The walls of Qalathar appeared through the heat shimmer.
The column slowed. Nobody spoke.
The workers were the first to react. A woman near the center of the column dropped to her knees in the sand and pressed both palms flat against the ground. Two others followed, touching the sand, murmuring words I didn't recognize.
I stood still for three full breaths and let the sight of it land.
The walls were still standing.
The Titans hadn't broken through while we were gone.
Not yet.
The southern gate's Ashkeri detail spotted us and sent riders.
They formed a loose escort and fell in alongside the column without a word.
We passed through the gate in silence.
Inside the walls, the city closed around us. After eight days of desert and concrete and the chemical reek of an alchemical factory, the ordinary daily life of Qalathar was comforting.
Soldiers were waiting at the garrison compound. Iron Cross soldiers. Three of them, standing in the shade of the compound's gate arch.
The tallest one stepped forward as I dismounted.
"Sir." His eyes moved past me, scanning the column. "Where is Captain Eckhardt?"
I handed the horse's reins to Farhan and faced him.
"Eckhardt received new orders during the operation. She's been reassigned." The lie came out flat and clean. "The details are classified above garrison level. High Command will brief you when it's appropriate."
The three soldiers exchanged a glance.
"Reassigned, sir? In the middle of—"
"I don't know what they're thinking. I only got this explanation." I kept my voice level. "What I can tell you is that the expedition has returned, the mission objectives were met, and the operational command of the Iron Cross presence in Qalathar falls to me until High Command says otherwise." I looked at each of them in turn. "If you have concerns about Captain Eckhardt's status, put them in writing and I'll include them in my report. Until then, we have work to do."
The tallest one's jaw worked. He wanted to push. The other two were watching him, waiting to see if he would.
He didn't.
"Understood, sir."
"Good. Get the horses stabled. Get the wounded to a physician. Get food and water into everyone who's standing."
They moved.
I stood in the compound gate and watched the column file through. The workers were separated from the rest and led toward the civilian wing under Voller's supervision. Ganz walked under his own power now. Breit had acquired a quiver of local arrows from somewhere during the march and was already inspecting the fletching.
Dorn passed me. He had his strapped arm tucked against his chest.
He stopped.
"Sir."
"Get that arm looked at."
"I will." He hesitated. "Thank you. For bringing us back."
I watched him walk into the compound.
Prince Khalid received us in the high chamber of the palace's eastern wing.
Khalid sat behind the table with two advisors flanking him and an Ashkeri officer standing at the door. His dark eyes tracked from me to Hayyan and settled on the alchemist.
Hayyan stood to my left, three paces back. The alchemist had washed and been given fresh clothes. His chemical-stained hands were clasped in front of him. His face was composed.
We had spoken the night before.
Two hours in the garrison compound's empty mess hall. I had told him what we would say and what we would not say and why.
"The facility was built on a pre-portal ruin in the deep eastern desert," I said. "Roughly eight days' travel east of Qalathar, past the settlement clusters. The site was operated by individuals using Imperial equipment. But the operation itself was not controlled by any organization I recognize." I let that hang. "Our assessment is that this was a criminal enterprise. Possibly with connections to noble houses or commercial interests in the Empire, operating outside any legal authority."
Khalid's expression didn't shift.
"The facility manufactured Snow Dream," I continued. "Industrial scale. Fifteen to twenty civilian workers, most of them Qalathar citizens, recruited or coerced. Roughly thirty goons providing security." I paused. "The workers have been delivered to your household staff for processing. They are Sultanate nationals. Their disposition is yours."
Khalid inclined his head a fraction.
"The goons were killed during an attack on our return march. A force of approximately twenty mages intercepted our column in the open desert. They targeted the prisoners with fire lances and killed all nineteen before we could intervene." I held his gaze. "Whoever sent them wanted those soldiers dead before they could talk. We engaged and drove them off. Eleven of the attackers were killed. The rest withdrew by wind spells."
