Silence still reigned in the great throne room when Maélor turned to his sister. He had just spoken the words.

- "My sister... we are going to need your services."

Elystria, usually so calm, so stable, so unfathomable, paled slightly. A discrete tremor ran through her lips. Her gaze hardened, but her breath remained fluid, contained.

- "You... know what you're asking, Maélor," she finally said in a low voice, without challenge, but tinged with deep pain. "You know the price. You know what it entails. You swore to me... never to ask me that again."

Maélor didn't flinch. His icy eyes remained fixed on her, without an ounce of compassion. There was no longer a brother in that gaze. Only a king.

- "This threat, Elystria... it calls into question my first campaign. My reign. I cannot tolerate an unknown force evading my authority, and I have no more time to waste on speculation."

- "You prefer to sacrifice your sister for a political campaign?" she whispered bitterly. "Condemn me to eternal sleep for a few disappeared faces...?"

Maélor stepped forward, and his aura became heavier, sharper. He didn't shout. His voice remained calm, but each syllable resonated like a verdict.

- "If you refuse... sister or not, princess or not, you will be judged for treason against the Crown."

Silence fell like an axe. Even the guards shuddered.

Elystria slowly lowered her head. Her eyelids closed briefly. A broken sigh escaped her lips.

- "...Very well," she murmured. "I will look into the past."

She slowly raised her chin, her gaze meeting Maélor's, as cold as it was resigned.

- "You'll only have to read my thoughts when I'm in the coma."

- "Good," replied Maélor, a hard smile on his lips. "You fulfill your duty. And this curse of eternal sleep, we'll find a way to reverse it. I swear it to you."

They installed Elystria in a protected meditation room, surrounded by anchoring and silence runes. No sound would disturb the process. Two priestesses came to bless her. Three scribes stood ready to note the magical oscillations.

Elystria knelt at the center of the circle, her hands placed flat on the ground. She breathed deeply. Her pupils vibrated with an opalescent light.

She was diving.

The spell she used was unique, a genetic relic of their extremely rare lineage that she had inherited from her mother. A forbidden gift: deep vision of the past. Looking not at an individual's memories, but at the imprints of places themselves. A power so violent for the mind that it tore the body of whoever practiced it from consciousness.

The magic activated in absolute silence.

Her hands joined on her knees, she closed her eyes and began deep meditation.

Her breathing slowed. The light around her seemed to twist, vibrate, dance with her.

Silver lines ran across her skin, ancient marks activating to the rhythm of her heartbeat.

Then... she dove.

The ground blurred. The walls dissociated.

And before her stood the barracks.

Empty. Then populated. Then empty again. Time was folding.

She accessed a particular night.

Adrien.

Young, alone, walking in a tunnel. He slipped out of the barracks through a narrow crack that no draconic eye had been able to spot. She descended in the wake of the memory, beside him.

Then, in the darkness, a silhouette appeared.

Not yet clear.

Only the eyes.

Two orange pupils.

Burning. Alive. Intelligent. Terrible.

Adrien stepped back, fascinated. He returned the following days. Several evenings.

And then finally, in the faint light of a makeshift torch... the face was revealed.

Her heart skipped a beat.

- "Mordred..." she whispered in the vision.

The memory tore.

The light imploded.

And everything became black.

Elystria's body toppled forward. Maélor caught her just in time, embracing her against him.

Her body was supple, alive... but without consciousness.

- "Have a room prepared. Immediately. Magical surveillance and permanent care."

Servants rushed forward.

Maélor, still kneeling, slowly raised his eyes.

- "Summon a master of the mind. One of those who know how to read post-mortem... or comatose memories."

An hour later, a dragon dressed in violet, his skull tattooed with ancient glyphs, knelt before the king.

He didn't have time to open his mouth.

Maélor brutally grabbed him by the neck and lifted him from the ground.

The king's claws dug into his scaly throat.

- "You're going to enter her memories. You're going to look at exactly what she saw. No more. Not one memory more. Not one stolen thought. Otherwise you'll pray for death to come for you."

