. It reminded him of why any of this mattered.

The Council would hate it if they knew. They’d see it as a waste of the crown’s time, something sentimental and foolish. But Tommy was king—whether he liked it or not—and he could choose what he did with his time. No one else had the right to tell him how to spend his grief.

He only looked up when the murmurs in the room sharpened into raised voices. A few of the older men had begun arguing across the table, their booming tones rising like the rumble of a coming storm. Tommy sighed and glanced around for the golden figurehead he’d given them—an actual little statue—to indicate who had the floor. It was a stupid system, but it kept the elders from barking over each other like dogs.

Of course, he couldn’t see the figure. Either someone had pocketed it or forgotten it entirely. Again.

He let out a low breath, then slammed his palm against the table. The sharp crack echoed through the room. “Calm! Calm!” he barked, rubbing his temples as the room quieted slightly. “God, old people,” he muttered under his breath, then louder, “Speak. One at a time.”

He pointed to one of the men mid-argument and leaned back as the man launched into his complaint, voice puffed up with indignation. Tommy listened for a few seconds, then turned to the second man, who responded in kind, matching tone for tone. Something about trade route security, or maybe who had jurisdiction over a waterway. He couldn't bring himself to care. It was peacocking at its worst.

With a flick of his hand, he motioned toward another councilor, silently making it known the debate was over as far as he was concerned. If they wanted to squabble, they could do it outside.

The next speaker, a man in his late thirties—middle-aged compared to the room’s average—stood and cleared his throat. His voice was steadier, more deliberate. He didn’t waste time.

“There’s a sickness,” the man began. “A slow one. Not fatal, but close enough. People are falling ill in a few villages east of the river border. Symptoms include dizziness, vomiting, fever. It comes in patches—whoever walks into certain areas gets sick. We believe it’s coming from a man-made mist. It clings to the air.”

Tommy straightened a little, his eyes narrowing. That was… unusual.

“A mist?” he asked. “A mist that stays where it’s thrown?”

“Yes, your Sanctity,” the man said, nodding. “It does not disperse quickly. It lingers, hours sometimes.”

Tommy drummed his fingers on the table. Mist that lingers… sickness… That was chemical warfare, probably. But it was the way the man described it—the pockets of fog, the targeted nature of it—that triggered something deeper in Tommy’s mind. He tilted his head. “Has anyone found glass nearby? Like, shards of a bottle or container?”

There was a pause. The speaker glanced sideways at the man seated next to him, who stood and answered, “Yes, my Sanctity. Shards of glass have been found at each site. Scattered near the center of the mist’s origin.”

Tommy stared at the table for a long moment, lips pressed into a tight line. Mist. Glass. Sickness.

He knew what that was. He knew.

But how could he say it aloud?

How could he look these men in the eye and tell them someone was brewing potions? That this was alchemy of a kind that belonged to another world—his old one. Back home, a bottle of lingering poison wouldn’t have been out of place in the hands of a witch or a player. There, it would’ve been brewed with ingredients like fermented spider eyes and golden carrots, sparked into potency with blaze powder. But blaze powder didn’t exist here. And even if someone had it, even if it was possible… it required magic. Real magic.

And magic wasn’t supposed to exist in this world anymore.

He couldn’t tell them that. So instead, he leaned back in his chair and said, casually, “Give them milk.”

The room blinked at him.

“Pardon, your Sanctity?” one of the older councilors asked, as though unsure he’d heard correctly.

“Milk,” Tommy repeated, folding his hands together. “Give it to the sick. It should help with the symptoms—soothe the poison, at least. Won’t fix everything, but it’ll give them time to recover.”

There was a moment of hesitation as the men exchanged glances. Skeptical. Confused. But no one challenged him.

“Trust me,” Tommy added, his voice quiet but firm. “It will make them feel better.”

The meeting ended in the usual blur of empty words. Tommy barely caught the last thing said before the councilmen began gathering their scrolls and rising from their seats, murmuring pleasantries that didn’t mean anything. They never did. His hand kept moving on the paper in front of him, even as his eyes lost focus. He wasn’t writing notes anymore. Just... anything to keep his hands busy.

He was still thinking about the mist. About the sickness. About the fucking potions .

That thought had rooted itself in his brain like a splinter. Someone was brewing potions in this world. Real ones. Not some home-brewed herbal tea or military-grade gas—they were talking about sickness lingering in the air, mist that clung to corners and made people collapse. Potions. Magic. And that terrified him more than he wanted to admit.

Because magic wasn’t supposed to work here.

He’d been so careful. Hadn’t cast so much as a spark since he landed here. Hadn’t whispered an enchantment or even thought about the other world’s magic—not when this one felt like it might spit him out if he stepped out of line again. He’d buried the old power like a corpse. And yet… here it was. Someone else was digging it up.

He didn’t even notice General Gallardo moving until the man was sitting beside him. Tommy looked up, startled, but the General didn’t say anything at first—just met his gaze with a look that made Tommy’s stomach twist. Hadrian wasn’t the type to waste time on dramatics. If he was sitting close, it meant something bad was coming. Tommy followed the glance Gallardo threw over his shoulder. His aides—Samantha and Becca—stood quietly nearby, dutiful as ever. His two guards flanked the back wall like statues, silent and unflinching. The kind of loyalty that made your skin crawl if you thought about it too long.

Tommy sat up straighter and spoke in the same warm tone he used when politely lying. “General Gallardo and I have some things to discuss. Give us the room, yeah?”

The aides nodded and slipped out without fuss, but the guards hesitated. One of them—Stellan or Corin, he still mixed them up—shifted his weight like he didn’t like the idea of leaving him alone. Tommy gave a sharp grin. “You think he can’t stab someone for me? Come on. He’s terrifying. Go on.”

Gallardo laughed—low and brief—and the guards finally exited, though one of them shot him a look over their shoulder before the door shut. Then it was just them. Silence settled between them like dust in the air. Tommy leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Alright. Out with it. How bad is it?”

Hadrian didn’t speak immediately. He was a man who liked his words heavy and precise, and that always made Tommy nervous. Finally, he said, “There’s talk of an assassination.”

Tommy blinked. “What.”

“Not just talk,” Hadrian clarified. “We’ve intercepted fragments of a plan. It’s vague, but the pieces are coming together. Someone is moving pieces inside the city. Someone who wants you gone.”

Tommy leaned forward, frowning. “Is this the nobles again? I thought they got tired of backstabbing each other.”

Hadrian didn’t smile. “I don’t think this is a council matter. This is something older. Something deeper.”

There was a pause.

“Might be tied to that mist.”

Tommy swore under his breath, fingers twitching against the edge of the table. “So you think this isn’t just some pissed-off royal trying to cut my head off in a power play. You think it’s something… different.”

“I think,” Gallardo said carefully, “that you’ve made enemies that don’t care about crowns. And I think the safest place for you, right now, is far from this palace.”

Tommy huffed. “Great.”

“You’ll leave with the first eastern division at dawn,” Gallardo continued, tone firm. “You won’t be missed until midday. We’ll say you’re inspecting the outposts. No one will question it.”

Tommy dragged a hand down his face. He hated this. Hated being moved like a pawn, hated being a risk someone had to protect . He wasn’t a coward. He’d already died once. What more could they take from him?

But he wasn’t stupid either. He’d seen what this world did to the reckless. He couldn’t burn it all down just because it was ugly.

“Fine,” he muttered. “But I’m not hiding. If I’m going, I’m doing it my way.”

Gallardo nodded. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

Tommy scowled at the title but didn’t argue. Instead, he stood and grabbed the stack of refugee letters from the table. That was the one thing he could do—talk to the people who still believed in him, who’d written with stories and fears and broken hopes. That was the part of the job he chose. Everything else was just noise.

He slung the satchel over his shoulder, jaw clenched.

Magic. Mist. Assassins.

This world hadn’t chewed him up yet.

But it was trying.

Tommy sat in what he would confidently call the shittiest carriage he’d ever been in—not that he had a long list to compare it to. The wooden frame creaked with every bump in the road, the thin padding on the bench barely dulling the impact, and the canvas roof flapped loudly with the wind. He leaned against the narrow window frame, cheek pressed to the cold glass, eyes fixed on the scenery rolling past.

They were far from the city now. Open fields stretched endlessly on either side, dotted with pale winter grass and the occasional crooked fence. The outskirts of Solmere—less city, more stubborn farmland. He’d decided to stay there when he first arrived in this world. It was quieter, a bit wilder, less clogged with ceremony and judgment. A place that reminded him of how he’d grown up—half-feral, a little forgotten, always watching the horizon.

He kept staring as the land passed by, but nothing really caught his eye. It all looked the same. Grey sky, tired earth, the occasional farmhouse slumped like it was too exhausted to stand upright. He exhaled sharply through his nose and turned back into the carriage.

Everyone had been surprised when he showed up unannounced that morning, Gallardo at his side. The general hadn’t left his elbow since. His aides—Anh, Becca, and Samantha—had stayed behind in the palace, though Tommy had seen the sharp way Gallardo had looked at them before they left. The man was paranoid. Not stupidly so, just… burned. Like someone who’d seen too many good people turn bad. Tommy got it.

He didn’t think the girls would betray him. But then, he’d thought that before. He’d trusted people before. Back home, betrayal had been part of the scenery—almost tradition, in a fucked-up way. So maybe Gallardo had the right idea being wary. Just in case.

The inside of the carriage was plain. Too clean, too polished for something meant for travel. Just him in there, alone with nothing but his thoughts and the rhythmic clatter of wheels over uneven dirt. He’d tried reviewing the maps earlier—terrain lines and supply routes leading to the eastern border—but it had only taken a few minutes for his eyes to glaze over. Boring. Necessary, maybe, but still boring.

He should’ve finished the letters. That regret gnawed at him. The stack of half-written replies had been left on his desk, folded neatly but incomplete. He hated that. People had trusted him enough to write—shared stories of loss, sickness, survival—and he hadn’t even managed to respond before fleeing the city like some shadow was nipping at his heels.

He leaned his head back, eyes fluttering shut. Maybe sleep would help. Maybe he’d wake up with more clarity. Or maybe he’d dream of the server again—the obsidian walls, the burning sky, the crackling sound of betrayal.

“Just a nap,” he mumbled to himself. “Not like I’ve got anything else to do.”

And for a little while, the carriage rumbled on, bearing the king toward danger, away from the throne, and deeper into the wild unknown.

Magic was strange, that was a known fact everyone ignored. It didn’t follow the rules—it bent them, twisted them into loops and knots and sometimes straight-up lies. Brewing potions was stranger still. Tommy had never paid much attention to it, not really. It had been Techno’s thing, and when Techno tried to explain it, it always sounded more like a riddle than a recipe. “Awkward potions for awkward teens,” he’d once said with a rare smirk, dropping nether wart into a glass bottle like it was nothing.

But it wasn’t nothing.

Potion-making was like cooking, if cooking could make you breathe underwater or light you on fire. Blaze powder gave the whole thing power—the fire underneath, the spark of alchemy. Nether wart first, to awaken the water. Then came the real magic: sugar for speed, rabbit’s foot for leaping, spider eye for poison, golden carrot for night vision… and on and on. Redstone stretched the effect out, made it last. Glowstone condensed it, punched it. All of it could be held in a single bottle. All of it could change the outcome of a battle. And Tommy remembered every combination like it had been carved into his skull.

He sat cross-legged near the campfire, the crackling heat warming his face, pretending to listen to the soldiers around him. They laughed and talked and passed around food, half of them unsure whether they were supposed to bow when they met his eyes. Tommy kept things light, made dumb jokes, and laughed too loudly. It kept things easy. It kept them from looking too close.

But while they joked and ate, Tommy was thinking.

He had everything he needed. In his inventory he had the ingredients. He could feel them, nestled against that strange aching pulse in his fingertips. The world didn’t work like it used to. He couldn’t just pull out his hotbar like he used to. But the rules were still there. Somewhere.

The problem was the brewing stand.

He didn’t have one. And even if he did, they wouldn’t know what it was. He couldn’t just pop it out in front of a group of soldiers and expect them to ignore the glowing flames and floating glass. Magic didn’t exist here. Or it wasn’t supposed to. And even if they were starting to believe, they weren’t ready for what magic was. He stared into the fire. A brewing stand was just a glorified stove, right? What did it really need? Heat. Focus. Fuel. A place to rest the bottle.

He tapped a knuckle against his chin.

There had to be a way. There was always a way. He had his hands. He had the ingredients. He had a fire. And somewhere inside him, buried under layers of ash and blood and time, he still had the memory of power.

Tommy looked up at the stars. Some constellations were familiar—shapes he used to trace with Tubbo during long nights atop the SMP walls—but others were strange and unfamiliar, glimmering in patterns that didn’t belong to his sky. Still, they felt comforted in a way. Distant, silent, and constant. He sat with his back against a packed crate until the camp fell quiet, soldiers either asleep or lulled into sluggish stillness. Even the night watch had gone still, yawning as they blinked up at the stars. No one questioned him. After all, he was the Saint King.

He stood slowly, brushing dust from his coat, and walked through the sleeping camp with the careful ease of someone who had learned how to sneak past enemies long before he could vote. The dying embers of a dozen fires glowed faintly around him, tiny red eyes that watched him slip through the dark. He stopped by one of the still-burning fires, grabbed a sturdy branch, and lit the end until it flared orange. Firelight danced across his face as he crouched beside a supply crate and reached inside, pulling out three cubed glass bottles—Solmere’s kind, not the rounded ones he remembered. With a flicker of thought, he tucked them into his inventory. A familiar tingling kissed his fingertips.

