Warm, yet cold.
Heat seeps from beneath me, yet my body shivers. I’m moving, jostled in uneven rhythm. Spikes of anxiety and fear echo through the resonance network, every note sharp and trembling. I can’t see. The song tells me only fragments, broken chords, frayed edges of a larger melody. I reach out weakly, sending a single tone: alive.
Soft fur brushes my cheek. Beneath me, muscles flex and twist, each stride a burst of power. The scent of sand and ozone fills my lungs. Am I riding Hamu? My body is draped chest-down over the feline’s back. His growls rumble through me, and the air around us crackles. The Ashwing is still here. Scott is fighting.
I can’t see… but chat can. Their voices break through the static, urgent and alive.
[VioletVex]: He’s still breathing but that dragon looks furious!
[carapace_kid]: Scott’s holding it off, but barely!
[Archivolt]: The Ashwing’s flying higher, circling, it’s hurt, but getting meaner.
[ProteinPrincess]: That hit must’ve scared it! Look how it’s pulling back!
[Thrumline]: The battle’s not done yet; this song isn’t over.
That first big strike must have made the Ashwing wary. It’s learning. It hasn’t figured out Scott’s rhythm yet, and that blow hurt it badly. It can’t take another one like that. I have to move. I have to help.
I push up, pain screams through me, white and absolute. My vision swims. Passing out again would not be beneficial, but at least I’ve learned that losing consciousness doesn’t eject me from Nod. Small blessings.
Hamu lunges left, and I nearly slide from his back. My fingers clamp down on the saddle’s edge, holding on through sheer will. Scott’s breathing comes ragged through the resonance, the sound of effort and exhaustion. How long was I out? How long has this fight raged?
The air cracks, the dragon’s breath weapon charging. I feel the heat, smell the sharp tang of ozone, like sand struck by lightning. The wings beat hard overhead, roaring wind across the arena. Then, suddenly, silence. Hamu slows, panting. The Ashwings roar echoes across the arena, and the sound of his wings soften as it retreats.
“Kyris! You still with me? That thing’s a monster, man, how the hell did you hold for an hour? I think it’s backing off to lick its wounds. Geez, that thing hits. You’re unreal.”
Strong hands grip me, lifting me from Hamu’s back. “Now how do I get this helmet off you?”
I will the crown to fold away, metal streaming back into its halo form.
“Well, dang, that’s wild,” Scott breathes, grinning despite the blood at his lips. “Here, eat this, you need your strength.”
He presses a small marble against my lips. The taste bursts sharp and artificial, blue raspberry, of all things. It hums with warmth, dissolving into heat that spreads through my limbs. Tingling follows, then pain, raw and real, flaring up my right arm. Broken. Parrying those strikes did more damage than I thought.
Scott pours water over my face, wiping away blood and grit until I can open my eyes. The battlefield is wreckage, cratered sand, glass, and twisted stone. Scott looks even worse: his left arm hangs limp, his hammer discarded beside him, his breath coming in shallow gasps.
“What did you feed me?” I ask, voice rough. He steadies me as I rise.
“Oh, long story,” he laughs, “but let’s just say it’s a perk. I can make these regen candies, stamina, health, the works. We’ll talk shop when you’re patched up.”
As if on cue, my resonance flares. Ten strong notes rush toward us, Cast’s tone leading, high and fierce with desperation. The hum grows as the Hekari riders leap over the outer wall, sablehounds kicking up waves of dust. Cast dismounts before hers even stops, rushing to my side, eyes wide with relief.
“My King! We saw the Ashwing fly north, we feared the worst. I could barely hear your tone.”
The captains begin clearing the debris, carving a safe exit from the shattered arena. Scott collapses backward into the sand with a laugh.
“Man, that was insane! Totally different from any boss fight so far. You’re a legend, bro. Holding that thing off? Unreal.”
The adrenaline drains out of me, leaving exhaustion behind. Scott’s grin helps cut through the haze.
“You did some damage yourself,” I tell him. “That leg you broke will keep it lamed for a while. I could barely scratch it.”
He grins, rolling to look at me. “Want to know a secret? I can’t hit like that every time. That first swing was everything I had, but the Ashwing didn’t know that. After I busted its claw, it kept its distance. I just had to bluff till it ran.”
I laugh despite myself, the sound breaking the tension.
As the captains clear the last barrier, Cast and Scott help me mount one of the sablehounds. My gaze drifts to the broken form of the hound that saved me. Cast follows my eyes, her tone soft.
“I felt its final note,” she says quietly. “It sang pure and fulfilled. Saving you was its purpose, and in that last song, it was happy.”
The words bring small comfort, heavy all the same. I press a hand to my chest and whisper to the hum. We’ll grow stronger. None of you will die for me again.
[VioletVex]: Cowards, attacking while the king slept, that is filthy.
