The balcony overlooked the banquet hall, sleek panels of glass and polished steel framing a view meant to impress. Ether conduits thrummed in the walls, feeding chandeliers that glowed like captured stars, every circuit hidden but pulsing steadily beneath the marble floors. The nobles below moved in neat currents, their jewelry catching the artificial light, their laughter lifted by sound projectors woven into the music.

Arik leaned against the railing, chin in his hands, eyes scanning the crowd with all the patience of a boy who'd already decided the whole thing was dull.

Noah, sitting cross-legged beside him, didn't even glance up. His new book flickered with pale blue script across its tablet screen, the soft glow painting his face. "You're restless," he said, not looking away.

"You're boring," Arik shot back, but the bite was missing. His gaze caught on the announcer stepping forward, voice carrying easily through the speaker arrays.

"His Grace, Cain Canmore, Duke of Veyne, envoy of Wrohan."

The crowd shifted. Heads turned. The sound system amplified the polite applause, but underneath, the hum of whispers was as sharp as static.

Arik's eyes narrowed. Cain was tall, broad-shouldered in a fitted suit, his posture that of a man used to being surrounded by power. Blond hair gleamed under the light, violet eyes sharp as polished glass. He looked… staged.

The violet eyes moved from the people around him to look at the balcony. The clarity of those eyes, the shape and the weight behind them made the hall dissolve.

The polished steel vanished, replaced by marble walls that glowed in the midday sun. Ether and crystal chandeliers burned low, casting his palace in gold, his palace that had risen from war and conquest into something neither of his ancestors could dream of. Laughter filled the air, envoys from every border offering tributes, and envoys bending toward him where he sat at the head of it all. He was emperor. Goliath. His smile had cut sharp, and his laughter carried like thunder.

And Felix… Felix stood beside him, elegant in silk, smiling faintly, already getting used to the position of future Empress.

Arik jolted against the railing, his fingers locking white over the steel. His breathing uneven and gold eyes blown wide. He almost pleaded with whatever was doing this to stop; he knew… he knew something worse would come.

Then the banquet shattered.

The hall folded in on itself, brightness strangled into shadow. He blinked, and suddenly he was in his bedchamber, its ether sconces glowing low and steady. The weight of armor was gone, replaced by silks clinging to his skin. Felix was there too, nearer than before, with the same poised grace in every movement as he poured another glass of wine.

But the smile was wrong.

He lifted the goblet while speaking idly, words thick with contempt for the nobles who had fawned and begged all day. "Greedier than before," he'd said. "Always greedier." The words blurred against the edge of his own laughter, careless in the safety of his chambers.

He remembered the taste, sweet and bitter, slipping down his throat like velvet lined with glass.

His chest seized. Ether roared through his veins, channels blistering, collapsing one by one under the poison's fire.

He tried to stop it, clawing inward, forcing his channels to close before the rot spread further, but it was already too late. His sight blurred, eyes burning, blood streaking down his cheeks as even the threads in his eyes tore open and failed.

Felix's outline blurred. He was already moving, activating a conduit carved into his wrist, the light pulling him away, vanishing from the room with the same serenity he had entered.

And then there was nothing left but…

PAIN.

It tore through every thought, every nerve, every inch of him. Pain for breathing, pain for moving, pain for existing. His body, once the empire's strongest vessel, was a cage now, every heartbeat cracking him apart from the inside. His mind remained sharp and alive but trapped in a shell that burned endlessly.

Arik gasped against the balcony railing, his small body convulsing once before he caught himself, golden eyes wide and wild. His chest rose and fell too fast, his hands slick with sweat against the steel.

The hall below was still there, polished steel, glowing chandeliers, and nobles laughing in streams of amplified sound. Cain Canmore stood in the center of it all, violet eyes gleaming, and for Arik it was Felix again… Felix was standing over him as his body failed, Felix smiling faintly before vanishing into light.

Noah blinked up from his tablet, startled at the sound Arik made. "Arik? What's wrong?"

Arik didn't answer. Couldn't. His breath trembled out, uneven, his golden eyes locked on Cain like he was staring at a ghost.

The only word that slipped past his lips was hoarse, raw, and not a child's at all:

"Huh…"

Noah looked up, blinking owlishly. "What?"

Arik's grip on the railing tightened until his knuckles whitened, his breath shallow and uneven. His gaze never wavered from Cain, from the violet eyes that weren't Cain's at all, not to him. They were Felix's. The same eyes that had looked down on him with faint amusement while his veins burned, while his empire collapsed from beneath his fingers.

The memory lingered like smoke, like the sting of poison still in his throat.

His voice came low, ragged, carrying a weight Noah had never heard in him before, too old, too certain to belong to a nine-year-old boy.

"I was right," Arik murmured, almost to himself, golden eyes flickering with something that wasn't entirely his own. "I was right all along."

Noah froze, his book lowering slowly in his lap. "Right about what?" he asked carefully, but Arik didn't answer. His lips pressed thin, his small frame stiff against the railing, the laughter and music below suddenly too far away, too unreal.

Cain's violet eyes shifted away, back to the crowd, but the damage was already carved deep. Arik's chest still heaved with each breath, his hands trembling where they clung to the steel.

For the first time in his young life, he felt the weight of a memory that didn't belong to him yet lived inside him, sharp as a scar.