Warmth.

Not from the torch.

He kept moving.

Water was stored near the center of camp. He approached slowly, crouched near the barrels, and filled the bottles, listening to the glugging sound that echoed in the quiet. He corked them and tucked them away again. Then, torch in hand, he moved farther and farther from camp. Past the tents, past the gear-lined wagons, into the fields of long-dead grass that whispered in the wind.

He found a dip in the terrain, just enough to crouch out of view, and set the torch down beside him. He crouched low and pulled out the blaze powder. It shimmered faintly, warm in his hand, quiet but alive. There was a hush to it, like a breath held. He smiled without meaning to.

He sparked a fraction of it into the fire, enough for three potions. The flames shimmered gold-red for a moment, pulsing with a low, steady hum that echoed in his bones. He balanced the glass bottles above the fire using a few salvaged bits of metal. Not ideal, but it would do. He waited for the nether ward, breath held, watching the surface. The water took longer to boil than it would have in a proper brewing stand. For a few dragging minutes, he thought it might not work at all.

But then—bubbles.

Steam rose gently. The scent hit him next. Faint, earthy, tinged with something bitter and sharp. Awkward potions. He grinned.

It worked.

Magic still worked.

He scrolled through what he had left. Golden carrots, a spider eye, some redstone, and even a bit more blaze powder. Strength potions were tempting. But he hesitated over the carrots, lifting them and running a thumb over their orange-gold skin. He chose three. Quietly, carefully, he chopped them into fine pieces and added them to the awkward potions one by one, just at the right time. As the ingredients fused, the liquid shimmered green. A familiar lullaby hummed in the air. Soft, subtle. Otherworldly.

He exhaled slowly, the breath shaking just a little.

It felt like being alive again.

He held up the spider eye, already fermented and pungent, and paused. He hadn’t made invisibility potions in years. There’d been little use for them back home once everyone could teleport or blow each other sky high. But here…

Here, no one expected it.

He sliced it open, added a piece to two bottles, and watched the color drain from green to a cloudy grey. He shivered.

His body buzzed, alive with something ancient and quiet.

Lastly, he pulled out redstone. Dipped his fingers into it. The dust clung to his skin, staining the cracks of his nails. He poured a pinch into each potion, watching them thicken and deepen in tone. Longevity.

Somewhere, deep in the earth beneath the roots of the world, something blinked. The wind shifted. The fire crackled louder for a beat before settling into a whisper.

Tommy smiled. Just a little. Just for a second.

Magic was strange.

But it was still his.

Chapter Text

The stench hit harder than it had the day before—thick and suffocating, like rotting meat left too long under the summer sun. It forced its way down Techno's throat and settled there, heavy and sharp. He jolted upright, already reaching for his armor before he was fully awake. His voice cut through the dim quiet as he shook the soldiers sleeping near him—Arctica among them, and others he hadn’t bothered to learn the names of yet.

The moon was dipping below the edge of the world, casting the last of its pale light across the field. The horizon glowed a soft orange, warning of the coming dawn. Techno tugged on the last strap of his chest plate and grabbed his sword, his fingers closing around the hilt with instinctive familiarity. He exited the tent, breath clouding in the chill, and took in the sight of the camp coming alive.

Men stumbled out of tents, half-armored and squinting. The overwhelming scent drew some, others by the frantic movement spreading like wildfire. The quiet murmurs of early morning had turned into the clamor of metal and hurried footsteps. Soldiers barked orders; horses shifted nervously.

At the central tent, Philza was already present, his expression set and grim as he adjusted his armor with practiced ease. A few Solmere soldiers flanked him, similarly preparing themselves. Moments later, TapL arrived, flanked by his men, their armor catching the light of the flickering torches around camp.

"What the hell is happening?" Techno asked, more to the air than to anyone specifically. His voice was hoarse, the edges fraying from lack of sleep.

"They’re moving," someone muttered nearby, and the words carried weight. A silence pressed into the space for a second too long.

Outside, the sound of the waking camp intensified. Metal clanged, feet thudded against frozen earth, men shouted.

"Isn’t the first of Solmere’s backup arriving by midday?" Techno asked, almost more to ground himself than anything else. He felt a bone-deep chill, one that had nothing to do with the weather. Only Philza’s steady presence beside him kept him focused, stopping the spiral of Solmere panic.

"We should hope they arrive earlier," Phil said, quiet but firm.

A figure entered the tent—a high-ranking Solmere officer, blonde, though his name escaped Techno. His face was pale, tense with barely concealed urgency.

"There is movement north of the camp," he announced, voice clipped.

No one hesitated. They surged out of the tent as one, armor clanking, urgency crackling between them. And outside, the smell was worse—a thousand times worse. It hung over the camp like a death sentence, heavy enough to make Techno’s eyes sting. Whatever was coming, it was close. 

The Solmere officer didn’t speak, but the grim set of his jaw said enough. His eyes were sharp, and he walked with a brisk, determined stride, clearly a man used to urgency. Techno followed close behind, adjusting the strap on his chestplate as they wove through the camp. The sky was still painted with the lavender of early dawn, but light was crawling fast over the horizon, creeping into corners and exposing the hastily rousing soldiers.

They stopped by a group gathering their equipment—men in worn red robes, Solmere’s archers. The scent of old leather and oil hung around them, bows being restrung and arrows passed hand to hand in practiced rhythm. Many of them were older, their faces lined and weathered, with quiet confidence in their movements. These weren’t professional soldiers—Techno could see that immediately—they were hunters. Civilians pressed into duty, but were skilled nonetheless. He saw callused hands, quick fingers, eyes that knew how to track prey in low light.

A slow-moving mass shambled across the far hills, just on the edge of visibility. The undead. A thin, uneven line of shadow-stained bodies, dragging themselves forward in silent, dreadful persistence. Techno squinted, trying to estimate the distance.

"I give them four hours until they’re close enough to see us," one of TapL’s officers murmured, his tone uncertain.

The Solmere officer beside Techno frowned deeply and raised a hand, summoning one of the young archers. The boy—barely older than a teenager, really—stepped forward. He had sharp cheekbones, a too-thin frame, and wore his red robe like it didn’t quite fit him. His bow was already slung across his back. There was a cautious confidence in the way he held himself, though, like someone who’d grown up with a bow slung over. The officer pointed toward the distant mob, saying nothing. The boy squinted, adjusting his stance, then nodded. "They'll be between bow ranges within two hours. Maybe less if the wind stays in our favor."

The officer gave a sharp nod and waved him away. He turned to the others. "I recommend getting your own archers in place."

Techno’s gaze swept over the gathering force. More were joining—some dressed in Arctica’s signature blues, others in TapL’s deep greens. It wasn’t many yet, but the numbers were slowly growing. Still, it was far from enough.

"Right," Techno muttered under his breath, more to himself than anyone else. He rubbed his hands together, his fingers trembling. Not from fear—at least, not entirely—but from cold. The chill had sunk beneath his armor, biting through the seams. He needed another layer, maybe a cloak. Something. Anything to stop the shivering that had started to burrow into his bones.

He took a breath and looked back out at the horizon. The undead were coming, and the light of dawn did nothing to stop them.

Tommy started to smell the rot when they were still a day away, and it gnawed at the back of his thoughts like a whisper he couldn’t shake. That alone made him worry—but he knew he wasn’t the only one. General Avalos, the officer sent to accompany him—not Gallardo, who had stayed behind in the capital because Tommy needed someone he trusted there—looked even more tense than usual. He and the other high-ranking officers began to press the company harder. The breaks became shorter, the hours longer, and the pace relentless. Originally, they were expected to arrive by midday. At their current speed, they’d make it well before then.

Tommy had refused to ride in the carriage. He didn’t want to be coddled. He didn’t need it. He'd argued until Avalos relented, and now he rode a brown, spotty horse beside the front line. No one liked the arrangement, but no one challenged him again after the first hour. The cold bit at his fingers and ears, but he welcomed it—it kept him sharp. Something about being on horseback, surrounded by the endless frozen expanse of land, reminded him of the time after exile when he helped Techno with Carl. He tried not to think about that too hard.

As they rode, the smell of rot only worsened. It curled through the air, thick and sour, clinging to their clothes, sneaking into their throats. The horses began to react too—heads tossing, steps faltering. Tommy’s own mount had slowed, its ears flicking nervously. That night, just a few hours from the camp they were meant to reinforce, something felt off.

Tommy couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t for lack of exhaustion—he was tired to the bone. But something in the stillness of the camp made it impossible. He tossed and turned on his makeshift bedding, trying to get warm, trying to relax. Nothing helped. Eventually, he gave up. He sat up and stared at the night around him. Tall frozen grass rustled gently in the breeze, silent and watchful.

He wasn’t the only one awake.

Others shifted where they lay. Some sat up. There were murmurs, uneasy movements, the quiet slide of blades being drawn from sheaths. Tommy rubbed a hand down his face, the growing unease making his skin itch.

It wasn’t paranoia.

It wasn’t tired nerves.

He knew exactly why they couldn’t sleep.

There were monsters nearby.

He grabbed a discarded sword—some soldier’s backup blade—and began walking the perimeter of their small camp, eyes scanning the grass, heart thrumming. As he moved, soldiers began to rouse fully. More hands reached for weapons. Eyes followed his path. General Avalos watched him too, saying nothing.

For a moment, Tommy started to think maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was overreacting. He took another step.

And then he saw them. Red eyes. Small, beady, and shining like dull coals from the edge of the brush.

The spider lunged. Tommy’s instincts kicked in, and he raised the sword in time to block it, the clash of fang against metal ringing sharp through the air. He stumbled back slightly.

“Prime, I hate spiders,” he muttered under his breath, steadying himself. He loved Shroud, but this? This was different.

He killed the spider efficiently—one clean strike, its limbs curling inwards before the whole body crumbled into ash, dissolving into nothing. No drops. No glint of experience orbs. Nothing. That… wasn’t right.

Tommy’s brow furrowed as he turned. Ahead, a small cluster of soldiers were already swinging their blades, backed into a loose formation while several more spiders skittered through the grass toward them. Without a second thought, he ran to assist, slashing through one, then another. The spiders hissed, legs jerking unnaturally as they fell, leaving no remains. It was almost peaceful, in a warped way—familiar. Muscle memory kicked in like instinct, each motion so ingrained that it felt like breathing. This, at least, made sense to him.

But to the others… it didn’t.

The soldiers looked terrified, their eyes wide and their movements stiff. These weren’t seasoned warriors from worlds like his. They hadn’t spent their youth fighting mobs in the dark or holding weapons like lifelines. These were people trained for war, not for monsters. They didn’t understand that spiders could leap out of shadows like this. And Tommy—well, he felt a little guilty for how natural it all felt to him. Just a little.

He scanned the field again, the hairs on his arms standing on edge as he looked for anything out of place. There were no flickering purple particles in the air. No endermen, at least. That made him breathe easier. Endermen never played fair.

They cleaned up the last few spiders with some coordination, swords finding their marks quicker now. As the final body dissolved, Tommy stood quietly, watching the startled faces of the soldiers as they stared at the empty grass where monsters should have left corpses. The disbelief in their expressions struck him.

He looked out into the field again—no zombies. No skeletons. No creepers. Just spiders.

That wasn’t right.

He hummed, low and thoughtful, as General Avalos approached, blood on his sleeves but otherwise composed. "No dead. Two injured," the man reported, voice clipped.

Tommy nodded slowly, eyes still fixed on the fields beyond the camp.

Something pricked at the back of his mind. Was this because of the potion? Had the act of brewing stirred something up? If just one round of potion-making brought this on… what would happen if he did something more? Enchanting? A nether portal? What would it wake up?

His thoughts spiraled before he could stop them. Was this happening elsewhere too? Or only where he went?

A chill that had nothing to do with the night air slid down his spine. If the latter was true—if he was bringing this with him—what would happen to the cities and villages who didn’t have the soldiers, the experience, the weapons to fend off the dark?

He didn’t want to think about that. But he knew he had to.

They went through one more wave of spiders before the night truly began to settle. The air was sharp with cold and tension, the wind whispering through the tall, frostbitten grass like a warning they couldn’t quite understand. Some men managed to sleep, sprawled out uneasily with swords still near at hand, while others kept watch, their backs straight, eyes flicking toward every rustle of grass or crack of frozen branch. Tommy laid beside his horse, a patchy brown thing with long lashes and a habit of huffing like it was unimpressed by everything around it.

Potts, the horse, didn’t seem to care much about Tommy unless he had food in hand. Earlier, Tommy had slipped him a golden carrot when no one was looking, and now the horse stood nearby, eyeing him with vague interest, clearly wondering if another treat might appear. Tommy stared up at the night sky, drawing lines between the unfamiliar stars. There were constellations here he couldn’t name, and that made something in his chest ache. He didn’t like not knowing.

Eventually, sleep took him in brief fits, the kind that never truly rests your bones. He was pulled awake by the quiet, purposeful presence of General Avalos, who gently nudged his shoulder and offered a hand to help him stand. Tommy took it without a word. Potts was already saddled and grumpy about it, shaking frost from his mane with an indignant toss of his head.

The sun was beginning to rise, casting a pale gold hue over the dead grass and turning their breath to mist. There was a restless tension in the camp. Soldiers moved like they were expecting the ground to open up again at any moment. Their eyes flicked toward the treeline, toward the shadows. Tommy noticed the tight grips on weapons, the way some kept glancing behind them. They hadn’t shaken off the night’s fear. Not completely.

