The ten kings watched the sigils flare and then die as if a great lung had exhaled through the hall.

They had not expected the First King to be anything like the legends—nor had they expected him to be anything like an Ancient Demon.

Dekaan Jeffmann spoke with a slow amusement that set the runes humming again.  

“You are all fools,” he said. “You called to what you did not understand.”

Faces hardened around the council table. Lord Vaedrin’s hand twitched toward a blade; Lord Argen’s eyes narrowed into poisonous slits.

“You were the one who sealed them,” Dalph Bakian said, voice hoarse with an old memory. “You bound the Ancient Demons when the world still had teeth. We thought—”

“I sealed them,” Dekaan interrupted. “And I bound them with a part of myself.”

The hall froze. Ten kings stared at the First King as if the world had tilted.

“You mean—” Myrra Valcrus began.

“A single drop of my blood,” Dekaan continued, “mixed into the bindings. I feared a day like this—when desperation or pride would call them forth again. So I made the seal answer to more than stone and rune. I made it answer to blood.”

The meaning settled on them like ash. The seal was not merely a cage; it was a pact. Dekaan’s pact. His essence nested amongst the teeth of the abyss so that, should the old things wake, a part of him would know.

“You placed yourself into the prison,” Zephyr said, hoarse. “You are of their ward.”

Dekaan laughed, and the sound was older than thunder. “Not their kin. Their ward. Their key. I am not an Ancient Demon, you fools. I made sure their hunger could be locked with what could never be stolen by summoning alone.”

Argen’s hands clenched. “Then why now? Why let us call them?”

Dalph’s black flame had not left his gaze. “You called because you feared the loss. The boy tore down the world, and you wished for the hammer. But do you understand the hammer’s name? Do you understand what you would loose upon the world when a thing older than kings wakes hungry?”

The ten looked down at their palms, at the blood still fresh on basalt. In an instant they saw the other possibility: the very act of calling might unseat the bindings, might strain the blood-woven sigil until it snapped.

Dekaan’s expression softened in a way that terrified them more than his amusement. “That is why I hid. That is why I walked away and watched you hold the pieces. I feared your haste. I feared the day when you’d think sacrifice a small matter.”

He rose then, a mountain of a man in the shuddering light. “But my grandson walks alone into the teeth of the cosmos. That is a different matter.”

“Lead us then,” Dalph said, voice low and certain.

“You think I will sit idle while my blood’s heir bleeds?” Dekaan’s hand hovered over the map of burning cities. He spoke like a judge. “I will not summon the Ancient Demons for you. I will remind the gods why we sealed them. I will lead us myself.”

There was no argument left that could touch the weight of his decision. The kings moved as one: to gather banners, to feed the portals with basalt and blood, and to step into the great transference arrays that had been dormant since the First Age.

As portals woke and the court became a tide of shadow and iron, the First King’s voice rode the roar like a promise. “Then let us return to the world and make it remember who carved night.”

Jexy returned to Emberhold under a sky he had painted with ruin.

He had expected something—adulation, terror, maybe silence thick with the respect of survivors. Instead the gate opened onto a storm of palms.

Guild members, blackened by smoke and worry, had gathered. At their front stood Lyssara Veinflare; flame curled from her shoulders not as power but as raw, furious heat.

She did not run to him. She ran at him.

The first slap sent his cheek stinging; the second landed with the weight of all the things she had been holding in since the chapel fire. Hands grabbed him, hauled him through a ring of furious faces, and she pummeled words between hits like hammer blows.

“You idiot!” she shouted. “You went alone? You left dozens—dozens of our people—behind to die for some—some vendetta? Do you know what kind of idiot does that?!”

Jexy tried to blink the stars into order. “I—” he began, but his mouth was full of ash and defeat.

“You left the Chalice,” a guildman accused. “You left the boys and girls who signed up because they trusted you.”

“Do you understand what happened?” Jexy said finally, rubbing his cheek. “They sacrificed them at the summoning. Those were our people—our neighbors—our friends. I went to break the altar, to cut the call and make their names stop being offerings.”

Lyssara’s eyes flashed, burning hotter. She tightened her grip and swung again. “So you go and do it alone. Alone! You think that makes you noble? You think that makes you a hero? You think you can protect us by being dead? Do you? Do you even hear yourself?!”

A silence. Jexy’s mouth hung open. He had not expected to be dragged before a tribunal made of fists.

He tried a crooked grin. “I thought—”

“You thought?” she snapped, voice narrowing like a blade. “You thought wrong!”

The hits continued, and laughter—half-gleeful, half-sobbing—bubbled from the crowd. They had feared losing him; the fear had turned Sorrow to rage and now to a private carnival.

Only when Lyssara’s arms ached and her palms reddened did she stop. She stood over him, breath ragged, face flushed like a warflag.

“You can tell me you wanted revenge,” she said, voice low now, the storm in it finally spent. “But you do not tell me I cannot feel for every one of them and also hate that you ran off like some damned, melancholy god.”

Jexy, pinched, sore, and limping from dignity more than damage, rubbed the last of the sting from his cheek. He opened his mouth to answer with a dozen excuses and a single truth at the center.

“I did it for them,” he said softly. “For Emberhold. For the ones who were taken on my wedding day.”

Lyssara looked at him for a long beat. Then she slapped him once more—lighter—and shoved him toward the battered commonroom.

“Good,” she said. “Now go explain to every one of them why you left them out of it—and bring the wine. You owe us both.”