They filed out of the vault—boots clanging on iron catwalks, breath steaming in the cold air—only for the world to lurch.
A sweep of blue light arced up from the runes at the chamber lip and slammed shut across the doorway with a chord that set their teeth on edge.
Celeste’s muffled shout snapped into nothing; she pressed her palm to the shimmering wall and felt the cold hum bite back.
She was sealed inside.
Outside, the courtyard exploded into chaos.
Figures blurred at the far end—shapes weaving mana and steel. Saff was there, braided copper flashing as she darted like a blade, flanked by a dozen mythic loyalists moving with lethal grace.
Opposite them stood Brassmane, guards behind him, but he wasn’t whole. A dark, sticky dagger jutted from his back, his stance winded but furious. He spat accusations as he dodged a burn of spellfire.
“Traitor,” Brassmane said, voice low and cold, each word a weight. “Saff—what have you done?”
Saff laughed, hard and sharp, stepping between slashes as if she were leaning into wind. Her tone was all clipped steel and contempt, cruelty wrapped in righteous heat.
“Done? I freed them, Brassmane. I opened their cages. I ripped your gilded leash off. Your ‘protection’ was a shackle. This—this is their last chance.”
Ray bristled, hammer raised, eyes flaring. “Saff—what are you doing? This is madness.”
“Ssh, Ray,” Saff snapped without looking at her. “Shut it. I want two things: that cat locked up in your bloody vault, and I want Brassmane to admit what he’s done. Publicly.”
Ray’s grip tightened around Heartbreaker.
“Stop being an idiot!” she shouted. “You’re going to get everyone killed!”
That made Saff finally turn.
Her orange eyes locked onto Ray with something almost pitying.
“Oh, Ray.” Saff’s smile twisted. “Still barking for scraps, are you? You came running back here because you wanted security. Thought the Council wouldn’t follow you if you hid under our wards.”
Ray’s ears pinned back.
Saff stepped closer, voice cutting deeper. “But if they do come? If the Council decides it wants you badly enough? The elders won’t think twice about throwing you to the wolves. You’re still weak. Still looking for something bigger to stand in front of you. A clan. A wall. A chieftain. Anything but yourself.”
Ray’s face flashed with fury.
“Say that again,” she growled.
Saff smirked. “Truth hurts more when you already know it.”
Kirrin screeched, wings unfurling, and stepped in front of Brassmane, feathers bristling with indignation. Her Scottish lilt cut through the din.
“Ye’ll no’ tear this place apart for old ghosts! He’s our chieftain—this isna the way.”
Saff ducked a blade-thrust and snarled back. “Forward? That’s all you ever do, Kirrin? Forward, forward—run so the Council can never pin us down? I’m tired of hiding! We have an apocalypse to fight. We have the guts to fight back. And you—” she spat the word like bile, “—you lot would rather stage some pretty alliance with hybrid scum than take your place in the world. Hypocrites.”
Brassmane’s voice, when he found it, was tired and reasoned, not the bluster of a man without guilt.
“We once ruled, Saff. Mythics held the weight of world and responsibility. We bound purebloods, yes—because law was order. They cast off chains and the world turned. They learned to wield mana as weapon. You would use that weapon against them? You would light the match and call it justice?”
Hughes, hands on his crook, grunted a short laugh and spat between his teeth. “Aye, grand words. But stabbin’ leaders and raisin’ torches rarely gives you the plan afterwards.”
Pitch shifted, watching the ping-pong of accusations, voice low and incredulous. “So. Open revolution or staged coup? Either way—this is about to get very loud.”
Arcade’s eyes were knives of calculation, quills flicking as he took in formations and flares. “Saff, you realise what you’re risking? This isn’t just political theatre. The vault’s wards won’t like a broader breach. People die in collateral. Are you prepared for the cost?”
Saff moved like thunder then, steps measured, voice a blade.
“Yes. I am prepared. Better to take the risk than to beg for crumbs while your kids starve under Council edicts.”
Kirrin pushed forward again, voice cracking with urgency. “Enough! This is the past. We need tae let it sleep. Tearin’ at old wounds will only make new ones—”
Saff scoffed, closing the distance between them. “Let it sleep? So we’ll all keep pretending the chains weren’t there? No. I’m through sleeping. I want freedom, not polite subservience.”
