Chancellor make sure everyone who has seen the King-Consort stays quiet. Nothing leaves this village," Vivienne said quietly.
Greymoor folded his hands within his sleeves, gave her a long look, and nodded without a word.
After Ethan had packed his things and boarded the flying mount with Lily, the Queen's carriage caught the last of the evening wind and rose into the fading sunset, shrinking to nothing on the horizon.
Greymoor stood in the empty lane for a moment.
"The King-Consort must not be seen to interfere in politics directly — and there are those who would use his identity against Her Majesty the moment they knew of it. So she brings him back under a different name." He paused. "A Sage walking into the court. Things are about to become very interesting."
"Her Majesty's methods are something else entirely."
To avoid raising any suspicion in Ethan, the flying mounts accompanying the royal carriage made several wide circles above the capital before descending slowly into the palace grounds.
Ethan breathed in the air as they landed and said, to no one in particular:
"So this is where power lives. You can actually smell the wealth and excess."
In the carriage a short distance away, Vivienne — who had been listening — pressed her lips together.
Lily glanced at Ethan sideways, two or three times, wanting to say something and deciding against it. There was no smell. They had simply circled the palace once and come down. The air was identical.
The carriage stopped at the Grand Hall of the Golden Phoenix, not at the rebuilt cottage. Restwell Village had been quietly sealed — no entry permitted without the Queen's direct authorization.
"Come here." Vivienne stepped down from the carriage and crooked a finger.
Ethan stepped forward. "Your Majesty."
Vivienne looked at him — standing there with the air of a man attending his own sentencing — and felt something close to delight.
"I'm changing your name for the capital," she said. "You'll go by Ethan Crest from here. Understood?"
Ethan's brow furrowed. "Why? Is there something wrong with my name?"
"Because I said so. No more questions."
She left him standing there to work it out on his own and walked ahead.
Why hide my name? he thought. And why did she sound — almost playful — just then?
"Something's off," he muttered. "Everything's off."
The Grand Hall of the Golden Phoenix was not gilded. It was black.
Not dark by neglect — black by intention. The interior was vast, several hundred meters deep, constructed from a material Ethan couldn't see but could feel the quality of in the air itself — clean, faintly energizing, like breathing somewhere very high up. Ten-Thousand-Year Spirit Jade, if he had to guess. The kind of stone that made ordinary people feel more alive simply by being near it.
Eighty-one coiling dragon columns flanked both sides in deep obsidian, running the full length of the hall toward the throne at the far end. Along the walls stood Royal Guards in full plate, each one a Skyrise Realm cultivator, helmets down, visible only as two cold eyes in the dark metal. Absolutely still. More statue than soldier.
The assembled Officials stood in ranked rows below the throne — Civil Ministers on one side, Military Commanders on the other — jade administrative tablets in hand, perfectly arranged, having clearly been waiting for some time.
Ethan walked the length of the hall in a black robe trimmed with a python-dragon pattern, white cane tapping a steady beat on the stone floor. He felt the weight of every gaze in the room tracking him, and he walked to the front, stopped, and bowed.
"Your Official, Ethan Crest, greets Your Majesty."
The throne sat behind a deep crimson veil. The Queen's hand rose briefly.
"Rise."
A pause, and then the Queen's voice carried through the hall with full authority:
"Minister Crest's talents are exceptional — rare in any generation. I am appointing him to the position of Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Ceremony. Does anyone object?"
Ethan's eyelid twitched.
That was a third-rank position. For someone who had walked in off the street this morning.
At the front of the Civil ranks, Greymoor glanced at Ethan and said nothing. He was one of perhaps three people in the hall who understood the full picture, and he had no objections.
The rest of the court was a different matter.
Officials who had been fighting fatigue for the last half-hour were suddenly extremely awake. They stared at the black-robed figure at the front of the hall — young, unknown, clearly blind, with no record of service, no family name of standing, no visible credentials of any kind — and the hall began to fill with the particular energy of people who are about to say something loudly.
Several exchanged glances. Some looked at the blind figure and then at the throne, arriving at an interpretation that they did not say aloud but also did not conceal very well.
A few younger military commanders were thinking something slightly different: the Queen apparently had a preference for blind men. The King-Consort was blind. Now this. Perhaps blindness was a career opportunity they had overlooked.
The officials erupted.
"Your Majesty, this abandons all established precedent—"
"Ethan Crest? I have never heard that name in my life. No family backing, no examination record, no service history. On what grounds does he qualify for the third rank?"