But Tommy… he felt calm. More than calm, even. Something inside him was at peace. Maybe it was the battle, maybe it was the magic—he couldn’t say. But he felt good. Even happy. He didn’t show it, of course. He kept his expression composed as they rode in silence, his boots light in the stirrups and his thoughts heavier than they’d been in days.

At one point, they passed through a field of wildflowers, frost still clinging to the edges of blue petals. Bees darted lazily through the cold air, bumbling between blossoms. Tommy smiled softly. These bees were so small compared to the ones back home. Not blocky or puffed up, no sharp stingers twitching in constant threat. He wondered if they stung as easily. Maybe they were just here to work, like the rest of them.

But the peace was shattered as they crested the last ridge before the main camp. The smell hit first—thick, gagging rot that made his stomach churn. The sharp contrast from the quiet ride made it worse. The camp was in chaos. People ran back and forth, voices shouting orders, and medics rushed between bodies. Some were carrying the injured into tents. Others were already stained with blood, ash, or worse. Tommy dismounted Potts before the horse had even fully stopped, his boots slamming into frozen earth. General Avalos followed close behind, his hand already on his blade.

Tommy pushed through the chaos, his heart pounding harder with every step. He was searching for a sign—any sign—of pink. A flicker of red and white. Anything to tell him that Techno was safe. But before he could find it, something lunged from the side—a half-decayed figure with hollow eyes and jaw hanging loose. Rotting flesh was the only thing he registered before steel flashed beside him.

General Avalos cut it down in a single movement, blade slicing clean through as the body crumpled, disintegrating into ash and nothingness. Tommy stared, not blinking. His stomach twisted with guilt. They had gotten there before midday. They had hurried, forced horses and men through the cold and the dark.

And yet... they were still too late.

Tommy moved quickly through the maze of tents, his boots pounding against the frozen, muddied ground. Every few steps, another groan signaled a rotting corpse lurching toward him. His blade met flesh and bone again and again, each strike efficient, instinctive. He barely blinked when the bodies collapsed, disintegrating into ash and air. There was no time to hesitate. No time to mourn.

But he was slower than he should’ve been. He knew it. The wings—they dragged at him, clipped awkwardly against the tent flaps, snagged on the strings that held canvas down. They made tight turns harder, quick dodges clumsier. He cursed them under his breath as he pushed on. During his time in this world, he'd done his best to treat them like they were a part of him, tried to remember what his Phil had done, how he’d moved, how he’d folded and carried himself with them. Tommy tried to imitate it, and tried to fold his own wings in the same way. But they weren’t Philza’s wings. And Tommy wasn’t Philza .

He huffed, forcing himself into the next row of tents, scanning for any hint of pink hair. Somewhere in this chaos, Techno had to be fighting too. Tommy wouldn’t believe anything else.

He peered into tents one after another, the flaps heavy with frost and stained with blood. Some were empty, others held medics elbow-deep in field dressings, their faces pale and sweating. Still no Arctica General. Still no Techno.

His steps faltered.

Bodies lay outside the tents—soldiers caught by the first wave, their armor shattered, some missing limbs. He forced himself to keep walking. He didn’t look. That was a lie—he did. His eyes clung to the shapes, to the half-familiar poses of people who had once stood straight and proud. His fingers tightened around his sword.

How long had it been since he’d walked through a battlefield like this?

How many names had he buried? How many he hadn’t been able to?

He blinked, and suddenly the rot was replaced by gunpowder, thick and acrid. Smoke curled up from fires he couldn’t see, loud shouts echoing in the back of his mind. For a heartbeat, he wasn’t in this world. He was in another—dirtier, louder, younger. He heard the crack of something exploding, saw flashes of pixelated hearts bleeding red, a scoreboard dropping to zero.

He doubled over for a moment, bile threatening to rise in his throat. His breath hitched. His chest burned. Somewhere, someone screamed—not in pain, but in fury. He straightened with a gasp.

No. Not now. Not now, you bastard brain.

He forced it down. Swallowed it like poison. Now wasn’t the time to relive things he couldn’t fix. There was a Technoblade to be found, and he wasn’t going to let memories stop him. Not again. He ground his teeth, knuckles pale around his sword’s hilt.

The war had never left him. He had just learned to move forward anyway.

Another groan. Another corpse. Another kill.

He didn’t know when he stopped actively looking for Techno. Maybe it was somewhere between saving a boy who reminded him too much of a younger version of himself and driving a blade through a zombie with no arms. Somewhere in that chaos, the search had ended—and Techno had found him instead.

Tommy would’ve liked to say that the smell of rot hadn’t shifted in his mind, hadn’t turned into the acrid sting of gunpowder. That the shuffle of the undead didn’t sound like boots on battlefield dirt, or that his heart hadn’t tried to flee from his chest when Techno appeared beside him and struck down a zombie with one clean swing. He would’ve liked to say his brain hadn’t screamed at him to run, to find Tubbo and drag him away from the blast radius—even if there was no Tubbo to save in this world. But that would be a lie.

His throat had gone tight, the air dry and choking with phantom soot. His stomach twisted, bile scraping at his insides like it wanted out. But there was no time to stop. No time to crawl into a tent and let himself be knocked out until the panic passed. So he did what he always did—he survived it. He swallowed it down. He kept going.

He fought.

He moved in sync with Techno, blades swinging, the rhythm of battle familiar in a way that hurt more than it helped. The weight of the sword in his hand, the tension in his shoulders, the way Techno shifted to cover him without needing to speak—it was muscle memory. It was comfort laced in pain.

And then, silence.

The sudden absence of groaning and clashing metal made the ringing in his ears louder. It felt like someone had pulled a lid off a boiling pot. He staggered away from the last corpse, from Techno, from the battlefield. His body moved on instinct as he doubled over and threw up behind a half-collapsed supply tent. The acidic burn crawled up his throat and splattered the frozen ground.

He could hear Techno’s footsteps behind him, slow and solid. He didn’t want to turn around. Didn’t want to see what kind of face Techno might be making. He lifted a hand behind him, shaky but firm.

"M’good," he muttered hoarsely, then gagged again, his body not listening to his words.

He wasn’t good. But he was here. And that had to be enough for now.

They didn’t speak much. Techno kept glancing at him, quiet, the sharp blue of his eyes narrowing every so often with that same expression Tommy had learned to read like a second language—worry. But Tommy ignored him. He couldn’t handle it. Not now.

They walked past lines of medics stitching together shredded skin and stabilizing the injured with whatever rations they had left. One or two soldiers sat stiffly on the ground, staring blankly into space like their minds had gone somewhere far away. He passed Solmere soldiers who gawked at the blood soaking Tommy’s hands and clothes, clearly unsure what to make of it. They hadn’t had a king who fought like this in their lifetime, Tommy realized. A king who bled and bruised and hacked down monsters beside them.

He didn’t care what they thought.

Arctica soldiers nodded to Techno, quiet signs of respect exchanged without needing words. They passed bodies, covered with frost-dusted blankets, and if Tommy picked up the pace just a little, Techno didn’t comment. The silence between them was thick and heavy, filled with too much unsaid.

The main command tent loomed ahead, a mass of dark canvas with frost clinging stubbornly to its seams. Not snow, not yet—it wasn’t cold enough—but close. Death clung to the camp like frost.

Inside the tent, General Avalos was pacing. His eyes were wild and underslept, and his coat was stained nearly black with blood and dirt. Philza sat off to the side, carefully cleaning and binding TapL’s arm. The wound was wrapped already, but the soaked-through bandages said enough. Around them, generals from all the allied nations sat in grim silence.

General Avalos looked up when they entered. He crossed the tent in three long strides and immediately pulled Tommy to the side, checking him for wounds with quick, clinical hands. Tommy didn’t protest. He didn’t have the energy.

He let the general fuss, too exhausted—too hollowed out—to push him away. After a moment, Avalos relented and nodded toward the spot beside Phil and TapL. Tommy sat down hard. His legs weren’t shaking, but only because he had nothing left in him to shake.

Phil looked at him with wide, pale eyes, worry etched deep into every line of his face. Tommy didn’t return the look. He stared forward, hands loose in his lap, stained red and starting to tremble as the adrenaline wore off.

Someone was talking.

He blinked and turned his head slightly. His ears picked up noise, voices, but they were far. Muffled. He could feel himself respond once, twice, a sentence or two that sounded like they came from his mouth but didn’t feel like they belonged to him.

He focused on breathing. It was the only thing keeping him anchored. Inhale. Exhale. He couldn’t let his mind wander. If he did, he’d see a different battlefield. Hear the wrong explosions. Call out names that didn’t belong here.

General Avalos was recounting the night—the spiders, the unexpected wave, how the men had barely slept but pushed forward. Techno spoke next. Calm, clear, recounting the first wave of the undead, how they breached the outer perimeter and how the front lines had held just long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

Tommy listened. Sort of. He caught the shape of the story but none of the color. All he could really feel was how cold his hands were. How loud the blood in his ears still was. And how deep the dread sat in his chest, unmovable, like a stone in his lungs.

He was moved into another tent, someone—a medic probably—came to check on him. Their hands were gentle but firm, pressing against his skin to feel for bruises or broken bones, their voice low and steady, but Tommy barely heard them. A soldier dressed in green, maybe from Arctica or some smaller house allied to it, handed him a damp cloth. Tommy took it slowly, stared at it for a moment like he didn’t understand what it was for, then began wiping at his hands.

The blood had dried sticky, the cloth didn’t do much, but he scrubbed anyway, trying not to think about where it had come from. It truly took him a moment to even acknowledge that he was in a medical tent. The canvas above him was off-white and stained, smelling faintly of alcohol and rot. He glanced around. Soldiers from all over sat or lay wounded. A few groaned. Some were dead quiet. Medics weaved through them, sleeves rolled, uniforms stained. A girl with her arm in a sling wept quietly into her coat. A boy clutched a sword he hadn’t let go of since the fighting stopped.

Then his breath caught in his throat.

A medic walked by—tall, dressed in blue, of course they were—and their silhouette made his chest tighten. They were too tall, their skin a mix of pale and dark gray, their horns catching the flickering lamplight just right. Tommy’s heart stuttered. He didn’t wait. Didn’t breathe. He got up, stumbling slightly from exhaustion, and pushed out of the tent before his brain could decide if it was Ranboo or just someone who looked like them.

He didn’t want to know.

He walked blindly at first, one foot in front of the other, until he found a red canvas tent—Solmere colors, if he was right. He ducked inside without asking. It was mostly empty, likely a supply or resting tent for their soldiers. There was a cot with a blanket folded neatly over it, and Tommy lay down, not bothering to remove his boots. His limbs felt heavy.

He stared at the red canvas above him, blinking slowly. It swam in and out of focus, shifting shades. In his tired, frayed mind, the red began to ripple and move like blood. He blinked again, and it was like the fabric bled. His throat tightened.

Bodies lay on it, in his mind’s eye. People he had killed. People he had tried to save. People who were already dead and some who weren’t—not yet, but soon. Their eyes open. Watching him.

He shut his own eyes, breathing in shallow bursts. He didn’t want to think. Didn’t want to dream. He just lay there, quiet, hoping that if he stayed still long enough, everything would stop spinning around him.

He didn’t sleep. Not really. But he stayed.

Not much time had passed when he heard more noise outside. It filtered in through the red canvas like the echo of a dream, muffled and distorted. He blinked, willing his senses to make sense of it, his vision clinging to the red above him until it stopped swimming. Just a tent. Just red fabric. Just light. No blood, no bodies. He exhaled sharply, grounding himself with the rhythm of his breath. In. Out. The ghosts stayed at bay for now.

He sat up slowly, joints aching like he’d been buried under the weight of himself. Something buzzed in his skull—quiet, annoying, like a fly circling memory. He stood and swayed, feeling more alive than he had in hours. Not better. Not okay. But alive. His skin didn’t quite fit right and the edges of the world still felt too bright, too sharp, but he could move. That had to be enough.

He walked to the exit and paused at the edge of the tent flap. Outside, the world buzzed louder—movement, voices, boots in dirt. He couldn’t make out the words. His mind felt like it was still catching up, trying to assemble itself in the right order. Prime, what was wrong with him? They were zombies. Zombies. Not even real people. Not clever enemies who could bait or beg or betray. Just mindless husks. So why had he—

Tommy shoved the thought away and stepped into the sun.

It was just past midday. The sky looked too blue for how much blood he’d seen today. Time had slipped past him like water, and now the camp was pulsing with energy again. Soldiers moved in tight groups, some alert, some tense. The path to the main tent was mostly blocked, guarded with bodies more than force. He veered off to the side, spotting a soldier in red—Solmere colors.

“What is all this about?” he asked, voice still rough.

The soldier turned, and for a moment just stared. Then he dipped his head into a shallow bow. Tommy sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He hated that. Hated the way people treated him like glass or god.

“There’s a rumor they caught the Necromancer, Your Sanctity—”

Tommy didn’t wait. He turned on his heel, the last word catching behind his ribs like a splinter. Sanctity. Ugh. He shoved past bodies toward the main tent, ignoring the protests, the startled gasps when people recognized him. The crowd thickened the closer he got—too many bodies for the size of the structure, the air hot and tight with breath and sweat. He forced his way through, parting the sea with elbows and exhaustion.

He made it to the center, to the eye of the storm.