Brassmane’s posture broke for a split second—an old sorrow passing like a shadow—then steadied.
“You call it freedom; I call it chaos. We are no longer children in the wild. There is order to preserve. If you rip that order away, you unmake the delicate balance that keeps the worst of us from spilling over.”
A loyalist behind Saff shouted something—an oath, a cry—and a small skirmish flared. Flashes of mana. A clang of steel against warded leather. A bright sting of arc-light seared the air.
Ray lunged, hammer smashing shields. Hughes heaved, his crook anchoring a charging attacker. Pitch side-stepped and laid a precise, nonlethal strike that sent a mythic reeling.
All the while, Brassmane and Saff sparred with words as much as blows—accusation versus conviction.
“You sold them comfort for chains,” Saff hissed in a voice that might have been contempt or heartbreak. “You told them safety. I told them the truth.”
“I offered stewardship,” Brassmane replied, each syllable deliberate. “And when we held power, we were wiser—this you forget.”
Saff barked a short, vicious laugh. “Wiser? You enslaved them and called it wisdom. Get over yourself.”
She turned sharply, throwing one arm toward the watching elders.
“And don’t pretend this little welcome mat you’ve rolled out for hybrids is kindness.”
The elders stiffened.
Several looked away.
Saff saw it and smiled like a knife finding a seam.
“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s the part nobody wants said aloud.”
Brassmane’s expression darkened. “Saff.”
“No.” Her voice rose, carrying across the courtyard. “Let them hear it. The only reason you and the elders want hybrids here is to breed more mythics.”
A shocked murmur tore through the gathered Manaliaid.
The elders’ faces shifted—embarrassment, anger, shame, denial. One elderly stag lowered his eyes. A fox woman clutched her shawl tighter. Another elder opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Saff spread her arms.
“I’m not wrong, am I? For every one young we have, a hybrid with a mythic can produce seven, eight, ten in a litter. That’s the calculation. That’s the hope. Not love. Not sanctuary. Numbers.”
Ray’s face went pale with rage.
Kirrin looked wounded.
Brassmane’s jaw tightened.
Saff pressed on, merciless now. “That’s the only reason you want them here. Otherwise, it would be just like the Mana Age. The same second-class citizens. The same useful bodies. The same pretty words wrapped around ownership.”
She jabbed a claw toward the direction of the vault, where Celeste remained trapped beyond the barrier.
“And don’t act like the Nullborn are worse when they keep hybrids for the same reason. Breeding Nullborn immune to our mana. Breeding tools. Breeding shields. Breeding futures they don’t have to bleed for.”
Her voice cracked, but her fury only sharpened.
“You’re hypocrites. All of you. This is just another form of slavery, dressed up in clan colours and old songs. And I’m done with it.”
The courtyard went deathly quiet for one terrible breath.
Then the fighting surged again.
Saff lunged, ringed mana flaring. “If you’re not strong enough to see how rotten this world is, then step aside.”
Kirrin, bleeding a strip of sacrificial anger, fought to keep them from tearing the courtyard apart. “We need solutions, not swords in backs!”
Around the edges, Arcade, Hughes, Ray, and Pitch moved to hold the line, protecting civilians, trying to defuse the escalation without taking a side.
Celeste, pressed against the barrier inside the vault, listened to every chant and clang through the glass, heart like a trapped bird.
The argument curled tighter, voices rising, and for a breath the whole base teetered on a knife-edge between rebellion and restraint.
Outside, mana sparked and wings beat.
The courtyard smelled of ozone and hot metal.
Plum stepped forward before anyone could stop her, notebook clutched hard against her chest.
“That isn’t the whole truth,” she said, voice sharper than usual. “Yes, the purebloods want hybrids. Everyone knows that. But Umbranox banned the factories. She’s changing things. Slowly, yes, painfully slowly, but she is changing them.”
Saff’s head turned.
Her stare landed on Plum like a knife point.
Plum swallowed, but didn’t step back.
Saff’s lip curled. “You know nothing.”
Plum’s ears dipped slightly.
“You know nothing of hybrid suffering,” Saff said, voice low and venomous. “Nothing of mythic suffering. You sit behind your notes and your feeds and regurgitate Council rhetoric because someone important smiled for your camera and promised reform.”
