The first thing Sei felt was motion.

  Not the rocking of a cart, not the sway of a horse—something steadier. Subtle vibrations through wood and stone, like a building full of people trying not to make noise and failing anyway.

  The second thing he felt was pain.

  A hard, concentrated pressure behind his eyes, like someone had driven a spike through the center of his skull and left it there. His throat was dry. His tongue tasted like iron.

  The third thing—

  The third thing was wrong.

  His body felt… good.

  Not fine. Not recovering. Good like he’d slept for days and woken up refreshed. Good like his muscles had been fed and stretched and cared for. Good like his lungs were full, his limbs light, his heart strong.

  That should have terrified him.

  But the headache hit again, and he breathed through it instinctively, trying to orient.

  Sound filtered in.

  Muted voices.

  Bootsteps.

  The rustle of fabric.

  Then a voice close by, clinical and unfamiliar.

  “His breathing is deepening,” the voice said. “Pulse steady. Almost too steady.”

  Another voice—older, controlled.

  “Keep him down. Do not let him sit up. If he wakes disoriented, he could seize. He could—”

  Sei’s eyelids fluttered.

  Light stabbed through the darkness.

  He blinked hard, squinting into a room lit by pale daylight and lantern glow. Canvas walls. Wooden beams. The smell of damp earth and ink and too many bodies in one place.

  A tent.

  Not Toradol’s war tents. Something more formal. Neutral.

  He tried to lift his head—

  Pain detonated behind his eyes.

  A sharp breath escaped him.

  “Hold him!” someone snapped.

  Hands pressed down on his shoulders.

  Sei reacted on reflex, not with violence but with urgency. His body surged upward anyway, stronger than the hands expected. He sat up in one motion, breath ragged, vision swimming.

  The room froze.

  A man in gray robes—no insignia, no crown, but the posture of authority—stared at him with wide eyes. He held a crystalline rod in one hand, its tip faintly glowing with diagnostic light. A healer.

  Not like Sei.

  A mage-healer.

  “You—” the mage began, then stopped, adjusting grip on the rod. “Stay still.”

  Sei’s head pounded. His nose bled faintly, a warm trickle he wiped away without thinking.

  “Where am I?” he rasped.

  The mage stepped closer, lifting the rod toward Sei’s chest. “You were unconscious for four days. We need to assess what—”

  The rod’s light brightened.

  For a moment, Sei felt something press against him—an intrusion, a probing sensation like fingers trying to pry open a door inside his ribs.

  Then the light flickered.

  The rod vibrated violently, as if repelled.

  The mage’s eyes widened. “What—?”

  He tried again, forcing more mana into the tool. The crystal flared—

  —and then went dead.

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  Not dimmed.

  Dead.

  The glow vanished entirely, the rod turning dull and lifeless like it had never been enchanted at all.

  The mage stared at it in disbelief, shaking it once like that would make it work again.

  “It… it won’t—” he stammered. “That’s impossible.”

  Sei stared back, confusion slicing through the headache.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Sei said.

  The mage’s throat bobbed. He looked at Sei like he’d just sat up out of a grave.

  Behind him, someone shifted—boots on wooden plank.

  Eva.

  Sei turned, and relief hit him so hard it almost made him dizzy.

  She looked worse than he remembered. Not wounded, but worn down—eyes sharpened by sleeplessness, hair slightly out of place, armor scuffed and dulled. Still calm, still controlled… but tight, like a string drawn too far.

  “You’re awake,” Eva said.

  Her voice was steady.

  Her eyes were not.

  Sei swallowed. “Eva. What—”

  “You’ve been out for four days,” she repeated, sharper now, like she needed him to understand the weight of it. “And you are going to lie back down before you split your skull open.”

  Sei blinked. “Four…?”

  The mage-healer stepped back, still staring at his dead rod. “Captain, I can’t read him. The diagnostic focus failed. It’s like—like something is… covering him.”

  Eva’s jaw tightened. “Leave.”

  The mage hesitated. “But—”

  “Leave,” Eva said again, quiet but absolute.

  The man bowed stiffly and backed out, still clutching the rod like it had betrayed him personally.

  Sei watched him go, heart beating too strong in his chest.

  Too strong.

  He looked down at his hands.

  They were steady.

  No tremor.

  No weakness.

  No shaking.

  That was wrong.

  The last time—Greymark—he’d woken up barely able to sit. Feverish. Empty. Like his body had been hollowed out and left behind.

  This time…

  Sei’s stomach twisted.

  “Why do I feel… fine?” he whispered.

  Eva’s gaze flicked away for a fraction of a second, then returned. “You’re not fine.”

  Sei looked up. “But I’m not—”

  “You’re not tired,” Eva finished for him. “I know.”

  That confirmed it. Confirmed the wrongness had a witness.

  Sei’s voice dropped. “What happened.”