[Archivolt]: They should be ashamed, strike while he is absent, what honor is that?
[Arbiterofsalt]: We will take vengeance, I swear it, that thing has made war on our home.
We ride slow back toward the Singing Citidel, the sablehound’s gait steady beneath me. The dunes are in ruin, seared lines of glass splashed across the sand, serrated blades of molten splash frozen mid-flight, every ripple a white scar across the landscape. The sky is bleeding light into the east, and for the first time since I began spending nights here, the sun is up. Wait, what time is it, I ask myself, because Nod has always felt like night to me. I tuck that thought away to ask Cast later. There are a dozen mysteries crowding at the edges of my head, things I still do not understand, my strength among them, what abillities the crown has, what the chime will answer to, the limits of my territory and the physics of this place. The fight has stripped me of any small arrogance I may have carried.
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The closer we get, the quieter the air feels, not because the sound is missing, but because the scale of loss drowns out everything else. The gate we charged through hours ago is now a place of patient motion, not fury. Drones move in tidy lines, resin-slicked limbs working like clockwork to seal glass panels, extract shards, and bury the dead. There are fewer of our song now. The courtyard where I taunted the Ashwing is somber, its sand dragged smooth where bodies were gathered. They are already cleaned up, cataloged, and carried below. Rituals of repair become business here, the hive does not linger in grief, it recalibrates into labor, but the weight of what was taken still presses against my chest.
[VioletVex]: The silence feels wrong, too quiet for what they lost.
[carapace_kid]: I can’t believe how many are gone, this hurts to watch.
[Archivolt]: The hive mourns through work, rebuilding is their grief made motion.
[Thrumline]: Every drone moving is a prayer to the lost.
[Arbiterofsalt]: Their grief will be answered, this isn’t the end for them, the ashwing on the otherhand...
I feel every loss like a note falling out of tune. Plans form in me, immediate and brutal: layered air defenses, a web of listening posts tuned to heat pulses, reflective resin baffles that can scatter particulate plasma. We need contingency for air combat, fallback corridors, harpoons with resonant anchors designed to hold a winged bulk in place while we drive in steel. I make the decisions in a few cold strokes, rapid and spare, the kind of thinking that used to keep a raid group breathing for the next minute.
We go inside the cathedral, the false throne a blank silhouette in the pool of sand light. Down the spiral stair, the stone hums underfoot, it feels different these hours, lower and heavy. Into the inner keep, past workshops that smell of hot resin and singed metal. Cast ushers us to the throne room threshold, hands quick, eyes wide. She helps me out of the saddle, steadying me as if I might fall back into exhaustion like a man into sleep. Her grip is real and immediate, solid.
“Sit,” she says simply, and I let her lift me to the throne. When my weight settles, the world opens like a ledger across my mind. The castle sings its inventory in numbers and tones and ragged counters. Sixty three Hekari lost, my voice says first, sixty three of two hundred gone. My throat tightens when the drones tally comes next, twenty thousand to start, eight thousand five hundred forty missing. The numbers are blunt and obscene, they rip at me. Since I arrived, I planned for growth, expansion, a hive that could outlast me. Now that plan lies shredded like fabric. One creature pushed us close to extinction with a handful of strikes.
Fire rises in me, hot and clean. Not for revenge in some messy way, but for the machine of survival. I breathe, and the throne answers with little clicks in my skull, the Dominion listening, waiting for a shape to the plan.
Before I speak further, I turn to Cast. “The sun,” I say quietly. “It’s… wrong. I’ve only ever arrived here at night.”
Her expression twists in confusion. “My king, you have never arrived at the same hour twice. The cycles are inconsistent, though the hive always knows your rhythm.”
That doesn’t sit right. I glance at the broken sky filtering through the resin windows, pale and sharp.
“Scott,” I call, looking toward him. “In your desert, is it always day when you wake here?”
He blinks, then laughs. “Nah, man. My people figured it out early. Nod runs on a thirty-hour clock, like six hours longer than home. So the days and nights keep drifting. Pretty wild, huh?”
Thirty hours. I let the number roll around my head. The time ratio is one to one for waking and dreaming, but the rotation itself is longer. That explains the inconsistency, the drift in light, the way night and day blur depending on when I enter. I’ll need to test it. Maybe time itself hums to its own rhythm here.
“Good to know,” I murmur, already cataloging it away for later. There’s still so much I don’t understand. My own strength, the crown’s limits, the chime’s will, the scale of the Dominion’s reach. Every question feels like a chord left unresolved.
Cast hums softly in response, an understanding tone that vibrates through the air. “The world itself may be listening, my king.”
Scott stretches, cracking his shoulders. “Well, whatever the clock is, I’m starving. You got any food that isn’t sand-flavored resin?”
Despite myself, I laugh, a small, honest sound that cuts the tension. Even after all this, he can joke.