Plum’s face flushed. “That’s not—”
“It is exactly what it is,” Saff snapped. “You think a law wipes away generations? You think banning factories means the children already bred, sold, chipped, and buried suddenly become free?” Her eyes burned. “You report suffering. You do not carry it.”
Plum went quiet.
Mezzo pushed past her, guitar-axe clenched in both paws, his usual swagger stripped down to something raw.
“Enough of this,” he said, voice hard. “Let Celeste go.”
Saff looked at him then, amused despite the chaos. “Not a chance.”
Mezzo’s jaw tightened. “She hasn’t done anything to you.”
“No,” Saff said. “She’s done something far more useful.”
Behind the barrier, Celeste pressed harder against the shimmering wall, unable to hear every word clearly but catching enough to make her stomach twist.
Saff pointed toward the vault.
“Every mythic here felt her mana. Every single one. And she’s only releasing drops.” Her voice rose, fierce and feverish. “Drops, Mezzo. Little sparks of something vast enough to tie everyone together. Who knows what she could do if we used her properly?”
Mezzo’s ears pinned back. “Used her?”
“If we turned that power against the Council,” Saff said, eyes bright with conviction, “no being of mana would ever be shackled again. No mythic banished. No hybrid collared. No child hidden in a camp because some Nullborn lord decided their blood was useful.”
Mezzo stepped closer, fury flashing across his face. “She’s not a weapon.”
Saff’s expression hardened.
“Everything powerful becomes a weapon eventually.”
“She’s a person.”
“People are what wars are made of.”
Mezzo lifted his guitar-axe slightly. “I’m warning you, Saff.”
Saff smiled without warmth. “Warn all you like.”
Her gaze slid back toward the vault, toward Celeste’s small trapped shape behind the blue barrier.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m taking her.”
The words struck the courtyard like a match dropped into oil.
Brassmane’s shoulders stayed steady, his voice low and even as stone grinding under a millwheel.
“Listen to the numbers, Saff. For every mythic that draws breath, there are a thousand purebloods. Yes—we may endure a century multiplied, but longevity does not make the arithmetic in our favour. They are too numerous to fight in the open. To wage total war against them is to waste our lineages on pyres.”
He folded his hands, eyes softening with a sadness that carried history.
“We can live for centuries. They live fast, burn bright—then are gone. But brightness does not win a war of attrition. We are surviving, Saff. That is the point. We preserve what matters in the gulfs between assaults. If you push for all-out revolt, you do not merely risk yourself. You condemn those who cannot fight back—hybrids, innocents—who already suffer more under Council rule than many of us ever did.”
Saff’s laugh was a blade.
She stepped forward, copper braid trembling as fury threaded each syllable.
“They’re not full mythics, Brassmane. They never will be. They do not understand our rites, our temperance. You couch it as stewardship, but you keep them stripped and fenced like livestock. You call it order; I call it theft.”
Brassmane’s hand lifted—not in surrender, but in a slow, careful gesture meant to slow the storm.
“They are ripped from families, yes. Raised in camps where names are numbers. Many do not know the shape of their kin. That is the cruelty I lament. But those who do know their kin are spared a loneliness you cannot imagine, Saff. We at least afford some recognition—”
“You call it recognition,” Saff spat, cutting him off. “I call it a gilded cage. With the cat’s power, with that girl’s spark, we could make the Council bow. We could make them answer. Revenge is not sentimental. It is justice.”
Her eyes burned.
“We could reclaim what’s ours.”
Brassmane’s gaze hardened, but his tone remained measured, a scholar trying to explain what his heart feared.
“And doom us all for a past you cannot revive? You would torch the fragile balance for a memory of dominion. We built structures of restraint because power untempered devours the unprepared. If you strike at the Council and they strike back—if they unleash the mechanisms they hoarded—what do you suppose will happen to those within your care? The camps will burn first. The hybrids you claim to free will be trampled beneath the game of thrones you start.”
Saff’s voice dropped to a raw, dangerous whisper.
“Then so be it. Better to die having taken a stand than to live forever on your knees. If you are too weak to claim what is ours, Brassmane, step aside.”
For a moment, the air between them tightened like a harp string.
Around them, the courtyard echoed with the clash of loyalties—steel, mana, and the noise of the world deciding where it now wished to fall.
