At the centre of the chamber stood fifty tall crystals, each one burning with a different colour of distant power. Through them, the great clans of the Mythic Accord looked into Rustrows from across Caerfaen—mountain halls, forest shrines, cliffside camps, caravan courts, flooded sanctuaries, hidden valleys, and old fortress-towns the Council pretended did not exist.
Brassmane stepped forward before Arlo could raise the second memory crystal.
“I have called the Accord because I am bound to do so,” he said.
The chamber quietened, though uneasily.
His amber gaze moved from crystal to crystal, then over the elders gathered in person.
“Our ancestors lost a kingdom because power was hoarded. Because knowledge of mana became treasure, then weapon, then chain. Secrecy made lords of some and slaves of others. Secrecy broke Caerfaen. Secrecy drove us into exile.”
A few of the older elders lowered their eyes.
Others stiffened.
Brassmane continued.
“So I will not hide what was felt and seen at Rustrows. I will not pretend yesterday was a local disturbance. I will not decide alone what may concern the fate of all Mythics.”
His mane flickered.
“Nor all Hybrids.”
A murmur moved through the chamber.
Brassmane’s voice deepened.
“Nor even all Purebloods.”
That caused a sharper reaction.
Some hissed.
Some whispered.
A dragon elder’s claws clicked against stone.
Brassmane did not flinch.
“This incident may touch the fate of every living soul beneath Caerfaen’s sealed sky. It may even be linked to the candy plague itself. I do not call you here to crown anyone. I do not call you here to claim anyone. I do not call you here to begin a holy war.”
His eyes hardened.
“I call you here to witness. To consider. To advise. Nothing more.”
Near the pillar behind him, Solas leaned closer to Cosmo.
His voice was barely more than breath.
“We could get rid of her.”
Cosmo’s ears twitched. “Solas.”
“Let her be a Pureblood problem. Why do we need to suffer for what she is?”
Cosmo’s mouth tightened. He glanced toward Brassmane, then back to the crystals.
“Because it may be a benefit too. We do not know yet.”
Solas gave a humourless little breath.
“That is always the answer, is it not? Wait. Watch. Debate. Saff was right. Elders love to posture, but they never do anything.”
Cosmo looked at him sharply.
“Saff nearly got people killed.”
“Saff acted.”
“And look where acting without wisdom got her.”
Solas’s jaw clenched.
Cosmo softened, just slightly.
“I am not saying trust blindly. I am saying do not decide in bitterness.”
Solas turned his gaze back to the chamber.
His face was carved from stone.
Brassmane saw him.
Then looked away.
This was not the moment to pull a wound open in front of fifty clans.
Arlo lifted his staff.
The first projection appeared above the central circle.
Celeste in the heart of the Trial.
Her body suspended in blue-white radiance.
Her core burning beneath her chest like an iridescent moon.
Behind her, vast wings of alicorn light and dragon force unfurled, unstable and beautiful and terrible.
Then the image shifted.
A crown formed above her brow.
Not metal.
Not jewel.
Light.
A circlet of prismatic threads, settling around her head as if the Weave itself had remembered where it belonged.
The Assembly fell into horrified wonder.
The bird Mythic spoke, her voice shaking.
“I felt that surge.”
Everyone turned toward her crystal.
She placed one clawed hand against her chest.
“From here. In the north of Caerfaen. I felt it pass through the leylines like a second dawn. Every core in my hall rang. Children woke screaming. Old wards lit for the first time in generations.”
A murmur spread.
Arlo nodded gravely.
“It was not local.”
An elder with antlers of black bone leaned closer to his crystal.
“Or it was a Nullborn illusion.”
The chamber chilled.
Several voices rose in agreement.
“Yes.”
“A glamour.”
“A trap.”
“The Nullborn twisted light before.”
“They used dead names.”
“Show us proof.”
Arlo’s expression did not change.
He lifted his hand again.
The projection shifted.
Runes appeared in the air: recording lines, mana measurements, broken graphs, old Daroganwyr script, emergency ward readings from the Trial.
Mana spikes rose like spears.
Then shattered.
Whole sections of the reading had burned out completely.
Not gone blank.
Burned.
As if the recording crystals themselves had been unable to survive knowing what they had seen.
Arlo’s voice filled the chamber.
“No illusion did this.”
He pointed to the shattered portions of the reading.
“These are not gaps from deception. They are burns. The crystals attempted to record her full resonance and failed. The mana did not hide. It exceeded them.”
A rune-keeper in one of the crystals leaned forward, all colour draining from his face.
“That is impossible.”
“Yes,” Arlo said softly. “Many impossible things occurred yesterday.”
Brassmane gestured, and another image appeared.
This one showed the Knights in the crater.
Mezzo holding Celeste through the storm.
Ray and Pitch taking the surge.
Arcade sparking with stolen lightning.
Skye glowing with trembling moonlight.
Hughes kneeling with roots split across his arms.
Lumina beside Celeste, pink-gold mana woven into blue-white light.
Threads connected them all.
Not metaphorical.
Visible.
Living.
They reached from each core toward Celeste’s, and from Celeste back to them.
The Assembly went utterly still.
A kitsune priestess whispered, “The core-binding.”
Another elder answered, voice cracking. “Like the spirits.”
A third made the sign of the Three Rivers again.
“They join to Mamgoleuni’s heart.”
Brassmane’s jaw tightened.
“They are children,” he said. “Knights, yes. Brave, yes. But children. Do not forget that while wrapping prophecy around their throats.”