"Unknown affiliation," Khalid repeated. His voice was dry as the sand outside his walls. "Criminals who field twenty combat mages in the deep desert and execute prisoners with military precision."
"Criminals with resources," I said. "Which is precisely why the investigation will continue. The physical evidence — equipment, batch records, communication crystals — survived the ambush and is secured. It will be transmitted to Iron Cross High Command for analysis. If the trail leads back to anyone in the Empire, they will be found."
And if it leads to the princess, that's a problem I handle on my side of the border. Not here. Not now.
Khalid studied me for three long seconds.
"And the alchemist?"
I stepped aside.
Hayyan moved forward. He had the sense to bow.
"Your Highness," Hayyan said in Kumsuri. His court register was better than his conversational speech. "I operated a Snow Dream synthesis laboratory for eleven years. First independently, supplying through Selim's network in Qalathar. Then under coercion, when those men seized my facility after the network's destruction." He paused, the rehearsed cadence holding. "They told me to produce, or they would kill me. I produced."
Khalid's gaze did not soften.
"You supplied Selim," he said.
"I did."
"And through Selim, you supplied the palace."
Hayyan's jaw tightened. "I did."
Nobody spoke. One of the advisors shifted his weight. The Ashkeri officer at the door was motionless.
"Tell me about the river," Khalid said.
Hayyan's eyes flicked to me. A fractional movement, invisible to anyone who wasn't looking for it.
I gave nothing back.
Hayyan turned to the prince.
"The facility was built over a subterranean aquifer," he said. "A natural formation. The aquifer feeds a river that runs north through the bedrock and surfaces approximately thirty kilometers northeast of the facility." He paused. The lie came out clean, rehearsed to the cadence of truth. "When I first established my laboratory eleven years ago, the water table was low. Normal for the deep desert. The mana concentration in the ground was unremarkable."
He spread his hands.
"What I did not understand, what no one understood, was that the aquifer sits above a mana-rich geological stratum. A natural deposit. Over the past decade, tectonic pressure has pushed mana from the stratum into the aquifer. The water became saturated. The river became a conduit, carrying concentrated mana north and west, feeding into the soil, the vegetation, the ecosystem."
Khalid's eyes narrowed. "A natural deposit."
"The desert holds many things beneath its surface, Your Highness." Hayyan's voice steadied as he tried to keep his lie. "The founding Sultan pushed thousands of square kilometers of mana-saturated sand across the continent. That energy didn't vanish. Over two centuries, the deposits stratified into concentrations that are now, under tectonic stress, beginning to discharge."
Good, I thought. He's selling it.
"It is this discharge," Hayyan continued, "that I believe is attracting the Titans. The mana gradient flows north and west. Creatures sensitive to mana follow the gradient. They are not choosing Qalathar. They are following the current, and the current points here."
Khalid was quiet.
His advisors watched him.
"Can it be stopped?" the prince asked.
Hayyan's hands dropped to his sides.
"Not quickly," he said. "Anti-mana reagent compounds can be introduced into the aquifer at the source. Neutralizing agents that bind to mana and precipitate it out of the water column." He paused. "But the volume is enormous. The aquifer feeds hundreds of kilometers of underground channels. To reduce the mana concentration below the threshold that attracts Titan-class entities..."
"How long?" Khalid said.
"Three years. At minimum."
One of the advisors inhaled sharply. The other's face went gray.
Khalid didn't move.
Three years. Three years of Titans hitting the walls every day, sometimes twice, sometimes more. Three years of sand mages and Ashkeri and conscripts holding the line while the desert's poisoned water drew monsters from the unmapped east.
"Can the walls hold for three years?" Khalid asked. The question was directed at the Ashkeri officer at the door.
The officer's hesitation was a fraction of a second too long.
"If the frequency remains at current levels, Your Highness, the garrison can sustain its defense. If the frequency increases—"
"It will increase," Hayyan said quietly. "Until the reagents begin to take effect, the gradient continues to build. The first year will be worse than what you have experienced. The second will be worse than the first."