“Your Sanctity, where were you? We tried looking for you—”

He cut the speaker off with a sharp wave of his hand. His gaze was already locked onto the boy in the middle.

Young. Wrapped in a purple cloak far too large for his frame. He looked frightened, confused—defensive but tired. And small. He didn’t scream ancient magic or forbidden knowledge. He looked like someone who didn’t belong here. Someone who’d walked into the wrong room at the worst possible time.

“That’s not him,” Tommy said flatly.

The room stilled. Eyes snapped to him. Silence hung in the air like a held breath.

The boy looked up, relief and frustration mingling on his face. “That’s what I’ve been saying—!”

A man in yellow—Tommy didn’t bother identifying him beyond that—cut the boy off. “Why do you think that, Your Sanctity?”

Tommy wanted to laugh. It came out as a scoff. “Why does everyone say it like it’s gonna burn their tongue?” he muttered.

But how could he explain? How could he tell them that the boy in front of them was untouched by death, by the sickly aura that clung to the real necromancer’s work? That there was a feeling in the air when magic like that was close—like the world holding its breath wrong. This boy was just… a kid. Scared. Alive.

He didn’t have to explain.

Techno’s voice rose behind him. “He is right. This isn’t the Necromancer.”

Tommy felt a sharp, unwanted twist in his gut—pride, recognition. He hated that. Hated that it still mattered what Techno thought. Hated that his chest fluttered at the agreement, even when everything in him said it shouldn’t.

This wasn’t his Techno. And even if it was, he didn’t want to feel good just because he’d backed him up. Not anymore.

The room lost it, voices rising in a storm of speculation—something about the cloak, the magic, the implications—but Tommy wasn’t present enough in his own mind to truly care. His thoughts still lagged behind his body, a beat too slow, half-floating as if the world around him had gone slightly underwater. Still, he moved, instinct guiding him through the thick air of tension and noise. 

He focused on the boy—the one at the center of all this. He looked far too small, too young, sitting under the weight of the tension in the tent. Tommy forced himself to soften. He squared his shoulders and made his expression open, calm, and nonthreatening. It was harder than it should’ve been. Every movement took more effort than usual, but he pushed forward.

Quietly, he stepped closer to the boy and placed a hand lightly on his arm. He guided him to sit on a small stool by the center, away from the ring of soldiers and leaders. That action alone was enough to hush the room. The rustle of shifting uniforms and the tight breaths of officers held tension, but for a moment, silence took hold.

He crouched beside the boy, knees protesting. It felt a little too familiar, too much like past scenes burned into his memory. He swallowed hard and forced his voice to come out soft. “Can you explain what happened?”

The boy nodded quickly, his limbs twitching with leftover panic. Tommy noted how thin he was, and the tremble in his hands—either very young or malnourished, maybe both. He could almost see the outline of every bone under his skin.

"I was on the outskirts," the boy started, his voice trembling but growing stronger with every word. "There were the dead, and one got me—bit my arm. I think it would've… I don't know. But then a soldier came. Not from the unit I was with. He wore purple-grey armor, not like the others. He took the thing down like it was nothing. Then he gave me his cloak and told me to head east. Said people would find me there. I think… I think he was in a rush."

Tommy nodded slowly. The boy glanced up, unsure.

"And you got lost?"

The boy nodded again. "Yeah. I thought I was going east but I ended up here. They found me walking alone. Then they saw the cloak and—"

Tommy hummed low in his throat, turning slightly to glance back at the others in the tent. He could see the suspicion still lingering in their eyes, but a few were starting to reconsider. He turned back. “How did this soldier look?”

The boy frowned, closing his eyes like he was digging deep into his memory. “He was around your age, I think. Blonde… or maybe brunette? The sun was in my eyes. But purple eyes! Bright, like—like neon almost!” His own widened as he remembered. “Oh! And he had these—” he pointed to the sides of his head with both hands, fingers curling upward like little horns, “antennae, I think. He was a hybrid of some kind.”

Murmurs rippled through the tent at that detail. Purple eyes. Antennae. No soldier was known to wear purple, and hybrids were mostly affiliated with the Arctica Empire—but none matched that description.

Tommy’s expression flickered. Purple eyes. He stared at the black canvas wall, suddenly seeing a very different face from his past, smug and sharp and quick-witted. Antennae.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Tommy muttered under his breath, eyes widening, exasperation clawing through the fog in his head. 

Purpled. 

Chapter Text

The tent had been emptied by force minutes earlier, soldiers and officials ushered out until only a handful remained. Tommy stood near the center, feeling the cold seep into his clothes, but it barely registered. The swirl of thoughts about Purpled in his mind was forcefully pushed down into something simple, instinctual. He knew if he let himself think too much—really think about it—he would spiral. So instead he focused on the basics: breath in, breath out, listen, move. Nothing more complicated than that.

The boy sat nearby, small and brittle-looking even now that he was eating from a bowl of warm porridge. Thirteen, Tommy thought. He’s thirteen and he looks like a strong wind could knock him over. Malnourished, probably. Another thing to add to the growing pile of worries he was trying to carry without dropping.

A Solmere soldier approached quietly, not interrupting the conversation happening between Avalos and Techno but standing close enough to catch Tommy’s attention. "My sanctity," he said lowly, respectfully, tapping two fingers against his forehead in greeting. Tommy resisted the urge to grimace at the title and nodded for him to continue.

"I have reason to believe he is part of a nomadic cult." The soldier pointed subtly to the back of his hand, where a small black symbol was tattooed near the wrist. "That boy has the same one."

Tommy frowned, glancing back toward the kid, who seemed entirely focused on his meal, small hands trembling slightly around the wooden bowl.

"They don’t give their children names until they earn them," the soldier added, voice clipped and professional. "Very anti-hybrids. If you're not human enough, they throw you out." He hesitated, before offering something quieter, more personal. "So was I. As said, they’re... very anti-hybrid."

Tommy looked at him properly then, noticing for the first time the small horns curling back into the soldier’s hair and the slim tail curling around his boot. He didn’t bother trying to figure out what hybrid he was—it didn’t matter. It never should have mattered. He huffed softly under his breath, feeling something bitter rise up in his chest.

He waved the soldier off with a muttered request for a blanket and made his way back toward the kid.

He crouched down carefully, letting his posture stay loose, non-threatening. "Do you think he’s still nearby?" he asked quietly.

The boy glanced up at him with wide, uncertain eyes, porridge halfway to his mouth. "I don't know," he said, voice small, almost fearful. He curled in slightly on himself like he expected to be punished for not having the right answer.

Tommy's heart twisted painfully. He forced himself to smile, something gentle, something that might not scare the kid off. "That's alright. You did good."

He paused, considering, then asked, "Do you have a name?"

The boy shook his head, a sharp, jerky motion. No name. No real place to belong. Kicked out for something he couldn’t control.

Tommy sat back on his heels for a moment, staring at the red-stained canvas of the tent wall, feeling the weight of the day pressing down heavier on his shoulders.

He needed to find Purpled. He needed to—no, he reminded himself, this wasn’t the Purpled he knew. This wasn’t home. Whatever 'home' even meant anymore.

Tommy sighed but still managed a small smile for the kid. He couldn’t do much, but he could at least offer that much. A moment later, the same Solmere soldier from before returned with a soft, worn blanket tucked under one arm. He knelt and gently draped it around the boy's thin shoulders. The boy blinked up at him in surprise before clutching the fabric tightly against himself, the bowl of porridge abandoned for now.

Tommy felt something twist in his chest again, something too complicated to name. Before he could stop himself, he reached out and ruffled the kid’s hair—light, quick, a little clumsy. The same way the Commander used to do when Tommy had been younger. When things had been simpler. His brain supplied the memory unbidden, a flash of a rough hand on his head and a gruff voice calling him a good lad.

The boy looked up at him with wide, solemn eyes, full of a trust that Tommy hadn’t earned. Not really. He wasn’t someone anyone should look up to. He wasn't a hero, wasn't a saint, no matter how much Solmere tried to make him one. He had too much blood on his hands for that.

Still, he smiled, because it was easier than trying to explain all of that to a thirteen-year-old who had lost everything.

He was just pushing himself to his feet when Techno and General Avalos approached. Their steps were careful, measured, like they knew any sudden moves might shatter the tentative peace in the tent. Tommy watched them kneel beside the boy, voices soft as they asked if he could point out where he had met the man in purple. They were careful—careful not to say "necromancer," careful not to overwhelm him.

The boy listened, licking his lips nervously, then lifted a small hand and pointed off in a general direction. "There’s a forest nearby," he said, voice faint.

Tommy’s frown deepened. The nearest forest was a few hours' walk from camp—three, maybe four, depending on how fast you moved. He glanced at the kid’s bare feet, noticed the half-healed cuts and the way he sat like his whole body hurt. How much had he walked to get here? How long had he been alone?

His fists clenched at his sides, but he didn’t say anything. What could he say?

Techno and Avalos exchanged a look, silent but communicating all the same. Tommy stepped back slightly, giving them space while the soldier who had been looking after the kid knelt again, murmuring something soft and comforting in a voice too low for Tommy to hear.

They all drifted a little ways from the boy, standing near the tent’s flap where the sun bled gold through the canvas.

Tommy caught the slight frown on Avalos’ face, mirrored in a tighter version on Techno’s. It unsettled him. They were thinking something he wasn't privy to, something that made them wary. He shifted his weight, restless, but held his tongue. They couldn’t do anything now except wait, wait and prepare.

Avalos cleared his throat softly. "Your sanctity?" he said, turning his full attention to Tommy. "I think you should go rest."

Tommy opened his mouth, already ready to argue—he didn’t need to rest, he wasn’t a child, he was fine—but Techno cut him off.

"He’s right. You should rest," Techno said firmly, and this time Tommy caught the undertone there: you’re not as fine as you think you are.

Tommy's frown deepened, his shoulders hunching slightly. He hated being treated like he was fragile. Like he couldn’t handle it. But some stubborn part of him also recognized the truth in their words. He wasn’t at his best. Not after the battlefield. Not after the tent. Not after the memories clawing their way back up inside him.

He exhaled slowly, a little shaky, and forced himself to nod. Fighting them on this wouldn’t accomplish anything. He could be stubborn later.

"Alright," he muttered. "Alright."

He threw one last glance at the boy—wrapped in his blanket, porridge forgotten again, eyes following them anxiously—and Tommy promised himself he’d check on him after he rested. Just a few hours. Then he’d find Purpled. He had to.

Even if it wasn’t the Purpled he used to know, he still had to try.

Tommy was going to rest. He was! But every time he tried to turn toward the command tents, his gaze caught on the wounded still being carried in, the quiet weeping of those tending to the dead, the chaos that hadn't yet settled into something manageable. His hands curled into fists at his sides. He couldn’t just walk away. Not yet.

He told himself it would be just a little more—he would help for a bit longer, and then he would rest. Just a little longer.

Before long he had thrown himself into the work, hauling crates of medical supplies from one black-canvas tent to another, the white sigils marking them bright against the gloom. He forced himself to memorize the layout as he went, making a mental map of the camp’s veins and arteries, keeping busy, keeping moving.

He nearly tripped half a dozen times. His wings—still too new to feel natural—caught on tent flaps and poles when he wasn't careful. Tommy cursed under his breath every time he had to awkwardly untangle himself. Months he had been stuck with the bloody things—you’d think he would have learned by now how to move properly. Apparently not.

Once, he properly fell, hitting the ground hard enough to bruise. Before he could scramble up, a hand reached down toward him. "Y’alright, mate?" 

Tommy blinked up and found Philza offering him a smile, one hand outstretched. Grumbling, Tommy accepted it, letting the older winged man haul him to his feet. His cheeks burned. Great. Fantastic. Exactly what he needed—falling on his ass like an idiot in front of him.

Phil didn’t tease, though. He just grabbed one of the supply crates himself, and from that point on, the two of them moved together, running supplies where they were needed most. When the crates finally ran dry, they didn’t stop. Instead, they drifted toward the tents and started patching minor wounds. Tommy knew he could probably handle bigger injuries—he wasn't bad with field medicine after everything he had lived through—but he also knew enough to stay out of the real healers' way. Doctors were terrifying when crossed, and he had no interest in getting barked at by someone wielding a scalpel.

So Tommy stuck to the minor cuts and shallow punctures, working quietly alongside Phil. It was...almost nice, the rhythm of it. The simple focus.

But after a while, he caught Phil watching him out of the corner of his eye. Not casually, either. Not a glance. Phil was studying him.

Tommy finished wrapping a bandage around a soldier’s arm—someone in Arctica blue—and turned to meet that look head-on. Phil didn’t even try to hide it. His expression was intent, the same sharp calculation Tommy had seen in his Phil’s face when he was trying to decide whether it was worth chasing a charged creeper for its head—or when he was trying to figure out if Techno was hiding something.

It was the look of someone putting pieces together. The look of someone suspicious.

Tommy forced a small, almost sheepish smile. Had he done something to deserve that? His wings twitched involuntarily, and he sighed quietly through his nose. Was it them ? Was it the way they moved wrong, maybe—too stiff, too self-conscious? Was it the whole saint thing? Prime knew he hated it enough.

He tried not to let his discomfort show as he helped a second soldier wrap up a gashed leg. Phil was still looking. Measuring him.

An ugly thought struck Tommy like a punch to the gut.

Maybe Phil could tell . Tell he wasn’t from around here. Tell that he didn’t belong to those wings. Tell that they hadn't been with him his whole life, that he was a patchwork thing stitched together wrong. He swallowed thickly, trying to push it away. This wasn’t the time for spiraling.