"A seventh-rank position would already be generous for an unknown commoner, regardless of talent—"
"Where did this man come from? Your Majesty, please don't be taken in by an unknown quantity—"
Vivienne leaned against the arm of the throne, chin resting in her hand, and let it run.
Her expression said nothing.
Go ahead, she thought. This is your test, Ethan. If you can handle this room, good. If not, I'll send you back to the cottage and you can grow your flowers.
Ethan had been hoping very much to be a quiet, invisible presence at the edge of court proceedings.
He had given the Queen the courtesy of coming. He had not complained. He had packed his things without argument and climbed onto a flying beast.
And now a room full of people who had never met him were lining up to tell him he was worthless.
He turned to face the hall.
"I was a commoner," he said. "Her Majesty saw something worth recruiting and traveled a considerable distance to do it. I assumed that the Officials who stand in this hall — given their rank and their years — would be exceptional people."
"It seems I assumed too much."
The hall went sharp.
"Outrageous—"
"What abilities does he claim to have? Show us, if you dare. If this is nothing but reputation-seeking, don't expect to leave this hall with your head." The voice came from a broad-shouldered man in a four-clawed golden dragon robe, black beard, the look of someone who had been waiting for exactly this opportunity.
Ethan turned toward the voice.
"Your name and rank, please."
"Lord Edric Voss," the man said, with a thin smile. "Marquis of Ironpass. Third-rank Official." He looked at Ethan the way a person looks at something that has wandered into the wrong room. A cripple. And this one thinks he belongs here.
Ethan was quiet for a moment.
He turned the name over. Reached back into the novel's plot, searching.
Edric Voss. Ironpass. Goldmere's northern territories.
There it was.
His expression settled into something still and precise.
He struck his cane against the floor once. The sound hit the stone ceiling and came back down, and the noise in the hall dropped.
"My eyes don't work," Ethan said. "But I can read what's woven into a person's fate. I just now caught a thread from yours."
Voss folded his hands behind his back, eyes narrowed, mouth curling slightly. This should be entertaining.
"Lord Voss comes from the northern territories," Ethan said. "From modest beginnings. He entered the military, built a record of genuine achievement, and earned his rank honestly."
"Known facts," Voss said. "You've done some reading. Impressive."
In the front row, Greymoor and the Captain exchanged a glance.
Here it comes.
Ethan continued, his tone unchanged:
"Two and a half years ago, ten counties in the northern territories suffered a mass poisoning event. Nearly a hundred thousand people died. The source was never officially identified. The inquiry was eventually closed without resolution."
Voss said nothing.
The hall went quiet in a different way than before.
"That's because Lord Voss was the source." Ethan's voice dropped the warmth entirely. "He cultivated a forbidden technique that required a mass sacrifice to complete. He poisoned a hundred thousand people to break through to the Mountain-Shaker Realm. Every one of those deaths was deliberate."
"How dare you—" Voss's voice came out wrong — too fast, too sharp. "You have no proof! You're a stranger who walked in this morning and you're standing here accusing a third-rank—"
"You want proof," Ethan said.
He spoke a sequence of words — low, rhythmic, structured in a pattern that didn't fit any common language used in the hall — and something in the room changed.
Voss's composure broke from the inside outward. A sound came from him that wasn't a word. His pupils flooded black. The structure of his spine shifted visibly beneath his robe, vertebrae pressing upward like the edge of a blade.
The hall erupted.
"A demonic corruption technique — he's been practicing forbidden cultivation—"
"The Deputy Minister wasn't lying — Voss is the one who did it—"
"A hundred thousand people — and he just walked in here every morning for two years—"
Officials who had been questioning Ethan thirty seconds ago were now leading the condemnation, with considerable energy.
The Queen raised one hand.
The hall went still.
Her voice came from behind the crimson veil, measured and cold:
"Take him. Death by slow execution. Let his blood stand for the hundred thousand souls of the northern territories."
She paused, then added:
"Deputy Minister Crest. Continue."
The silence that followed had a completely different quality to the silence before.
Ethan smiled, privately satisfied.
She didn't even ask for verification. She just trusted the read and moved.
He turned back to face the hall.
"Everyone who spoke up against my appointment earlier," he said pleasantly, "please form a line. I'll work through you one at a time."
The Officials looked at each other.
Nobody moved.
"Step forward," the Queen said, from behind her veil, in the tone of someone who would not be saying it twice.