The earth still trembled faintly underfoot, a residual shiver from the Void’s awakening, as rebels staggered out of the seminary’s shadow. Above them, the sky tore open—not with violence, but with a sigh. Smog peeled back like rotting parchment, dissolving into nothingness as golden sunlight cascaded over the Greylands for the first time in centuries.

  Lissa froze mid-step, her boots crunching on brittle grass. Her upturned face glowed as sunlight kissed her cheeks—real sunlight, unfiltered, warm. She gasped, silver-veined fingers clutching her chest. “It’s… it’s blue,” she whispered, as if speaking too loud might shatter the miracle. “Like the old stories said.”

  All around her, the camp erupted in disbelieving chaos.

  Myrtle dropped her rifle, staring slack-jawed at the heavens. “Saints alive—it’s burning! Why isn’t it hurting?!” She flinched as a sunbeam grazed her arm, expecting blisters, only to shudder when warmth seeped into her skin instead.

  Gonov stood motionless, his sniper’s squint softened to something childlike. “The color…” he rasped, blinking rapidly. “Just like the whispers of the Resistance, like the deep lakes before the Monarch poisoned them. But… brighter.”

  Lapen stumbled, tripping over his own feet as he gaped upward. “But the sermons said—they said sunlight kills—”

  “They lied,” Claire said softly, her voice carrying over the murmurs. She stood atop a rubble pile, her red hair blazing like a banner under the open sky. “About this. About everything.”

  By dusk, the rebels had gathered in the seminary’s central courtyard—now bathed in fading gold and streaked with the first stars any of them had ever seen. Trent and Baruch stood at a makeshift podium, their usual bickering replaced by stunned reverence as they addressed the crowd.

  “The Dungeon’s upper chamber isn’t just a training ground,” Trent announced, gesturing to the obsidian archway behind him. “It’s a… a mirror. Shows you what you need to learn. How to fight smarter. How to unlearn the Monarch’s poison.”

  Baruch nodded, uncharacteristically solemn. “And below? A true Dungeon. Not a pit—a labyrinth. Mana-rich, crawling with challenges. But it’s… alive. Teaches as it tests. Lets you commune with the World Energy.” Murmurs rippled through the crowd.

  “You mean haunted,” someone shouted—Jyn, a wiry Stone Pelter turned scavenger.

  “Blessed,” Veyra corrected, stepping forward. Her crow-feather cloak seemed to drink the twilight as she raised her hands. “The Apostates of the First Purge walk those halls. They will guide us. Harden us.” Her milky eye gleamed. “To them, we are the Second Coming. The reckoning the Monarch delayed for five hundred years.”

  Claire waited for the murmurs to die before climbing onto the podium. “This isn’t just a stronghold,” she said, her voice sharp as a whetstone. “It’s a sanctuary. A school. A hospital. We’ll take in everyone—rebels, deserters, even Loyalists who’ve lost their stomach for the Monarch’s lies.”

  Roza crossed her arms, her facial scar twisting as she frowned. “And when the Seraphim come? When they realize we’ve stolen a piece of their sky?”

  “Let them.” Elara emerged from the shadows, her Void-scarred hands resting on her sword. “The Dungeon’s wards are tied to the land itself. They’ll break their fangs on our walls.”

  After the council, the camp buzzed with frenetic energy. Rebels who’d spent lifetimes hunched under smog now sprawled in the grass, tracing cloud shapes with disbelieving fingers.

  “Look—this green stuff!” A former Cobble Whisperer poked at a patch of moss, recoiling when it didn’t bite. “It’s… soft?!”

  Near the well, Lapen found Lissa lying flat on her back, arms outstretched as if to hug the sky. “What’re you doing?”

  “Memorizing it,” she whispered. Her silver veins pulsed faintly, mirroring the emerging stars. “In case it’s gone tomorrow.”

  He sat beside her, wincing as unfamiliar grass pricked his palms. “Claire says it’s permanent. That the Void’s anchored here.”

  Lissa rolled onto her side, her eyes too old for twelve. “Claire is right. This is only the beginning.”

  Dawn found the war council in the seminary’s vaulted library, huddled over maps scavenged from the Dungeon. Sunlight streamed through stained glass reforged by Void energy, casting fractured rainbows across tactical sketches of supply routes and smog-choked borderlands. The air hummed with the scent of ink and urgency.