Wiping his hands off on a clean cloth, Tommy forced himself into casual conversation. Light jokes about the medical staff being scarier than the battlefield. A few comments about the weather. Phil chuckled once or twice, but his eyes never quite lost their focus.

The paranoia gnawed at Tommy’s brain like a hungry rat.

He had come out of nowhere, hadn’t he? Had walked into this world like a ghost, draped in prophecy he hadn’t asked for, crowned in names he hadn’t earned. Saint-king . Sanctity . He hated every title they laid at his feet. It was all a lie.

Maybe Phil knew . Maybe Phil guessed . After all, Phil was an Emperor—ruler of the Arctica Empire. Spies weren’t exactly something Arctica lacked. Tommy met Phil’s suspicious eyes with a sharp, questioning look of his own. If Phil thought he could pick Tommy apart, Tommy would just have to make damn sure he didn’t give him the chance.

Maybe he was overthinking this. Maybe he wasn’t.

Either way, he couldn’t afford to slip up.

Techno was joined by Philza as the sun began to bleed into the horizon, dyeing the clouds in bruised reds and orange fire. They didn’t speak at first. They didn’t need to. The battlefield had gone still for now—only the quiet shifting of tents and the low murmur of tired soldiers moved around them. Techno sat cross-legged, elbows resting on his knees, watching the sky fade while the blood dried on his armor. Phil smelled like antiseptic and dried herbs—sharp, clean, medicinal. Techno didn’t need to ask what he’d been doing. He could picture it easily: Phil crouched beside the wounded, wrapping bandages with a gentleness that didn't quite match the deadly sharpness of his wings.

“Curious, isn’t it?” Phil said at last, his voice low but calm.

Techno turned to glance at him, raising an eyebrow. “What is?”

Phil lifted a hand and gestured vaguely at the world around them. “This. All this. Magic.”

There was a pause, and then, more pointedly, “Solmere’s King.”

Techno tilted his head, considering. He could only nod. It was curious. No matter how many wars he’d fought or how many realms he’d seen collapse into dust, there were still things that made him pause. Still things that crept up from the blind spot of his worldview and demanded to be reconsidered. A boy crowned by prophecy. Wings too big for his frame. Light bends oddly around him. Magic responds like an old dog to its master.

“You spoke with him?” Techno asked, and Phil nodded without hesitation.

Techno frowned, eyes flicking toward the dying sun again. “We sent a small unit into the forest,” he said, motioning with his chin to the west, where the horses were being watered and the edge of the forest loomed beyond the open fields. “Hoping that bastard in purple might still be there. It’s been hours, though. He’s probably gone.”

Phil only hummed in acknowledgment, settling into silence again.

Techno was grateful. The quiet with Phil had always been easy. Over the past decade, they had led the Arctica Empire together—Phil the Emperor, Techno the General. The weight of those titles hung lighter between them than they did on paper. The world knew them as leaders, conquerors even. But here, at the edge of a battlefield, they were just two old soldiers watching the sky.

Their peace didn’t last long.

One of Solmere’s generals—Avalos—approached. Techno had come to respect him. It wasn’t easy to serve one king and then another, especially when the monarchy had shifted into a theocracy overnight. The man carried the weariness of someone who had spent too long trying to keep his people together with words he didn’t fully believe in.

They spoke in low voices. Techno could feel Phil’s presence nearby, as well as the nearby officers who pretended not to listen while staying well within earshot.

General Avalos’ words made his frown deepen with each passing sentence. Eventually, Techno turned toward Phil and motioned him over. “When was the last time you saw the Saint-King?”

Phil’s brow creased, confused. “What?”

“When did you last see him?” Techno clarified.

Phil hesitated, searching his memory. “Maybe two hours ago? We were helping patch up the wounded. He left before I did—said he was going to check if anyone else needed help.”

Avalos made a small sound of realization. “About two hours ago is when we sent the scout group into the forest…”

There was a shift around them, a ripple in the calm. Chatter rose, voices lifting in scattered concern. Techno’s hand flexed instinctively toward the hilt of his blade. “Not the worst news yet, I’m guessing,” he muttered, just as another soldier jogged up to them, breathless.

“General Gallardo is here,” the soldier said. “Says he has news from the capital. Urgent. Says he needs to speak to the King directly.”

Avalos’ mouth tightened. There was something in the way he set his jaw—Techno recognized that expression. He knew Gallardo. Maybe too well. 

Another voice called for him—one of his own officers this time. Techno turned toward the sound, expecting more routine updates, but the man looked uneasy. “Uh, General Blade?” the officer began, voice too high to be calm. “There’s a horse missing.”

Techno narrowed his eyes. “A horse?”

“Yeah. Not sure when it went missing, sir, but—it’s gone. The stablehands just noticed.”

Techno opened his mouth to tell him to relax. That a single horse in a camp this size wasn’t exactly news. The officer swallowed. “It’s Carl, sir. Carl’s the one that’s missing.”

Techno stilled. The silence around him felt heavier now, more brittle.

Carl didn’t go missing.

Not unless someone took him.

His jaw clenched. Slowly, deliberately, he stood to his full height, the creak of his armor echoing faintly. Phil and Avalos both looked at him, understanding blooming in their expressions. The boy was gone. Carl was gone. And there were too many pieces suddenly clicking into place.

"Get me Gallardo," Techno said, voice like iron. "And send scouts south. Now."

General Gallardo was already dismounting by the time Techno approached. The man hadn’t changed much from the last time they met: longish brown hair, worn but well-kept armor, and eyes too sharp to belong to anyone who hadn’t spent a lifetime navigating both war and politics. Gallardo scanned the camp with narrowed eyes, his frown deepening when he failed to spot the one person he clearly expected to be there. “Where is his Sanctity?” he asked, not yet raising his voice but demanding all the same. His gaze turned to Avalos, expecting an answer.

But before Avalos could speak, Gallardo cut him off, voice edged with quiet urgency. "Is he missing?"

Avalos hesitated, jaw tight, and nodded once.

They had been walking to meet Gallardo for some minutes, and during that time, Avalos had given Techno a brief account of the man. He had described Gallardo with a scoff and a roll of his eyes: a "pretentious prick," and "the Saint-King’s most trusted dog." Techno had listened without comment, letting Avalos get the bitterness off his chest, but now, face to face, he could see the exaggeration. Gallardo didn’t seem pretentious. He seemed deeply, quietly tired—and more importantly, concerned.

"We believe he took a horse," Techno said, stepping in before the tension could escalate. "And followed the team we sent to look for the Necromancer."

Gallardo hummed thoughtfully, eyes narrowing. He didn't ask why. He only asked, "How far ahead would he be?"

"Two hours, maybe more," Avalos answered, arms crossed.

Gallardo allowed himself a brief, frustrated smile before schooling his face into something appropriately serious. His next words were clipped, decisive. "Then I’ll follow."

Avalos straightened, visibly irritated. "We’ve already sent scouts south."

Gallardo barely looked at him. He was checking the straps on his saddle, already preparing to mount again. He raised a hand toward Avalos, dismissive but not cruel. "This isn't a matter of preference. I need to speak with His Sanctity. It’s an emergency."

Techno watched them carefully, piecing together what hadn’t been said aloud. There was history between these two, clearly. Some old wound or rivalry. Avalos' clipped tone and Gallardo's careful restraint told him more than their words did. And yet, despite whatever stood between them, Gallardo seemed focused on only one thing.

Solmere’s king.

Techno sighed through his nose. "I’ll follow too," he said. "Your King took a horse. He took my horse."

Gallardo glanced at him, and for the first time, smiled for real—just a flicker, but it reached his eyes. He ignored Avalos’ increasingly indignant muttering and gave Techno a respectful nod.

They both knew what they were riding into might be nothing.

But they also both knew it might be everything.

Tommy was a little bit impulsive. Just a tiny bit. Okay—maybe a lot impulsive, but this was not the time for details. He had a mission now, and second thoughts had no place in it.

Carl—Tommy would recognize Carl anywhere—hadn’t taken too much convincing. Just one golden carrot, and the horse had practically knelt in allegiance. Tommy grinned as he rode, the reins in his hands loose and familiar. The Arctican cavalry fed their steeds well, sure, but Techno's Carl was a different breed altogether. In any world, Tommy guessed, Carl had a taste for the finer things. Back in the SMP, his Techno wouldn’t have fed his animals anything less than enchanted golden apples if he could help it. He expected the same here. Carl was royalty, really.

The sun had begun to dip westward, its glare sharp against the right side of Tommy’s face. He kept his distance from the actual scouting team ahead, staying just out of sight, the sound of hoofbeats muffled in the dry soil. Carl ambled at a calm, unbothered pace. Tommy offered him another carrot, and the horse took it gratefully, lips brushing Tommy's palm in a familiar ticklish way. Tommy scratched behind his ear affectionately. "Good boy," he murmured.

When the treeline appeared, Tommy tugged gently on the reins and brought Carl to a halt. The team was already entering the forest—dark oak, from the looks of it. Shadows pooled between the thick trunks and low-hanging branches. He watched them go, waited five full minutes until their movement was gone from sight, then nudged Carl eastward.

He dismounted in a small clearing just outside the main path. There, he tied Carl loosely to a tree, making sure he had some shade, a good view of the trail, and two more golden carrots. "You’ll be fine," he said, petting his snout. Carl blinked at him slowly in what Tommy chose to interpret as wisdom and encouragement.

His hands moved automatically as he checked his inventory. His armor shimmered faintly in the dim light as he equipped it piece by piece. It wasn’t a full set, but half of enchanted netherite was better than nothing. His fingers hesitated briefly over the armor they had given him back in Solmere—he stored it. It wasn’t that he was ungrateful, but this felt better. Right. Real.

He adjusted a leather strap across his chest to carry his sword. Netherite, sleek and heavy and familiar in his grip. There was no proof that this "Purpled" would recognize him—not this version of him, not in this place. But the boy had said the soldier who helped him wore purple-grey armor, and sometimes, just sometimes, Netherite shimmered like that in the sun. Enough to make someone pause. Enough to be a lead.

He exhaled hard through his nose and stepped into the forest.

The air changed immediately. Cooler, denser. The trees here were ancient things, with trunks thicker than houses and branches that weaved together in a dense, knotted canopy. The light that filtered through was sparse, dappled, and golden-green. A perfect place to get ambushed. Or to do the ambushing.

Tommy considered climbing, scaling the rough bark and traveling from branch to branch. He could do it. He had done it before. But he was trying not to attract attention. Not yet.

So he walked. Slowly. Quietly.

And tried not to think about what he’d do if he found Purpled first.

He had a realization somewhere around the fifth time a low-hanging branch snagged his feathers—his wings were a serious drawback. They weren’t made for this kind of terrain, for this tangled, thick-trunked forest where everything brushed too close and nothing gave way. Small feathers kept tearing loose, fluttering down like pale scraps onto the mossy ground. It made him feel stupid and slow. How did Philza manage it? How did anyone with wings do this? Because this was a design flaw, wings and trees just didn’t go together. 

Tommy huffed and came to a frustrated stop, rubbing his fingers over the frayed ends of one primary. It wasn’t even the pain—it was the sheer inconvenience . When he found whatever divine being had decided to throw him into this place, this war, with no warning and wings he didn’t even know how to use , he was going to give them a piece of his mind. He muttered curses under his breath and swatted another branch out of his way. How long had he been walking? Prime knew. The sky was bleeding toward night, light slipping away in cold, creeping strands. A dark oak forest was the last place he wanted to be once the sun dipped. Monsters didn’t wait for nightfall, but they sure liked to thrive in it.

Just ahead, there was a small clearing, a break in the trees—and that’s when he heard it. A snap. A branch breaking. Tommy spun immediately, instincts flaring, and came face to face with the rotted face of a zombie.

“Shit!” he hissed, slashing with quick, practiced hands. The zombie fell with a gurgle, black blood hissing on the grass. His breath was ragged. Was that a sign? Was Purpled here? He didn’t know what else could be calling the monsters out this way unless the Necromancer himself was close.

He kept moving, faster now. A spider crawled into his path—eyes glinting, legs twitching. He slashed again, and again. The mobs were gathering. It made his skin crawl.

Then—

A hand grabbed his shoulder.

He yelped and nearly spun to strike, only to freeze when he came face to face with General Gallardo. The man didn’t look angry. Didn’t even look winded. They just stared at each other for a heartbeat, and Tommy frowned. “Shouldn’t you be in the—”

Gallardo raised a hand and shushed him, then pointed through the branches.

Tommy squinted. It took him a second to make out the shapes. In the center of the clearing, someone was fighting— two someones. He recognized Techno immediately, the glint of fading sunlight catching on pale pink hair. But the other—his heart stuttered.

Holy shit.

That was Purpled .

Or, at least, it looked exactly like Purpled. Pale hair, violet eyes, light armor. He fought with a blade held low and tight, the same way the Purpled in the SMP had always fought. Could it really be—? He had no proof. No certainty. But something inside him twisted with sudden urgency.

Purpled wasn’t just fighting Techno. He was fending off the entire scout team. It was a dogpile. Unfair, lopsided. One versus six, maybe more. Tommy turned slowly back to Gallardo, his mind racing.

He didn’t know this Purpled. But the boy wore a familiar face. And right now, that was all Tommy had. Familiarity. Recognition. Even the barest scrap of it. He needed that. He needed someone from home. Even if he couldn’t be sure this Purpled would know him. Even if they’d barely spoken in the real world.

