"Lady Veyla, Lady Isolde, it seems the excavation will take a little longer. Why don’t you rest in the meantime? You must be tired, no?" Vesha approached in a single-piece blue dress; her long blond hair was gathered high, catching the sun’s gold, and her ice-blue eyes held a clear, innocent light.

"Ah, Lady Vesha..." Facing her, Veyla and Isolde tensed a little.

They still were not used to receiving royal treatment here. "It is all right. We are not that tired, and as you can see, we are not the ones doing the hard work." Veyla’s answer carried a hint of shame. They were only giving instructions from time to time while everyone else worked.

"I understand. Please say the word if you require anything. The kitchen is preparing a few snacks, and in a few minutes you will have your choice of tea or coffee." Appointed by Adyr to look after them, Vesha handled her role with smooth care.

"Thank you, Lady Vesha. You are very kind," Veyla and Isolde answered with genuine warmth, privately noting how striking and adorable she looked; yet the pleasant thought had barely settled when the day shifted.

The sun still held, and the dig site buzzed with light spirits, but the horizon darkened as a mass of pitch-black clouds began to swarm toward them, and a slow dread, heavy like a hand on the chest, moved through the crowd.

Bodies tightened, a tremor passed from back to back, and the shared sense of approaching catastrophe unraveled the easy rhythm from every hand.

"What is that?" Dr. Veyla was not used to seeing anything like it. The phenomenon felt wrong to the eye and heavier to the mind.

"That is..." Vesha already knew what it implied. Fear had filled her eyes, and a tremor had started in her limbs. "We should return to the city. Please follow me. Hurry." She urged the 2 women to move.

They had no time. A voice crashed over them like thunder, and a real thunderclap split the air, cracking the ground and freezing everybody where they stood.

"People of Velari, my patience wears thin, and my time is short. Comply, and I will count it as surrender." Sevrak swept in above them on his giant Black Dragon, the sky around him tearing with bluish electric currents. He descended like a natural disaster, pressure folding over the gathering.

"Lord Dragon Rider Sevrak. What can these humble people do for you?" Vale Von Velaris, the king, stepped forward at once. His bare upper body with its aged muscles trembled slightly under the sheer pressure. White hair and beard were streaked with mud and dust.

"Are you the king of these lands?" Sevrak asked with open disdain. He drove the Black Dragon down into the ground with a loud impact, flinging dust and earth outward. The displaced air shoved the nearest onlookers back on their heels.

A mortal styling himself king only soured Sevrak’s mood further, for he held that title in his own region.

"I would not dare." Wise as his eyes suggested, Vale chose his words with care, determined not to provoke Sevrak any more than he already was. "I am merely a representative of my people. How may we assist you, my lord?"

Sevrak, faintly satisfied with his tyrant’s authority, crushing the ants at his feet, spoke with cold economy. "I came to take what I was promised. Give it, and I will consider my business here done."

At the curl of that sneer, Vale understood at once. He meant Vesha—the reward promised to him over the Collossith affair. That promise had already been broken, but Vale did not voice it. He knew this tyrant would not hear excuses.

Instead, Vale chose ignorance and reached for time. His voice went thin. "Forgive me, Lord Sevrak. I am not fully informed. Why not wait until Lady Liora Virell returns, and she can meet your request?"

Whatever softness had crept into Sevrak’s features set like stone. "Representative of the Velari, are you testing my patience?"

The Black Dragon’s jaws parted. Blue electrical filaments spat outward, wild and hissing. They struck several of the nearest bodies; flesh blackened in an instant like charcoal, hot vapor wisped from their skin, and lives went out without a cry.

Seeing this, Vale dropped to his knees. "No, no, Lord, please have mercy. I do not dare." The ease with which his people were taken made his heart tremble, but he swallowed his pride for the sake of the many who still stood.

"Now give her to me." Sevrak’s voice stayed low, yet the ground quivered under it as if to recognize a verdict. He demanded what he called his.

Vale fell into silence again. He was not resolved to hand Vesha over, yet refusing would only feed more lives to that lightning. It was the hardest dilemma of his reign, and it had come to rest in this single breath.

As the seconds stretched and the choice tightened around him, a small figure broke from the edge of the crowd and ran hard toward them.

"Please stop. You can take me, I beg you." Vesha ran hard toward them, ice-blue eyes shining with tears; her one-piece dress was smeared with mud where she had fallen more than once, and blood streaked her knees as she closed the distance.

"Hmph. At least someone here still has a reasonable mind." Sevrak’s tone was distant, though the anger on his face had not faded. "However, you will pay for making me wait this long. My time is more precious than every life you could pile before me."

His killing intent rose. The Black Dragon opened its vast maw; between razor teeth, a heavy current gathered, bright and swelling, intent on erasing every life present without sparing one.

"No." Vale lifted his head and shouted, dread filling his face as the weight of the responsibility pressed on him, as if the hundreds behind him had already been judged and were about to vanish.

Before the Rank 4 Spark could release the current, something shifted.

The dragon’s massive body stiffened, then eased; the forming charge unraveled and bled away, and the creature lowered its head as if in submission, as if something worth fearing had just entered the field.

"Dragon Rider Sevrak, I beg your pardon for the interruption." A voice, low as a still sea and loud as an erupting volcano, filled the space. Every soul and body felt, in the same breath, as if plunged beneath a bottomless depth.

Sevrak’s dark eyes widened as he registered the figure now standing atop his Black Dragon’s head. He had neither seen nor sensed the approach; in the space of a breath, the intruder was simply there, balanced above the dragon’s brow as if he had always occupied that place.

"Sir Caprion..." Sevrak, stripped of his earlier arrogance and the tyrant’s aura he wore like armor, inclined his head to the goatman before him.

Without letting his respectful tone or bearing waver, Caprion made his request. "Dragon Rider Sevrak, for the sake of my master, the Wanderer Merchant, I ask that you withdraw."

Sevrak raised his head, shock settling across his features.

For a moment, he could not make sense of what he had heard; at the sound of that name, the name he feared most in the entire Outer Region, his anger emptied out.