The room was silent.
Khalid's jaw set. The muscles along his temples tightened, the tendons standing out beneath the skin. He looked at the narrow windows, at the city that stretched beyond the palace walls.
Half a million people.
I stepped forward.
"The alchemist stays," I said. "He works under your authority, with your resources, producing the reagent compounds. Whether we have three years or three months, the work begins now. Every day of delay is another day it gets worse."
Khalid's eyes found mine.
"You said 'we,'" he observed. "You are leaving."
"I have to return to the Empire." The words tasted like failure, but the math was unforgiving. "The weapons production requires my presence. The prototypes I brought — they're a beginning, not a solution. Scaling the rail-pistol to something that can threaten a Titan requires resources, expertise, and manufacturing capacity that exist only in Silberwald."
I held his gaze.
"I will come back. As soon as the production line can run without me, I will return. With weapons. With engineers. With anything I can carry."
Khalid regarded me.
"You promised me a weapon that could kill a Titan," Khalid said. "I will hold you to that."
"Understood."
Khalid looked at Hayyan.
"The alchemist begins tomorrow. He will have laboratory space, materials, and a guard detail." The prince's tone carried the particular flatness of a man issuing orders he expected to be followed absolutely. "If his work is productive, he lives comfortably. If it is not productive—" He let the silence complete the sentence.
Hayyan bowed again. Deeper this time.
"It will be productive, Your Highness."
Khalid stood. The advisors rose with him. The audience was over. He walked through the door. The Ashkeri officer followed. The advisors trailed behind.
Hayyan and I stood alone in the chamber.
The alchemist exhaled. His shoulders dropped three inches.
"I'd better make sure the reagents work."
I spent the afternoon with the Princess.
Soraya sat across from me at a low brass table. She had a piece of charcoal in her hand and a sheet of rough paper flattened beneath her palm.
"Again," she said.
Her Imperial was flawless, but we weren't speaking Imperial. She pointed the charcoal at the sweeping, jagged script she had just drawn.
I stared at the characters. My throat felt thick. I tried to form the stop required for the second syllable, the sound that originated deep in the chest and finished against the teeth.
I butchered it.
Soraya sighed. It was a soft sound, devoid of the awe she had carried when she first looked at the 'Angel of Qalathar'. Over the few days I spent in the city, the angel had been steadily demystified into a frustrating, thick-tongued student who couldn't master basic syntax.
She was patient. She had the disciplined endurance of royalty who had spent their entire lives sitting through agonizingly dull state functions. She simply wiped the slate, drew the characters again, and repeated the pronunciation. Step by step. Shape by shape.
I followed her lead, tracing the letters on my own parchment.
I need to get back to the Empire.
But I stayed in the chair. Because this was the only place I could get it back.
Learning Kumsuri the first time had been almost effortless.
But Sloth had taken it.
Rebuilding it was agony. It wasn't just starting from zero; it felt as though Sloth had ripped the skill out and salted the earth it was on. Every word I tried to memorize slipped away. Gluttony was starving, clawing at the edges of the language, but the resistance left by the time-curse was a physical pressure behind my eyes.
"You are forcing the breath," Soraya said, tapping the parchment. "It does not come from the lungs. It comes from the throat. Like this."
She made the sound.
I closed my eyes. I visualized the movement. I tied the shape to the sound and spoke the phrase.
The syllables clicked. The pronunciation rang, vibrating against my teeth exactly as hers had.
Soraya's eyebrows rose. She offered a small, approving nod.
In the corner of my vision, a blue box finally shattered through the resistance.
I exhaled a long breath. Level one. It had taken days of humiliating repetition just to grasp the absolute basics of a language I used to read fluently.
Never again, I thought, staring at the blue text. I am never doing that again. No more forcing the loop. No more suicide experiments.
The blue box faded.