  “We’ll need couriers,” Claire said, tapping a route sketched in Melissa’s smudged charcoal. “People who know the sewers and the Smuggler’s Tongue. If we’re taking in refugees, we need eyes everywhere.”

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  Georg leaned forward, Lara’s red ribbon tied around his wrist like a bloodstain. “The Sewer Queen’s network. She’s got informants in every work camp, every ration depot from here to the Iron Wastes.”

  “And what’s her price?” Natalie muttered, sharpening her glaive with a sound like bones grinding. “Another favor from Devon? A pint of Void-blood? Or just front-row seats when the Seraphim raze this place?”

  “Compliance,” Veyra said coldly, her crow-feather cloak swallowing the light as she stepped from the shadows. “She knows we’re the only ones mad enough to break the Monarch’s chokehold. But make no mistake—she’ll want a throne at whatever table we build.”

  Melissa slammed her palm on the table, making inkwells jump. “Forget the how—focus on the where! We can’t stuff a thousand refugees into this ruin. The Apostates’ training chamber is vast, but it’s not a damned city! And what happens when the Monarch sends a battalion? A Seraphim legion? We’re sitting ducks in this—”

  “He won’t.”

  All eyes turned to Elara. The former Archon stood apart, her Void-scarred hands tracing the edge of a yellowed military map. “Not immediately. His armies are concentrated eight hundred leagues east, bleeding themselves dry in the Perpetual War.”

  A hush fell. Even the seminary’s new-grown ivy seemed to still.

  “The… what?” Lapen asked, hovering near the doorway with Lissa half-hidden behind him.

  Elara’s dagger flashed as she stabbed the map, pinning it to the table. “The Eastern Kingdoms. A dozen nations bound by salt and steel, wedged between the Monarch’s territories and the Azure Wastes. They’ve held his forces at bay for seventy years.” Her finger traced a jagged scarlet line snaking across the parchment—the Iron Front, studded with inkblot fortresses. “He calls it purification. They call it genocide. We called it… duty.”

  Georg’s knuckles whitened around his axe. “You fought there.”

  “Led there,” Elara corrected, her voice hollow. “Three tours across the Bloodstone Marches. The Monarch doesn’t wage war—he engineers famine. Burns crops to create refugee crises, then offers ‘sanctuary’ to those who swear fealty. The Easterners would rather eat their dead.” She tapped a cluster of symbols near a mountain range. “His elite forces are here: the Omega Corps - Archons, Seraphim Primes, Architect Primes, Purgatory - Tier 6 elites. All tied up breaking the Kingdom of Lir’s Frontier.”

  Claire frowned. “Why pour resources into a meat grinder?”

  “Mana wells,” Elara said. “The Lirian peaks hold the last untapped reservoirs on the continent. The Monarch needs them to fuel his soul engines. But there’s… another reason.” She hesitated, her scarred throat working. “The Perpetual War isn’t just conquest. It’s a distraction. A way to justify the draft, the ration cuts, the disappearances. You think the people care about census taxes when their sons come home in ash urns?”

  Natalie snorted. “So we’re banking on the Monarch being too busy to crush us? That’s your grand strategy?”

  “No.” Elara’s sword dragged westward across the map, leaving a scar in the parchment. “We’re banking on his arrogance. To him, we’re roaches in a crumbling temple. The Eastern Front is where glory’s won. But—” The blade halted at a jagged coastline. “His supply lines stretch thinner every year. The Smuggler’s Tongue you mentioned? Half their routes exist to feed the war machine. Weapons from the Free Cities, blight-resistant grain from the Southern Archipelago, all funneled through the Monarch’s ports.” Her eyes met Claire’s. “Cut those lines, and the Iron Front collapses. The Eastern Kingdoms will do the rest.”

  Melissa whistled. “You want us to starve a war.”

  “I want us to end one,” Elara said in an ominous voice. “Every shipment we intercept is food for our people, weapons for our forges. The Monarch can’t hold the East and root us out. Not unless he abandons Lir—and that mana is the only thing keeping his throne intact.”

