I slid the Glossshard into my pedia and the data poured in like cold water. At first the file looked dry—names, ledgers, shipment manifests—but then the connections lit up and the truth snapped into place. Dullgave was not merely a merchant of bad taste and worse decisions. He was a hydra.

Not the poetic kind you read about in nursery tales. A hydra in practice. Multiple heads, multiple fronts, one central spine. He kept buyers, drop points, and shell companies so abundant that chopping one down only sent two more sprouting in its place. The ledger we held was a mouthful of names and triangles and timestamps—useful, but not enough. The real secret was that Dullgave had built redundancy into his trade like a living thing. Follow one bag and you found a dozen routes; seize one safehouse and two more lit up in the night. The Hydra metaphor wasn't fanciful. It was tactical.

Glimmer's profile in the pad read clinical and cruel. It wasn't simply an addictive glitter—its raw form had practical uses. A measured application could steady a brain in free fall, arrest a mana-induced seizure, patch a mind frayed by overexposure to star-forged power. That was why the law tolerated it in narrow, licensed hands. Illegal production, though—cutting corners, adulterating the powder, mixing in horn shavings from creatures that should not be harvested—created something monstrous. That's where the traffickers lived: between medicine and malice.

Then the next panel opened and the message scoured me clean. Not a ledger this time. A voice in a sigil.

Target: Queen Candidate Morgana Havereck. Crime: Conjuring and Summoning a Fallen.

The grit in my mouth grew heavier. Morgana Havereck—name attached to privilege, patronage, and now a conjuration that smelled of ruin. Fallen. The word alone shifted the space between my ribs. Fallen do not arrive cleanly or politely. They arrive as rot and as hunger. Even if this one was stalled for now, stalled was a temporary noun in the vocabulary of disaster.

The Glossshard appended a directive—clearly stamped with Demetterra's authority. Her voice was not lyrical. It was a scalpel.

As you may have been told by your manager, the skills as the Spear ARE what will save this world. While the Fallen itself is being stalled—currently—that isn't always going to be the case. I have VERY limited authority within my own realm, under Grandis Law. This is the extent of what I can do: call in a favor, push you along, and push you to where you need to be. Succeed, and I'll reward you with something you've probably begged for.

Agency.

Fail, and we all won't live to succeed on it.

—Dominus Demetterra, Lady of Earthen Law, She Who Protects, and The One Who Whispered Her Name.

Agency. The word landed like a key sliding into a lock. Mother wanted me to act; Demetterra wanted me to be the blade that made the cut. But the fine print snapped at the foot of the order—limited authority under Grandis Law. I could marshal men, call in a favor, point a steward at a ledger. I could not, by fiat, raze a duchy or suspend a cluster-wide contract. I was a spear, not a crown. I could be authorized to strike, but I could not write the epilogue.

Still—agency. In a court that handed favors like coins, that single promise was heavier than a purse. To be given the right to shape one's own work was as rare as a dry day in a rainstorm.

I slid the shard from my pedia and stared at the raised wax of the Queen's seal again. Morgana Havereck. Dullgave the hydra. A Fallen being tended like a sleeping thing. The ledger's triangles seemed suddenly sinister, each one a head that might wake.

Somebody had mapped the trap. Somebody wanted me in the center of it. And Mother—who I now suspect is Demetterra—had just told me the prize for climbing out alive.

I set the shard down with more care than it deserved and breathed out. The game had changed. The ledger was no longer an inventory. It was a battlefield map.

***

I turned the cube over in my hands for what felt like the hundredth time, the smooth faces catching the light from the study's dim lamps. The etched sigils pulsed faintly—silver veins that looked almost alive, breathing with a rhythm that wasn't mine. I sighed, the weight of the thing pulling on me heavier than it should. It wasn't just a Skillcube. It was the reason Princess Yoringtide had shown up unannounced, wrapped in formality and veiled urgency.

Everyone in the room was staring. No one spoke. Just that quiet, collective pressure of unsaid questions hanging in the air like humidity before a storm. Their eyes were all the same—wide, curious, half-afraid. All except Cordelia's.

"Fine," I said, finally breaking the silence, setting the cube gently on the table before me. "Since none of you are brave—or candid—enough to actually ask, but will keep slamming me with your eyes." I flicked a glance toward the quiet woman sitting across from me. "Except for Cordelia, who is pretending she isn't trying to pry past my mental defenses…"

She gave me a look that was half-guilty and half-irritated. "You're really improving when you want to," she sighed, leaning back. "Alright, then. What is it?"

"The cube?" I turned it once more, the runes now faintly pulsing in tune with my own pulse. "You all know how I already sacrificed two cubes for my griffin bond, right? Even though my Arte has nothing to do with bonds—unless, of course, my masterpiece Arte does."