He couldn’t let him fall.

Gallardo must have read something in Tommy’s expression—because he let go.

“Careful, kid,” he muttered.

And Tommy, for the first time in ages, smiled at the name. Kid was a hell of a lot better than “Sanctity” or “Your Majesty.”

He crept forward, brain scrambling for a plan. He didn’t have one. He was just going to throw himself into the middle and improvise. Hope Techno didn’t stab him on instinct.

Wait—!

His hand flew to his inventory. The invisibility potion. The one he’d brought just in case. He moved fast, pouring gunpowder into it from a smaller flask, shaking it briskly. Ideally, he needed blaze heat to make it splash potion—but room temperature would have to do. It would only give him a few seconds.

Seconds were all he needed.

He leapt from the brush, surging toward the fight. He shoved Techno aside—not that it did much. Techno was built like a goddamn giant—but the push startled him just enough to shift his weight.

Tommy swung up his blade to block an incoming sword—deflected it—and made eye contact.

Purpled.

Those violet eyes widened. Recognition. Confusion. Alarm. Something flickered there, too fast for Tommy to name.

And then Tommy threw the potion at the ground.

It shattered, hissing smoke and invisibility in all directions.

The clearing exploded into chaos. Shouts rang out. People disappeared. Confused yells and wild swings filled the air.

Tommy grabbed Purpled by the wrist. “ Run! ” he hissed.

They didn’t wait. They sprinted—dodging blindly between invisible soldiers, ducking an arrow that nearly clipped Tommy’s shoulder. He didn’t look back. They just ran.

Branches scraped against his wings again, and he cursed aloud, nearly stumbling as feathers tore loose. God, he hated them. Hated how they caught on everything. Hated how visible they made him. But Purpled was keeping up beside him, breathing hard, no resistance in his stride.

Tommy just had to pray that the boy would follow him a little longer before demanding answers. They had to get away first. Then they could deal with the whole who-the-hell-are-you part.

Philza landed beside him with a flutter of wings and the soft crunch of boots hitting soil. Techno raised a brow, not bothering to hide his disapproval.

“You were supposed to stay back,” he said flatly.

Phil just grinned, casual as ever, and offered a small shrug. “I trust our officials.”

Techno exhaled through his nose—more of a scoff than a breath. He was not in the mood for cryptic optimism. His gut had been twisting ever since they arrived, but he hadn’t expected this . The boy-king aiding the necromancer? That wasn’t even on his list of worst-case scenarios. And Techno knew worst-case scenarios.

He turned away from Phil, jaw tight, and looked at Gallardo. The man stood a few feet off, arms crossed, face unreadable. Probably doing some damage control in his head.

“Wanna explain what happened there?” Techno asked, voice edged like a blade. “Why in the world would your king do that?”

Gallardo met his eyes and huffed. “Believe me, my guess is as good as any of yours.”

Techno narrowed his eyes. He didn’t have hard evidence to accuse the man of anything, not yet. But after watching the boy-king run off with the necromancer like they were in on some secret plan, it was easier to understand why Avalos distrusted Gallardo so much. Maybe they weren’t so paranoid after all. Phil hummed beside him, drawing Techno’s attention again.

“Where did you lose them?” he asked.

Phil pointed vaguely to the southeast. “That direction. Not that it matters now—the trees are getting too dense.”

Someone else muttered agreement from the back, something about the forest not being safe after dark, but Techno ignored them. He stepped forward, feet sinking a little into the mossy ground, and Phil followed without a word. “You felt that?” Techno asked once they were a few paces ahead, low enough that only Phil would hear.

“The magic?” Phil murmured back. “Yeah, I did.”

There was a pause as they both processed that. Techno’s mind raced through possibilities—enchantments, cloaking spells, rituals—but it kept circling back to what he’d seen . Netherite. The shimmer of it in the dying light.

“They both wore netherite,” Phil added quietly. “The necromancer’s set was more complete than the boy-king’s, though.”

Techno clicked his tongue and stared into the growing shadows between the trees. It would be night soon, and that meant the undead would be stronger, braver. He wasn’t too worried about himself or Phil—but the others, the scouts, the new recruits? They wouldn’t stand a chance if caught off-guard.

“Have we found Carl?!” he barked over his shoulder.

The scout team turned to each other, confused and wide-eyed. None of them answered. That was answer enough.

Techno sighed, loud and frustrated. “We need to find my horse.”

Phil snorted a laugh, shaking his head fondly. “Of course we do.”

And just like that, they were moving again. Because if there was one thing Techno trusted more than his instincts, it was Carl. And if that boy-king and the necromancer were planning something—he intended to be ready for it.

Tommy cursed everything under the sun when he saw the bastard that had just taken a shot at him.

“ Are you kidding me?! ” he snarled, ducking behind a crooked tree trunk. Since when were skeletons spawning here too? The white gleam of bone was an eyesore against the last streaks of dying sunlight. The thing notched another arrow with its eerie, twitching hands. Tommy was already preparing to lunge when the skeleton suddenly crumbled—taken out in one sharp shot from behind him.

He turned, startled, to see Purpled lowering a bow. The guy didn’t even seem fazed. He hadn’t flinched, hadn’t shouted a warning, just coolly pulled out a bow from his inventory like it was nothing.

Tommy blinked. Inventory. That wasn't normal here—not for anyone but him. The tally board in his head marked another uncertain point under maybe this is my Purpled . The odds were still depressingly low, but come on—who else could just summon gear like that?

Purpled stepped up beside him, eyes scanning the tree line. “Why would you do that? The whole charging-in-alone thing,” he said, not even sounding winded.

Tommy didn’t answer right away. His gaze lingered on the ghostly curl of smoke left behind by the fallen skeleton. He didn’t turn toward Purpled as he spoke. “You look like someone I know.”

There was a pause. He could feel Purpled looking at him, like he was trying to place a face over Tommy’s voice.

“That’s funny,” Purpled said, and his tone was light, almost too casual. “You also look like someone I know.”

That made Tommy turn. The two of them just stared at each other for a moment in the hazy twilight. Confusion flickered across Purpled’s face—just for a second—and Tommy felt a strange twist in his chest. Was this what it looked like when a stranger wore a friend’s face? Or was it the opposite?

He didn’t know what he wanted the answer to be.

The wind picked up, rustling through the trees. Somewhere behind them, another monster groaned in the distance.

Tommy broke the stare first, turning back to slash down an oncoming zombie. Purpled moved in tandem beside him, shooting a spider clean through the eyes. It felt almost like muscle memory, fighting side by side. Almost like how things used to be.

“I guess so,” Tommy muttered. Quiet. Almost too quiet to be heard over the shuffle of leaves and the low groans of monsters. But maybe Purpled heard it. Or maybe he didn’t.

As they continued weaving through the trees, Tommy noticed something strange—and from the slight tension in Purpled’s posture, he had too.

The mobs weren’t dropping anything. No bones. No string. No rotten flesh. Not even XP orbs. They just crumbled into fine gray ash on contact, like they’d never really been there at all. Like illusions—echoes of what this world thought monsters were supposed to look like.

He wanted to say something, but the silence between them felt too fragile to break with speculation. Besides, everything he could think of asking spiraled into questions he wasn’t ready to answer. Where are you from? How do you have an inventory? Do you remember me?

So instead, he let the silence stretch.

And Purpled didn’t ask anything either.

They just kept walking, weapons still out, moving in sync through a forest full of empty ghosts.

They walked in silence until they reached a horse.

Purpled stared at it, blinking once. Then again.

“…Isn’t that…?”

He didn’t finish the question. Didn’t need to. He just frowned and glanced at the blonde, who was busy patting the horse’s flank and offering it another carrot from somewhere.

Purpled crossed his arms, watching closely. He hadn’t put his weapons away. Not because he thought Tommy would stab him in the back, but because he wasn’t entirely sure what this version of Tommy was. The Tommy he had known—if “known” was even the right word—had been loud and angry and loyal to a fault. And maybe a little bit insufferable. Purpled had fought with him and against him and somewhere in between, too. They had been on the same side more times than not, though Tommy never quite stopped treating Purpled like a maybe-enemy.

But that Tommy had died.

And this one…

This one had wings.

Which—first of all, what the hell? Since when? Secondly, he talked just like the original, but there was something different in the way he moved. Sharper in some places, softer in others. Purpled wasn’t sure if he liked it. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to like it.

His thoughts tangled, looping on themselves. He knew better than to trust strangers. Stranger danger , and all that crap adults drilled into you when you were young. But no one had ever explained what to do when the stranger almost wasn’t. When the stranger wore a face you remembered. When the stranger fought beside you like he remembered the rhythm, even if neither of you had spoken it aloud.

Was this the same Tommy?

Or was this someone new entirely, some winged lookalike who’d never once set foot in L’Manberg or stood on the many floors of Pogtopia or been hunted through snowy forests by the same pink-haired brute now chasing him?

He wanted to ask. He really, really wanted to ask.

“Hey, are you perhaps someone I have fought both with and against in a series of increasingly stupid wars mostly caused by the man you once considered a brother and another guy who had an unhealthy obsession with the color green?”

“Didn’t you die in a prison cell, bloody and broken, at the hands of said green-loving sociopath?”

Yeah. Definitely not the way to start a conversation.

So instead, Purpled said nothing. He followed. Because if there was one thing he knew for certain—one tiny fact that had not changed between dimensions, timelines, versions, or whatever the hell this was—it was that Tommy was a reckless, senseless, and sometimes alarmingly selfless idiot. The kind who’d run headfirst into danger if he thought it might help someone.

He was still half-convinced this might all be some elaborate trick. Maybe this was a clone. A fake. A test. The silence between them didn’t help. He kept glancing sideways, trying to catch the expression on Tommy’s face, but the winged boy never gave much away—just scratched behind the horse’s ears like it was an old friend, then muttered something under his breath.

“I didn’t think this through,” Tommy admitted aloud.

Purpled huffed a laugh before he could stop himself. “You never do.”

Tommy didn’t react at first. Then, slowly, his shoulders rose and fell like he was holding something in—breath, words, maybe even a laugh of his own. He didn’t look at Purpled, but his voice was quieter when he replied.

“Yeah. Sounds about right.”

And that was all it took to make the knot in Purpled’s stomach twist even tighter.

Because that sounded exactly like the Tommy he knew.

Which, somehow, made this entire thing even more terrifying.

Chapter Text

General Gallardo had children of his own. He had lived long enough to see them grow, stumble, rise again. He remembered scraped knees, muttered apologies, the way even the bravest of his sons used to reach for his hand in crowded halls. And maybe that was why, from the very first day the Saint-King had been introduced, Hadrian couldn’t help but see the boy beneath the title.

Because that’s what he was.

A boy.

He was barely past the age of his youngest child, draped in divine expectations and ancient prophecy like oversized armor. And the moment he descended—wings outstretched, eyes glowing with reluctant command—the council had bowed. Called him His saintity. The Saint-King. The winged salvation foretold in scattered scrolls and long-forgotten songs.

But Hadrian had seen the tremble in his hands.

He had seen the way the boy—Tommy, he had learned in private—flinched at loud noises and fumbled when forced to speak in riddles and hymns. Tommy didn’t ask for this. He had stumbled into power and then been caged by it. Just because his back bore feathers didn’t mean his heart was any different from the dozens of soldiers Hadrian had watched die on battlefields. Still human. Still breakable.

So Hadrian stayed close. At first, because it was duty. Then, because it was instinct. Eventually, it was out of a growing, reluctant affection.

He didn’t call it that, of course. He never would. He was a general. Not a caretaker. Not a father.

But in the quiet moments, when the Saint-King slumped into his war table chair and dropped the regal act like a badly-fitted cloak, Hadrian would sit across from him. They would talk. Not about strategy or divine visions—but about weather, and food, and the strange, shifting weight of leadership. Hadrian didn’t offer advice. He didn’t need to. He listened.

And the King—awkward, reckless, infuriatingly impulsive Tommy—listened in return.

Now, as they rode back to camp in uneasy silence, Gallardo found himself chewing the inside of his cheek. His eyes flicked toward the distant ridge, where the sky was beginning to bruise with pre-dawn blue.

He had let the boy go into that forest.

Let him

And now, General Gallardo might very well be labeled a traitor.

The Arctican soldiers—those cold-eyed bastards—had seen it. General Blade, always unreadable. The Emperor, sharp as ever beneath his seemingly soft exterior. They had all seen the Saint-King intervene on behalf of the necromancer. They hadn’t drawn weapons, but they had drawn conclusions.

Conclusions Hadrian couldn’t counter until the boy spoke for himself.

He didn’t know what Tommy had seen in the necromancer—why he had stepped between blades, why he had vanished into the trees with him. Maybe it was desperation. Maybe it was recognition. Maybe it was just another one of his half-planned leaps of faith that somehow made everything worse before it ever got better.

Hadrian tugged the reins, shifting in his saddle.

The soldiers behind him kept their distance but watched him too closely. They were waiting for someone to make the call: traitor or loyalist.

And all Hadrian could think was: He’s just a boy. A boy with too many names and not enough time.

The worst part?

This would follow him. Not just through politics or battle—but through memory. If they called it treason, if they forced the Saint-King to defend himself in council, they would turn on him. They would stop seeing the boy and only see the crown. And that crown would grow heavier, colder.

Hadrian closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the rhythm of hooves and the low murmurs of dawn wind. His hands stayed steady on the reins.