Then I face him again, the humor fading to something sharper.
“Thalos,” I say, because names in this place change weight when they are spoken.
He straightens, and the smile is all bright muscle.
“After we lay that monster low, I want more than a friendship. I need strength. Will you forge this into a formal alliance? Train together, grow together, build up Songbird like we used to? We cannot keep doing this alone.”
I say it without show, raw and honest. I watch him for a beat, his hands still marked with sand and blood, the way his chest lifts as he breathes. This partnership is something different now, because neither of us is playing for vanity.
“Do you even ave to ask?” he says finally, like he has waited half a minute to tell me something he is tired of hiding. “Of course I will. I came for the thrill at first, but this is real now. I have people to protect.”
He steps up, extends his hand. The gesture is simple and old, a pact made with hands not words.
We clasp, and the resonance moves between us like cold metal and molten sap, nodal, shifting. I feel the Dominion stir, the map in the cathedral answering as if new lines are being drawn. I lock my gaze on him.
“Then let the rebirth of the Songbird Alliance roar across this world,” I say, letting the words be both vow and command.
His grip tightens around mine.
“Lead us to the end, Kyris.”
[VioletVex]: The Alliance rises, the kings stand as one!
[carapace_kid]: He said it! Two legends side by side, let’s go!
[Archivolt]: The resonance shifts, history remade before our eyes.
[ProteinPrincess]: BROTHERHOOD VIBES, THIS IS PEAK!
[LifelineV]: You’ve got this, Kyris… bring it home.
He grins wide, the kind of grin that makes the chat explode. “Man, Victor is going to kill me for taking so long.”
I let a short laugh escape. “He can scold you later. He’ll find ways to help, I promise.”
[LifelineV]: For the rebuilding efforts.
A single violet flare flickers in the corner of the chat, my first tithe. The offering blooms into a shining scarab token in the coffer beside the throne, pulsing with quiet light. Then the feed erupts.
[carapace_kid]: Wait, new button? I can donate???
[VioletVex]: ALL MY SUPPORT, funeral costs for the good boy sablehound ; -;
[Archivolt]: Tribute accepted. The hive rebuilds on faith.
[ProteinPrincess]: HYPE TRAIN LET’S GOOOOO
[Thrumline]: The Dominion sings louder when its people give.
[GainsGoblin]: Dropping tithes for the king, rebuild those walls!
The flow of tithes doesn’t stop; it swells until the coffer beside the throne gleams with violet and gold light. Each pulse carries warmth into my bones. For a long breath, I can’t speak. They’re giving, faith, time, energy, all of it poured back into this wounded hive. My throat tightens with a quiet, humbled gratitude.
I bow my head slightly toward the ring and whisper, “Thank you. I’ll make every note of your faith into a new song.”
I sink back into the throne and push the kernel of orders into the song, precise and cold, mental lists that snap into place: bolster the western walls, double the listening post density on the north road, prioritize resin storage and hatchery outputs, divert artisan time to reflective baffle work, requisition more Sable Hound breeding stock and begin a cipher for fireproof gear using the salamander hide. As I feed the song the tithe, light swells and seeps into the hive’s pulse, infusing the hatcheries with strength. The air itself hums as the resonance bleeds into production, drones in the lower chambers shudder, their forms adapting as the tithe's energy mixes with the harvested salamander cores. Fireproof resin begins to take shape, layering along their carapaces like obsidian scales. Workshops glow faintly from the energy transfer, molten gold bleeding through seams of glass as forges awaken.
The hatchery songs quicken, a deep harmony rising from below as cocoons form faster than before. Every tithe pulse fuels a rhythm of growth, doubling output, forcing the next generation of drones into evolution. I can feel their transformation as a symphony beneath my skin, the hive drinking from the faith of thousands and giving back life and armor in return. Resin mantles take shape on racks around the artisans, each one black as my cloak, flexible yet gleaming with a shimmer of heat resistance. The Dominion will thrive again, rebuilt by faith and function in equal measure.
I set manufacturing priorities and designate hunt teams, careful margins for expected losses, and I slot in repair cycles.
“We cannot give the Ashwing time to heal,” I say to Scott, my voice steady. “In one week, meet me at the border fort. We put this thing down then.”
He gives a one-armed whoop, slapping his knee, and the chat floods with heart emojis and weightlifting gifs. Cast’s tone folds around the orders like a well-tuned instrument, answers crisp: repair teams staged, hatcheries pushed to triple production over the next month, hunt teams seeded across the dunes.
I let the plan hang just long enough to feel real. The throne holds me like a steward of sound. I think of the lost hounds, the drone counts, the names and faces that went quiet. I let the grief fold into the ledger of work. We rebuild. We train. We bind allies.
And when the Ashwing takes to the skies again, the world will know the Dominion remembers its dead.