The words struck some.
Offended others.
Arlo watched him with quiet approval.
Then Brassmane showed the final image.
Celeste’s core.
The projection enlarged until it filled the whole centre of the Assembly.
A perfect sphere of iridescent light turned slowly in the air, blue-white at its heart, rainbow fire shifting across its surface. Threads of mana moved inside it like living rivers. Ancient patterns flickered beneath the glow—old Kymara structure, impossible matrices, something programmed and something holy fighting to share the same shape.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody breathed.
The fifty crystals burned brighter.
Then a voice, low and shaken, came from one of the far halls.
“Brassmane.”
He looked toward the speaker.
An elder whose face was half-shadowed by a hood leaned close to his crystal.
“This is serious.”
Brassmane gave a grim little smile.
“I had noticed.”
“No,” the elder said. “You have not. Not fully. This could start a war.”
Arlo lifted his staff.
The chamber quietened again.
He began to speak, not as a scholar now.
Not as a seer.
As something older.
“Mamgoleuni will return with iridescent light within her,” he said, and the words seemed to awaken the walls. “She will carry a heart that connects all mana. She will stand between the rivers and not be drowned.”
Several elders began whispering along.
They knew the lines.
Of course they did.
Most had dismissed them as poetry.
Until now.
Arlo continued.
“She will choose the sword, or she will choose the shield. The sword held by the rogue. The shield held by the knight. One shall awaken her from slumber. She shall share her light with him, and together they shall bind the Ten Lights once again.”
The air grew colder.
Arlo’s voice carried through every crystal.
“And when the Ten Lights are bound, the Beings of Light shall return once more.”
A priestess fell to her knees.
Someone began to cry.
Someone else whispered, “No. No, it cannot be.”
Arlo did not stop.
“Her body shall carry both Nullborn and Manaling. The blood of four forms shall fight within her until peace is found. This is how she shall be recognised.”
Every eye turned back to the projection of Celeste’s core.
Four bloodlines.
Dragon.
Alicorn.
Ragdoll.
Lionhead rabbit.
Nullborn structure.
Manaling resonance.
Kymara light.
A silence deeper than fear settled over the Assembly.
Brassmane watched every reaction and felt the weight of each one settle on his shoulders.
A bronze-scaled dragon elder rose from his seat, smoke curling from his nostrils.
“The prophecy of the Crefft y Goleuni,” he said. “It matches.”
A unicorn priestess in one of the crystals bowed her luminous head. “Iridescent light. Crown of old memory. The rivers above her.”
A pegasi elder whispered, “The Kymara sign.”
A gryphon seer spoke from a black crystal, voice thin and distant. “The old texts called her Mamgoleuni. The one who vanished when the Void descended.”
A younger voice, trembling with awe, said, “Then she has returned.”
“No,” another snapped. “Or something wears her shape.”
That was all it took.
The hall erupted.
“If she is Mamgoleuni reborn, we must hide her before the Council chains her as they chained the others!”
“No—this will bring war! The Council will call it rebellion.”
“Invoke the Right of Kinship. Bring her under Mythic banners and declare her ours by blood.”
“She is not wholly Mythic!”
“Nor wholly Pureblood!”
“Nor ordinary Hybrid!”
“She bore a Kymara crown!”
“She nearly tore Rustrows open!”
“She opened pocket roads thought sealed since the Nullborn fires!”
“She is a child!”
“She is a sign!”
“She is a danger!”
“She is both!”
Voices multiplied until the chamber trembled.
Even the runes carved into the old factory walls began to glow, protesting the heat of their words.
The bronze-scaled dragon elder slammed his claws against the arm of his chair.
“She is dragon-born. I smelled the mana of Afon Dracona upon her. The rites are clear—she must undergo the Trial of Embers. Only the wyrms of Clan Goldthorn can temper such fire.”
Immediately, a cluster of unicorn and pegasus elders flared with celestial light.
“She carries alicorn grace through equestrian’s line,” one said. “She belongs beneath the forest clans and sky circles in Clan Starwoven. Flame will not mend what harmony must guide.”
“Purity?” the dragon snarled. “She burned half the valley to ash.”
“Because her awakening was mishandled!”
A jackalope priestess stepped forward, robes stitched with leaves and moon-white thread.
“She carries prey as well as predator. Rabbit and cat run through her veins. By our laws, she falls under kinship of balance with Clan Fernsong. She must learn stillness, softness, listening.”
A cat-sìth mystic hissed in reply, tail lashing.
“Softness will get her killed. The cat blood within her is ancestral and sharp. She should train among us in Clan Dawnmane, to learn grace and cunning.”
From one of the brighter crystals came a smooth voice wearing silk over a blade.
“Or perhaps,” said a silver-robed mage kelpie, “she should learn from those with the discipline to shape power without sentiment. The Archmagi of the Astral Court extend a personal invitation. We can train her. Hone her. Make her what she was always meant to be.”
His words dripped with elegance.
And ambition.
Brassmane’s jaw tightened.
He had seen that glint before.
In war councils.
In courts.
In every place power met fear.
The Archmagi did not want to train Celeste.
They wanted to own her.
He stepped forward.
“Enough.”
The word rolled through the chamber like a boulder through a gate.
The crystals flickered.
Lantern-light quivered.
Brassmane’s voice dropped, low and thunderous, the kind of sound that rumbled in the bones before it reached the ears.
“You forget yourselves.”