If this falls apart, he thought , then I hope to every god above and below that boy can still stand afterward.

He exhaled slowly.

Hadrian hadn’t said a word when they returned to camp. He stood silent and still while the Arctica Emperor and General laid out the details of what had occurred—how the Saint-King had gone willingly to the Necromancer, how he had fought with him. How he had vanished into the darkness with the enemy at his side.

The reactions from Solmere’s supposed allies were immediate and loud. Whispers echoed like cold wind through the tents. Faces once filled with reverence twisted into distrust. Soldiers he’d dined with, strategized beside—Hadrian watched their spines bend like reeds in stormwater. So many of them had once sworn loyalty. Now all it took was a little shadow, a little doubt, and they were ready to burn the boy they called king.

He wasn’t surprised. Just disappointed.

What was he supposed to do now?

He sighed, hand tight at the hilt of his sword. He’d heard the stories—the first night, the spiders, the king on the front lines. He’d seen the aftermath of the wave of undead that had crashed into the camp the day the boy arrived. The soldiers hadn’t forgotten. They had watched him fight beside them. They had bled beside him.

That loyalty was a double-edged sword. It made them hesitate now. It made them doubt the story being fed to them. But it also made the whispers sting deeper.

Traitor .

The word had started to spread like infection.

Hadrian took watch, unable to rest. Giant spiders were still a thing—he would never quite be used to that—and now there were undead crawling over, foul and wrong. Magic. Necromancy. All of it was crawling under his skin.

He drifted between stations, barely speaking. The Saint-King was on his mind. Always.

And then, without warning, a hand reached out from the dark and dragged him into a tent.

He turned sharply, hand going for his blade. But he stopped.

It was him .

The boy looked tired, pale under the dark armor he wore. There was someone beside him—Hadrian stared. A second boy, the same dark armor gleaming oddly in the lantern light. Eyes sharp, skin cold, magic clinging to him like frost.

The Necromancer.

Hadrian didn’t ask why. Didn’t speak yet. Tommy opened his mouth like he was trying to find the words.

Hadrian beat him to it.

He pulled the boy into a hug. A firm, grounding thing. Tommy hesitated—then leaned into it, shoulders slumping, hands trembling as they pressed to Hadrian’s back.

“You’re not hurt?” the general asked, pulling back slightly, giving the boy a once-over like a worried father.

“I’m not hurt,” Tommy mumbled against his shoulder. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw. “I didn’t—He’s not—It’s not what they think—”

“I know,” Hadrian said, voice low but solid. “Not now.”

His eyes moved to the Necromancer. He looked so young . No older than the king—perhaps even younger. And yet there was something off about him, something ancient curled around the edges of his presence.

“I shouldn’t have let it happen,” Hadrian muttered. “I was right there.”

“I walked,” Tommy said quietly.

Hadrian exhaled sharply through his nose. Then, hesitating only a moment, he spoke.

“Two high councilmen were found dead this morning. Poison. Their guards swore they never left their tents.” He looked Tommy dead in the eye. “They’re going to blame you.”

Tommy looked away.

“The rumors about an assassination attempt? They’re not just whispers anymore.” Hadrian’s voice dropped. “They’re hunting you now. Both of you.”

The Necromancer’s head snapped toward him. “They’ll strip him of his title, won’t they?”

Hadrian met the boy’s gaze. “They’ll strip him of more than that. They’ll drag both of you through the mud. Say you’re corrupted. That you consort with the dead. They’ll call for execution before they call for mercy.”

Hadrian spat at the ground. His anger was simmering low and dark now.

The Necromancer glanced at Tommy, a look of silent communication passing between them.

Tommy exhaled hard, looking toward the tent’s flap. “We should talk somewhere else.”

“No,” the Necromancer said. “We don’t have time for talking. We need to go. Now.”

Tommy nodded. “Don’t try to fight for my honor,” he told Hadrian, voice sharp and worn. “That’ll only get you killed.”

Hadrian opened his mouth—closed it. The boy wasn’t wrong.

“We have to find the cause of all this,” the Necromancer said. “The one pulling the strings.” His hand gestured vaguely outside the tent. “Find a way back home.”

Tommy looked between them both, lips pressed in a thin line “Do you think the council will side with the Arctican Emperor?”

Hadrian hesitated only a breath.

“They hate the Arcticans,” he said. “But they hate being humiliated more. And you—” He met Tommy’s eyes. “You’ve made them look like fools, time and time again.”

Tommy grimaced.

“You better leave. Still have your horse?” Hadrian asked, and both of them nodded.

“Just be careful,” he added, voice softer now.Tommy turned back toward the door, lingering for a breath too long, as if he meant to say something more. His mouth opened slightly, words forming and faltering. The boy beside him nudged his arm. Tommy startled, then offered Hadrian a crooked, sheepish smile. “Thanks,” he mumbled, and gave a small nod.

Hadrian’s hands twitched at his sides, like they wanted to reach out again. He tried to think of anything useful he could say, some final words of wisdom, a warning, a comfort—anything to give them an edge. But his mind came up blank. 

“Purpled, where is—Oh, never mind,” Tommy said suddenly, reaching down to retrieve something from the floor

Purpled .  That was the Necromancer’s name? He looked far too young to carry a title like that. Hadrian studied him for a breath too long.

“Do you think they’ll join the Empire?” Purpled asked, catching Hadrian mid-thought.

The old man blinked. The fire outside the tent crackled low. Hadrian considered him for a long moment. “I can’t be too sure,” he admitted. “It’s been decades. Anything can happen now. Too many people have read books about the Empire and imagined themselves the heroes of its ruins. But there were loyalists, even after the Revolution. Still tucked between the walls.”

Purpled nodded like he understood, but there was a shadow in his expression. Something ancient for someone so young. Hadrian wondered—not for the first time—what these two boys had lived through before stumbling into all this mess. He wondered if they would ever talk about it, or if the silence between them had already said enough.

“I wish I could be of more help,” Hadrian said at last, stepping forward. He reached for Tommy, hesitated, then drew him into a firm final hug.

This time, the boy hugged him back. Not just out of politeness. Not out of obligation. It was clumsy and a little stiff, but it was real. Hadrian held on for just a second longer than he should have.

He peeked out through the flap of the tent, scanning the dark edges of the camp. No movement. No eyes watching. Just the soft hush of night. After a moment, he gave a small, decisive nod. “Go,” he said. “Quickly.”

They slipped out into the night like shadows peeling away from the firelight. Two figures—too small, too young—melting into the tree line with only a saddlebag and each other.

Hadrian stood there for a long while, longer than made sense. Watching the space where they’d vanished. Listening for hoofbeats that faded too quickly into silence.

He felt something shift in his chest. A tightness he hadn’t realized he was holding. Not grief. Not worry. Something like... closure. And something like hope.

“May the gods protect you,” he whispered to no one, voice rough with things unspoken. “Wherever you go. However far.”

He let the tent fall closed behind him, the fire outside flickering like a heartbeat in the dark.

They left Carl behind.

The stable was quiet when they slipped past, moonlight pooling in patches across the straw-littered ground. Tommy gave the horse a final pat on the neck, slipping him a golden carrot from his inventory.

“You were great, mate,” he muttered, running a hand through Carl’s mane. “Hope we don’t see each other again.”

The horse blinked at him like he understood, then went back to chewing.

They didn’t take another horse. It wasn’t worth being hunted down as thieves on top of everything else.

The two of them walked.

Not much talking. Just the rhythm of boots on dirt and the weight of things unspoken. There was a shared understanding between them, quiet and strange: You are who I maybe think you are. If so, we’re both far from home. That was enough, for now.

“He seemed nice,” Purpled said eventually.

Tommy glanced over. “Who?”

“Your general. The older guy.”

Tommy nodded. “He was the best.”

That was all that needed to be said.

They kept walking, mostly in silence. Tommy didn’t know what else to talk about. Back in the SMP, he and Purpled had drifted. They were never enemies—but they weren’t the kind of friends who shared their dreams, either. And yet, here they were. Somehow, in this backwards world, they were each other’s only familiar faces. Maybe that was enough.

They reached a town by the next dawn. A sleepy place tucked into the edges of a valley. Stone walls and moss-covered roofs, buildings packed close together like they were sharing warmth. The inn was easy to find, nestled between a bakery and what looked like a blacksmith’s forge.

The innkeeper barely looked up when they walked in. He did a bit of a double take at Tommy, but said nothing once Purpled tossed him a coin pouch heavy with gold. They both knew they probably overpaid, but neither mentioned it. At least that bought them some quiet.

The room wasn’t what Tommy was used to—small, creaky, and smelled vaguely like damp wood—but nothing was ever going to be the castle again. And he probably wasn’t a king anymore, anyway.

Tommy kicked off his boots and face-planted into the closest bed. It was the softest thing he’d touched in days.

Across the room, Purpled unpacked with silent efficiency. Then, finally:

“So what’s up with the wings?”

Tommy cracked one eye open, groaning. “They just kinda… appeared. Whole reason I got sanctified. Big ol’ magical moment.”

Purpled hummed. “You’re doing a shit job hiding them.”

Tommy flipped him off without turning around. “You wanna do better, be my guest.”

But he didn’t mean it. He was too tired. Too full of everything. He thought he might say more, but his body had other plans.

Sleep took him like a crashing wave.

He woke up sometime past midnight.

Rain tapped gently against the window. The room was unfamiliar, too quiet. No creaking castle walls, no guards walking past with clinking armor. No forest rustling with things just out of sight.

Just stillness. And across the room, Purpled—still awake, sitting on the other bed, fiddling with a piece of cloth in his hands.

“You’re a light sleeper,” Purpled said without looking up.

“I’m a soldier,” Tommy muttered, voice thick with sleep. “Or was. Or—fuck, I don’t know.”

Purpled didn’t press.

The quiet stretched. Then:

“You always like this?” he asked.

Tommy shifted, propped himself up on one elbow. “Like what?”

“You talk a lot when you’re angry. Or when you’re trying to piss someone off. But when you’re like this, you just go real quiet.”

Tommy didn’t answer right away. He stared up at the wooden ceiling. Shrugged. “What’s there to say?”

Purpled looked at him then. Really looked.

“You died, man.”

Tommy flinched, just a little. His lips twisted into something like a smile. “I didn’t think you’d be here. Not in this world. Not in this mess.”

“I didn’t plan to be,” Purpled replied, accepting the shift in topic without complaint. “One moment I was somewhere else. Next thing I know, I wake up in a field of lavender with a fucking pigeon trying to steal my satchel.”

Tommy blinked. “You punched a bird?”

Purpled shrugged, deadpan. “It started it.”

A beat of silence. Then another.

Tommy snorted.

And for the first time in what felt like weeks, he laughed.

The low fire in the hearth had burned down to a faint glow, casting the room in soft, orange shadows. Tommy had given up on sleep about twenty minutes ago—after his third time rolling over and staring at the rafters—and Purpled, sprawled sideways in the armchair like he owned it, didn’t look anywhere near tired either.

It started slow. Just laying out what they’d heard since being dumped here—Purpled with his strange half-trail of rumors about a “wandering necromancer” and the rotting horde apparently shadowing him through the countryside. Tommy couldn’t decide if that made Purpled unlucky, terrifying, or both. It did explain why locals whispered his title like it might curse their tongues.

“Which,” Tommy said, leaning forward on his elbows, “sorta leaves some questions. Like… why aren’t you dead?”

Purpled snorted. “Bold question.”

They drifted into talking about the coincidences they’d stumbled across since ending up in this place, this non-magical world. Or, at least, a world that wasn’t supposed to be magical anymore. Tommy ran a hand through his hair as they pieced together the weird way their presence seemed to ripple through the place—how just using the mechanics of the system felt like throwing rocks into still water.

“Magic’s coming back,” Tommy said, “but not like—” he waved vaguely in the air “—big flashy ‘ta-da’ magic. It’s crawling. Why isn’t it faster?”

Purpled watched him for a long moment before answering. “Do you think they’ll follow?”

Tommy shrugged, though the question sat heavy in his stomach. “We need to find a way home. One that doesn’t—y’know—really fuck this place up too much.”

A beat of silence stretched between them.

“I think it’s already fucked,” Purpled said finally. “It’s just taking its time about it.”

Tommy gave a humorless huff. “So… what, fuck everything and just get home?”

“No.” Purpled leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Tommy, this is a world with people who don’t know how to live with magic. They would absolutely be fucked.”

Tommy blinked at him. “Magic still lingers in hybrids though.”

“Yes,” Purpled said, tone flattening. “Magic does linger. But our first priority is not making their lives worse. We can’t just—kick over the table and leave.”

Tommy tilted his head, smirking faintly despite himself. “You sound like you care.”

“I sound like I’m being realistic,” Purpled muttered. But he didn’t deny it.

Tommy wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up in front of the warped old mirror in the corner of their room. He just knew what he was doing now: today’s mission was simple—hide his wings.

It turned out to be a lot harder than he thought it’d be.

Back on the SMP—or even earlier, back in the chaotic mess of the Business Bay days—he’d never really paid attention to how Phil managed it. The man could tuck his wings so neatly they vanished under a long cape, or somehow make them look like part of it, all without batting an eye. Phil never seemed to struggle, never had to grit his teeth and shift his shoulders until the joints ached. Tommy, on the other hand, was discovering just how unnatural it felt to flatten them against his back. It wasn’t just uncomfortable—it was wrong. Like trying to pretend he didn’t have elbows. 

