The words settled into me like cold ash.
I stared at the map, at the faintly pulsing lines that should’ve been alive and generous and instead felt… wrong. Sluggish. Like veins clogged with something invisible and malicious.
“Can it be reversed?” I asked.
Shad didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he folded the map carefully, hands steady, movements controlled in the way of someone restraining something furious just beneath the surface. Then he looked up at me, his eyes hard.
“Everyone who managed these lines is gone,” he said. “They vanished even before you took the city. A few days, by my estimation. This wasn’t done in a panic. It was prepared.”
My teeth sank into my lower lip before I realized I was biting it.
“They knew we’d attack,” I muttered. “They planned this. Made sure taking Altandai would hurt. Starve us slowly, weaken us, then take it back once we collapse.” My hand clenched into a fist. “I hate the grand—”
I stopped myself.
Shad didn’t.
“You’re right to hate my former colleagues,” he said, and this time, his voice wasn’t calm.
The room reacted.
Vines coiled along the walls, leaves shuddering as if struck by a sudden wind. The hum of the machinery deepened, resonating through the floor. For just a moment, the carefully controlled ecosystem around us trembled.
“This,” Shad continued, each word precise and venomous, “is not a political maneuver. This is sacrilege against nature.” The vines snapped tighter, wood creaking under their grip. “If they weren’t locked by the God of War’s bindings,” he added flatly, “I would kill them myself.”
I believed him.
“Come,” he snapped, turning on his heel.
I followed him back into the main chamber, the vast laboratory-barn hybrid that I’d barely registered earlier because my brain had been busy with memories of being restrained by him.
At the center of the room stood a pillar.
Tall, stone at its core, but wrapped in layered frameworks of rune-etched rings, and humming devices that looked like a cross between agricultural equipment and arcane instruments. Tubes fed into it, thin lines of light pulsing through them like trapped lightning.
“How did I miss that?” I murmured.
“Because it isn’t meant to draw the eye,” Shad replied. “Look at this.”
He gestured me toward one of the devices mounted near the pillar. It looked vaguely like a microscope, if microscopes were made of crystal lenses and humming runic arrays instead of glass and brass.
I leaned in.
The moment I looked through it, my breath caught.
Fractures.
Tiny, precise cracks threading through the crystal lattice, barely visible unless you knew how to look. Microrunes etched so fine they bordered on conceptual, warped just enough to break symmetry.
I blinked, because I’d seen this before. But— “Oh,” I breathed. “Oh. No way.”
Shad watched me closely. “You recognize it.”
“…Yeah,” I drawled. There was a quest to fix war machines. I did it, like, twelve times. Because I kept screwing it up. I leaned closer, squinting at the structure. “This isn’t corruption. It’s inversion. The crystals are phase-inverted,” I said, the words coming easier the more I stared. “Someone flipped their ley-harmonic polarity and locked it into a recursive growth-null loop.”
At least, that was one of the lines that persuaded the captain to send the crew to the dungeon.
Shad blinked, and he stared at me as if I’d just started speaking a foreign language. “Are you… sure?”
I straightened, nodding. “Yeah. Pretty sure.”
The realization clicked fully into place then, the way pieces from old puzzles suddenly rearranged themselves into something coherent. “Without a reset,” I continued, warming to it despite myself, “every spread cycle compounds the entropy. Another month and the land won’t just fail to grow… it’ll actively unmake viable soil.”
Silence followed.
Shad’s expression shifted from disbelief to dawning understanding and respect. “I haven’t taken you for a scholar,” he said, a faint smile touching his lips.
“I’m not,” I shrugged. “I just… picked up some things.”
His smile widened, genuinely amused now. “And you created demon circles beneath the binding stone because you simply memorized the pattern without understanding it?”
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I blinked.
…Actually, yes.
But I wasn’t about to blabber it out loud, so I shrugged instead. “Anyway. We’re not taking land from Sallén production.”
That wiped the smile right off his face.
He studied me for a long moment, measuring, calculating. “Salaga,” he said carefully, “the crop from which Sallén is produced, occupies five percent of arable land. We need to cut down on cash crops. Including Salaga.”
I rose to my feet.
“Nope.”
Shad’s brow furrowed.
“Not Sallén,” I said firmly, lifting the bottle and pointing it at him like it was an argument. “We’re not sacrificing it.”
His gaze flicked from my face to the bottle and back again. “You are prioritizing sentiment over survival.”
“No,” I snapped. “I’m prioritizing fixing the problem instead of amputating around it.”
I stepped closer to the pillar, tapping one of the crystal housings. “Five temporal shards. That’s all it takes.”
Shad stiffened. “Temporal shards are extremely rare.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Five will let me realign the chronoflux lattice, roll the crystals back to their pre-tamper state, and overwrite the sabotage like it never happened.”
Basically, Ctrl+Z for magical agriculture.
He stared at me.
Longer this time. “You’re suggesting a full temporal rollback of the ley interface,” he drawled. “That would restore output immediately.”
“Exactly.”
“And you’re certain this won’t destabilize the system?”
“Positive. The loop is already unstable. We’re just… undoing the damage.”
Shad let out a long breath, rubbing his chin. “Where would you even acquire temporal shards? They aren’t sold. You can’t simply pick them up at a farmer’s market.”
I pouted at him. Actually pouted. These elven hormones were doing things to my emotional regulation that I did not approve of.
“Stop teasing,” I muttered.
He laughed.