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

A quiet shake of heads rippled through the group. I hadn't expected agreement.

"Yeah. Didn't think so." I leaned forward, elbows on the table, the air heavy with a mix of mana and anticipation. "Anyway… I wanted to be a machina user, archer, and mage hybrid when I started. That's no longer the case. I've changed direction. I'm walking the labyrinth path now, as you all know."

Someone—Wallace, maybe—nodded slowly. The labyrinthian path wasn't for the sane. It meant shaping your body and your mind into something that could survive within the ever-shifting folds of a constructed realm. It meant you learned to exist within paradox.

"This said," I continued, "using my skills as a Ranah-Tahir outside the labyrinth is… possible, but limited. Which means I have to plan differently."

"So that's what this new cube is for?" Fallias asked, her tone half-interested, half-worried. She always spoke that way when she already knew she wouldn't like the answer.

I nodded. "Exactly. I've already got Dance of the Paper Crane—that's my paper generation base. Then Stage of the Starbourne, The Ruined World, and Paper Pencells. If you count the two I sacrificed for the griffin bond, that's seven cubes total. Meaning…"

"Two open slots," Cordelia finished for me, tapping her fingers thoughtfully.

"Right," I said. I held up the new cube, letting them all feel the subtle, shifting pulse of it through the air. "And this one is…"

I trailed off, then exhaled sharply. "You know what—here." With a flick of my fingers, I transmitted the data through the pedia's local network. Holographic runes shimmered to life above the table, casting faint blue light across everyone's faces.

Manuscript of the Star-Writer (Tailored) A Skillcube specifically tailored to a unique user, utilizing a hybrid of Artes and the intended user's blood. Effect: Unknown.

The silence that followed was the thick kind—the sort that seems to pull the oxygen from the room.

Fallias was the first to find her voice. "Wait. A tailored cube?"

"Yeah." I didn't look up.

Her eyes widened slightly. "Those are legal?"

Everyone's head turned to me. I didn't even have to answer, but I did anyway.

"No."

That single word hung there like a blade.

The cube hummed, faintly. The lines running along its faces now glowed a little brighter, like it was reacting to being discussed.

"Tailored cubes," Wallace muttered, rubbing the back of his neck, "are supposed to be theoretical, or at least, forbidden. You'd need a blood key, a sigil, and direct Arte-to-soul imprinting. That's not just craftsmanship, that's—"

"Alchemy," Cordelia finished grimly. "And not the friendly kind."

Fallias looked at me, her brows knitting. "You didn't make this, did you?"

I shook my head. "No. It was delivered. Yoringtide's visit wasn't social. Plus, creating skill-cubes violates Pote's Paradox. Its part of the reason my arte is so valued. But conglomerating them together with artes and existing skillcubes is…well…I guess possible."

That changed the tone instantly. The others stiffened, shifting uneasily. Even Cordelia, who prided herself on her calm, went still.

"So," she said carefully, "this cube was given to you. By the crown."

"Technically, yes. But the seal on the accompanying writ wasn't the Queen's. It was Mother's."

Cordelia's pupils contracted. "The shadow network."

"Exactly." I sighed, letting the truth settle over them. "The cube is keyed to me. It's a hybrid—part Skillcube, part Arte core, partially… something else. It's using my own blood signature as its foundational cipher. Which means it's alive, in a way. It'll evolve with me—or kill me if it's misaligned."

"That's not a training tool," Wallace said quietly. "That's a test."

"Mother doesn't do tests," I replied. "She does verdicts."

Fallias stood, folding her arms, eyes on the cube. "Then what's the play here? You use it? Or do we destroy it before it decides you're unfit?"

I smiled weakly. "Destroying something keyed to my soul would probably destroy me, too. So, that's not an option."

The silence stretched again. I could feel the others' unease pressing on me. They wanted to help, but this wasn't something teamwork could solve. Tailored cubes weren't meant for collaboration. They were the sort of relics whispered about—artifacts that chose their wielder, binding themselves through blood and thought until only one outcome remained: fusion or annihilation.

Fallias finally broke the quiet. "Then we do what we always do," she said softly, walking around the table to stand beside me. "We adapt. But, Alexander… whatever that thing is—" She gestured at the cube, still pulsing faintly in my hand. "—don't let it define you before you define it."

Her words settled deep, somewhere I didn't want to acknowledge. I looked at the cube again, the strange runes crawling across its face like constellations shifting in the night. It felt alive, aware, almost… watchful.

And when I blinked, for just an instant, the sigils rearranged themselves into words only I could read:

WRITE YOURSELF INTO THE STARS.

My grip tightened. Somewhere, far away, I thought I could hear Mother laughing.

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