Still, he kept at it. He forced them down, worked to make them fold in ways they didn’t want to, shifting the feathers so the bulk would vanish beneath the travel-worn cape he’d scrounged. Standing like this was awkward too—months of being forced to keep his spine straight, chin up, all that “composed king” rubbish—had trained his body into a posture that screamed look at me.

And he didn’t want anyone looking at him. Not here.

The mirror reflected someone he didn’t quite recognise: back straight, shoulders squared like a soldier. Like the soldier he wasn’t anymore. That wasn’t the part he needed to show the world. He needed to look like before. Before the wars, before the crowns. Broken-and-lost Tommy. Just another teenager with nothing to offer and nowhere to be.

After fussing for what felt like forever, he finally got the wings to settle in a way that didn’t feel like they were going to snap. Slouched his shoulders enough that the cape draped naturally. Not perfect. But perfect enough that no one would give him a second glance.

The door creaked. Purpled stepped back in, and they just… stared at each other.

“I think the armour will definitely bring attention,” Tommy said eventually.

Purpled exhaled through his nose, a sharp huff, but nodded. They both knew the feeling—walking without armour was like walking without skin. It made you feel bare, exposed. But they needed to blend in.

The antennas were another problem. Purpled’s helmet usually kept them hidden, but without it they were impossible to miss. Hybrids weren’t exactly unheard of here, but Tommy hadn’t seen a single one with antennae in the months he’d been stuck in this world.

Neither of them said it, but the hope was the same: if anyone asked questions, they’d just keep walking.

Stepping out of the inn without a single head turning their way was… enlightening. If anything, it made Tommy’s skin itch. Back home, the silence in a room usually meant you’d said something wrong, or someone was about to stab you in the back — here, it just meant no one cared. Or maybe they were too tired to. Either way, it was clear. This place wasn’t ready for magical bullshit.

They stuck to the edges of the village, keeping their distance from the main road. Out here, houses thinned, fences fell apart, and the only movement came from the occasional shuffle of a chicken or a mob daring to creep too close. The sky was already bruising with dusk.

A spider skittered across the path ahead. Not the biggest one Tommy had ever seen, but still enough to make his muscles coil. He drew his sword without thinking. Purpled beat him to it, the blade flashing once before the thing dropped, twitching.

“They’re very vulnerable,” Purpled said, wiping his blade.

“A normal night back home would eat them alive,” Tommy muttered. He didn’t say the rest — that he’d seen worse. Much worse. That he didn’t want to imagine creepers or phantoms here, because they wouldn’t stand a chance.

They worked their way back toward the heart of the village, where a handful of stalls still stood open. One was run by an older woman with hands like knotted rope, selling carrots, sugar, and watermelon. She called to them as they passed.

“You two from out of town?”

“Uh… yes,” Purpled answered, ever the eloquent conversationalist.

“You need anything? That beast harmed the best of our men. Can’t imagine you two came through without a scratch.” Her tone was warm, but her eyes flicked over them like she was cataloguing possible injuries.

Tommy started to smile, to wave it off, but something caught his eye. A necklace hung around her neck — a strip of leather cord holding a flat iron circle, hollow in the middle. Iron. His breath hitched.

Purpled kept the conversation going while Tommy drifted, staring at the piece. The woman handed them a small sack of sugar, free of charge, and turned back to her work.

Once they were away from the market, Tommy checked the street before speaking. “Villages back home aren’t as… clever as this. Not as clever as the people here, I mean. But they had protection.”

“Protection?”

“Iron golems,” Tommy said, low. “Tall, strong things that never stopped moving, never stopped defending. Hostile mobs couldn’t touch a village with one of those.”

Purpled frowned. “That would require magic. Would making a golem here… do more harm than good?”

Tommy looked back toward the market, the people, the thin fences. Sighed. “I don’t know.”

They didn’t talk much after that. Just kept walking until sundown, watching the slow, silent panic as villagers rushed to get inside before nightfall. They saw bandaged arms, limping legs, and men who should’ve been in bed hobbling toward the watchtowers. Tommy and Purpled worked where they could — pulling a cart wheel out of the mud, handing up arrows, killing a skeleton before it could slip through an alley.

The final nail was the spider. Bigger than the first, quick as hell. It burst from behind a shed and lunged at a man carrying crates. Tommy barely had time to shout before he and Purpled were on it. The villager staggered away, pale-faced.

They stayed until sunrise, blades sticky and boots coated in dust. When they finally trudged back into the inn, the light outside was turning gold.

“Yeah,” Tommy said, kicking his door shut behind him. “They need a golem.”

Purpled groaned, already knowing where this was going. “Let’s hit the mines.”

“I don’t have—”

A pickaxe landed in Tommy’s hands before he could finish.

He blinked down at it, then tucked it into his inventory with a grin. “Alright, then.”

The caves were harder to find than Tommy expected.

Back home, they were everywhere—yawning black maws in the earth, ready to swallow you whole the second you stopped looking where you were going. You could trip into one if you weren’t paying attention. But here? The ground felt… stubborn. Like it didn’t want to give anything up.

Or maybe it knew what was lurking inside and was doing them a kindness.

Purpled walked ahead, scanning the rocky ridges beyond the edge of the village, his pickaxe resting loosely on his shoulder. The sun had barely risen, and the air still felt heavy with the remnants of the night—like the dark hadn’t fully let go yet.

Finally, a break in the stone. Narrow, almost hidden under a curtain of tangled weeds. The mouth of the cave breathed out cool, stale air. It smelled faintly of damp rock and something metallic—something that made the hairs on the back of Tommy’s neck stand up.

“Alright,” Purpled muttered, peering into the gloom. “Light it up.”

Tommy took a torch from his inventory, the warm glow spilling just far enough to show jagged stone walls and the faint scurry of something disappearing deeper in. Mobs thrived in darkness. And this was a lot of darkness.

Every step inside was an argument against common sense. Their boots crunched against loose gravel, the sound echoing too loudly in the confined space. The tunnel twisted downward, swallowing the torchlight in greedy gulps.

Something shifted up ahead. A shuffle. The soft click of chitin.

“Spider,” Purpled said immediately, voice low.

“Only one?” Tommy asked.

Purpled didn’t answer.

The hiss came first—low, rattling, somewhere between a warning and a promise.

Torchlight caught the gleam of eyes clinging to the ceiling ahead.

“Above,” Purpled snapped, already moving.

The spider dropped, all legs and fangs, landing so close Tommy felt the gust of air it displaced. He swung his pickaxe up on instinct, the metal edge catching one leg. It shrieked—a thin, tearing sound—and scuttled sideways, fast enough to blur in the dim light.

Purpled lunged, his own pick coming down with a sharp crack that sent the creature’s head snapping back. It twitched, legs curling inward, and disintegrated into nothing—ashes caught on a phantom wind.

No time to breathe.

The groan rolled out of the tunnel ahead, deep and wet. Two silhouettes stumbled into the light, dragging themselves forward with jerks that made Tommy’s stomach twist.

Zombies.

“Right one’s mine,” Tommy muttered, stepping forward before he could think too much about the smell. The first swing hit bone beneath rotting flesh; the second caved the skull. It crumbled apart in his hands, fading into motes like the spider had.

Purpled shoved the other zombie into the wall, pinning it with his forearm before driving the pick through its temple. It dropped instantly, scattering into dust at their feet.

They almost relaxed.

Almost.

The arrow scraped against stone, missing Tommy’s head by inches. It came from deeper in, from a skeleton half-shadowed in the narrow corridor, bow already drawn for another shot.

Purpled yanked Tommy down just as the second arrow whistled past.

“Keep it busy!” he barked, already darting wide along the wall.

Tommy charged, holding his pick low. The skeleton fired again; the arrow clipped his shoulder but didn’t slow him. He closed the gap, swung hard, and the brittle ribs shattered under the blow. Purpled was there a second later, driving the pickaxe down through its skull.

Bone fragments dissolved before they hit the ground.

The only sound left was their own breathing, loud and quick in the close dark.

Purpled raised his torch higher—and that’s when they saw it.

A vein of iron ore, thick and glittering in the wall just behind where the skeleton had stood. Another seam glimmered farther down the tunnel. And another.

Tommy let out a laugh, the tension in it making it sharper than usual.

“Man, that’s—” He counted quickly, eyes widening. “That’s half a damn golem right there!”

Purpled was already mining, the clink of pick against stone ringing like victory. “Then we’re halfway done.”

The iron clattered into their inventories, warm against the weight of the fight they’d just walked through. For the first time that day, the cave didn’t feel like it was trying to kill them—it felt like it was paying up

.By the time they’d hauled the last of the iron back to the surface, the sun was already well past its peak. Now, all they needed was a pumpkin. Easy. Or so Tommy thought.

Apparently, pumpkins were rarer than diamonds here. They wandered the edges of the village market, scanning the stalls. Then, over the low murmur of trading voices, Tommy caught the sound of laughter—childish, bright.

An older man sat on a bench near the well, a small group of children gathered at his feet. He spoke in a slow, patient voice, weaving a story. The way magic shifted around him was almost visible—like heatwaves off stone on a hot day. Tommy didn’t recognize what he was, but Purpled’s gaze narrowed.

They didn’t interrupt, just lingered at the edge of the crowd.

The man’s voice carried the rhythm of something old, something passed down.

“…and so the Poppy stood beside the Golem, no longer afraid. For she had learned the truth—that strength can be gentle, and that hearts can bloom where you least expect.”

Tommy knew this story. Back home, The Poppy and the Golem was a short, simple tale told to kids—don’t judge others, don’t fear what you don’t understand.

Purpled’s eyes sharpened. Now he understood. Tall. Broad shoulders. Beauty marks winding like vines along his jaw. Skin pale and grayish like worn iron. A golem hybrid. Rare. Too rare.

And in a world with so little magic, impossibly rare.

It made no sense. A golem hybrid shouldn’t survive here. The magic in this place was barely a whisper.

As the man finished the story, a woman approached, offering her arm to help him stand.

“Rest,” she said softly.

“I feel energized,” he replied with a small smile.

That exchange made Tommy’s stomach twist. Purpled’s too, judging by the tight set of his shoulders.

The man turned then, his gaze landing squarely on them. He smiled—not sharp, not threatening, but… steady.

“Hello,” he greeted, his voice warm as sunlight.

Tommy had fought wars. He’d faced armies. He’d killed. But for some reason, the presence of this man sent a spike of panic through his chest.

“Uhh… hi?” he managed, because he was amazing at small talk.

Beside him, Purpled was silent—too silent. Tommy could almost hear him holding his breath.

The man nodded toward a stall a few paces away. “I believe what you’re looking for is over there.”

Tommy blinked. Sure enough—pumpkins, stacked neatly on the corner table. “How…?” he started, but Purpled’s hand landed lightly on his shoulder.

“Like wardens,” Purpled murmured, eyes still fixed on the man. “All-knowing.”

The man chuckled. “I will take that as a compliment,” he said, looking directly at Purpled. “I believe my presence troubles you. Magic shifts and loves its children.”

It didn’t make sense. It felt like it wasn’t supposed to make sense. Purpled simply nodded.

As they turned to leave, Tommy glanced back one more time. “Are we right? Will they panic?”

“They will learn,” the man said simply. “I will help.”

He walked away then, leaning on a carved walking stick, his gait uneven but unhurried.

The pumpkin wasn’t hard to carry. Carving it, though—that was another story.

They’d taken one to the far outskirts of the village, past the last of the houses, where the grass gave way to open dirt and the air felt quieter. A flat stretch of ground lay waiting, iron stacked in neat piles beside them.

Tommy sat cross-legged, knife in hand, tongue poking out the corner of his mouth as he worked on the pumpkin. Purpled knelt nearby, tightening bolts on the rough, blocky body they’d built from the iron they’d mined.

“You’re carving that like it’s a melon,” Purpled said without looking up.

“It’s called style, Purpled. Maybe you’ve heard of it.” Tommy sliced another chunk out, the orange flesh curling away from the blade. “This is a guardian. It’s gotta look fierce.”

“It’s a lump of metal with a fruit for a head,” Purpled deadpanned.

“It’s art.”

When the last piece of pumpkin flesh hit the dirt, Tommy stood and set the carved face—crooked grin and all—on the iron shoulders. The air changed immediately.

Magic, faint but undeniable, stirred like something waking from a deep sleep.

Purpled stepped back. “Here it comes.”

The pumpkin’s carved eyes flared briefly with a pale light before the shape shivered—metal ringing softly, then clanging as the whole thing seemed to twist inward. The pumpkin’s skin dissolved into a faint, curling mist, replaced by a solid block of forged iron where its head should be.

The seams of the body sealed themselves, plates melting together until the golem stood as one unbroken piece of metal.

It opened its eyes.

The first hiss of night fell over the plains as the sun dipped below the hills. And the golem moved—slow, deliberate steps carrying it toward the nearest hiss of danger.

Purpled and Tommy stood well back, watching.

A spider lunged from the dark—gone in an instant, its body disintegrating into nothing under the golem’s crushing swing. Two zombies shambled closer. Same fate. No loot. No XP. Just… gone.

In the village, people froze where they stood. Some gasped, some flinched, others simply stared at the impossible thing striding through the fields, scattering mobs like dust.

And then, something else.

Not visible, not fully tangible—like a ghost passing through the streets. The magic here, normally thin and quiet, was thicker now. More present. It brushed at Tommy’s skin, whispered past Purpled’s ear.

A shift.

Small, but there.