  Claire studied the map, sunlight glinting off the sword still pinning the Iron Front. “So we’re a critical wound they haven’t noticed yet ?.”

  “A plague,” Veyra hissed, her milky eye gleaming. “The Apostates tried direct assault in the First Purge. The Monarch’s walls are too high, his legions too entrenched. But rot? Rot works from within.”

  Georg leaned back, arms crossed. “And when he finally sends those Seraphim legions west?”

  Elara’s smile was all teeth. “Let him. By then, we’ll have the Dungeon’s wards at full strength. The Apostates didn’t just build a sanctuary—they made a trap. Channel Void energy through those defenses, and the seminary becomes a bastion that’d give even Omega Corps pause.”

  “Then we build up,” Elara continued, sweeping her hand over the seminary schematics. “The Dungeon’s mana can be channeled. Grows crops in easily. Purifies poisoned aquifers. With the Void’s help, we can alter stone itself—expand vertically, create tiered gardens in the cloisters, reinforce the outer walls with living rock.”

  Lissa peeked out from behind Lapen, her silver-veined fingers brushing a blueprint. “Like the hanging farms from Melissa’s blueprints ?”

  Elara stiffened. “…Yes. But with some adjustments, we did not anticipate for the First Apostate’s help, and the Void’s.”

  Claire’s gaze drifted to the window, where sunlight streamed over laughing rebels. Children—actual children, not starved urchins—chased each other through wildflowers that hadn’t existed yesterday. “We’ll need structure. Rotating shifts—farming, construction, defense. No tiers,” she added sharply, catching Veyra’s look. “No fixed ranks. Everyone fights. Everyone learns. Everyone…” She hesitated, watching a teenaged rebel teach Myrtle to weave flower crowns. “…lives.”

  Veyra opened her mouth, no doubt to sermonize, when a commotion erupted outside. A red-faced scout burst in, clutching a scrap of parchment reeking of sewage.

  “From the Sewer Queen’s runners,” he panted. “Monarch’s dispatched a reconnaissance legion—Lightbearer Hussars. They’ll reach the Greylands in three days.”

  Natalie grinned. “Let them come. I’ll plant their banners in the latrines.”

  “No.” Elara’s voice froze the room. “The Hussars are scouts, not soldiers. If they report back, the Monarch will know the smog’s lifted here. We need them to disappear.” Her dagger flicked to a canyon marked on the map. “Ambush them at the Shattered Jaw. No survivors, no witnesses.”

  Claire studied her. “You know the terrain?”

  “I carved it,” Elara said quietly. “Led six purges there. The rocks remember.”

  For a heartbeat, the council held its breath. Then Georg stood, axe gleaming. “I’ll take point. Need to test this Void-armor anyway.”

  Lapen stepped forward, Lissa’s hand clutched in his. “We’ll scout the approach. The Jaw’s riddled with old Smuggler’s paths.”

  One by one, the rebels volunteered—Myrtle for overwatch, Roza and Lyla for demolition, even Veyra’s Apostates with their bone-chilling hymns. Only Natalie hung back, her gaze locked on Elara.

  “You’d send us to die in your old killing fields?” she hissed.

  Elara met her glare unflinching. “We will go together, to do the right thing.”

  That night, as the first true stars glittered overhead, Claire found Devon’s note still pinned to the command table. Democracy is tough, he’d written, but we gotta try.

  She touched the words, ink smudged by countless rebel fingers. Beyond the window, Myrtle and Gonov leaned on the seminary walls, arguing over whether stars were holes in the Monarch’s smog or dead saints’ lanterns.

  “He’s right, you know,” Veyra said, materializing beside her like a shadow. “This won’t work if we become them. If we trade one throne for another.”

  Claire snorted. “Says the woman who called this place a ‘Second Coming.’”

  “A coming, not a coronation.” Veyra’s talon-like nail traced the note’s edge. “The Void chose a prophet, not a king. Remember that when the whispers start. When they beg you to take the crown.”

  They stood in silence, watching Lissa lead a gaggle of rebels in a star-mapping game. Her laughter echoed through stone halls built for penitence, now ringing with hope.

  Somewhere in the Void, Devon felt it—a tremor of light, fragile and ferocious.

  The reckoning had begun.