Finlay stalked through the hollowed-out corridors of the High Manor, a low curse trailing in his wake like a frozen thread.

  "What kind of bastard builds a place this cold? It’s out there—why does it feel like I’m trekking through a glacial graveyard?"

  His breath escaped in thick plumes that hung in the stagnant air. He rubbed his palms together: not for comfort, just a practical check that his fingers remained tools and not brittle icicles.

  In the Dining Hall, the proximity of so many predators and the friction of their shared tension had generated a deceptive heat.

  Out here?

  Nothing but stone and steel and the pool of viscous cold that rose from the floorboards. A reservoir of unspent years. According to his memories, the Manor had always been this way. It never felt like home—it was the inside of a ribcage belonging to a god who had forgotten how to breathe.

  Pulseless. High-ceilinged. Hollow.

  The Family Dinner had dissolved shortly after Father’s decree. The decision itself—the Expedition, the Institute, —was almost secondary to the meeting's true revelation: the Great Wasteland was stirring. For the first time in four centuries, the dead earth was clearing its throat.

  That, and Finlay volunteering to be the first thing it swallowed.

  "Now," he muttered, his breath steaming in the icy air. "All that's left is to survive."

  A jagged laugh scraped its way up his throat, tasting of dry ash and old regrets.A familiar rhythm. Some things remained the same after his journey through the wreckage of time. He'd gambled his life again—and this time, he'd provided the stakes himself.

  He rasped, his boots hammering the flagstones in a cadence that pushed the sluggish blood through his veins. "How am I supposed to talk about survival when the place itself is trying to mummify me?"

  Even now, miles from the table, his Father's gaze clung to his shoulders. A leaden shroud. It pressed inward, tightening his lungs, triggering the muscle memory of two decades.

  For nineteen years, his body had been a temple of unrewarded discipline. The shame of his "tainted" blood had been a leash, and he'd been a dog that loved the fist that held it. He could still feel it—that starving, pathetic shard of his old self reaching out its hand for a scrap of recognition from the man who saw him as a ledger error.

  He slapped the hand away.

  His Father was no Heaven. He was no idol to be worshipped at the altar of fear.

  Well. He was a Ha'ven—but that's not the point.

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  His Father was, at his core, just another strong man. Strength gave him the right to kill. It gave him no right to own his son's soul.

  A perfect conclusion. Cathartic, even.

  He broke into a run. Grace and noble decorum could manage on their own. He just wanted to outrun the cold before it realized he was still alive.

  [A tragic expanse, this Manor. The architectural charm of a catacomb. The thermal output of a dead Moon.]

  A pulse of dry, golden heat throbbed behind Finlay’s eyes, pushing back the silver mist of his breath.

  [Such wretched taste. Those cellar-fossils never change.]

  "Oh. I almost forgot you were in there."

  [A shadow may forget the light that casts it, little spark. The Sun never forgets its own fire.]

  "Right." Finlay breathed, boots hammering stone. In a world full of things that preferred to ignore him, being remembered by a living eclipse was practically a recognition.

  [That Patriarch of yours. Quite a shadow he casts. A passing cloud that has convinced itself it swallowed the sky.]

  "Not another word about him."

  [Peace. I have no desire to waste my radiance upon a dying candle. You are the only horizon I care to illuminate.]

  A wave of pressurized warmth moved through his chest. Real warmth, not the deceptive kind the Dining Hall had offered.

  [You stood before the Ha'ven and refused to flicker.]The Sun weighed the moment. [For that... you have earned my Noon-Day.]

  It landed with more gravity than expected. Somewhere deep within his interior—a rusted mechanism of his old self—shifted off its axis.

  "...Thank you."

  [Gratitude. How exquisitely quaint.]

  But the shroud of his Father's gaze finally tore away.

  His steps became lighter. More deliberate. It was no trick of the mind: the Sun’s words radiated a heat his Father’s blood never could.

  Finlay refocused on the blur of the stone walls. The corridor was a labyrinth of shadow and frost, but his body had no interest in fatigue—high Endurance at work. He could maintain this killing pace for hours, his heart a steady, iron drum that refused to skip a single beat.

  He felt less like a man and more like a living engine of war. Calibrated. Lethal. Absolute.

  [You are no Zenith yet, . But you are treading the right path. To step into the maw of the Void for the sake of the family... truly picturesque.]

  A sharp, involuntary twitch seized the corners of Finlay’s lips—a muscle-spasm of pure, unadulterated irony.

  He didn't know whether to let out a jagged laugh or simply choke on the phrase. In the Esterra Court, there was no "family." There was only The Family—a cold, hungry entity that ate its own children.

  In the end, he just smiled.

  "You're right."

  He muttered, his voice as cold as the masonry.

  ""

  He locked his grip onto the rhythmic, metallic strike of his boots and what lay ahead.

  "Hey—Finlay!"

  A sharp shout cut through the stillness and shattered his stride.

  His body stopped before his mind caught up. Pure reflex. Muscles locking, breath hitching, every nerve in him suddenly standing at attention and screaming one word.

  He turned.