  Eva didn’t answer immediately.

  She stepped closer, then sat on the edge of the cot opposite him. For a moment, she looked older than her years.

  “You remember the dragon,” she said.

  Sei’s throat tightened. “Yes.”

  “You remember Rhen stepping out.”

  Sei’s breath caught on the name. “Rhen?”

  Eva watched his face carefully. “So you heard it.”

  Sei swallowed. “I… I saw him. He was going to—”

  Eva nodded once. “He tried.”

  Sei’s hands curled into the blanket. “And then I—”

  Eva’s eyes hardened.

  “And then you stopped being you.”

  The words hit Sei like cold water.

  His heart stuttered—then resumed too fast.

  Eva continued, voice controlled as if she’d practiced saying it without letting it break her.

  “Green light. A blade. Like a surgeon’s tool made of… something alive.” She inhaled slowly. “Your eyes turned dark. Your veins—”

  Sei’s stomach dropped. “No.”

  “You didn’t fall,” Eva said. “You stood. You moved. You went between them.”

  Sei’s mouth went dry. “I don’t remember.”

  “I know.” Eva’s voice softened for the first time. “You were gone.”

  Sei stared at her, horror blooming in his chest.

  “And the dragon?” he asked, barely audible.

  Eva’s gaze lifted toward the tent’s ceiling as if she could still see the sky.

  “You cut it,” she said. “Not like a warrior. Like a… correction.” Her voice tightened. “The wing. It tried to fly away and couldn’t. It went jagged—crippled—like the air didn’t obey it anymore.”

  Sei’s throat closed.

  He pictured the dragon’s shadow swallowing the ground.

  He pictured green light.

  He pictured himself—

  Not himself.

  “And Rhen?” Sei whispered.

  A voice answered from the edge of the tent.

  Low.

  Gravelled.

  Awake.

  “You didn’t just heal me.”

  Sei turned sharply.

  Rhen Varick sat in the shadows like something too heavy to belong indoors. His burns were bandaged, but the bandages looked more like insult than aid against what his body had endured. One horn was chipped. His eyes were half-lidded, watching Sei with a calm that felt more dangerous than rage.

  “You forced something to give,” Rhen finished.

  Sei stared at him, pulse hammering.

  “You know me?” Sei asked, voice strained.

  Rhen’s mouth twitched. Not a smile.

  “I know what you did.” His gaze dipped briefly to Sei’s hand. “And I know a dragon doesn’t leave like that unless it’s afraid of bleeding again.”

  Sei looked down at his palm.

  It looked normal.

  Too normal.

  He stood abruptly—faster than he meant to—and the world tilted. Pain surged behind his eyes, and fresh blood slid from his nose.

  Eva was up instantly, gripping his arm. “Sit.”

  Sei didn’t.

  He steadied himself with a breath, and that was wrong too—his body responded too well, like it had reserves it shouldn’t have.

  He swallowed hard.

  “The summit,” Eva said quietly, and the words felt heavier than the dragon ever had. “We made it.”

  Sei’s head snapped to her.

  She nodded.

  “Neutral territory,” she said. “Twelve leaders. Guards. envoys. Everyone waiting.” Her eyes sharpened. “They started without us.”

  Sei’s stomach dropped. “They stopped?”

  “They stalled,” Eva corrected. “They’re calling it caution. Neutrality. Respect.” Her tone made it clear she believed none of those words. “But yes. They’re waiting.”

  Sei’s mind flashed to Brannic’s earlier warning.

  By the time we arrive, everyone will think they know you.

  He wasn’t even awake and he was already shaping international decisions.

  Sei’s hands trembled—finally, faintly.

  Not from weakness.

  From fear.

  “Why do I feel like this,” he whispered again, more to himself than anyone. “Why am I not—”

  He couldn’t finish the thought.

  Because the answer sat in the gap where his memory should have been.

  Eva’s voice lowered.

  “Sei,” she said, and there was something like a warning in it. “When that healer tried to read you… his tool died.”

  Sei swallowed.

  Rhen spoke from the shadows, calm as stone.

  “Something is sitting on you,” he said. “Like a shadow that thinks it’s your skin.”

  Sei’s breath hitched.

  He looked at his hands again.

  He felt warm.

  Too warm.

  Alive in a way that didn’t match what he’d spent.

  And the most terrifying part wasn’t that he didn’t understand it.

  It was that a part of him suspected he did.

  Sei lifted his gaze to Eva.

  “I need air,” he whispered.

  Eva didn’t argue.

  She just tightened her grip, steadying him as he swayed.

  Outside the tent, the murmur of hundreds of voices rose and fell like a living thing.

  A summit waiting.

  A world watching.

  And somewhere beyond neutral borders, a crippled dragon was still alive… still angry… still remembering the shape of a green blade.

  Sei didn’t feel tired.

  He felt charged.

  And he didn’t know which was worse.