Like, genuinely laughed, head tipping back slightly, the sound echoing warmly through the lab. I had to physically restrain myself from pouting harder, which was embarrassing for reasons I would unpack later, preferably never.
I turned toward the exit. “We’re not sacrificing Sallén,” I said, already walking away.
Behind me, Shad’s laughter softened into something thoughtful.
Before I went back to the cart, I closed my eyes and returned to my bed on Earth.
The transition was instant and deeply unfair.
One second I was standing in a plant laboratory that smelled like wet soil, ozone, and impending famine. The next, I was face-first in memory foam, sheets cool and soft and aggressively comfortable.
I stretched without thinking, rolling onto my side and letting out a small, deeply undignified sound. Oh wow. I forgot how soft this was.
Earth beds were cheating.
I rolled once more, burying my face in the pillow, breathing in floral detergent. For half a second, my brain tried to convince me that everything else had been a weird stress dream.
Then I sat bolt upright.
“Jerry?”
Silence.
The room stared back at me in judgment.
I scanned it again, eyes flicking to the window or nightstand.
Nothing.
I bit my lip, irritation bubbling up. Honestly, not having Jerry answer my every whim was kind of annoying. I hadn’t realized how used to that I’d gotten until he wasn’t there to sigh, but trying to be kinda-human? Maybe? Clouda was not exactly forthcoming.
So instead of yelling his name louder like that would help, I swung my legs out of bed and stood.
The mirror caught my eye as I passed.
Right.
Still in Rimelion Queen clothes. I focused, exhaled, and willed the clothes to change shape.
The magic obeyed.
The blue folded inward, silver lines smoothing and darkening until it became clean black fabric. The weight shifted, settling into something tailored, the illusion refining itself until I was staring back at—
A perfect black suit… Lola-approved one and I grinned at myself in the mirror. “Oh yeah,” I whispered. “That’ll do.”
I sent a ping as I headed for the elevator.
Incoming to the Assistance Room.
Which, in Lola-speak, meant: Everyone, please drop what you’re doing and try to stop her from doing something catastrophic.
The elevator ride was mercifully short. The doors slid open, and I stepped straight into—
Paperwork hell.
Tables everywhere. Stacks of documents in various stages of collapse. Screens flickering with reports, projections, resource charts, and alarming red arrows pointing down. Assistants and analysts moved through it all like exhausted ants, talking quietly, typing furiously, and occasionally staring into the middle distance like they were reconsidering working for me.
I couldn’t help it.
An evil grin crept across my face.
I walked straight up to the desk where Olivia sat, fingers moving at a speed that suggested caffeine had long since replaced blood in her veins.
“Olivia,” I said coolly. “New orders.”
Okay, maybe I enjoyed playing cold Queen a little bit.
Maybe more than a little bit.
She didn’t even look up. “Acknowledged.”
Impressive. “Important,” I added. “Very.” and showed them the bottle in my hand.
Still typing.
“May I ask for details?” she said calmly.
I nodded graciously, hands clasped behind my back like I was about to announce a quarterly earnings report instead of a dungeon raid.
“We’ve got a problem with crops, right?”
“Yes,” Olivia replied instantly. “Production has sharply decreased across multiple sectors. Initial analysis suggests labor disruption combined with logistical inefficiencies due to the regime change, but the rate of decline exceeds projected—”
“I examined the problem,” I cut in gently. “And I found a solution.” Her fingers paused for exactly half a second and she looked up. “I’ll personally lead a team into a dungeon,” I continued, smiling pleasantly, “and retrieve the items needed to fix crop production. Which means we won’t need to increase tagrain area.”
Silence.
Olivia stared at me as if she was trying to reconcile two incompatible realities. “Queen,” she said carefully, “with all due respect, even the Minister of Agriculture—”
I cracked.
The serious expression shattered, and I giggled, clapping a hand over my mouth like this was a delightful secret instead of a logistical nightmare. “I just spoke to him,” I said brightly. “And he agreed.” Olivia stopped typing, and that alone was impressive.
“I see,” she said.
“Yes!” I clapped my hands together once. “So let’s assemble a team, shall we?”
I tapped my chin, pretending to think while my brain was already sprinting ahead. Who hadn’t seen much action lately? Who wouldn’t immediately escalate things into a crater?
“Oh!” I snapped my fingers. “Katherine, Lucas, Frozna, and I.”
Olivia inhaled.
I saw an objection forming. The careful, reasoned argument about risk profiles, operational necessity, political optics.
I raised a hand.
“And,” I added, “ask Scamantha if she still has the potion with the Saevrin feather.”
That did it.
Olivia exhaled a long, resigned sigh, shoulders slumping just slightly as she typed again. “Understood.”
Around us, several analysts stared, and I nodded to them politely, turned on my heel, and left the room before anyone could stop me.
As the doors slid shut behind me, I smiled to myself and chose to believe they were speechless because of my impressive speaking skills.
I blinked, and the world shifted back into weight and scent and magic.
The barn loomed where I’d left it, Tawnyx stamping impatiently nearby, tail lashing as if it could sense my indecision across realms.
I walked back to the cart, heels crunching over packed earth, the bottle of Sallén still warm in my hand, proof that some traditions deserved to survive whatever chaos I dragged them through.
Or realms. What would Patrick think if I gave him this?
Gael straightened when he saw me, nerves and hope warring on his face, and I flashed him a grin that felt dangerously sincere. “Okay,” I said, hopping up and motioning for him to follow, “let’s go. You need to show me how to make alcohol.”