The master of the mind bowed deeply, his hissing breath still unstable under the grip of the royal hand. He slowly approached Elystria's inert body, kneeling in the now inactive circle.

He placed two fingers on her temples, and a third on his own forehead. A thin violet glow ran through his hand, snaking up to his left eye, which turned an opaque white.

His mind immediately projected into Elystria's, plunged into her coma—a world made of frozen mist and memory fragments swirling in space.

The dragon advanced into the dreamlike labyrinth, up to a black door, swinging, marked with a blood seal: the last vision.

He breathed in, crossed it... and saw.

The barracks.

Slaves. The night. The strange sensation of a routine.

Then Adrien. Him again. He goes down into a tunnel.

The rock, humid.

The air, denser.

And in this darkness, two orange pupils.

A living fire. A gaze that burned. Not with hatred... but with presence.

Slowly, the silhouette emerged. The master of the mind saw the face, young, marked by war, years, determination.

Mordred.

Even here, in another's memory, this name resonated like a thunderclap in the mentalist's soul.

He felt the imprint of that gaze, and prudently stepped away from it. He didn't linger. He followed the order.

He withdrew from the memory, slamming the mental door behind him, and reopened his eyes in the throne room.

A moment of silence.

Maélor, still standing, fixed him without a word.

- "Well?" whispered the king.

- "She... said his name. At the end of the vision. Mordred," whispered the master of the mind, still trembling. "He apparently comes from our world."

Maélor slowly closed his eyes.

A shiver ran up his spine. A mixture of anger, bitterness, and... excitement.

He turned to the guards.

- "I want all information on this Mordred, where he comes from and how we could have reached this point!"

The throne room was silent, frozen under the weight of the revelation. The name of Mordred, once relegated to the margins of collective memory, had just reappeared, more alive, more threatening than ever.

Maélor, left alone after the master of the mind's departure, contemplated the flames dancing in the black braziers for a long time. His face remained frozen, but his mind burned with a much more violent fire.

- "Bring me everything we have on Mordred," he ordered in a cold voice.

Archivists were dispatched, registers deployed, reports unearthed in the minutes that followed. A pile of documents accumulated on the war table.

Maélor consulted them one by one, his claws scraping the parchment.

- "Name: Mordred. Initial status: slave captured during the purges."

- "Transferred to the Colosseum of the 7th Crown. Results: exceptional. Notable victories against several champions."

- "Danger level: high. Unstable, but promising."

- "Selected for the Bio-construct Weapon program #27."

- "Paired with special agent Ygdrasyle. Projection mission into the human world."

- "Last report: died in combat, buried during the collapse of a building during the assault on Paris. Body not recovered. File closed."

Maélor slowly put down the last sheet. The wood under his palm creaked slightly as his grip tightened.

His eyes became two slits of ember.

- "Ygdrasyle."

The word cracked in the air like a cleaver.

- "Bring him to me. Right now."

A few minutes later, Ygdrasyle entered the room. Slender, calm, his gaze sharp as a stylus, he bowed deeply.

- "Majesty."

Maélor slowly descended the steps of the dais. Each of his steps echoed in the immensity of the room like an approaching sentence.

- "It would seem that Mordred is alive."

Ygdrasyle slowly raised his head, raising an eyebrow, feigning astonishment.

- "Mordred? That's... impossible. He's dead. I already reported it to you. I was with him when the building collapsed in Paris. There was nothing to save. The site was vitrified under the debris."

- "Yes. A report... written by you. Without witness. Without remains. Not even a scale. No visual confirmation. Just your word and the fact that the slave collar deactivated."

The king drew closer still, now just a few steps from him. His presence alone was enough to make his guards step back.

- "Tell me, Ygdrasyle. How could Mordred have survived that? Did you, by chance... omit a detail? Or lie to cover something up?"

Ygdrasyle held his gaze, calm. Too calm.

- "I deny any accusation, Majesty. I don't know what you've seen, or thought you saw. But I maintain what I said: Mordred died that day. I swear it to you."

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